Date: 2017-04-03 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction; Space Opera; Fiction; Fantasy; Space; Young Adult; Romance; Lgbt; Adventure; Science Fiction Fantasy
Description: My name is Alice Long, and I’ve always known I was different. When I was little I used to climb up to the highest branches of the housetree at night, and watch the starships docking at the orbital stations high above. Forty meters off the ground, watching ships thirty thousand kilometers overhead, with senses that could pick out radar pings and comm chatter as easily as the ships themselves. It all seemed perfectly natural at the time. There were other kids with mods at the orphanage, but nothing like that. I learned fast to downplay my abilities, keep my mouth shut and try to blend in. Even a

Perilous Waif

E. William Brown

Copyright © E. William Brown, 2017

All Rights Reserved

Chapter 1

My last day at the Benevolent Goddess orphanage started out full of promise. I greeted the dawn from a perch high atop the tallest housetree in the complex, happily enjoying the fruits of my latest hunt. As Felicity’s sun cleared the horizon I looked up into the warm yellow glow with the contentment that comes only from the prospect of a full belly.

My roommate, Dika, told me the other kids just saw a bright glare when they looked into the sun. Their loss. Having a giant ball of nuclear fire hanging in the sky was just too cool for words, and there was always something interesting going on up there. Today I could see an especially pretty solar prominence, a ghostly streamer of hot gas rising so high it looked like it might escape the sun entirely.

I smiled, and tore another bite out of the zango I’d caught in my little pre-dawn hunting expedition. I was supposed to be asleep in bed, of course. But sometimes my cravings got too strong to ignore, especially when I was going through a growth spurt. The matrons didn’t mean to starve anyone, but the house bots had never been programmed with a metabolism like mine in mind. So every now and then I’d sneak out to indulge my hunting instincts, and catch a little extra food with my own hands.

I would have felt bad about eating a squirrel, and monkeys would be too weird. I usually hunted zangos, a kind of vicious furry predator that hunted monkeys in the forest canopy. They had long limbs for jumping from tree to tree, and big hooked claws for catching things. The security bots mostly ignored them, since they were nocturnal and good little orphans weren’t supposed to be out of their beds at night anyway. Killing one without getting any scratches that might give me away was a challenge, but I’d managed it.

Yay me. The mighty huntress triumphs again.

I bit down on a rib, crunching it between my teeth and savoring the tangy flavor. Yum. So many things in there that I didn’t get from the vegetarian diet the matrons served. But was it enough?

I closed my eyes, and pulled up my internal management interface.

I had a lot of enhancements, but this was one of the fanciest ones I knew about. A rotating three-dimensional image of myself appeared in my mind’s eye, showing every detail of my physical condition.

I was getting awfully skinny. I’d been shooting up like a weed this past year, gaining a centimeter or more every month until I could easily pass for a teenager. I didn’t mind that so much, but growing so fast burned through a lot of calories. I’d ended up with a willowy, fragile-looking build that I wasn’t at all happy with. I was a predator, darn it. I wasn’t supposed to look completely harmless.

“At least I don’t look boring,” I mused.

The natives of Felicity were all the same morph type, a custom job the original colonists had commissioned to help make their weird little society work. The dryads were small and slender, with round faces and soft features. Most of the orphans here at Benevolent Goddess were that type, with the usual brown skin and dark green hair. They all blended together into a sea of bland sameness to me. A herd of pastel prey animals grazing contentedly under the trees.

No one would ever mistake me for one of them. My narrow face and high cheekbones would have stood out even without the bright violet eyes. My hair was a wild mop of jet black that fell well past my shoulders, instead of the natural pixie cut that was normal here. Even my skin stood out, a pale white with just the slightest hint of a tan despite a life spent mostly outdoors.

Well, I could have let myself tan if I’d wanted to. But my skin didn’t do it naturally, and by the time I’d grown up enough to use my morph interface I’d decided I liked standing out. I never wanted to be mistaken for a native.

Offworlders like me were a minority at the orphanage, but a surprisingly big one. Felicity didn’t normally allow immigrants, but there was a loophole for orphans that the Federation Navy apparently liked to take advantage of. There were about thirty of us here at Benevolent Goddess, and no two were alike. We had everything from spacer kids with zero-gee adaptations to full-on animal morphs. Too bad we had even less in common with each other than with the dryads, or we might have stuck together more.

Oh, who am I kidding? You can’t put that many kids in one place and not have them break up into a bunch of cliques.

I put that thought aside, and dug deeper into my interface. There was a whole thicket of yellow malnutrition warnings, complaining that my diet here wasn’t giving my body everything it needed to grow. From what I’d read that was one of the problems with extreme morph types like me. When you design a body that grows all kinds of exotic cyberwear as it develops, it ends up needing to eat things that a normal human wouldn’t.

I worked my way through the rest of the rib, and watched the calcium deficiency warning slowly fade away. Some of the other warnings were losing urgency too. So maybe I just needed to get more meat in my diet?

Well, no. There were a bunch of other warnings that weren’t budging. What the heck was ‘MGE feedstock’, anyway? Or ‘P-group supplements’? Sometimes I really wonder what mom was thinking when she decided to give me all this stuff.

My musings were interrupted by a familiar voice.

“Alice? Are you up there?”

I peeked over the edge of the branch I was sitting on, and found Dika’s exasperated face peering out the window of our dorm room twenty meters below.

“Um, hi?”

She leaned further out of the window to glare up at me. “What are you doing, you nut? Wait, is that blood on your face?”

“Oops.”

I licked my fingers clean, and rubbed ineffectually at my face. I should have had another thirty minutes or so to finish my kill and get cleaned up. What was my roommate doing awake already?

A moment later I heard the scrabble of claws on the housetree’s rough bark, and then Dika was pulling herself onto the branch beside me.

Thankfully, my roommate was another foreign kid instead of one of the locals. The other girls called her a data rat, and liked to make fun of her for having a tail. Me, I didn’t think there was anything raftlike about her.

Well, okay, she did kind of scurry around a lot, and the way she moved didn’t really look human. Baseline humans kind of plod along at a leisurely speed, content to chase you until you drop from exhaustion. Dika was all fast bursts of manic speed, like a lot of small mammals. She had some cosmetic mods too, like the furry ears poking out of her brown hair or the way her face somehow looked like it ought to have whiskers.

But her tail was furry, not naked. So what if she had a habit of climbing furniture, and walls, and sometimes even people? She was so tiny, she needed the extra height just to talk to you without craning her neck. Besides, I thought the whole effect was adorable. Especially when she was climbing around the tree wearing nothing but a pair of panties and a flimsy nightshirt. She might not have a figure like some of the other offworld girls, but she was lean and fit and incredibly limber.

I jerked my eyes away, feeling my ears heat. This was so embarrassing. I’d only started noticing things like that a few weeks ago, and I had no idea what to do about it. Dika was seventeen, and I was still just a kid.

Her eyes took in my bloody face and the half-eaten zango, and she gasped.

“Alice! Are you nuts? Can you imagine what the matrons would do if they caught you eating live animals?”

“Lecture me about living in harmony with nature?” I suggested. “Like there’s anything natural about a terraformed planet with a completely artificial ecology. Did you know zangos have a little corporate logo on their bellies? I bet their DNA even starts with a copyright notice.”

She rolled her eyes at me. “You can’t argue religion with zealots, Alice. That’ll just make them mad, and then you’ll spend a day in the Hole before they send you for Adjustment.”

I shrugged. “You know Adjustment doesn’t work on me. What are you doing up so early, anyway?”

She plopped down next to me with a little sigh, and turned her gaze out over the forest. “I couldn’t sleep. I’ve been feeling really restless since yesterday. I think I’ve got a new instinct package coming online.”

I nodded sympathetically. That was one of the reasons the matrons had put me and Dika in the same dorm room. Most of the offworld kids here at the orphanage had pretty simple mod packages. Cosmetic changes, health upgrades, maybe a few practical enhancements like a computer or com implant. Nothing that was hard to figure out, or even remove if the matrons decided it was a problem.

We were different. Dika’s parents must have been rich, because her mods went way beyond normal genetic changes. She had tons of nanotech cybernetics, more sensory enhancements than you can shake a stick at, and an amazing amount of software that didn’t come with much of a help package. No matter how hard she tried to fit in, she tended to flummox the matrons just by existing.

As for me, well, no one was really sure what I was. The matrons always said the Federation Navy found me during a raid on a pirate base, and my parents were dead. But whoever they’d been, they’d gone all out with my enhancements. I was an infant when I was brought here, but I’d sprouted into a credible imitation of a thirteen-year-old girl in only six years. Most of the kids were freaked out by that, and the matrons had no idea what to do with me.

Dika took it all in stride, though. She knew exactly what it was like to have some new enhancement to my body or mind activate itself every few months, and she’d always been here to help me through it. She’d helped me get a grip on my hunting instincts, and we’d learned a lot about dealing with extreme sensory enhancements together. If she was going through another change the least I could do was help her with it.

“Sounds annoying,” I said. “Any clues what it might be about?”

“Something social? I’ve been feeling kind of… well, promise you won’t freak out?”

I gave her a look. “I’m the one who’s sneaking out at night to hunt down wild animals and eat them. I’ve got no room to call anyone weird.”

She chuckled. “I guess not. And for the record, that’s really gross to watch. How can you eat raw meat like that?”

I shrugged. “Cooked would be better, but the security bots would be all over me if I lit a fire. Besides, it doesn’t really bother me. I don’t know why mom thought it was a good idea to give me all these predatory instincts, but they’re good for that. So, you were saying?”

She hesitated, and turned to watch the sunrise. When she spoke again, she’d switched to speaking in the Classic English that we sometimes used as our own private language.

“Do you know about boys?”

I frowned thoughtfully. That was dangerous ground.

There are no men on Felicity. There wasn’t even a word for ‘boy’ in Standard Newspeak, the common language of Felicity. The closest I’d seen was some warnings about the strange and immoral biomods that offworlders used, and of course good community-minded girls weren’t supposed to be interested in that kind of thing.

But this was Dika. She wasn’t going to tattle on me to the matrons if I admitted to not being a good little herd animal.

“Yes,” I admitted.

The database I’d been born with was a pretty minimal thing, probably meant as a starting point for a real education. But it covered a lot of basic stuff that our classes here at the orphanage didn’t, including the fact that people come in more than one gender.

“Have you noticed that even the girls who were older when they came here have no idea?” She pressed. “Sometimes we get girls as old as seven or eight, and there’s no way they’d just forget on their own. There’s only one way that could happen.”

“I know. I guess the matrons erase the memories when they Adjust them. They do that with everything they don’t like. No one here really knows what a war is, either.”

“I could live with being stuck on a world full of pacifists,” Dika replied. “But I want to meet a boy someday. Something about that just feels really right, you know? Just, pick one out of the herd, and lure him into chasing me, and… well, I’m not sure about the rest. But I wish there was someone to practice on.”

Ah, now I was getting the picture. I grinned. That did sound kind of fun, actually.

“And you say you don’t have a hunting instinct. Maybe you’re just built for catching a different kind of prey?”

“Shut up!” She shoved me, trying to look indignant. But she couldn’t hold the expression. A smile broke through, and she shook her head ruefully. “Maybe I am. Is there something wrong with that?”

“Of course not. But you’re not going to find what you’re looking for on Felicity. If they’re pretending boys don’t exist they must think they’re evil or something, so they probably don’t even let them on the planet.”

“I know,” she groaned. “Believe me, I know. Sometimes I wish I could just leave.”

“I’d go with you,” I offered.

She rolled her eyes. “Just like that? What are we supposed to pay for passage with? Where would we even go? I don’t know of a better colony to move to. Do you? Besides, space is dangerous. I’m not going to try it until I can afford a bodyguard, at least.”

Part of me wanted to tell her that I’d be happy to guard her body. But it was a corny line, and I was too embarrassed to actually say the words. What would she think? Could she even be interested if I wasn’t a boy? Did I really like her like that, or was this just my stupid hormones messing with my head?

No, better to keep my mouth shut. It was a dumb idea, anyway. Bodyguards are supposed to be intimidating, and I was anything but. Just an innocent little girl, as far as anyone could tell. The dangerous stuff was all carefully hidden on the inside.

“I guess it’s going to be a while, then,” I said.

“I’ve got a plan,” she confided. “When I turn twenty and get out of here I’m going to have all my certificates lined up for a career in network security. That pays pretty well on Felicity, since none of Gaia’s daughters want to work with computers. I’ll have access to the datanet too, so I can research other colonies in my spare time. I’ll be off this rock before I turn thirty, as long as I keep my head down and don’t attract attention.”

“If you say so, Dika. Well, I’d better get cleaned up before breakfast.”

“I’ll say. You’ve got blood all over your face. Wait here, and I’ll bring you a towel.”

She slipped off the branch and scrambled back down the trunk before I could reply. I watched her go with a sad smile.

I was pretty sure her plan was just wishful thinking. Being raised by an orphanage wasn’t free, and the matrons made sure to give us plenty of guilt tripping about how important it was to pay off our debt certificates once we left. But I noticed that no one ever quoted any numbers, and debt peonage was another of those lovely ideas I had to learn about from my database because it was never mentioned in class. Not to mention that Felicity uses dynamic taxation instead of a static rate system. I’d be amazed if they ever let her work her way out of debt.

I had my own plan. It was a lot more dangerous than hers, especially since there were so many things I couldn’t prepare for in advance. The orphanage didn’t even have a datanet connection, and the matrons did their best to keep us ignorant about so many things. But I couldn’t stay here forever, so I’d just have to make it work somehow.

A surprised squawk from the window drew my attention. Voices, when the rest of the dorm should barely be stirring. I focused my hearing, filtering out the sounds of the forest so I could make out what was happening in our room.

“You’re going to be in so much trouble!”

It was Kovy, from the room next to ours. That wasn’t good. She was a beautiful girl, a curvy redhead with a winning smile and a talent for making people like her. But she was more dangerous than anyone seemed to realize, and she’d been sniffing around Dika lately.

“Please don’t tell anyone,” Dika said nervously.

“A good girl always tells the matrons when someone has been bad.”

Another voice, smooth and calculating. Kovy’s roommate and favorite minion, Ulin. The smug bitch was always making trouble. She was a tall, athletic brunette with a basic Amazon package, and while the Adjustment we’d all been through insured there was no real fighting in the dorms that didn’t keep her from taking advantage of her superior strength.

“I’ll owe you a favor,” Dika offered.

“Oh, you’re going to do more than that,” Ulin purred. “Breaking curfew isn’t so bad, but climbing around outside the housetree like some kind of heathen? They’ll send you to Adjustment, and that’s if they don’t figure out whatever you were doing out there with that roommate of yours.”

“P-please, Ulin!” Dika begged.

“You’re asking a lot from us,” Kovy said. “I’d go that far for a friend, maybe, but you said you didn’t want to be one of my friends. Maybe you’ve reconsidered?”

“I… it’s not you, Kovy. I just don’t like girls that way.”

“What are you talking about, Dika?”

Kovy sounded genuinely puzzled at that. I guess even a finely tuned social predator like her wasn’t immune to Adjustment.

“I bet she just wants us to talk her into it,” Ulin said. “She’s so shy, I’m not sure she’s ever played with anyone. Or maybe she’s afraid of the freak finding out.”

I gritted my teeth. A freak, was I? She’d better watch her step, or I might show her just how freakish I was. But no, the matrons were death on anything that even hinted of violence. Dika was always better than me with words. It was probably better to let her handle this.

“Aw, is that it? Don’t worry, Dika. If she’s giving you trouble I can get Matron Gisel to deal with her. But if it’s the other thing, well, that can be fun sometimes. Ulin?”

There was a surprised squeak, and the thump of a chair being knocked over.

“Ulin!” Dika shouted. “Let me ga ha hooo…”

That was weird. I frowned, leaning over the side of the branch to try to hear what was happening.

“Ssshhh, pet,” Kovy crooned softly. “Isn’t this nice? Yes, you can struggle if you like, but no shouting.”

“S-stop it,” Dika whimpered. “Oh! Oh, goddess. Please. Please please please…”

“What’s that, Dika? Please turn it up? Well, if you insist.”

I’d heard enough. A growl burst from my throat, and I pitched myself off the branch.

The wind rushed past my face as I fell towards the ground, sixty meters below. This was going to hurt if I messed up. One second. Two.

My hand snapped out to grip the window sill in passing. For a normal girl that would have been a hopeless gesture, but my fingers latched onto the thick mass of living wood with a burst of inhuman strength. I jerked to a stop, the force rattling the bones in my arm. They were just diamond whiskers embedded in a growth matrix, way more fragile than they’d be when I was fully grown. But even so, stopping my puny thirty-eight kilos was barely a strain.

I flung myself up through the window, tucking into a ball momentarily to clear the narrow opening, and landed on my feet in the middle of the room.

“Leave her alone!”

The scene I found was exactly what I’d been afraid of. Ulin was standing behind Dika, effortlessly holding her arms pinning behind her back. Dika squirmed uselessly in her grip, unable to consider using her claws as the weapons they were meant to be. And Kovy…

Kovy had neurostims in her fingers. One of her hands rested lightly on the side on Dika’s head, projecting a finely tuned field that scrambled my roommate’s thoughts and did who knew what to her feelings. The other was on Dika’s thigh, teasingly working its way up towards her panties.

I saw red.

The next thing I knew Ulin was on the floor, crying and babbling apologies while I held her arm twisted behind her with just slightly less pressure than it would take to break it. Kovy was huddled in the corner screaming hysterically, and there were hurried footsteps coming up the stairs.

“Hands off my roommate, bitches,” I growled. “She’s not interested in pushy suckups.”

“Oh Gaia, mercy, please don’t kill me Alice,” Ulin sobbed.

The door flew open. I looked up to find Matron Wensa staring at me in horror, and had a split second to remember the blood on my face.

“Security!” She screamed. “Emergency response, now!”

Oops.

Letting the security bots capture me was probably the hardest thing I’d ever done. All my instincts screamed at me to fight, struggle, run away, do anything other than passively stand there and let them take me. But that would just make things worse. Fighting another orphan was bad enough. Resisting a matron would be a thousand times worse.

All I could do was surrender, and hope for the best.

That sounded like a smart idea right up until the first bot sprayed me with capture web, and then it was too late to change my mind. But I had a horrible, sinking feeling. I’d never seen the bots use capture web before. What did they think I was going to do, go crazy and kill everyone?

By the time the bots had carried me up to the Discipline Office I was wondering if I’d made the right choice. Matron Gisel’s lecture didn’t help.

“In all my years at this institution I’ve never seen such a barbaric display,” she fumed. “Violence! Actual, physical violence, in my orphanage. What were you thinking?”

I opened my mouth.

“Not you!” She snapped. “I want you to sit quietly, and think about what you’ve done.”

Well, I certainly wasn’t going anywhere. The security bots had wrapped me in enough capture web to hold a dozen adults, and the sticky strands were firmly attached to the hard wooden bench I sat on.

There were two of the benches facing the desk in Matron Gisel’s discipline office. Dika was perched next to me, free of restraints and being careful not to touch me. Ulin and Kovy cowered on the other bench, looking ready to bolt out the door if I so much as looked at them funny.

It was hard to suppress a smirk at that. Whatever happened here, they weren’t going to bother Dika again anytime soon.

There wasn’t much to look at in the office. It was just a medium-sized room growing out of the trunk of one of the housetrees that made up the orphanage. The walls were bare, as was the huge desk of dark wood that grew from the floor. The windows along the wall to my left looked out onto a solid mass of foliage, admitting light without providing much of a view.

Matron Gisel was pacing in front of the window, instead of sitting behind the desk like she usually would. That was probably a bad sign.

The matron was a typical dryad, barely ten cems taller than me and with no muscle tone to speak of. Physically, I had nothing to fear from her. The simple green dress she wore matched her hair, but was worthless as armor. She didn’t carry a weapon, and I doubt she could have brought herself to use one if she did. The settlers who had colonized Felicity a hundred years ago had done their best to engineer away the human capacity for violence, after all.

But there are worse things than direct violence. As head matron she had ultimate control of all the orphanage systems, including the security bots. She could order me confined to sensory isolation in the ‘Quiet Room’, or have me sent for Adjustment, and the bots would carry out the sentence. I wasn’t sure what else she could do to me, but I had a sinking feeling I was going to find out.

“Kovy, what were you doing in Dika and Alice’s room?”

Kovy glanced at me, and swallowed nervously.

“We were just trying to talk Dika into a little friendly petting, ma’am,” she said earnestly. “She never lets anyone touch her, and that can’t be healthy.”

Matron Gisel frowned. “Is that true, Dika?”

Dika sniffed. “Yes, ma’am. I just… I’m sorry, I don’t mean to make anyone feel rejected. I just haven’t felt anything like that yet. But ma’am, I was trying to tell them no and they wouldn’t listen. Ulin was holding me down before Alice made them let me go.”

“Come on, cutie, don’t you know it can be fun to play that way?” Ulin said.

“We were just testing you,” Kovy insisted. “I thought you might be looking for someone who knows how to be pushy. We would have let you go if I didn’t get a reaction.”

“You have neurostim projectors in your fingers!” Dika objected. “Anyone would react to that.”

“If it feels that good, then what do you have to complain about?” Kovy replied, sounding smug.

Matron Gisel put her hands on her hips, and frowned at the girl. “Kovy, we’ve talked about this before. You can’t just go around using your enhancements on anyone who catches your eye. You’ll end up leaving a trail of broken hearts behind you, and that isn’t kind.”

Kovy’s eyes fell. “Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry, ma’am. I really was trying to help her.”

“Forcing me to feel the way you want me to isn’t helping, Kovy,” Dika said harshly. “Please don’t do that to me again.”

Kovy hung her head, and did her best to sound contrite. “I’m sorry, Dika. I promise, I won’t.”

“That’s more like it, girls. We’re a community here. Do try to act like it. Ulin? Do you have something to say to Dika?”

Ulin was silent for a long moment. From her expression I couldn’t tell if she was thinking, or just sulking.

“We caught Dika climbing in through her window,” she finally said.

“The window? My word. But you’re in the upper dorms. Is this true, Dika?”

Dika winced. “Yes, ma’am.”

“What in Gaia’s name were you doing out there? Something to do with Alice, I suppose.”

“I woke up, and she wasn’t in our room,” Dika explained.

“So you immediately decided to climb out the window? Somehow, I suspect there’s more to it than that. Ulin, why didn’t you call a matron then?”

“I was going to,” she claimed. “But Kovy and I had been talking about how to get through to Dika, so I was already thinking about that. I, um, kind of made her think I might not tell on her if she cooperated.”

“That’s hardly proper behavior for a good girl, Ulin. Were you really going to let her get away with improper behavior? Or were you offering an agreement you didn’t intend to keep? Neither option reflects well on you.”

“I, um, didn’t really think it through, ma’am.”

Matron Gisel wasn’t impressed. “Lack of foresight is also a fault, young lady. Is there anything else you need to tell me?”

“I think Alice messed up my arm, ma’am. It hurts pretty bad right now.”

“Yes, and now we get to the heart of the matter. Alice, where were you this morning?”

Well, there was no point in lying. She’d just send the security bots to do a forensic sweep if she wasn’t satisfied with my explanation, and I certainly hadn’t covered my tracks well enough to fool them.

“I was in the upper branches watching the sunrise, ma’am.”

“Breaking curfew,” she noted. “And endangering yourself.”

“I can’t really be hurt by falls, ma’am,” I disagreed. “Even if I land wrong, the worst I could get is a few bruises.”

“A bruise is still an injury,” she noted. “Also arguing with a matron, and setting a dangerous example for your peers. Go on. Why were you up there? Did you just have an irrepressible urge to see the sunrise?”

“I was hunting, ma’am,” I admitted.

“I see. Is that why you have blood on your face?”

“Yes, ma’am. I caught a zango.”

She shook her head sadly. “You caught and ate a wild animal. Have you no respect for the goddesses’ creatures?”

“The logo said it was a Callisto Creations creature, ma’am.”

Her lips pressed together so hard they went pale. Oops. I probably shouldn’t have said that.

“We are all Gaia’s creatures, young lady. So Dika climbed up to see what you were doing?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And when she returned to her room, like a girl with at least some faint shred of common sense, you then overheard her conversation with Ulin and Kovy?”

I nodded.

“Then would you please explain, Alice, exactly what possessed you to attack two members of our community?”

Why had I done it? It seemed a little over the top, after Kovy’s explanation. I could have just glared at them, and they would have backed off. But I hadn’t seen two overly enthusiastic schoolgirls being a little pushy. I’d seen… something there wasn’t a word for in Standard Newspeak. The closest that could get was ‘ravish’, which meant something like ‘to be delightfully pleasured by a forceful partner despite your insincere protests’.

Had I been wrong?

No. I knew better than to believe anything Kovy said. She was a social predator, and she was fighting to protect herself now.

I lapsed into the Classic English that I’d been born knowing. “Ma’am, I came through the window to find these two practically raping my roommate.”

Ulin and Kovy didn’t speak English, but Dika and Matron Gisel did. Dika gasped, and turned to stare at me.

“We speak Standard on Felicity, Alice,” the matron snapped.

“Is there a word for ‘rape’ in Standard, ma’am?” I replied, still in English. “Ulin was keeping her pinned so Kovy could scramble her brain until she stopped struggling, ma’am. I took one look and my combat instincts activated. I almost killed them both. But then I remembered that we’re supposed to be a community, and community members don’t hurt each other. So I held myself back, and stopped them without doing any real damage. So you could decide what to do. Only you aren’t even going to punish them, are you? You’re actually buying that load of self-serving nonsense Kovy made up.”

Matron Gisel went pale. “Enough! Speak Standard, or don’t speak at all. I won’t have you poisoning these innocent girls with your outlandish foreign nonsense. How do you even remember things like that? The Adjustment when you came here should have taken care of it all.”

I remained silent.

“Well, I’ve had enough of this foolishness from you. The path of least intervention is all well and good as a general rule, but not when it harms the community. Security, put a call in for a medical team to review Alice Long’s case. I don’t care how cleverly that computer in her head is hidden, there has to be a way to take it out.”

“Compliance,” the bot behind me said.

“Good. Dika, I’m sorry we had to put you with such a troublesome roommate. I’ll see what we can do to fix that, and provide you with a healthier environment in the future. But you still should have known better. I’m going to have to give you a time out in the Quiet Room, so you can think about how to do better in the future.”

“But, matron, Alice is my friend,” Dika protested.

“Not any more, child. Now wait here, and a proctor will be along for you shortly. Ulin, Kovy, come with me. You’re both going to serve detentions for your part in this mess, but I want the docbot to have a look at you first.”

She was halfway to the door when the security bot spoke.

“Matron Gisel, Doctor Yarik of the Spinsel Medical Grove has accepted your request. She offers to send an orderly to retrieve Alice Long for a preliminary exam this afternoon.”

“Good. Warn her that the patient is antisocial, and she’ll need to be restrained.”

“Compliance.”

Gisel nodded. “Come along, girls.”

She led them out of the room. Kovy gave me a smug look behind her back, just a momentary flicker of expression before she went back to playing innocent. Ulin was less restrained. She actually sneered at me, and waved goodbye.

I really wished I’d broken her arm. Maybe her neck, too. The docbot would have fixed it, but at least she’d have suffered a little first.

“I’m sorry,” Dika said miserably. “I didn’t mean to get you caught. Crash, I should have just given them what they wanted.”

“Don’t say that,” I said sharply. “I’m the one who messed up here, Dika. I could have stopped them without scaring them so much, and then I’d just be getting another Adjustment that won’t do anything.”

We sat in silence for a moment.

“Are you going to be okay?” She asked. “I know you’ll lose a lot if they take out your implant computer.”

I sighed. “I don’t think they can do that without killing me, Dika. You know how I’ve got a clock in my head? I can watch the milliseconds go by one by one if I want to.”

“Oh.” She bit her lip, and gave me a concerned look. “You never told me that. But what does it mean? Organic brains don’t run that fast, but you can’t be an infomorph. There’s no way they would have missed it.”

According to the Church of Gaia sapient AIs are practically demons, and uploaded humans aren’t much better. But she was right about it being weird. There was a pretty normal-looking human brain in my skull, and no one had noticed anything odd about it the few times I’d been given medical checkups. Or when I’d been Adjusted, for that matter, and you’d think a brainwashing machine would watch its victim’s brain pretty closely.

“I don’t know what it means, Dika,” I admitted. “But I’m scared of what they might find, if they look at me too closely. I don’t know what they’ll do with me if it turns out I’m… not what I look like. Matron Gisel thinks I’m dangerous now. What if they decide there’s no way to make me safe?”

We both knew the answer to that. Felicity is supposed to be a safe little bubble of perfect conformity, where no one ever has to think about anything unpleasant. If they decided there was no way to make me fit in, well, then for the good of the community Alice Long would have to quietly disappear.

“Dika, I think you can guess what I have to do now.”

The security bot was still listening, so I couldn’t just come out and say I was going to escape. Fortunately bots aren’t very smart, especially the cheap ones the orphanage used for security. It wasn’t going to figure out what I meant unless I actually came out and said it.

Dika gave the capture web a dubious look, and glanced back at the security bot floating silently behind us. “Are you sure, Alice? There’s no other way?”

The last thing I wanted was to make her worry. So I mustered up my best cocky grin.

“Don’t worry about me, roomie. I’ve got a plan. I’ll make it, and someday I’ll come back to check on you. Maybe give you a rescue, if you need it.”

She managed a hesitant smile. “That’s so you. Alright, but don’t think I’m going to be some helpless victim here. I’ve always been better at blending in. I bet I’ll end up being the one to rescue you.”

“Sounds like a bet to me.”

“Good idea. In three years I’ll be an adult, and at the rate you’re growing up you will be too. So whichever of us is better off then gets to swoop in and rescue the other. The loser owes the winner… um…”

“A big hug, and a chance to say ‘I told you so’,” I suggested.

“Deal. Good luck, nut.”

“Good luck to you too, Dika. May the most awesome girl win.”

It wasn’t long before the proctor arrived to collect Dika for her day in the Hole. I was a little worried about her, but she’d come through punishments before. She’d survive, and without me there to draw attention to her she’d have everyone convinced she was completely reformed in a week.

A few minutes after that the bot stirred, and silently glided out of the room. I grinned triumphantly. I’d been counting on that. The bots had a lot of routine duties to see to, patrolling the building and grounds to make sure everything was safe. The surrounding forest was full of wild animals, and some of them would happily make a snack of a little orphan girl if they got the chance. Since the security computer thought I was safely restrained, keeping an eye on me would be a lower priority for it than watching out for the whole community.

Getting out of the capture web should have been impossible. It was much too strong for me to just tear free, even if I ramped my strength up to max and burned off my whole energy reserve struggling. My teeth would probably cut it if I could bring them to bear, but the way I was trussed up made that pretty much impossible. Fortunately I had other, less predictable options.

I closed my eyes, and focused on my chemosynthesis system. I’d learned a couple of years ago that I could use it to change my scent, so the mosquitoes that swarmed in the damper parts of the forest wouldn’t think I was food. I could secrete other chemicals, too. The network of microscopic nanofabs in my skin could make any molecule I had data on, and the database I’d been born with had a few dozen useful entries in it. Signaling pheromones. Body odor, and agents to neutralize it. A cleaning solution that could have saved me a lot of trouble this morning, if I’d thought to use it on my face.

Capture web solvent.

The transparent goop seeped out of my skin, and started to eat away at the webbing. Unfortunately the disposable shifts they issued residents at the orphanage must have been manufactured from the same base, because my clothes dissolved too. Wonderful. Well, that was just extra motivation to make sure no one saw me leave.

What did it say about my family, that mom had made sure her baby girl had a handy way to escape from standard police restraints?

Hopefully I’d get the chance to find out someday. But there was a lot of capture web, and my feedstock reserves were tiny. I got my arms free, and wiggled off the bench. But my ankles were still stuck together when I ran dry. I could cannibalize my own flesh to make more feedstock, but I didn’t exactly have a lot of spare weight to lose. Besides, that would take ten or fifteen minutes. What if Matron Gisel came back before then?

Instead I managed to wiggle around enough to get my ankles up near my face, where I could gnaw away the remaining strands. They were a lot tougher than the zango’s bones, but they weren’t as hard as my teeth. A few moments of frantic work left my jaw aching, but they parted one by one.

The moment I had the last one free I was on my feet, and rushing towards the window. It didn’t have a lock, and it took only a moment to work the latch and swing it open. Then I was outside, with the sun on my face and leaves all around me.

I wasn’t sure how my tree climbing actually worked. My database said it had to do with ‘van der Waals attraction’, but we’d never covered that in science class. All I knew was that my skin will stick to anything if I want it to, and it only takes a thought to turn the stickiness on and off.

I slithered silently up the side of the tree, leaving no marks on the rough bark behind me. There was a long branch I could use to cross a narrow spot in the yard surrounding the orphanage, and reach a greatoak in the surrounding forest. But those security bots were roaming around somewhere out here, and I had no idea if I could actually fight one. Better to do everything I could to avoid them.

Well, at least I was already naked. Reluctantly, I activated my stealth suite.

My skin changed color, blending in with the bark I clung to. I stopped breathing, switching to my little internal oxygen store. Active sound suppression would quiet my heartbeat and any other small sounds I might make, and there were other measures I didn’t really understand. Things to hide me from motion sensors, bottle up my body heat, and counter a long list of other senses.

None of it was perfect. If I was careless enough to get too close to a bot it would still see me, and probably tag me as a threat instead of a harmless little girl. I couldn’t keep it up for long, either. The system sucked down buckets of power, burning energy faster than a hard workout. But I only needed it for a few minutes.

Like a ghost, I vanished into the vast expanse of trackless forest that surrounded the orphanage. Let them try to pick me out among the monkeys and dire badgers, if they didn’t just give up and assume I’d been eaten. How much effort would they go to, for the sake of one troublesome orphan?

Chapter 2

Three weeks later, another dawn found me carefully peering through the upper branches of a goldenbough tree at the perimeter fence surrounding the Faith’s Door Spaceport.

I’d lost two kilos on the trip, and I was getting really sick of the taste of raw meat. But I’d crossed two thousand kilometers of jungle, swamp and hill country to reach my destination, at a pace I knew no one else at the orphanage could have matched. No one would be expecting that. Even if the matrons hadn’t given me up for dead, they wouldn’t be looking for me here.

Now all I had to do was somehow sneak past spaceport security, and talk a space captain into hiring me. Or maybe stow away on a ship, if I had to.

Easy, right?

I studied the fence again. At first glance it looked like a series of tall brown poles with sheets of dark green fabric hung between them. But my spectrometer said the ‘fabric’ was some kind of woven carbon fiber, and I was picking up a lot of electrical activity. Sensors, probably, so if I tried to climb over it I’d be spotted for sure. The fence was a little overgrown in places, but the other side was just a cleared area twenty meters wide with another fence beyond it. Getting past that without being seen would be tough.

This was probably the wrong place to try it, anyway. Looking over the fence from my treetop perch, I could see a wide black expanse of landing field with bright orange markings here and there. It was way too open for sneaking unless I used my stealth suite, and I couldn’t afford to burn off that kind of energy right now.

Here and there I could see spaceships. Or maybe just shuttles. Most of the gleaming machines on the field seemed too small to be real spaceships, and one of them even had wings. But there were a couple of blocky shapes that had to be a hundred meters long. Each of those was surrounded by swarms of bots, busily unloading cargo containers.

There were buildings in the distance, on the other side of the landing field. Maybe there would be less security there?

I shimmied down the tree, and started working my way around the spaceport. There was a swamp bordering the fence to the south, so I circled around to the north instead. The ground was firmer there, and I made good time jogging through the trees. There didn’t seem to be any security bots, so at least that was one less thing to worry about.

It was kind of weird, seeing artificial buildings for the first time. I was used to the great housetrees that made up the orphanage, and the handful of places the matrons had taken us to on field trips over the years. Housetrees can grow to full size in just three or four years, and you can buy custom versions designed to grow into any shape you might want. They provide light and clean water for their inhabitants, and even a little bit of power for a local network. Why would anyone go to all the trouble of building something artificial, when you could just plant a seed and wait?

Apparently offworlders didn’t think that way, because I found a whole clump of odd-looking buildings on the other side of the spaceport. They came in a bewildering variety of shapes and sizes, from rows of giant boxes to little round huts. A tall tower sculpted into the shape of a double helix rose from an area filled with flashing lights and radio noise, which seemed to be the heart of the… town?

My database supplied the unfamiliar word. I looked over the messy spread of buildings again, and nodded. Yeah, a town.

Getting in proved easier than I expected. There was only a single line of fence around the town, probably to keep animals from wandering in out of the jungle. A lot of the perimeter was just buildings with bits of fence blocking the spaces between them, and there were places where the jungle grew right up to them. Most of the buildings didn’t seem to have security, either. All I had to do to get in was climb a tree, and crawl out to where I could drop onto a convenient roof.

Sweet. I couldn’t keep the grin off my face as I crawled to the edge of the roof, and peered carefully down at the street below.

People. So many people, and all of them looked so interesting. I’d learned in class that Felicity has a population of over thirty million, but settlements of more than a hundred people were rare. The dryads like their nature, and staying spread out was supposed to minimize their ecological impact.

Clearly, no one here cared about that. There must have been thousands of people in the town, and hardly any of them were dryads. I saw lots of big, rough-looking women wearing everything from armored jumpsuits to leather miniskirts. A good number of dog and cat morphs were sprinkled through the crowd, along with more bots and androids than I’d ever seen before.

“This looks like my kind of place,” I said to myself. “Now, how do I get some clothes?”

There was an amazing amount of radio noise in the air, and something in the back of my head recognized parts of it. Com signals, radar implants, private datalinks… aha! There was a public datanet.

I fumbled my way through the login handshake, and created an account. It wanted an ID code? Well, I wasn’t about to use my real one, but… oh, good. There was a program in my head for generating fake codes. I threw together a forged identity packet, and used it to log in to the network.

Thanks, Mom. But why did you think your little girl would need to be able to forge identity codes? For that matter, how did you do it? Stealing an identity provider’s private key can’t have been easy.

I’d barely finished the login when a few hundred data packets hit me all at once. Messages from shops wanting to sell me things, a whole bunch of ‘surveys’ asking personal questions I wasn’t going to answer, and… oh, goddess.

I blushed furiously. Why was Tatiana’s Massage Parlor sending me naughty pictures of their masseuses? Didn’t their computer see the age header on my identity packet?

Was this advertising? No wonder it was so restricted on Felicity.

I told myself to ignore any more messages like those, and went looking for public services. That’s what networks like this were supposed to be for, right? Aha, there was the information site. Maps of the town, port rules, locations of public facilities. That was the stuff I needed.

It took the better part of an hour to work my way carefully across the town to a public restroom that didn’t seem to be very busy. I watched it for long enough to be pretty sure it was empty, and then cloaked myself just long enough to drop off the roof and dart inside.

Being surrounded by walls of some synthetic material instead of wood was kind of weird, but aside from that the layout was about what I expected. Sinks and mirrors in the front, and then a hallway lined with doors. I hurried nervously down the hall to the full-service cubicles at the end, and claimed the first one I came to.

It had all the essentials, just like I’d hoped. A toilet, in its own little room. A sink and mirror, with some kind of cosmetics station. A shower, and oh goddess was I looking forward to getting clean again. Then the service closet, with a laundry machine and clothes fabber right next to the first aid station. Perfect.

After drowning myself in hot water and body wash for half an hour I felt a lot more human. I picked out a simple red dress from the fabber’s menu, with underwear and matching shoes. Maybe a ribbon for my hair? No, that made me look three years younger. No one was going to hire a girl they thought was ten.

Would they hire a girl who looked thirteen? I had basically no skills a spaceship crew would be interested in. Most captains would just laugh in my face, wouldn’t they?

“Then I’ll keep trying until I find someone who doesn’t,” I told my reflection. “I can live here for a long time if I have to. I can sneak out to catch meals, or go into conservation mode and just not eat for a couple of weeks. A lot of ships must come through here, so it’s only a matter of time until I find someone who’ll give me a chance.”

My reflection looked skeptical. But I didn’t have another option, so instead of dwelling on things I pulled up the list of ships in port and started planning my approach.

The directory said there were forty-eight shuttles on the landing field, but six of them were from big cargo ships that didn’t even send humans down with them. Five more were owned by Felicity natives, who I didn’t dare approach, and three were from military ships. That left thirty-four possibilities, including everything from tramp freighters to private yachts. One of them was bound to give me a chance, right?

“Yolanda Corporation does not hire anonymous ragamuffins with no record of training or prior service.”

“Run on back to mommy, little girl. Space is no place for kids.”

“Can you run a fusion plant, or rebuild these damned multifuel thruster feeds when they get fouled up? No? Then get lost.”

“We’ve got an opening in passenger service, but you’re not old enough for that job.”

It was enough to make a girl feel unwanted.

“Why are you so desperate to get into space?” A tired-looking faerie morph asked me at one point.

“Do you have any idea how crazy this planet is?” I replied. “I can’t live here for long.”

She sighed. “Teenagers. Always so dramatic. Look, kid, you’re doing this the wrong way. You need to go back to school and get your spacer certs, and then get a job with a reputable company that has offices on Felicity. If you keep wandering around a port town asking strangers to let you on their ship someone is going to end up kidnapping you, and once they’re out of the system no one will bother tracking you down. Unless your parents are rich?”

“I’m an orphan,” I admitted.

“There, you see? Now go home, before you get in over your head.”

“Ma’am, you don’t know how things work here on Felicity. I’m not just being dramatic. If I stay here they’re either going to rip out my enhancements and brainwash me, or break something they don’t understand and kill me. Please, ma’am, I’m desperate. I can follow orders, and I’ll do whatever work you want. I don’t need to be paid, or anything like that. I just need a way off this rock.”

For a second I thought I’d gotten through to her. But then she shrugged, and turned back to the cargo bots she was supervising. “Sorry, kid. Captain isn’t hiring right now, and he doesn’t let crewmembers bring dependents on board.”

By nightfall I’d tried every ship in the port, and been turned away by all of them. Well, there were two ships that had been locked up, with no sign of any crew around. But I couldn’t plead my case to a closed door, so that was no help.

I trudged wearily through the streets of the port, trying to think of something else I could try. There had to be hundreds of spacers gathered in the bars and restaurants along the port’s main road. If I were a social infiltration type like Kovy it wouldn’t take an hour to find some lonely traveler and have her wrapped around my finger. But I had no idea how to do something like that.

A sudden burst of static from an alley caught my attention. It was so loud it completely drowned out the port datanet. Was that a jammer? Why would anyone be running a com jammer in the middle of a spaceport?

I ducked into the alley, curious to see what was going on. From there the sound of an argument led me around a corner, to where three rough-looking dog morphs were confronting an elegant lady in the fanciest dress I’d ever seen. The language they spoke was one I’d never heard before.

But it was in my database. Japanese. One of the frontier dialects, but it wasn’t that different from the traditional version that I knew. I could understand them just fine.

“As I said before, I am no longer Mr. Ishida’s property,” the fancy lady was saying. “Captain Sokol commands my loyalty now, and while I have no intention of violating past confidences I also will not allow myself to be stolen. I suggest you withdraw and request new instructions, before things become unpleasant.”

“Like we’re going to be intimidated by some jumped-up geisha?” One of the dog morphs sneered. “The rose bends to the storm, Naoko. Stand down, and do as you’re told.”

The lady flinched back a step. “What? No, you can’t… who told you that phrase?”

That was when one of the dog girls spotted me, and made a grab for my arm. “Jin! We’ve got a witness here.”

She was fast. A lot faster than any of the girls at the orphanage. But she was twice my weight, and that made her just a little too slow to catch me. I ducked under her hand, swatting her arm away as I spun behind her, and the world slowed down.

Three against one was bad odds. Maybe Naoko would fight, but it sounded like they might have used a control code on her. Did that mean she was an android? She looked organic to me, except that there was a computer inside her head instead of a brain. That’s right, I’d seen that on a vidshow once. Sometimes rich people put their androids in organic bodies instead of synthetic ones, because it’s supposed to be more ‘authentic’ or something.

Later. I couldn’t afford to get into a big fight here, especially since I had no idea if I could win. What was the fastest way to make them go away?

Well, that was obvious.

I jumped, reoriented and kicked off the back of the woman who’d tried to grab me. That sent her stumbling away from me, out of action for a few seconds while I rocketed through the air towards the one who’d been talking. She was already reacting, dodging out of my way while she pulled a knife from her belt.

But I didn’t need to hit her. I just needed to get close enough to reach out as I flew past, and pluck the jammer off her belt. I tumbled to my feet, and crushed it in my hand.

“Oops. You didn’t need that, did you?”

“Nicely done,” Naoko said. “Distress call is out, Jin. Are you still going to be here when my backup arrives?”

Jin growled in frustration. “A loli combat droid that’s pretending to be human? That’s the best you can do for a bodyguard? Naoko, you know that isn’t going to cut it in the long run. You’d better turn yourself in before things get serious.”

“That will not happen tonight,” Naoko said calmly.

“Your funeral. Come on, girls.”

They slunk off down the alley, and broke into a run once they were around the nearest corner. I focused my hearing and listened to them go, making sure they weren’t sneaking back for another try.

Naoko sagged in relief.

“Thank you for your help,” she said softly. “That was a very thorough surrender code. I don’t believe I could have escaped them on my own.”

“You’re welcome. I’m Alice Long, by the way. You aren’t going to call the proctors for real?”

Com traffic is encrypted, so I couldn’t just listen in on someone else’s conversations. But I could see that she hadn’t actually transmitted anything. I guess the dog girls didn’t have fancy radio sensors like mine.

“After this failure they will need to report back to their handler, and receive new instructions before considering another attempt. Which is fortunate, for I have no one to call. I’m the only crewmember who came down on the shuttle, and I don’t dare involve law enforcement. The organization the inugami serve has considerable influence, and local law does not seem well disposed towards androids such as myself. The last thing I want is to create a mess that will trouble my captain. It’s bad enough that I can’t seem to find a source for these flowers I’m supposed to be purchasing.”

“Flowers?” What the heck would she want flowers for?

“A special request for an offworld collector,” she clarified. “I thought it would be easy, but no one seems to sell presence blossoms.”

“Well, of course not. They’re sacred to Gaia. No one on Felicity would dare pick one, and they don’t sell the seeds. You’ll have to sneak out of town and gather them yourself.”

“That is a problem. I’m programmed for work in stations or aboard ship, but I’d be lost out in that wilderness. Does this planet even have a navgrid?”

“Nope. That’s another sinful indulgence of people who’ve lost touch with nature. But, um, I could show you where to find some.”

She gave me a wary look. “I see. And what would you want in return for this service?”

“A ride off this planet,” I told her. “You can do that, right? I don’t care where you drop me off, as long as it’s not some crazy mind control dictatorship. I just can’t stay here.”

She studied me for a long moment. I could see a flurry of encrypted traffic on her datalink now, and I had a feeling I knew what she was looking up.

“You said your name is Alice Long,” she said slowly. “The missing orphan from the Benevolent Goddess Orphanage?”

“That’s me. So we’re even, right? If I was an evil bitch I could use your surrender code on you, but you could turn me in to the port proctors before I could finish saying it. I’m sure your captain would get mad about it too, and I need her cooperation to get what I need. So what do you say?”

“That orphanage is halfway across the continent,” she observed.

“Yes. It was a long walk, and I’m getting really tired of hunting animals for food. Please? I hardly weigh anything, so it’s not like the lift will cost much.”

Her lips twitched. “Indeed, it will not. The Square Deal is not a passenger liner, Alice. The accommodations are Spartan, and the captain may require you to work for your passage.”

“I can do that. I’m not trained, but I’m smart and I’m not afraid of hard work. I don’t need much, just basic life support and a place to sleep. Give me a chance, Naoko. Pleeeease?”

I gave her my best puppy eyes. She gave up on trying not to smile.

“Very well, Alice. If you will help me accomplish my mission here, I will take you with me when I leave and persuade the captain to allow you passage. Until then you shall be my guide. Agreed?”

“Yes!” I couldn’t resist hugging her. “Thank you, thank you, thank you! You don’t know how much this means to me, Naoko. You’re saving my life, here.”

“You are welcome, little one. Now focus. We need to finish and be gone before the inugami cause more trouble. Where can we find those flowers?”

“Oh, right. Okay, focused like a laser. Um, how many do you need, anyway?”

“At least two whole plants, suitable for cultivation,” she told me. “There is a bonus for additional specimens, but only a small one.”

“Then we should take at least four. Presence blossoms are delicate, so we might lose one on the trip. We’ll need something to put them in, of course. Do you have access to a private fabber? We should really use hothouse boxes to move them, but buying those from a public fabber might raise a warning flag somewhere.”

“There’s a small fabber on my shuttle,” Naoko said. “I’m checking the database now. A ‘hothouse box’ is a small, controlled-environment container meant for transporting plants, correct?”

“That’s right. You’ll need one about twenty by twenty by forty cems tall for each plant. If you’ve got options look for a stackable model with carrying handles, or maybe one of the fancy ones with a hover unit in the base.”

“A hover unit would take too long to fabricate,” she objected. “Does this seem suitable?”

She sent me a complicated message over the public datanet. I could feel my com software chewing it over, trying to figure out what to do with it. Finally it resolved into a 3D model of an odd-looking hothouse box, and a few hundred pages of technical specs.

“Oh, neat! I didn’t know you could do that with the datanet,” I told her.

She gave me an odd look. “You’ve never linked a fab design before?”

“We didn’t have a datanet at the orphanage,” I admitted. “I figured out how to log in, but I’m still struggling with most of this stuff. It took my implant computer almost a hundred milliseconds to figure out what that file was. Anyway, um, let’s see. Yeah, I think this will work. It says it’s rated for tropical marsh environments, and all K-class biochemistries. Felicity’s plants are all in the K16 family, so that should be fine. Just don’t forget to plug them in when we get back to your ship, and refill them with organic feedstock about once a week.”

“I shall do so. You seem to know a great deal about plants, Alice.”

“That’s mostly what they teach in school here,” I explained. “Gardening and animal care for the little kids, biology and genetics for the older ones, and then stuff like weather management and ecological caretaking for advanced students. It’s kind of boring, but learning it was better than failing all my classes.”

“I’m sure. Well, the boxes will be ready in fifteen minutes, and once they’re built a utility drone will deliver them to us. Now, how do you propose to leave the port? Offworlders are not allowed outside, you know.”

I snickered. “The security here sucks. I guess they figure there’s no reason to worry about people on foot, since there’s nothing around here but jungle and marshland. Can you climb buildings, and sneak? Our best route is over one of the big square buildings on the east side of town.”

“The warehouses? Yes, I can manage that. Which way?”

I led her back across town to the spot where I’d come in. Her dress morphed as we walked, gradually turning into something a lot less eye-catching. The floating ribbons that hovered around her merged into the fabric, the strategically placed cutouts closed, and her plunging neckline rose to something a lot more modest. The high-heeled shoes melted into practical boots, the gloves extended up her arms to fuse with the sleeves of her dress, and then the skirt started to get shorter. By the time we got where we were going she was wearing a skinsuit that covered everything from the neck down, with a short skirt and a light jacket that kept the tight garment from being too revealing.

I’d never seen smart matter clothes in action before, so it was kind of cool to watch. But I thought Naoko was more interesting.

She was beautiful, of course. Spacers always have enough money for cosmetic mods, and what kind of weirdo wouldn’t make herself look good when it was so easy? But it was a different kind of beauty than anyone I’d seen before. Her face was pure aristocratic elegance, with high cheekbones and dark eyes. She was taller than any of the matrons, pushing a hundred and seventy cems, which left her towering over my puny hundred and fifty. Her hair was two-tone, dark red woven with pure black, like a smoky flame cascading over her shoulders and down her back.

She was slender, but her figure was much bolder than anyone I’d seen on Felicity. Something about the way she moved kept drawing my eyes along sculpted legs and swaying hips… darn it, I didn’t know whether to be embarrassed or jealous.

Maybe both. I resolved then and there that someday I was going to have breasts like hers. I’d never realized that big ones could make a woman look so sexy.

She caught me looking, and raised an elegantly sculpted eyebrow. “Is there a problem, Alice?”

I flushed. “I, um, no. I just, well, no one on Felicity looks like you. You’re really pretty.”

She smiled. “Thank you, Alice. But do try not to get distracted. You can gaze in wonder all you like once we return to the ship.”

I gulped, and looked away. “Sorry! I didn’t mean to stare. Oh, look, we’re almost there. Just down the alley here, and up the wall…”

Her knowing smile made me feel like a little kid. Thank Gaia she let it go at that.

I was more in my element once we started our sneak. I found the spot with the overhanging branches easily enough, and scampered up the side of the building. Naoko stared up after me for a minute, and shook her head.

She made a throwing motion, and something smacked into the side of the building near the roofline and stuck. I took a closer look, and realized it was some kind of grappling device attached to a thin cable of woven carbon fiber. I guess it had a motor on it too, because Naoko just held her arm out and the cable pulled her up. She swung herself up onto the roof with a nimble acrobatic maneuver that caused enough bouncing to pull my eyes right back to where they weren’t supposed to be. Darn it, was she doing that on purpose?

I turned around, and made my way to the branch I’d used to get in. It was easily within jumping distance, although Naoko used her gadget again for some reason.

“Hold up, please,” she said when I turned to go. “My drone will be here with the boxes momentarily. It’s best if it doesn’t try to cross the fence.”

“Alright,” I said.

We waited quietly for a moment.

“Alice,” she said hesitantly. “Will you be offended if I ask what you are?”

“Just a girl with a lot of enhancements. Why?”

“May I see your hands?”

I didn’t see a reason to say no, so I let her examine them. “What are you looking for?”

“The way you climbed that wall looked like setae gloves,” she explained. “But your skin feels completely natural now. That’s very impressive engineering, Alice. Well beyond what one normally sees in civilian hands here in the Federation.”

I shrugged. “The navy found me in a pirate base when I was a baby. I’ve always wondered who my mom was, but I don’t know anything. Maybe there’s a clue there?”

“Perhaps,” she agreed. “We should talk to Doctor Misra about it when we get back to the ship. He might be able to tell you something.”

“You have a doctor on the ship? Like, an actual medical doctor who’s a person, and not a bot? Wow, that must be expensive.”

“You’d have to ask the captain about that,” she said. “But yes, Doctor Misra is human, and certified to work on a wide variety of morph types and cybernetics.”

“Sweet. Maybe she can tell me what’s up with some of these malnutrition warnings I keep getting. Oh, there’s your drone.”

The little messenger bot was a lot like the ones that sometimes made deliveries to the orphanage. A sticklike body with four thruster pods mounted on it, and a cargo bundle slung underneath. Naoko waved it down and unpacked the boxes with brisk efficiency, then sent the bot back to her shuttle.

That was the last thing she did efficiently.

I swear, the moment we passed the fence line it was like she lost thirty points of IQ and turned into a complete klutz. She had no idea how to climb a tree, and I had to take the boxes and hold her hand to get her down without falling. She tripped over a tree root before we were even into the forest, and then she walked right into a bush.

“Alice, help! Something’s got me!”

“It’s a bush, Naoko.”

She flailed aimlessly at the branches, and somehow managed to trip herself. “It’s eating me! Help! Get it off!”

“Naoko, it doesn’t even have a mouth. Ugh. Fine, stop panicking.”

I pulled her out. She stumbled backwards, falling on me and knocking us both to the ground.

“Eep!” She threw her arms around me and hung on like I was a life preserver. “Is it gone, Alice? Are we safe now?”

I groaned. “Great galloping consumerism, what’s gotten into you Naoko? It was just a bush. You do know what bushes are, right?”

“Bushes don’t jump out of the dark and grab you,” she objected. “It’s a monster. Is it gone now? Are we safe? What do I do? I don’t know what to do, Alice!”

“Naoko, calm down. It’s alright. You’re safe.”

I hugged her, because it seemed like the thing to do. Was she trembling? Wow, why was she so freaked out?

After a minute she stopped shaking, and seemed to get herself back under control.

“I’m sorry about that, Alice.”

“Are you alright, Naoko?”

She pulled away, glancing around at the dark forest around us. She flinched, and buried her face in my chest again.

“I hate it when this happens,” she said, sounding exasperated with herself.

“What’s wrong? You’ve got night vision, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. But I’m not programmed for this kind of environment. I’m getting buffer overflows in my visual processing, and every time I try to make sense of that vegetation my situational awareness module crashes. I’m sorry, Alice, this was a bad idea. I’m going to be completely useless out here.”

“It’s going to be okay, Naoko,” I reassured her. “Look, can you trust me? I can get around the woods just fine. All you have to do is follow me, and don’t make any loud noises. Can you do that?”

She nodded, still looking a little shaky. “Yes, I suppose I can. Are you sure you can find your way? We’re almost out of sight of the fence. Without a navgrid I’m going to be completely lost.”

“I’m sure, Naoko. I grew up in places like this, and I’ve got at least five different ways to navigate without locator beacons. I can wander around all night, and still find my way to anywhere I want to be. Now come on. These flowers bloom in moonlight, so the next few hours are our best time to find some.”

She sighed. “Alright, Alice. I’ll trust you. Please, take good care of me.”

Gaia, but she needed a lot of taking care of. I had to point out every root and hollow in the forest floor as we walked, or she would have been tripping every few feet. She’d walk right into the bushes if I didn’t keep her on a safe course, like she couldn’t even see them, and every time some animal made a noise she’d flinch and hide behind me.

Then we got into the marsh, and she thought the mud was trying to eat her.

“Are you going to panic again when you see a hexagator?” I asked.

“A what? There are predators out here? I thought you said this was safe?”

“Hexagators are big six-legged lizards that live in wetlands,” I told her. “Sort of like alligators, only bigger. They don’t normally eat people, but if you start flailing around next to one it’s going to think you’re attacking it. So take a deep breath, and calm down.”

She gasped. “Something just bit me!”

I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. “Yeah, there are mosquitoes in the marsh. They’re annoying, but they can’t really hurt you.”

“Why are they biting me, and not you?”

“Because I’m secreting a chemical that keeps me from smelling like food. I’d offer you some, but my feedstock reserve is just about empty.”

“It is? Are you going to be alright? You aren’t going to collapse, and leave me lost in the middle of this terrible place?”

I rolled my eyes. “Naoko, get a grip. I’m fine, and so are you.”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “Everything out here confuses me, and I get all skittish and stupid when I don’t know what to do. Are you certain we’ll be alright?”

“I’m sure, Naoko. Just stay calm, don’t make loud noises, and do what I tell you to, alright?”

She took a deep breath, and slowly let it out.

“Very well, Alice. I’m shutting down most of my planning functions, so they’ll stop glitching out and making me panic. I’m going to seem half asleep until I bring them back online, but I should be able to walk and follow simple directions. I shall rely on you to see me safely back to the port.”

Wow, that sounded scary.

“Alright, Naoko. If that’s what you need to do. I promise, I’ll get you back to your shuttle safe and sound.”

Chapter 3

I was about ready to strangle Naoko by the time we snuck back into town. My cheap dress was muddy and ripped, we were both soaking wet, and I had a long scrape on my arm from a hexagator she’d somehow managed to step on even after I’d warned her away from it. I was carrying all four of the loaded boxes even though they were kind of heavy, because otherwise she’d have tripped and dropped them a hundred times on the way back from the marsh.

Naoko’s smart matter dress was spotless, since it automatically cleaned itself whenever it got dirty. The mud didn’t stick to her skin either, and somehow having her hair all messed up made her look even prettier than before. I was so jealous. But I was also glad I wasn’t an android. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be so helpless.

The moment we were back in town Naoko’s body language changed completely. She stopped in the little alley next to the overgrown warehouse, and took a deep breath.

“That was the most terrifying experience of my life,” she said. “Thank you very much for your help, Alice. I could not possibly have accomplished that by myself, but I couldn’t bear to fail my captain so soon after my own rescue.”

“You’re welcome, Naoko. Just tell me you’re better at flying a spaceship than finding your way around a marsh.”

“My shuttle is perfectly capable of flying itself back to the ship,” she told me. “But yes, if an emergency should arise I am a fairly capable pilot. I’m sorry you had to see me in that state, Alice. I must have been horribly annoying.”

“You couldn’t help it,” I said charitably.

“Well, I still feel that I should make it up to you somehow. Come, let us hurry to the shuttle so we can get cleaned up. I feel like I could shower for a week.”

Even though I was tired, I couldn’t help but pick up the pace as we crept through the dark streets towards the landing field. In just a few minutes I was going to be on board a spaceship. By the time dawn came we’d probably be on our way. Leaving Felicity behind, and heading out into the wide universe.

Freedom. It was so close I could taste it.

Naoko led me to a dark opening that turned out to be an underground street, leading out under the landing field. It was lit by dim red lights, and here and there we passed doors with signs like ‘Landing Pad A-4’ or ‘Fuel Pumps - A Bank - Authorized Personnel Only’. It seemed like no time at all before we were climbing a flight of steps up to landing pad B-11, where her shuttle was parked.

I paused to look up at the sleek black shape. It was a good forty meters long, which seemed like an odd size. Too small to carry much cargo, but kind of big for one person. The hull was strangely contoured, too, with all kinds of bulges and projections.

Something in the back of my head woke up, and starting pointing out what they were. The long bulges along the sides of the ship were the main thrusters, mounted that way to leave room for a loading ramp at the rear of the ship. The dome under the bow was a light mass driver turret, probably for ground support. Those near-invisible ports forward of the drive tubes would open to expose four missile launchers, each with a magazine of a dozen or so short-range missiles. The hull was obviously armored, probably ten cems thick on the belly and three or four everywhere else. There were emitters for a beefy deflector shield, and a lot of point defense lasers.

“Naoko? That’s not a cargo shuttle. That’s a military drop ship.”

Naoko laughed.

“Your background is showing, dear. The Square Deal does most of its business with smaller colonies, and you can’t count on some government to protect you out in Dark Space. Tramp freighters are always armed, and my captain is more prepared for trouble than most. But I’m surprised you can tell.”

I shrugged. “Apparently mom thought I needed a database of military hardware in my head. This is neat, Naoko. I’ve never seen real weapons before.”

A hatch in the belly of the shuttle opened. “Come inside, and I’ll show you the controls once we’ve cleaned up.”

She stepped under the hatch, and a lift field snatched her off the ground and up into the shuttle. Sweet! I hurried after her, and giggled when I was suddenly launched into the air. I landed in a little airlock room, with just enough space for three people.

The hatch slid shut with a satisfying thunk, and then we were being scanned.

“We try to be careful about decontamination,” Naoko explained. “I think the ship has had trouble with creative rivals in the past. Are you sensitive to UV? There’s going to be a bright flash in a moment.”

I closed my eyes. “It probably wouldn’t hurt anything, but I guess I’ll play it safe. What are you checking for? We don’t have diseases on Felicity.”

“We check and sterilize anyway. You’ll find that spacers don’t usually have much faith in the pronouncements of planetary authorities. The system also looks for nanotech, microbots, stealth drones and quite a few other sneaky tricks.”

A brilliant UV light came on, along with a dimmer violet glow and a ton of other stuff.

“I see. Wow, we even get x-ray scans?”

That was really weird. I could see the x-rays, somehow. Not with my eyes, but with something hidden in the bones of my forearms and shins. Naoko was a translucent ghost figure, although her skull was almost as opaque as the walls of the airlock. She turned to me, and cocked her head.

“You can detect the x-rays, Alice?”

The scanner shut off. Aw, too bad. I was still trying to figure out what some of those hard shapes inside Naoko were. The computing core in her head was much better armored than I would have thought, and what were those things inside her ribcage? Power cells, maybe?

“Yeah, looks like I’ve got x-ray sensors. I’m not sure what that’s good for, since there’s never enough light to see by at those frequencies. I didn’t even realize I had them until just now.”

“Interesting. Perhaps someone on the crew will have an idea.”

The shuttle’s interior was just as strange as the outside. The decks and bulkheads were all bare expanses of charcoal gray armor, lit by glowing panels in the ceiling. Naoko led me down a narrow hall to a cozy little cabin with bunk beds.

“I’m afraid there’s only one shower,” she said. “Why don’t you go first, while I get the cargo stowed and begin launch preparations?”

“Thanks, Naoko.”

The shower wasn’t anything fancy. Just a little cubicle with a basic six-head shower system, and a dispenser with a few hundred soap and shampoo options. But the hot water was heavenly after a night spend tromping through the marsh. I scrubbed off the mud, muck and insect repellant, carefully washed my hair, and then turned the heat all the way up and spent two precious minutes just soaking under a massage spray.

I was tempted to stay longer, but the matrons taught us never to waste anything. Besides, it would be rude to make Naoko wait when she was doing so much for me. So I reluctantly turned off the water, and ran the dry cycle.

Naoko came back just as I was stepping out of the bathroom, wrapped in a fluffy towel that had somehow pulled every drop of water out of my hair.

“Thirty minutes to liftoff,” she announced with a smile. “I’ve reserved a launch window, and the shuttle is running through preflight now. That should be plenty of time to have your things delivered, right?”

“I, um, don’t have any things, Naoko,” I admitted. “I didn’t exactly have time to pack before I disappeared. Even that dress came out of a public fabber.”

She blinked at me uncertainly. “Oh. Oh, my. Not even a companion android, or a utility bot? But that’s terrible! Did you manage to shift your credits to an anonymous account, at least?”

“Orphans on Felicity don’t have money, Naoko. The orphanage would give us ration tokens for the fabbers sometimes, but mostly we just make do with whatever the matrons issue us.”

The way she looked at me, you’d think I’d told her the matrons beat us every morning for fun. She took a step, and for a moment I was sure she was going to hug me. But then she suddenly remembered that she desperately needed a shower, and stopped.

“You poor thing. Well, I shall have to talk to the captain about that, but I can at least make you a change of clothes. Maybe a new dress, and some ribbons for your hair? I’d definitely recommend going for a young and innocent look, if you don’t mind taking my advice. That will get you much further with the crew than trying to look tough, or professional.”

I shrugged. “I guess I’ll have to trust you on that, Naoko. You know your community, and I’m not much good at that kind of thing anyway.”

“Then it is fortunate that you have me to help you. Make a left in the hall, climb up the first ladder that you find, and the fabber will be in the compartment right in front of you. I’ve given you guest access to the shuttle, so feel free to explore once you’re dressed. I’ll be along in a few minutes.”

I found my way up easily enough. The fabber was in what was obviously an engineering space, crammed into a gap between the port drive tubes and what I was pretty sure was the fusion reactor. It was a good-size industrial model, with an assembly bay the size of a closet. Serious overkill for making shoes and a dress, but at least it meant everything came out at once.

My new dress was a green that nicely set off my pale skin and dark hair, with a knee-length pleated skirt and ruffled sleeves. It came with matching shoes and white socks, and a ribbon I used to tie my hair up in a ponytail. I just knew the outfit made me look like a little kid, but if that was the plan I’d play along. I found a mirror, and practiced my soulful looks for a few minutes.

The thump of the fusion reactor igniting startled me. I felt the sudden flow of current lighting up the shuttle’s power lines, and other systems starting to power up one by one.

Yes!

I rushed back down to the lower deck, not bothering to use the ladder, and went looking for the bridge. Where would that be, on a ship this size? Maybe in the middle, where it would be hardest to damage?

The doors in that direction opened onto an office, and then a room full of equipment I didn’t recognize. There was a comfy-looking elevated couch thing in the middle surrounded by ceiling-mounted gadgets, and some kind of control setup with a chair to one side. Oh, wait, was that a first aid station in the corner?

It was. I stopped there for a minute to wake up the bot, and let it cover the long scrape on my arm with a layer of medigel. That brought a sigh of relief. I can ignore pain if I need to, but the ache in my arm had been bugging me a little.

Past what I tentatively labeled a medical room was a larger hatch leading into the cargo hold. That was taller than the other rooms, and stretched all the way back to the big hatch at the rear of the ship. It was mostly empty, although there were some heavy bots secured to the walls back near the exit. The hothouse boxes we’d gone to so much trouble over were attached to the deck next to a row of shipping crates, and a crew of bots bustled around making sure everything was secure.

No bridge, though. Alright, maybe towards the front?

There was a door labeled ‘Armory’ that didn’t open for me, and then a hatch at the end of the corridor that led into a cozy lounge area. That looked like a kitchen off to port, and a couple of big pod things to starboard. VR pods, maybe? Virtual reality is heavily restricted on Felicity, but spacers wouldn’t care about that.

I checked the kitchen, wondering if there would be food there. Naoko’s body was mostly organic, so that meant she’d need to eat. Right? Plus, the ship would have other crew.

It was stocked, but I didn’t even recognize most of the food options. I decided to play it safe, and just grab a couple of ration bars. At fifteen hundred calories each that would make a good start on rebuilding my body’s depleted energy reserves.

Naoko must have been taking a really long shower, because she still hadn’t shown up by the time I finished. Well, there was only one hatch left to try, on the far side of the lounge from where I’d come in. Sure enough, the room it led to had to be the bridge. There were three big acceleration couches surrounded by control panels mounted on servos, and the walls and ceiling were all one big viewscreen showing the ship’s surroundings.

“Good morning, Alice,” a soothing androgynous voice said. “This is the Speedy Exit’s autopilot AI. Are you prepared for liftoff?”

An AI? Sweet! I’d never met one of those before.

“You bet I am, Speedy Exit. How about you?”

“Preflight checklist is eighty-seven percent complete. All critical engineering systems are operating normally, and fuel levels are at one hundred and seventy-five percent.”

“How can the fuel tanks be more than a hundred percent full?” I asked curiously.

“The Speedy Exit mounts external drop tanks,” the AI explained. “Would you like to sit, Alice? You are authorized to use one of the observer positions.”

“Oh, um, sure.”

A wall panel towards the back of the bridge opened, and another seat folded out of it. This one wasn’t as big, and it didn’t have any control panels around it. But I’d be able to look out the main viewscreen, and that was more than I would have dared ask for.

I realized I was smiling so wide it made my cheeks hurt. I was going into space! Something about that thought just felt so right.

Dawn was breaking over the spaceport. Here and there I could see teams of bots working around the other shuttles, tirelessly moving an endless procession of giant cargo containers. A cloud of steam rose from the far side of the field, where a big cargo shuttle must have just landed. I was sorry I’d missed seeing that, but there was a sleek little ship gliding past us. Maybe they were getting ready to take off?

A ground car with flashing lights mounted on top curved around the moving ship, and floated towards us. The port proctors? Yes, there were two dryads in uniforms visible through the windshield. What were they doing?

“Alice, I’m receiving a com call from that patrol vehicle,” the autopilot said. “Do you wish to reply?”

“No,” I said hastily. “Ask Naoko what to do, and don’t tell anyone that I’m here.”

“You have good instincts,” came Naoko’s voice from the open hatch.

She stepped into the bridge, and I felt my jaw drop. Instead of clothes, she’d changed into a suit of what had to be powered combat armor. It fit her so perfectly that her amazing figure was still pretty obvious, but practically every inch of her was covered in gleaming armor. She’d even put on a helmet, although it left her face uncovered.

She smiled at my expression.

“My captain likes it when I demonstrate that I’m not just decorative,” she told me. “Are you space rated?”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“Can you survive in a vacuum, dear?”

“Oh! Um, sort of? I think I’m supposed to end up that way, but a lot of my features haven’t grown in yet. Right now vacuum would kill most of my organic parts, but I think I’d still be alive if you got me to a medical bay. Why, are you expecting a problem?”

“No, Alice, but it’s best to be prepared for the unexpected. Please stay in your seat while we’re in flight. It will protect you if anything does go wrong.”

“Alright, sure. What about the proctors?”

The car had reached the shuttle while we were talking, and now a pair of dryads in black law enforcement uniforms were climbing out. Neither of them looked happy.

“I suppose I should see what they want,” Naoko reluctantly conceded. “Computer, set up a com filter to hide Alice Long, and then answer their call.”

“Done,” the autopilot said.

Naoko settled herself in one of the control seats, and a com window opened on the main screen in front of her. An annoyed dryad’s face filled the view.

“Finally! Speedy Exit, this is Proctor Lena of the Faith’s Door Port Authority. We’ve received information that you’ve been seen in the company of a wanted fugitive.”

Naoko was definitely programmed for acting. Her astonished expression was a work of art.

“A fugitive? How terrible! Does this dangerous individual have a name, or perhaps a face?”

A secondary window opened, showing a set of pictures from the orphanage. They had a good close-up of my face, and of course a rotating 3D model from my last medical scan.

Darn. They must have a computer scanning through drone footage from the port, or something. But why were they bothering? I never thought they’d go to that much trouble to find me.

“Her name is Alice Long. She’s believed to be unstable and quite dangerous, Miss Sokol.”

“Ah, yes, I do recall seeing her in the port,” Naoko mused. “I’m afraid I have no clue as to her current whereabouts, but I’m sure she’ll turn up soon enough. It’s hardly a large enough town for a fugitive to remain at large for long.”

The proctor frowned suspiciously. “What business did she have with you?”

“She was seeking employment. Sadly, I had to tell her that my ship is not currently hiring.”

The other proctor had been fiddling with a datapad during the conversation. Now she poked the one that was talking to Naoko, and showed her something.

The scowl deepened.

“I see. Miss Sokol, we have camera footage showing you walking down Conservation Lane with the fugitive barely an hour ago. I’m going to have to ask you to open up so we can verify that she isn’t on board.”

“Do you have a search warrant for the Speedy Exit, proctor?” Naoko said evenly.

“Felicity is a proper communitarian world, not one of your individualist hellholes,” the proctor exclaimed. “I don’t need a ‘warrant’.”

“Proctor, the Square Deal is an independent commercial vessel operating under the auspices of the Free Trader Accords. As specified in article four, sections six through twelve, planetary authorities may freely inspect goods and persons entering or leaving a trade vessel but may not board the vessel itself without a warrant issued by the local Merchant’s Association representative. If you have not obtained such a warrant, I fear that I must regretfully decline your request.”

“Now see here, you jumped up sexbot! I am an officer of the law, and you will obey my instructions or I’ll have you scrapped. Abort your launch countdown and open the hatch!”

Naoko sniffed. “Do you think I’m some sort of bot, proctor? I am a personal companion android, and my only loyalty is to Captain Sokol. I have orders to return this shuttle on schedule, and I intend to carry them out. Now I suggest you clear the pad, because I launch in four minutes.”

“We can’t possibly get a warrant in four minutes!” The other proctor objected.

“That is not my problem, proctor. Be advised that I also have orders to protect my captain’s property with all the means at my disposal, and any further attempt to gain illegal entry to this vessel may be taken as an attack.”

She gestured, and the call was cut.

“Stupid naturalist bigots,” Naoko grumbled. “Who does she think she is, ordering me around like that?”

“I’m sorry, Naoko,” I said miserably. “I didn’t mean to cause you so much trouble. I didn’t think they’d even be looking for me.”

She waved off my concern. “Oh, it’s probably my fault anyway. I shouldn’t have run that search on your name last night. Totalitarian governments are always snoopy about monitoring the datanet.”

Outside, the two proctors were arguing with each other. A squad of security bots had joined them now.

“Are we in trouble?” I said. “Can they cancel our launch, or something?”

“Launch windows are a courtesy, Alice. We’re perfectly capable of leaving without any help from local traffic control. Besides, getting permission to ground an independent trader is even harder than getting a search warrant. Everyone knows we won’t surrender quietly, and routine criminal matters simply aren’t important enough to risk getting a spaceport nuked. Unless you assassinated the local dictator?”

“Felicity doesn’t have a dictator, Naoko. It’s administered by a council of delegates from the sixteen planetary districts. And no, I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t even hurt anyone, really. I just escaped before they could take me apart to figure out why their brainwashing doesn’t work on me.”

“Well, escape from a mind control regime is not a criminal offense under the rules of the Association, and I doubt that a backwater world such as Felicity will risk making waves about - oh, you must be joking.”

A bigger bot had come floating across the field. This one was almost the size of a groundcar, with a big laser cutter mounted on the front.

“Naoko? I don’t think they understand that your ship has real weapons.”

She frowned. “I’m severely tempted to give them a demonstration. Autopilot, has the control tower assigned us a launch pad yet?”

“Negative, Naoko. Launch control is not responding to my inquiries.”

Her frown deepened. “Idiots. This is what happens when a society starts using mass mind control, Alice. They get so wrapped up in their own propaganda that they lose touch with reality. The Association is not going to be pleased with this incident.”

“What do we do?” I asked. “Do you need to call someone?”

“No, Alice. Here’s your first lesson on spacer culture. Disputes with local authorities are best settled with action, not words. A cargo shuttle would need to cross the field to one of the launch pads in order to avoid damaging the port with its drive, and I suppose they think they can interfere with our movements. But as you pointed out, the Speedy Exit is a drop ship. Autopilot, I’m declaring a cold launch from our current position in two minutes. Relay our flight path to all other ships in the area, and hit the warning claxons.”

The outside of the ship was suddenly lit up by flashing orange and purple lights. The sound of the sirens was mostly muffled by the hull, but I could just make out an amplified voice.

“Warning, this ship will lift in one hundred and twenty seconds. Lethal overpressure imminent. Minimum safe distance is thirty meters. Warning, this ship will lift in one hundred and ten seconds…”

The proctors scrambled back with shocked expressions on their faces. Proctor Lena backed into a security bot and fell on her butt. Her partner fumbled her datapad, and dropped it. The bots all froze in place for a moment, and then started backing away.

My smile was back. Naoko wasn’t afraid of them. They weren’t going to stop us. For the first time in my life, I didn’t have to be afraid of those sanctimonious bitches.

Naoko’s fingers danced across the control panel in front of her, and I could feel the ship coming to life around us. Monstrously powerful momentum exchange fields were forming in the thruster tubes behind us, flickering across the hull as the deflector shields spun up, tickling my emitters with artificial gravity and inertial dampening fields. There was something else, too. A massive potential field building up under the hull, like a bot’s lift field but hundreds of times stronger.

“Forty seconds to launch,” the AI said. “Ready for hover.”

Naoko nodded. “Engage hover mode, and retract landing gear. I don’t see any obstacles, autopilot.”

“Agreed, pilot. Our ascent track is clear. The port’s weapons appear to be offline, and planetary defense forces in orbit have not reacted to our launch warning.”

“Lovely. You see, Alice? This was just some local bigot attempting to throw her weight around. Alas, she seems less weighty than she had believed.”

There was a subtle flutter in my inner ears as the ship’s lift field engaged, and the ground outside drifted down a few meters.

“Hover mode active,” the autopilot said. “Landing gear retracted. We are clear for launch, pilot.”

The bots had already gotten clear, moving with their usual fast precision. But the proctors had wasted a lot of time fumbling around, and they were still climbing into their car. Oh, and Proctor Lena just dropped her keys. I watched her grope around on the floor of the car for a moment, and eyeballed the distance. Hmm.

“Are you really going to squish them if they don’t get out from under us in time?” I asked.

“Of course not. Someone would surely complain, and then my captain would have a great deal of paperwork to contend with. But I doubt we will need to delay our lift by more than a few seconds. Hold on tight, now. This is going to be a wild ride.”

“Sounds like fun,” I shot back. Just to be safe I found the control for the chair’s safety harness, and triggered it. A moment later I was held securely in place by a network of broad straps across my legs and torso. I looked back up just as the proctors got their car started, and backed frantically away from the ship.

“Five seconds till launch,” the autopilot said.

The proctors were still too close, but the groundcar was moving pretty fast now. It wobbled a little as the driver tried to keep it under control while driving backwards, and didn’t quite manage. Why the heck was she driving the car manually, anyway?

Oh, well, it didn’t matter now. They shot across the thirty meter line with nearly a second to spare.

Naoko grinned from ear to ear. “Ready, Alice? Here we go!”

She touched a control, and suddenly we were flying. An immense burst of power from the lift field threw us straight up so hard I could feel a hint of acceleration even through the inertial dampeners. The ground fell away below us in a blur of motion. We were already a hundred meters up, and moving faster than anything I’d ever ridden in my life.

The ship’s nose tilted up, and the main thrusters engaged with a roar I could feel in my bones.

I looked back at the landing field, rapidly shrinking into the distance below. Above us was a solid wall of white, a cloud bank that we were fast approaching.

Four gravities, my motion sense told me. No, wait, Naoko was throttling up now that we were clear of the port. Eight gravities. Twelve. Sixteen. How fast was this ship?

We went supersonic just as we entered the cloud deck. The Speedy Exit barely vibrated, but the shock wave blew a hole in the clouds behind us. Thirty gravities, now. The world around us was a cocoon of ghostly white, overlaid here and there with markers for things the ship’s sensors picked up. Other ships, a few aircraft, and the stations in orbit high overhead.

But not as high as before. We broke out of the clouds into a clear blue sky, and I couldn’t hold back anymore.

“Whoo hoo! Goodbye, Felicity. Goodbye, stupid matrons. Hello, space.”

Goodbye, Dika. Take care of yourself. Someday, somehow, I’ll come back for you.

Chapter 4

The Square Deal was a funny looking ship. Not that I was an expert on spaceships, but I’ve watched plenty of vidshows. I know cargo ships are usually fat, boxy things with a big fusion torch at one end and an armored collision shield at the other. Passenger liners are pretty, like giant abstract sculptures, with lots of big windows. Warships tend to look like armored freighters, with all that cargo space packed full of drones and missiles, or else they’re longer and have rows of gun turrets along the dorsal and ventral surfaces.

The ship in the viewscreen was sort of a flattened oval shape, and I wasn’t sure what to make of that.

Naoko had the main viewscreen set to show a close-up image of each ship the Speedy Exit’s sensors were tracking, so I had a lot of other examples for comparison. There were half a dozen cargo ships that looked about like I expected, including a big one that must have been six kilometers long. But there were also a lot of smaller ships I couldn’t identify, and some of them looked pretty odd. One had wings, like some kind of giant shuttle. Another was just an open framework of beams with equipment pods here and there. A couple of smaller ships were kind of egg-shaped. Okay, so there was a lot the vidshows didn’t teach me. But still.

“Why does it look so weird?” I asked.

Naoko glanced up from the controls to smile at me. “The Square Deal was originally built as an assault transport, Alice. She’s designed to land a brigade of marines on a planetary surface, and act as a base of operations during raids or pacification actions. After the Mormon Bastions crushed the Third Clone Jihad she was put up for auction as military surplus, and my captain thought that her capabilities would be well suited to his business.”

“So she’s a warship? Sweet!”

I turned to study the ship again. It was already maneuvering to break orbit, and the giant streamer of flame made it obvious where the main drive was. It looked like the Square Deal was about seven hundred meters long, maybe five hundred meters wide, and only a hundred meters thick. The big fusion torch drive was mounted parallel to the ship’s long axis, which made sense. A ship’s bow has to be heavily armored to protect against collisions with space debris, so you don’t want it to be any bigger than it has to be.

Alright, so the drive was at the stern and the opposite end was the bow. The side we’d originally approached from must have been the bottom of the ship, because it had a lot of big flat areas that looked like cargo hatches and retracted landing gear. There were also some mass driver turrets, which my database was telling me were mainly meant for shooting at things on the ground.

As we swung around the ship the other side of the hull came into view, and it had a completely different equipment layout. Those little turrets were point defense lasers, and there were also missile launchers and a lot of big deflector shield emitters. Oh, and there was an open hatch to starboard that must be the hanger we were headed towards. There was another hatch just like it on the port side, so two hangers?

Something in the back of my head was calculating. The ship totaled twenty-eight million cubic meters of volume, and it massed about seventeen million tons right now. That was bigger than I would have expected for a tramp freighter, so I guess they must be doing pretty well for themselves.

How did I know what the ship’s mass was?

I turned my focus inward for a second, looking for the source of that knowledge. Okay, there was another calculator hooked into my visual processing, just like the dozens I’d already noticed. Eyeball the ship’s acceleration and the size of the drive flame, and then there were simple formulas to get the ship’s thrust and mass. That was useful.

I watched eagerly while Naoko brought us in, matching velocity with a pretty little maneuver that left us perfectly positioned over the shuttle bay. She cut our drive, and a tractor field grabbed us and pulled us in. For a few seconds there were so many overlapping manipulator fields on us that it made me a little dizzy trying to keep track of them all. The Speedy Exit floated across the hanger under their combined influence, and set down next to a cargo shuttle.

There was a series of heavy thunks from below us.

“What was that?”

“Mechanical couplings,” Naoko explained. “To hold the shuttle in place, if there’s a sudden bump that the inertial dampeners don’t smooth out for some reason. Ah, there’s the airlock connection. Since you don’t have a spacesuit we’ll give it a moment to warm up, and do an extra round of safety checks. We normally leave the hanger in vacuum, you see.”

“I get it. Can I get up, now?”

“Certainly.”

I popped the safety harness on my seat, and bounced over to the viewscreen to peer around at the hanger. There was so much to see! A long row of shiny new shuttles filled most of the bay, and down at the end were what looked like a couple of asteroid mining drones. Not to mention the bay itself. The hatch rumbled closed while I watched, and there were a bunch of bots scurrying around doing things.

“Alice? If you can tear yourself away from the view, my captain wishes to see us in his office.”

“Oh! Right, okay, of course. Wait, you said ‘he’. There are boys on this ship? I’ve never met a boy before. This is so exciting!”

She smiled tolerantly. “Most of the ship’s crew are men, Alice. Do try not to stare.”

“Right.”

She led me back to the airlock, where we dropped through a short boarding tube and into the ship.

Some of the areas she led me through were like the inside of the Speedy Exit, if a little roomier. But once we got deeper into the ship the bare walls and armored bulkheads gave way to soft carpets and wall panels in pleasant earth tones. There were pictures on the walls here and there, landscapes from all kinds of planets. We passed through a lounge area with a big waterfall garden thing that I really wanted to stop and admire.

“Come along, Alice. It would not do to keep the captain waiting.”

“Okay. Um, we aren’t in trouble, are we? You seem a little tense.”

“Everything will work out, Alice. Just follow my lead, and be yourself.”

Well, that wasn’t very reassuring. What would the captain do, if he decided he didn’t want me on his ship? Send me back to Felicity? Sell me to slavers? Or maybe just space me, once they were beyond sensor range of Felicity’s stations?

Yeah, okay, better make sure to make a good impression here. Be polite, and respectful. What was the male version of ‘ma’am’? Sir? Yeah, that sounded right.

Eventually we came to a hatch flanked by a pair of security bots. Unlike the ones on Felicity they were heavily armored, and had guns along with the stunners and capture web launchers. I was getting a bad feeling about this.

The hatch opened with a cool swishing noise when we reached it. Naoko led me through, into a big room full of strange things. Cabinets, and shelves full of odd knickknacks. Pictures of strange-looking people, and interesting places. A big desk that looked like it was made of spaceship armor, with a bunch of holographic data windows floating in the air above it.

But it was the man behind the desk that I needed to focus on. He was big. Even bigger than the tall spacer women I’d seen in the port, and broader too. His arms were almost as big around as my waist, and he looked like he could snap me in half without any effort at all. He wasn’t happy, either.

His face was so odd. There was hair growing from his chin, a forest of dark brown that hid a third of his face. The hair on his head was cut short, and there were deep lines around his eyes. The whole effect was more intimidating than Matron Gisel at her worst, and he hadn’t even said anything yet.

“Naoko, good. Maybe you can explain to me what you think you’ve been doing for the last few hours?”

“I was simply completing my mission, Captain,” Naoko replied. “It seems that there are no vendors who sell the plants in question, so I was forced to acquire local assistance in obtaining them.”

His eyes narrowed. “You aren’t rated for wilderness activity, Naoko.”

“No, sir. Nevertheless, Alice and I were able to complete the acquisition. If you’ll allow it, I’d like to offer her half my share in payment for her efforts.”

“I see. Were you aware of her legal status, Naoko?”

“You mean, that she is a refugee from a mind control tyranny traveling in search of asylum? Yes, Captain, the matter did come up. I was under the impression that you favor offering assistance in such cases.”

“I do. That doesn’t explain why you felt the need to sneak her on board without informing me,” he scowled.

“I thought it would be best to ensure that any blame would fall on myself, sir,” Naoko said weakly.

“Oh, so you thought I should hear about this from the portmaster first?”

Naoko winced. “I’m sorry, Captain. I didn’t expect to end up in a confrontation with the local constables.”

“Always expect trouble to find you, Naoko. And you!” He suddenly turned to stab an accusing finger at me. “What possessed you to lead an urban environment android outside the port?”

I found myself standing up straight. “Sir, I didn’t know she’d have a problem with it, sir. She seemed really amazing when we were dealing with the inugami, sir.”

He blinked. “Inugami? What kind of trouble did you get into, Naoko?”

She hung her head. “There was a team waiting for me in the port, and they had my compliance codes. They would have gotten me, if Alice hadn’t come along and helped.”

He gave me another look. “You got into a fight with an inugami snatch team and won? What exactly are you, Alice?”

“Sir, no one at the orphanage could ever figure that out, sir. But I didn’t really fight the inugami, sir. They were using a jammer to keep Naoko from calling for help, so I just grabbed it and broke it. Sir.”

His eyes went to the long patch of medigel on my arm. “Is that where you got injured?”

“No,” Naoko interrupted. “I fear that I blundered into a monster in the swamp.”

I tried not to roll my eyes. “It was just a hexagator, Naoko. They’re not even fast enough to be dangerous, normally. But, um, she stepped on one, sir, so I had to get her away from it quick. We dodged the teeth, sir, but it got a good whack in on me with its tail before I could get us up a tree.”

“A hexagator,” the captain said slowly. “Computer, display Xenopedia entry for Felicitan hexagators.”

A new display window popped up above his desk. He studied the image for a moment, and sighed.

“Naoko, did you leave the port without your armor?”

“The integral weapons are a violation of local ordinance, Captain,” she said softly.

“Naoko,” he said again, sounding disappointed this time. “Why didn’t you call for help?”

“Males are not allowed on Felicity, and the techs would not be safe there,” she pointed out. “Beatrice is the only crew member who could come down, and I can only imagine the fuss she would have made. I didn’t want to be a bother, or cost the ship extra landing fees.”

“You could have just come back up,” he pointed out.

“And fail my mission?” Naoko said incredulously. “Never! I’ve caused you far too much trouble as it is, Captain.”

He gave an aggravated sigh. “Naoko, you aren’t with the Masu-kai anymore. You don’t have to complete every mission on pain of death, and you certainly don’t have to act like everyone’s servant. You’re a member of my crew, and I expect you to ask for help when you need it. Do you have any idea how worried we’ve been? When you canceled your launch window and went off the grid Jim was about ready to drop an extraction team to find you. I only stopped him because I had a hunch you’d make it back on your own.”

“What? But Captain, we’d be barred from the system if he did that. We’d lose access to the cheapest source of botanicals in the cluster, and the Association would surely levy a fine.”

“The lives of my crew are more important than profits,” the captain said firmly. “Naoko, please. Stop trying to do everything yourself. We’re a team, here.”

Naoko hung her head. “I’m sorry, my captain. I promise, I shall endeavor to do better.”

“Good. Now what’s the story with our guest? Do you have somewhere to go, Alice?”

“No, sir. I was trying to find a ship willing to hire me, sir, but I don’t have any certifications. Please, sir, will you at least drop me off someplace where a little orphan girl might be able to survive? I don’t eat much, and I promise I won’t cause any trouble on your ship.”

I gave him my best puppy eyes.

“Not bad,” he chuckled. “You need to practice, but I’d give it a seven out of ten.”

I pouted.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that. I was handling street rats on Old Earth long before you were born. Or was it built?”

“Born, sir,” I told him. “I had a mother, at least. But I barely remember her. I was a baby when the Federation Navy dropped me off on Felicity. So I really don’t know what I am, sir, or what I’m supposed to be good for. I just know the matrons were sending me to have my enhancements pulled out so they could brainwash me, and if that didn’t work they’d probably kill me. Sir.”

“Hmm. Well, you’ve already risked your own safety to help one of my crew, so I can hardly send you back now. Naoko is offering to share her cut of the profit on those flowers with you, and if the deal comes off as planned that should be more than enough to cover your passage. But there might be another option for you, if you’re ready to work.”

My breath caught. “Yes, sir. I can work. Whatever you want me to do, sir.”

“Good. I normally run a small crew, because things are more profitable that way. But it can be useful to have an extra hand around to handle whatever odd jobs come up, and as you’ve seen Naoko has her limits. We’re supposed to deliver those presence blossoms to a collector on Wirtan Station, but we’ve got several other stops to hit before we get there. Make yourself useful along the way, and I might be willing to hire you on as our new cabin girl.”

“Thank you, sir! I, yes, please, I promise I’ll do whatever needs doing. Um, what does a cabin girl do, sir?”

“Whatever needs doing,” he said. “Including a lot of training, so she’ll be qualified to move up to a regular crew position eventually. It’s an old tradition, used for training up new crew members in regions where there aren’t any trustworthy certification authorities.”

I felt my jaw drop. “That… that’s perfect, sir! Thank you so much for giving me a chance, sir. I won’t let you down.”

“See that you don’t. Naoko, why don’t you and Alice head down to medical and get yourselves checked out? I assume there are bugs and things in this swamp you two were trudging around in?”

“Gnats, midges, mosquitoes, leeches,” I confirmed.

“Leeches!” Naoko squeaked. “Why would anyone purposely put leeches in their biosphere?”

I shrugged. “Because Old Earth had them?”

“It still does,” the captain said. “There are plenty of swamps that never got nuked, and the bioweapons mostly target humans. But that’s a topic for another day. Get yourselves checked out, and then Naoko can set you up with a cabin and essentials. After that I suggest you get some rest. We don’t have any passengers at the moment, so Naoko can give you a basic orientation tomorrow.”

I waited until we were safely down the hall to stop and heave a sigh of relief.

“He’s kind of scary,” I said. “What’s his name?”

Naoko gave me an odd look. “Dan Sokol, but you should always call him ‘Captain’ or ‘Captain Sokol’. You aren’t connected to the ER network, are you? Why not?”

“I don’t even know what that is,” I admitted. “Something else we didn’t have at the orphanage, I guess. Sorry I’m such a noob, Naoko. I’ll try to learn quick.”

She smiled, and put her arm around my shoulders. “It’s quite alright, Alice. You’re a very clever girl, and I’m sure we’ll have you caught up in no time. I’m glad my captain decided to give you a chance. I was hoping that would happen.”

“Thank you for helping me, Naoko. Seriously, I probably owe you my life.”

“You saved me as well, little Alice. At this point there’s nothing for it but to declare eternal friendship, and continue to render mutual assistance as needed.”

My smile was back. “You’re right, Naoko. We’ll just have to be friends. So, um, I thought it was morning?”

“At the spaceport, perhaps. By the ship’s clock it is now twenty-one hundred, so we’d best get to medical before the doctor becomes too impatient.”

She led me down a corridor to another lift, which took us deep into the belly of the ship. There was a big waiting room right off the lift, and a medical bay much bigger than I could imagine a freighter crew needing. There must have been twenty private treatment rooms, and dormant medical robots sat everywhere. Naoko confidently led me down a hall to a larger room full of mysterious equipment, where we found another man waiting for us.

This one wasn’t quite as tall as Captain Sokol, although at two hundred centimeters he still towered over Naoko and me. He wasn’t as massively built as the captain either, but he was completely bald and his eyes were both cybernetic. It made him look intimidating, and the sterile white bodysuit and lab coat he wore didn’t help.

“Alice, this is Doctor Misra,” Naoko said. “Doctor, this is Alice Long.”

I bowed. “Pleased to meet you, Doctor.”

“Yes, yes, charmed I’m sure. I hear you’re auditioning to join the crew? Well, let’s have a look at you. Sit here, please, on the diagnostic couch. Are you receiving that connection request?”

I sat gingerly in the odd-looking chair he’d pointed to. It was comfortably padded, and adjusted itself to fit my size perfectly. But it was packed full of equipment that I couldn’t identify.

“Connection request? Oh, I guess I’m getting a lot of those. Let’s see, that all looks like bot chatter, and those are all old. Do you mean the one coming from that box over there, that says ‘Diagnostic Handshake’ in the header?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Your enhancements include radio direction finding, but you don’t even have a basic connection manager program? Interesting. Yes, please accept that connection if you can.”

There were a lot of sensors looking at me now. Feeling a little nervous, I accepted the connection and immediately found myself bombarded with data. The medical bay wanted to know if I had any of a thousand different software packages running. Did spacers usually have medical programs on their implant computers? I guess that made some kind of sense.

I didn’t have any of the programs it was looking for, really. But I had one that was eager to pretend it was a copy of Galsoft Medsuit Pro 17.4, so I let that run.

“Ah, here we go,” the doctor said. “Naoko, why don’t you get out of that armor and onto the other diagnostic couch. I doubt there’s anything wrong with you, but we can let the automatics make sure of that while I look this over.”

“Of course, Doctor.”

Naoko’s armor unwrapped itself from around her, hundreds of components unlocking and shifting around in complicated ways until she was standing there in just a thin jumpsuit. The armor continued to move as she stepped away from it, arranging itself for storage. Wow, that must have been an expensive feature.

“You haven’t been taking proper care of yourself, have you young lady?”

I turned my attention back to the doctor.

“You mean the malnutrition warnings?” I asked. “I’ve had a lot of those for as long as I can remember. The orphanage served a vegetarian diet, and then in the jungle I had to make do with whatever I could find. Um, what’s an ‘MGE feedstock’, anyway?”

“They didn’t teach you much at this orphanage of yours, did they? It stands for Medical Grade Electronics, and it’s a food supplement for morphs and techs that are designed to grow onboard computers. Honestly, girl, you have so many warnings I’m surprised you can function.”

I shrugged. “I guess mom paid for good engineering. Um, I don’t suppose the ship could maybe spare a little of that stuff?”

“Good heavens, girl, do you think we’d take you in and then starve you? What kind of monsters do you think we are? No, never mind, you were raised by savages. Of course you don’t know any better.”

“She came aboard with no possessions at all,” Naoko put in. “Even her clothes came out of the shuttle’s fabber.”

“Barbarians,” the doctor sniffed. “You’ll find things are different here, Alice. Now, I’m putting you on a special recovery diet until those malnutrition warnings are dealt with. I want you eating three meals a day, and you’ll get a large glass of nutrient shake with every meal. Those will have a blend of supplements in them to match what your systems need, so try to finish them no matter what.”

“Yes, sir!” I said happily. “Does that mean I get to eat more, too?”

He smiled, and patted me on the head. “Yes, Alice. Eat as much as you can. According to this you should be getting at least six thousand calories a day, and you’ve been subsisting on a fraction of that. Normally I’d be telling you to ease into such a large dietary change, but your digestive system has some adaptability mods that should make than unnecessary. Just listen to your diagnostics, and eat whenever you’re hungry.”

Something else in the invisible display caught his attention, and he frowned angrily. “What were those terraformers thinking? I’m seeing traces of no less than six parasitic organisms from that swamp. If you girls didn’t have top of the line medical packages you’d both be seriously ill. Naoko, you’ll need to take a quick dip in a treatment tank to make sure none of that fungus is clinging to your skin. Have your armor go through an internal decontamination as well, before you put it back on.”

“I will, Doctor. Ugh, that place was so disgusting! What about Alice?”

Doctor Misra studied his invisible display for a minute.

“It seems young Alice has military-grade combat nanites backing up her immune system,” he observed. “I’m picking up external contaminants consistent with a long stay in a toxic environment, but internally there’s nothing but stray protein fragments. Remind me never to take a blood sample from you, Alice. Your nanites would probably eat the equipment.”

Darn right they would, some instinct in the back of my head agreed. No one gets to take me apart to see how I work.

Huh.

“Is there a way to get a manual for all my enhancements?” I asked. “It seems like I never know about these things until they come up, and it’s getting kind of old.”

“I expect that will clear up once your electronics grow in properly. You’re suffering from a severe case of stunted development at the moment, but I’d prefer not to poke at your systems until you’re properly in control of them all. Your parents were apparently either military or survivalists, and either way you’re likely to have active defenses waiting to be triggered. Now, let’s get you both decontaminated.”

The medical decontamination involved a shower stall, which sprayed me down with weird purple goop that crawled across my skin like it was alive. I had to close my eyes and hold my breath for a minute while microbots scrubbed every trace of dirt and contaminants off my skin. Then the shower switched to a clear solution that felt more like water, and a bunch of robotic arms scrubbed me down to make sure none of the goop stuck. When I was done there was a fresh set of clothes waiting for me, still warm from the fabber.

Naoko took a few minutes longer than I did, probably because she had to take care of her armor. While we waited the doctor walked me through how to connect properly to the ship’s network, which was kind of cool. There was a com system, of course, but also a whole bunch of data feeds for things like news, announcements and the ship’s calendar. The ER system Naoko had mentioned was some kind of data mining tool, that constantly dug through everything looking for tidbits I might be interested in. Of course, the way it wanted to show me that information was crazy.

“Interesting,” the doctor said when I asked about it. “A baseline human would perceive enhanced reality tags as a set of glowing labels floating in the air.”

“I can’t imagine letting some outside software overwrite what I see like that,” I complained.

“Yes, that’s the traditional objection of the survivalists. Most people find the system too useful to simply ignore, however.”

“Oh, I’m not ignoring it,” I told him. “I’m reading the messages it sends me now, I’m just not letting it mess with my senses.”

“I see. It sounds as if you have some multiplexing in your sensory processing.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you can watch more than one data stream at the same time. Sensory multiplexing is normally used for controlling drone swarms or supervising bots, but it’s considered a radical enhancement. No one on this ship would think anything of it, but there are colonies where you wouldn’t be considered human. You should be careful who you mention that to, little Alice.”

“I always am, Doctor,” I assured him.

Naoko reappeared then, wearing a thin jumpsuit and slippers instead of her armor.

“Am I safe now, Doctor? No more creepy crawlies?”

He gave her a thin smile. “You have a clean bill of health, Naoko.”

“Wonderful! Oh, but what about Alice’s poor arm?”

“It’s just a scrape, Naoko. It’s not a big deal.”

“I’m afraid it would be hazardous to attempt a skin reconstruction when her nanotech may not recognize my equipment as friendly,” Doctor Misra said. “But in this case it hardly matters. Eat something before you go to bed, Alice, and I expect it will be fully regenerated by morning.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right. Don’t fuss, Naoko, I’m fine.”

“If you say so, Alice. Well then, let me find you a room. You must be exhausted after staying up all night. I know I am.”

I was, actually. Maybe the stress of my long flight across Felicity’s jungles was catching up to me, but I felt like I could sleep for a week.

Naoko led me on another trek across the ship, back up the lift and down a hall to an area that was marked ‘Passenger Quarters’ in the maps that I now had access to.

“This is just for tonight,” she explained as she led me through a roomy passenger lounge. “I’ll get you set up with a cabin of your own tomorrow. I’m afraid we don’t have companions assigned to the rooms, but feel free to call me if you need anything. You can order room service if you get hungry, and there’s a clothing fabber in your bathroom.”

She opened a door marked ‘Passenger Stateroom 6’, and I stopped to stare. It was huge! There was a living room that must have been thirty square meters, and that was just the entrance area. Beyond that the map showed a kitchen, study, bedroom, two storage rooms and a huge bathing area.

“Your passengers must be rich,” I said.

“Not usually. It’s a big ship, and there aren’t many of us on board, so space is rarely a problem. Also, I don’t mean to embarrass you, but I’m afraid you’re going to find that Felicity is very poor. Even the little Dark Space colonies we trade with are generally quite rich compared to what you’re used to.”

“Really? Well, I guess that just means I’ll be rich too someday.”

Naoko smiled, and hugged me. “That’s the spirit. Get some rest now, Alice. Breakfast is at 0800. Can you find your way to the mess hall?”

“The one in the crew space up on deck 12? Yes, I see it on the map.”

“Good. I have breakfast with my captain, but I’ll meet you there afterwards.”

“I’ll be there.”

Then I was alone.

I raided the suite’s pantry for a snack, and considered what to do next. I’d never had my own fabber before, and I was tempted to play around with it. But the bed was calling me.

Rest, then.

The bedroom made my old dorm room look like a closet, and the bed was big enough for half a dozen people. But it was soft as a cloud, and the covers were as warm as Dika’s hugs. My head touched the pillow, and I was out like a light.

Chapter 5

The scent of something wonderful greeted my arrival in the mess hall the next morning.

The room was pretty nice, a big space divided into smaller clusters of tables and chairs by big planters full of greenery. But I barely paid it any attention, as my nose led me across the room to a long counter with several tall stools. Beyond that was a room where a group of cute foxgirls were doing mysterious things with gadgets I didn’t recognize.

I hopped up on one of the stools, and leaned over the counter to watch. “Good morning, everyone. That smells amazing.”

“Thank you!” One of the foxgirls said, flashing me a smile. “What would you like for breakfast, ma’am?”

I looked behind me. No, there was no older crewmember standing there.

“I’m not a ‘ma’am’,” I told her. “I’m just Alice.”

The one man in the kitchen turned to greet me. “Ah, I see our new cabin girl isn’t above being friendly with the techs. Good morning, Alice.”

“Good morning, sir. You’re Chief Engineer Thomas Benson, right? Sorry, I’m still getting used to this enhanced reality thing.”

“I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it in no time, Alice. Yes, I am Chief Benson, the one man charged with defending this crew from technical disasters of every description. These brave young stalwarts are my techs, Jenna, Lina, Kara and Mina. Don’t let them fool you with those innocent smiles, they’ll get you into all manner of mischief if you let them.”

Goodness, but they were an odd group. Chief Benson was a few cems shorter than the captain and not as stout, with dark brown skin and close-cut black hair. He also wasn’t wearing a shirt, and his arms and torso were solid muscle. Wow. I’d never seen anything like that before, but I was pretty sure I liked it.

The fox girls were all a good bit shorter, maybe a hundred and sixty-five cems, and were all the same morph style. They had furry ears atop their heads, and long fluffy tails that I immediately wanted to pet, but not much fur. They were lean and athletic rather than all curvy like Naoko, but I guess that would be more practical for crawling around tight spaces in engineering. They looked so similar that hair color was probably the only way most people could tell them apart - Jenna had the orange-red color of an actual fox, Lina was a more classic redhead, Kara’s hair and fur were all black and Mina was blonde with a black tail.

“I see the good doctor has you on supplements,” Chief Benson went on. “But surely you’ll have room to sample our culinary efforts as well? Today we’re serving authentic American-style breakfast cuisine.”

“You mean, like, manual cooking?” I asked.

“Precisely! Autochefs may produce a passable product, but there’s no replacement for the satisfaction of preparing a fine meal with your own two hands. Now, you look like a pancake sort of girl to me. Do you like sweets? Of course you do, at your age. Lina, a short stack of blueberry pancakes with maple syrup, and a fresh pot of hot chocolate.”

The whole group worked together with seamless precision, mixing and pouring and doing complicated things with hot surfaces. I could see why the counter was here. It was fun to sit and watch them, and they didn’t seem to mind.

A bot dropped off my nutrient shake, and I gingerly tried a sip. Then a bigger one. Then I was gulping it down as fast as I could. Wow, this stuff was chock full of everything my development manager was screaming for.

Lina set a plate full of flat things in front of me with a grin. “Careful there. Don’t humans get brain freeze if they drink too much cold stuff too fast?”

I set the empty glass aside. “Ahh, I really needed that. I’m fine, Lina, but thanks for checking. So these are pancakes?”

“That’s right, and this is maple syrup. You pour however much you want over the pancakes, and then eat them with a knife and fork.” She sent me a video clip of that. “It’s pretty much all bread and sugar, but it’s good. If you want some protein too we can make you some ham strips, or bacon.”

“What’s bacon?”

Mina’s tail went stiff, and she turned to give me a horrified look. “You’ve never had bacon? Oh, you poor girl. I’ll make you a batch right now.”

“What do they usually eat for breakfast on Felicity?” Lina asked.

“Most days it was fruit and cheese,” I said. “Or sometimes berry mix, for variety. They have this whole environmentally sound vegetarian diet thing going on, which always drove me nuts because I get cravings for meat. I’ve never actually had bread before, either. Processed carbohydrates are supposed to be bad for you or something.”

Lina giggled. “Like anyone still has a paleo digestive system in this day and age? Well, you’ll get lots of new experiences here. We cook a meal for the crew every other day, and we’re always trying something different.”

“Sweet. Oh, this is good! Is it hard to learn how to make this?”

“Nah, pancakes are easy. But wait till you try the bacon.”

Bacon was amazing. So were the sausage patties, and the omelet that Jenna suggested after that. By then other crewmembers were streaming in at a steady rate, and for a while the fox girls were too busy to chat. But they kept putting plates in front of me, so I kept eating.

The way some of the crew talked to them bothered me a bit. They weren’t rude, exactly, but there was something about the way they spoke that reminded me of the matrons giving orders to the bots at the orphanage. I frowned, and dug through the mass of data the ship’s enhanced reality system was feeding me.

The fox girls were all androids, but they were clearly marked as crew members rather than equipment. Their bodies were synthetic, probably so they could work in places that didn’t have life support without messing around with space suits. But they were so realistic you’d never be able to tell without running an active scan on them, so it was hard to believe there was some kind of prejudice about that. Besides, I was pretty sure their processors could be transplanted to organic bodies like Naoko’s if anyone thought it was a big deal.

They were listed as class three AI’s, though, and Naoko was a class four. Hmm.

“Do you have a black hole in your stomach or something?” Lina asked as she took my plate, and offered me another one loaded with something called ‘biscuits and white gravy’.

“I’m supposed to eat as much as I can,” I reminded her. “But I think this is going to do it for me. Even my trick stomach has limits.”

“If you say so, Alice. Just say something if you change your mind. We’ll be happy to make more.”

“Thanks, Lina.” I glanced around, and saw that things were slowing down again. “Say, um, if you don’t mind my asking. What’s the difference between a class three AI and a class four?”

“Oh, that. It means we don’t have that magic universal learning and creativity thing you humans are born with.”

“It’s total bullshit, the way you guys can just figure out anything whenever you want,” Jenna commented. “The boss is really nice about upgrading us with new skill packs when we ask, but I’m still kind of jealous.”

“Most colonies don’t classify us as people,” Lina went on, her eyes downcast. “That’s why we don’t leave the ship very often.”

I put my hand on hers. “Hey, sorry if I brought up a sensitive subject. But I think that’s stupid. I mean, if I thought that way I probably wouldn’t consider baseline humans real people. They’ve only got five senses, they can’t do math to save their lives, and they can only think one thing at a time. How pathetic is that?”

Lina smiled. “Thanks, Alice. You’re really nice. I hope you end up staying with the ship.”

“Me too. I have to get you to teach me how to cook, after all. Assuming you can put up with my totally unfair universal learning powers.”

“We’ll deal,” Mina assured me. “Here, have some more bacon.”

Naoko found me soon after that, and pulled up a stool beside me.

“Good morning, Alice,” she said cheerfully. “I see you’ve met the engineering crew. What do you think of their cooking?”

“It’s amazing! They never gave us anything like this back at the orphanage. I’m so stuffed I think I might explode if I take another bite.”

She laughed. “Somehow I doubt that.”

“Hey, I’m serious. I was going to stop when I started getting stress warnings from my stomach, but then Mina waved more bacon under my nose. Now it’s one more bite and kablooie! Alice bits, all over the mess hall. You’d better rescue me before I give in to temptation.”

“Never fear, my friend. I shall save you from the peril of irresistibly tasty food. Let me show you around the ship’s datanet, and then we’ll see about getting you a spacesuit.”

I’d already figured out some of the basics, but it was nice to have someone who knew what they were doing show me around. The ship’s datanet was way bigger than the little ones I’d seen on our occasional field trips from the orphanage, or even the one at the port. There was a com system that supported everything from text messages to videoconferencing, the latter function using the ER system to create virtual images of whoever you were talking to. There was a way to access sensor feeds so you could see outside the ship, or check out what was happening in any of the public areas inside. There was a huge database of details about the ship’s current status, describing everything from the cargo in the holds to the wear on the landing strut joints.

It was a little odd for a ship this size to even have landing gear, but I guess it made sense. If you want to get a lot of men on the ground fast you don’t want to mess around with shuttles, and a ship was probably more survivable too. That got me wondering how a planetary invasion would work. But the next thing Naoko showed me was the training system, which was a lot more important to my immediate situation.

“I’ve set you up with access to all the basic classes, so you can work through them at your own pace,” she explained. “There are VR scenarios for a lot of them, in case you want to get some hands-on experience.”

“Is that safe?” I asked. “I don’t want to end up turning into one of those VR addicts you see in the vidshows.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about it, Alice. These are training simulations, not games. Besides, don’t you have some insane level of enhanced senses? The sims are set up to fool normal humans, so I suspect they’ll look like cartoons to your eyes.”

“Oh. I guess you’re right.”

“Of course I am. Now, I suggest you try to get through Bot Supervision, Basics of Cargo Handling and Introductory Passenger Service as soon as possible. Those are all easy courses for humans, and they’ll let you start being productive quickly. Engineering is always looking for help supervising the maintenance bots, and we’re due to take on passengers at Takeo Station tomorrow.”

“Whatever you need,” I assured her. “I guess I’d better work fast, then.”

“I wouldn’t worry, Alice. Passenger service will be easy for you. Simply smile, be polite and let me handle any problems that arise.”

“I’ll remember that. Is it okay if I work on these engineering classes when I have time? I’ve always wanted to know more about how things work.”

“Certainly, Alice. It takes a long time to learn, but it’s a valuable job skill. Now, let’s get your suit squared away.”

I wasn’t surprised that there was a fabricator set aside for the crew to use, since that obviously made more sense than trying to carry anything that might be needed in a cargo hold. It was interesting, though, that the Square Deal turned out to have a big supply bay with a dozen different fabricators of all shapes and sizes. Little ones for quickly turning out clothes or personal accessories. Larger ones for making furniture or bots. A big one that looked like it could build a groundcar, and even a fancy biofab unit with a person-sized assembly bay.

“Don’t try to use that one,” Naoko said, pointing at the biofab. “Biologicals are finicky, so ask Dr. Misra for help if you ever need it. The others are all freely available to the crew, although of course the system will bill you for personal use.”

“I don’t have any money,” I pointed out.

“Now that’s where you are mistaken, Alice. As of this morning you have twenty credits in your ship’s account, and the captain has authorized an allowance of twenty credits per week for the duration of your evaluation period. Basic feedstocks run a quarter-credit per ton here, and the fab fee is only twice that. So as long as you limit yourself to open source designs you can supply yourself with whatever personal effects you like. Just keep in mind that the baggage allowance for crew is only twenty tons, and you’ll have to pay shipping fees if you go over that.”

I stared at her for a long moment. “Twenty tons? What could I possibly need that would be that heavy?”

“You might be surprised. Our security chief keeps a whole arsenal of deadly machines on hand, and then there’s that infernal device the first mate is so proud of. But I suggest you keep it simple for now. A suit, some clothes, perhaps a few odds and ends?”

“You bet! Thank you, Naoko. Um, and thank you, captain, if you’re watching or see a recording or an AI forwards you highlights or something.”

Naoko laughed. “I’m sure the captain has more important things to do than spy on us, Alice. But I shall pass on your thanks, when next I see him. Now, would you prefer an integrated maneuvering pack or a detachable system?”

Turns out space suits are complicated. I was expecting to get stuck with some basic emergency thing, but the design database Naoko showed me had millions of options. Extended life support, onboard nuke packs, armor, maneuvering thrusters, medical kits, deflectors - some of the high-end designs were basically powered armor by another name. Too bad a decent power plant was out of my price range.

“Sixty credits for a two hundred kilowatt nuke pack? Why are those things so expensive?” I asked.

“Because radioactive isotopes are rare,” she explained. “Mining them is a lot more work than just gobbling up a few tons of CHON or nickel-iron, and then you have to work it with specially hardened fabricators that can stand the radiation. Electronics and superconductive power systems are expensive for a similar reason, since they require rare earths and other exotic elements.”

Too bad. For a moment there I had visions of stomping around in a giant battlesuit with a laser cannon. Oh, well. I ended up picking out a nice little armored suit with built-in maneuvering thrusters and an extended-duration life support package, which was probably more than I’d need anyway. Not bad for half a credit.

Lunch was less interesting than breakfast, since Chief Benson and his techs weren’t there. Naoko told me a little about the different cuisines on the autochef’s menu, and talked me into trying the same traditional Japanese food she was eating. The shrimp tempura and spring rolls were pretty good, but not nearly as much fun as having the foxgirls cook for me.

“Would you like to do your own cabin layout?” Naoko asked as we ate. “The crew quarters start out as just a rectangular empty space, so you have a great deal of flexibility in arranging things as you like them. But you may prefer to simply use a standard layout.”

“Probably,” I agreed. “I’m not picky about that kind of thing, and I’m not really sure what I’d want anyway. Wait, does furniture count against my mass limit?”

“No, ordinarily cabin fixtures belong to the ship. You can recycle them whenever you like, and if you leave the ship they get broken back down into feedstock. The mass limit only applies to things you want personal ownership of.”

“I guess that makes sense. Just a standard layout then, I guess. Oh, can I get my own shower, like the one in the Speedy Exit?”

She gave me an odd look. “Of course you can, Alice. Why wouldn’t you have your own bathing area?”

“We all had to share the showers at the orphanage,” I admitted.

“What?” She looked so astonished I had to smile.

“I had a roommate, too,” I told her. “Which was fun, because I really liked Dika, but it was kind of crowded too. So I’m sure whatever you rich spacers are used to is going to be more than enough for me. Heck, one room from that passenger suite I was in last night would be more space than I’d know what to do with.”

“One room? Alice, we aren’t heartless barbarians like those people back on Felicity. No, you’re going to have a proper cabin just like any other crew member. You like high places, correct?”

“Yes,” I admitted, wondering where she was going with this.

“Also open space, and greenery? But you’ll want your privacy, as well. Especially once you get older. Yes, I think this will do nicely.”

“What are you looking at, Naoko?” I asked.

“Trust me, Alice. You’re going to love it. There, I’ve got the Facilities AI setting it up now. Two hours to complete, which will give us time to make a tour of the ship and introduce you to the rest of the crew.”

“If you say so, Naoko. As long as this isn’t going to be too expensive.”

“Goodness, Alice, you don’t have to pay for your cabin setup. That’s an employment benefit, just like life support and medical care.”

“Oh.” I shook my head. “You know, Naoko, I’m really lucky you guys are such nice people. You could really take advantage of me, and I wouldn’t know any better.”

“If we were that sort I wouldn’t have brought you with me in the first place,” Naoko said. “But you do need to learn quickly, Alice. The Square Deal does most of its business at ports the corporate cargo vessels don’t visit. Some of them are just small colonies in inconvenient locations, but many of them are rather rough places. You’ll need to be very careful about leaving the ship, at least until you know enough to take care of yourself.”

“Should I be picking out weapons?” I asked.

“I believe we shall recruit the security chief’s assistance on that point.”

The ship’s database said Security Chief Jim West was an infomorph. I’d never met anyone who’d uploaded their mind to the net before, since that was obviously illegal on Felicity. So I was looking forward to meeting him.

I wasn’t disappointed. We found Chief West in a garage area near the armory, where he had a team of bots stripping down a spider tank. The body he was wearing was some kind of humanoid warbot, and it was positively covered in drool-worthy hardware. There were mass drivers in the arms, and two shoulder-mounted point defense lasers, and deflector shield emitters everywhere. If it wasn’t for the ER tags I would have mistaken him for a security bot.

“Hello, Chief West,” Naoko said. “Can you spare us a moment? I need your opinion on self-defense options for Alice here.”

“The new trainee? There aren’t any ratings in her file,” he said distractedly. “What have you practiced with, Alice?”

“Nothing, sir,” I admitted. “The matrons didn’t approve of violence.”

“Fucking pacifists,” he muttered, sounding disgusted. “Are you a pacifist, girl?”

“No, sir! I just don’t have any training, sir.”

“That’s ‘chief’, not ‘sir’. I work for a living, and I don’t have time to train a newbie up from scratch right now. Maybe once we leave the cluster, but you’ll have to get by on something else until then. It says here you’ve got boosted reflexes?”

“Yes, Chief.”

“Think you can keep your head in a fight?”

“Yes, Chief.”

“She’s already proven that,” Naoko put in. “Once when the inugami tried to kidnap me, and again when we were attacked by a dangerous predator in the swamps. Not a moment of panic or hesitation, either time.”

“Firefights are different,” he pointed out. “But we all have to start somewhere. Come with me.”

He led us across the room, through an armored hatch and down a narrow hallway lined with armored storage compartments. A hatch opened at his touch, and he stepped inside.

“I’m assigning you a personal protection swarm,” he said over his shoulder. “This model looks like a couple of those mini-dragon pets the kids are fawning over these days, so you can take them most places without being conspicuous. If you manage to get yourself into a fight they’ll deploy attack microbots to protect you, and lay down smoke to cover your retreat.”

He pulled a large box out of the storeroom, and handed it to me. Then he paused for a moment, watching me.

“Strength boost, too?”

Oh, yeah, I guess the box would have been too heavy for a normal girl my size. It was twenty kilos, easily.

“Yes, Chief. Um, I can see x-rays, too. I’m not sure what that’s good for, but Naoko thought you might know.”

He waved off the distraction. “Espionage crap, obviously. You’re too damned small to be designed for a nuclear battlefield. Now remember, Alice, these bots are not toys. They’re lethal weapons, and anyone who sees them in action is going to treat them as such. So I expect you to leave them in covert mode unless you find yourself in a situation where you’re in fear for your life. You do not use them to win a bar fight. You do not use them to beat up obnoxious dirtsiders. You do not use them at all if you can possibly avoid it. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Chief. I won’t use them at all unless it’s a life or death situation.”

“Good girl. Be sure to read the instructions carefully. You can use one of the training rooms to practice with them if you get the urge. Their base station will fab consumables for them as needed, and the bots are rated for a fifty year service life. Use them responsibly, and I’ll see about setting you up with some self-defense training the next time we have a long haul in hyperspace.”

“Thank you, Chief. I’ve managed alright so far, but I really want to learn how to fight before I end up getting in over my head.”

“I hear you, kid. For now just stick close to the crew when you’re portside, and we’ll take care of you. Oh, and Naoko?”

“Yes, Chief West?” Naoko said cautiously.

“Next time you need help, call me. We’ve got the resources, we just have to know that you need them. Don’t be the girl who vanished without a trace because she was too proud to ask for help.”

Naoko suddenly seemed to find the floor very interesting. “I apologize for my excessive stubbornness, Chief West. I shall endeavor to do better in the future.”

“Good. I assume the captain has plans for getting those submission codes out of your head?”

“I assume so, but we have not discussed the issue. I suspect he intends to keep me in the dark, in case I have some contingency that would force me to resist such measures.”

“Being hacked sucks,” he said sympathetically. “Especially if it’s in your hardware, which it probably is in your case. Try not to let it get you down, though. The captain must have some idea how to fix things, or he wouldn’t have kept you on the ship for so long.”

“I hope you are correct, Chief West.”

He nodded. “That’ll do for now, girls. Now scram. I’ve got a lot of work to do before we make Takeo Station.”

I stayed quiet until we had a couple of closed hatches between us and the chief, since he was bound to have enhanced hearing. Then I relaxed with a giggle.

“Whew. He’s kind of intense, isn’t he?”

Naoko patted my shoulder. “That’s his job, Alice. But he’s very protective of the crew, so there’s no need to be afraid of him.”

“Afraid? Why would I be afraid? I think I like him, actually. He makes me feel safe.”

“Oh? So you like military men, then?” She said teasingly.

I blushed. “I didn’t mean it like that! Besides, he’s like, forty. I’m just a little kid to him.”

“Calendar ages don’t mean much to spacers, Alice. I suppose you have some growing up to do still, but technically you’re older than I am. I was only fabbed two years ago.”

“That still sounds weird to me. I guess the fox girls were all fabbed as adults, too?”

“Most androids are,” Naoko agreed.

“Huh. Well, I wasn’t, and I don’t think I’m quite ready for stuff like that yet. I only started getting those kinds of feelings a few weeks ago.”

“Ah. Then I shall be gentle of your feelings, my friend, and try not to tease you overmuch.”

“Thank you, Naoko.”

We walked in silence for a moment.

“All those guns and armor are kind of hot,” I admitted.

“Mmm, aren’t they? If I hadn’t imprinted on the captain, I might well have made a play for him myself. Although luring him back into an organic body might be difficult, and his religion would be a complication.”

“Oh?”

“Oh, yes. He’s a Mormon, Third Reformation branch. They think it’s immoral to have less than three wives, and then there’s that whole ‘be fruitful and multiply’ thing…”

“Naoko! You’re terrible.”

She grinned at me. “You’re cute when you blush like that. Now, here we are at your cabin. Take a look, and tell me what you think.”

Had she just been trying to distract me? The hatch we’d come to had my name on it, but the space that my map showed on the other side was way too big to be a cabin. Ten meters wide by twenty deep, with an eight meter ceiling? That had to be wrong.

I put my hand on the sensor next to the hatch, letting it read my biometrics while I exchanged encryption keys with the lock. It set itself to my code, and gave a happy little chime. Then the hatch slid open, and I gasped.

Sunlight!

No, not real sunlight, but the spectrum was a perfect match for Felicity’s star. The bright, airy space had a display ceiling programmed to look like sky, and mirrored walls that turned the greenery along the edges of the room into an illusionary jungle. The floor was soft grass, and a little brook cascaded down a jumble of stones in the back to fill a pond in one corner.

It took me a second look to realize that there was furniture in the room. A couch and a couple of comfy-looking recliners that all looked like some kind of living plant furniture, clustered around a big display projector. An opening in the back led into a little hallway through which I could see a kitchen, a washroom door, and… stairs? Wait, there was a balcony along the back of the room.

I ran up the stairs, and found a study overlooking the living room. Beyond that was a huge bedroom with walls of living wood that reminded me of my dorm room at the orphanage. But here there was an opening like a cave mouth on the far side, with a few steps leading down into a bathing area like an underground grotto. There was a tub big enough to swim in, and the fanciest shower I’d ever seen.

“Do you like it?” Naoko said from behind me.

“This is all for me?” I said. I could hardly believe it. “I get to live here?”

“Yes, Alice. This is all for you.”

The next thing I knew I was hugging her.

“Thank you, Naoko. I love it! I can’t believe you had something like this in a catalog.”

“I may have made a few adjustments,” she admitted. “Changing cabin layouts is part of my job as stewardess, so I’ve developed some skill with the system.”

“You’re amazing! This is perfect, Naoko. It’s like my own little lair in the forest, only not so little. I can’t wait to try that bath. Only, what happened to the Square Deal being a bare-bones freighter with tiny little crew cabins?”

“I also said that Felicity is quite poor, did I not? Most people would consider this rather cramped, Alice. The ceiling is too low for proper trees, there are no servant quarters or athletic facilities, and the public spaces have barely any separation at all from your private study and bedroom.”

I shook my head. “I can’t believe how rich you spacers are. I wouldn’t know what to do with that kind of room anyway. Um, can I put fish in the pond?”

“Certainly. Permanent crew are allowed to keep pets, so long as they can’t escape your cabin. Do a good job, and we can buy you some to celebrate once you’ve signed a contract.”

“I will, Naoko. You’ll see. I’m going to be a super amazing cabin girl, and the captain is going to wonder how you ever got along without me, and he’ll hire me for real and then I’ll stay here forever.”

She smiled. “Forever is a long time, Alice. But I shall be glad of your company, for as long as we both remain here.”

Chapter 6

I was puzzling my way through a primer on starship electrical systems when the sudden jolt of a hyperspace transition pulled me away from my studies.

It turned out that the courses Naoko had pointed me to were only six hours long, and the VR instruction could be run at triple speed. So I’d easily blown through all three of them once she left me to study, and moved on to other topics. I’ve always wanted to know more about how things work, an interest that wasn’t considered respectable back on Felicity. So I’d spent most of the night poking through the engineering classes in the ship’s library, reading anything that looked interesting while I ordered one snack after another from the ship’s autochef.

Well, that and unpacking my new toys. The robots Chief West had assigned me really did look like miniature dragons. They were about the size of a housecat, with eyes like jewels and a beautiful red and black color scheme. They were so realistic I had to look close to see that they were bots, and they acted like little predators. I’d named them Smoke and Ash, and I already loved them.

Too bad their design wasn’t open source. I’d looked them up in the ship’s database, and apparently they’d cost almost a hundred credits. Ouch.

I paused the education program, and checked the ship’s status. We were in the Gamma Layer now, and making our approach to Takeo Station? I must have been so caught up in my class that I missed the jump warning.

The approach might be interesting to watch, and if not I could always go back to studying. So I paused the program, wiggled out of the little VR pod that Naoko had installed behind a hidden panel in my study, and headed for the bathroom. A quick shower, a fresh dress, and I could be down in the crew lounge in plenty of time.

On second thought, why not wear my spacesuit? Maybe it would help make the rest of the crew take me seriously. I had better odds with that than another dress, even if the ship’s library did have a lot of cute designs.

I found half a dozen people in the lounge, most of them clustered around a big holographic display that showed the ship’s surroundings. There was a pretty big station a few million kloms out, and all kinds of smaller clutter around us.

“Alice!” Mina waved me over with a smile. “Come to check out the view?” She gestured at the display with her cup, almost spilling it in the process.

“That’s right. I’ve never seen another system before. What am I looking at here?”

“You mean the stations? Pretty typical system defenses. The big station mounts heavy graser cannons, with enough range to pick off anyone trying to get in or out of the system. That globe of sensor platforms a light-minute out is to make sure no one can sneak in close without being spotted.”

I studied the display for a moment. “I think I get it. The Gamma Layer has better visibility than the Delta Layer, right?”

In school they’d taught us that there are four hyperspace universes, the Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta layers. Each layer is smaller than the previous one by a factor of pi cubed, so shifting to a higher layer lets you get places a lot faster than you could in normal space. But each layer is a whole universe, and while quantum physics is the same everywhere cosmology isn’t. So each layer had its own unique problems for travelers to overcome.

“Exactly,” Mina confirmed. “The Delta Layer has this weird repulsive gravity force that keeps stars from forming, and the part corresponding to Known Space is just a huge cloud of diffuse plasma. It interferes quite a bit with long-range sensors, and the big slow-haul cargo ships can’t get up there anyway because the Delta transition requires such a steep power curve. So everyone puts their border security here in the Gamma Layer, where you can see clear to the edge of the universe with a good telescope.”

I could picture the geometry, now that I thought about it. Hyperspace transitions are pretty obvious, so any ship trying to sneak into the system undetected would have to pass through the Gamma Layer a long way out from the station. But a million kilometers in the Gamma Layer would become thirty million in the Beta Layer, or nine hundred million down in the Alpha Layer. At a normal cruising speed of maybe a hundred kilometers per second it would take months for a ship to work its way around the fringes of the system without being spotted, and even then they’d be seen the moment they lit their drive. The same problem in reverse meant that a ship fleeing the system would have to pass close to the main station to escape into the Delta Layer.

“That makes sense,” I said. “But why are there so many ships docked at the station? Shouldn’t they all be heading down into normal space?”

“Overwatch stations like that usually get used as transshipment points,” she explained. “Bulk cargo shipping is a pretty competitive business, especially the short-haul runs between colonies in the same cluster. I don’t really get the details, but apparently a lot of the time it makes sense to drop off cargo at a central location where other ships can pick it up. They do that in the Gamma Layer, because that way the big bulk cargo ships don’t need to have a hyperspace converter.”

“The Hoshida system is the main trade port for a dozen or so minor colonies,” a crewman I hadn’t met yet put in. “Of course, that’s all local trade. The Square Deal specializes in longer runs, including a lot of dark colonies where the captain has local contacts. Ah, but a girl your age probably isn’t interested in all that. I’m Dustin Shaw, but everyone calls me Dusty. Welcome aboard, Alice. I expect we’ll be seeing a lot of each other.”

He was the first man I’d seen who didn’t look like he could break me in half with one hand. He was barely taller than Naoko, and his face was so odd it took me a moment to understand what I was seeing. He looked old. You never saw that on Felicity, even in historical vidshows. It was supposed to be too traumatic for sensitive young kids, or something.

Funny, but it didn’t seem gross or scary to me. He was obviously healthy. He had all his teeth, and his short brown hair didn’t have any gray in it. He just wasn’t bothering with cosmetic mods to bulk up his muscles or hide his wrinkles.

The ER system said he was the ship’s quartermaster. Did that make him an officer? Better safe than sorry.

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” I said. “I’m interested in everything, actually. What’s a dark colony?”

“Now didn’t I just say everyone calls me Dusty? That includes you, kiddo. Save the ‘sirs’ for when there’s paying customers around.”

“Oh. Um, thank you, s- Dusty. Sorry, I’m still getting used to things. I figured it’s safer to be too formal than not formal enough.”

“That’s usually a good bet,” he agreed. “Just don’t turn into a suckup. As for dark colonies, that’s what we call places that are trying to stay off the grid. See, there’s a good half-million systems in the average sector, and this far from Earth that’s almost all uninhabited space. The Kerak sector has about a thousand officially catalogued colonies, but they’re concentrated in forty-odd tight little clusters.”

“Why is that?” I asked.

“Well, you’ve got to remember the Outer Sphere wasn’t all colonized at once. The first few colonies grabbed the garden worlds, and some of the sweet industrial spots like the Imris system. The second wave mostly wanted to be close to an established colony, and pretty soon every cluster had at least one big industrial system. At that point it made sense for anyone trying to make money to stick close enough to be part of the freight network. Ships that can use the Delta Layer are thirty times faster than the bulk freighters in the Gamma Layer, but they’re also three or four times more expensive.”

“So the dark colonies are places that don’t care about money?”

“They’re people who want to get away from civilization,” Mina said.

“Exactly,” Dusty confirmed. “Pirates, bootleggers and survivalists. Religious cults and utopian dreamers. Transhumanists, uploaders and transformationists. All the weird and wacky folks that no one wants as a neighbor. Whenever a group gets fed up with being suppressed and harassed on their home world they pool their funds to buy some industrial gear, and pay someone like us to drop them off in an empty system way out in the middle of nowhere.”

“A good open source database has all the designs you need to build a colony,” Mina observed. “Of course, they’re not as good as more modern designs, and there are always things that aren’t in the database.”

“I get it,” I said. “We’re basically making customers, right? They want to keep their colonies secret so they won’t get raided by pirates or taken out by some government that doesn’t like what they’re doing. But they still want to have some trade with the outside world, and who better to trust than the guy who already knows where they are?”

“Looks like you’ve got some talent for this, kid,” Dusty said with a smile.

Naoko came hurrying into the room about then. “Alice! Good morning, my friend. I hope you slept well, for I fear we have a very busy day ahead of us.”

“Looks that way,” Dusty agreed. “Twenty-seven paying passengers, all headed for Zanfeld? Looks like the rats have woken up and started jumping ship.”

“I’ll leave the political speculations to you, Dusty. All I know is twenty of those passengers seem to be emigrating, and none of them know how to prepare a proper cargo manifest. I’m sure they’ll be no better at stowing their household goods, and you know how these Hoshidans are about their households. It’s going to be a nightmare getting them all aboard. Please say you’re available to help out!”

“You can always count on old Dusty, kid. I’ve got a few irons of my own in the fire here, but I’ve got time to help sort out our passenger problems.”

“Thank goodness! Alice, I want you to shadow us today so you can learn how to handle the passengers. I saw that you finished your classes already? Do you feel confident about supervising a crew of cargo bots?”

“Sure, that’s easy,” I assured her. “But I thought cargo distribution was more complicated than just moving boxes.”

“It is,” Dusty said. “But I can handle that part. We’ll set up a receiving station in bay fifteen to take whatever they bring in and containerize it properly, and then I’ll see about fitting it into the first mate’s loading plan. I don’t suppose you speak Japanese?”

“Yes, that’s one of my native languages. I’ve also got Mandarin, Russian, Spanish, French, Esperanto and Newspeak, if it comes up.”

“Good, good. I’m sure we’ll have errands for you, but for now let’s get this planned out. Naoko, why don’t you start laying out cabins while I fab up a security checkpoint and some packing bots.”

The preparations took up the rest of the morning. At first I wasn’t sure why taking on twenty-odd people was such a big deal, even if they did expect to pick their own cabin layouts. But then I got a look at the cargo lists they were sending us, and I saw the problem.

I also got kind of mad. Each of these people had dozens of techs and companion androids listed as ‘cargo’.

“Naoko, tell me we aren’t doing business with slavers,” I protested.

“Is Mina a slave?” She replied.

That caught me off guard. “No? I mean, she’s listed as a crew member, and she seems happy enough.”

“Of course she is. She was designed to crave the life she currently leads, and to be content with it. She loves Jenna, Lina and Kara with all her heart, because they’re her pack and her bonding instincts are overwhelmingly strong. She loves her work, because she was designed to enjoy it. She loves Chief Benson even more, because while she’s nominally free her instincts still see him as her master. All of these feelings are as real as anything you might experience, but they were all carefully engineered to make her embrace a life of subservience.”

I scowled, and kicked idly at a bulkhead. “Is that what they do here, then? Make people, and program them to want to be slaves? Is that supposed to make it right?”

“That is a topic of great contention, Alice. Most colonies allow serfdom of one kind or another, provided that the serfs are kept reasonably happy. Some forbid the practice, or restrict it to bots and specialized AIs that clearly fall short of proper sentience. But it would hardly be practical to limit our business to those rare exceptions.”

“We lost that fight a hundred years ago, kiddo,” Dusty commented over the com. “Mind you, it’s kind of suspicious how many slave revolts there are these days. The mind engineers say a place like Hoshida should be stable for hundreds of years, but I can hardly think of one that doesn’t have some kind of unrest. Ah, but old Dusty couldn’t possibly have anything to do with all the hacking and smuggling that must go into making that happen, eh?”

Naoko gave a frustrated sigh. “Dusty, she’s impetuous enough as it is. Please don’t encourage her.”

“That’s a fair point, I suppose. Stops like this, it’s best for an innocent young lady to keep her eyes open and her lips sealed. Shit’s always complicated, especially these days. Once you know what’s what, then you can decide what you’re going to do about it.”

“That sounds like good advice, Dusty,” I said. “Could we maybe talk about it more, when we aren’t so busy?”

“Ol’ Dusty’s always happy to run his mouth, kiddo. Ask anyone, they’ll tell you.”

I still wasn’t happy about it, but he was right. I needed this job, and it would be stupid to raise a fuss when I didn’t even know what I was talking about.

We had the baggage handling checkpoint set up by the time the Square Deal dropped into the Beta Layer. The transition sent a barely-perceptible vibration through the ship, and I don’t think Naoko even noticed. But I couldn’t help stopping to check the external view.

The Beta Layer is an antimatter universe, after all. Sure, space is mostly empty, and the Square Deal’s deflectors would keep stray debris from touching the hull. But a million vidshows had taught me that you don’t mess with antimatter, and I couldn’t help but be a little nervous about it.

Maybe it made the captain nervous too, because we were there for barely twenty minutes. As soon as the hyperspace converter was back down to a safe operating temperature we made our Alpha transition, and I turned my full attention back to my work with a sigh of relief.

Throwing together a couple dozen miniature palaces for a bunch of rich guys and their hordes of servants was a lot of work, even with bot crews doing most of the labor. Bots are only smart enough to handle routine work, and even the class two AI Naoko used as an assistant got confused pretty easily. It didn’t help that our passengers all submitted their requirements using different data formats, and they had all kinds of weird requests. I still can’t figure out why anyone would want a bathtub that fills with chocolate milk.

But they were paying, so I got to run around trying to supervise twenty different work crews at the same time. We converted a whole cargo hold to passenger quarters, laying out quick-fab walls and floors to subdivide the cavernous space, and then went to work on the detailed floor plans. Naoko did all the hard parts, translating the passenger requests into a standard design format and then compiling that into step-by-step directions for the bot crews. My job was keeping an eye on the bots and letting her know when they screwed up, which inevitably happened a lot on a rush job like this.

It would have been a real pain, except that around the time we got the fifth work crew started I remembered what Doctor Misra had told me about multithreaded awareness. Searching the ship’s stores I found some little flying observation bots that had a data stream I could interface with, and requisitioned one to keep an eye on a work crew.

Sure enough, it was no trouble at all to watch one crew through the bot’s cameras while I kept an eye on another one in person. There were five more of those bots in inventory, and using them all at the same time turned out to be just as easy. So I ended up with seven viewpoints to watch all the work crews, which was enough to keep up as long as I paid attention.

I worked right through lunch, grabbing a couple of meal bars and my nutrient shake to eat on the run. It was starting to look like we’d actually be ready by the time the ship docked at Takeo Station, but it was going to be close.

Then we dropped into normal space, and started getting calls from our passengers. Or rather, from their servants. It seemed like every last one of them wanted to make sure that they’d have a spot on the ship, and never mind that we’d already sent them automatic confirmations. They all wanted to talk, too. After the third five-minute call Naoko was about ready to tear her hair out.

“Alice, I need you to handle my overflow,” she said, hurriedly setting up a call manager program. I accepted an electronic invitation from it, and it opened a virtual display panel for me showing a list of incoming calls.

“Are you sure about this, Naoko? I don’t look like I should be in charge of anything.”

“We can fix that. Computer, set up a cosmetic com filter for Alice. Make her look ten years older, change her voice to match, and set her rank label to ‘Assistant Stewardess’. There, now use that to answer the calls I can’t get to.”

“What if-”

“Just smile and nod and tell them everything will be taken care of,” she interrupted. “As long as you don’t quote any prices we can work things out later. Hello, this is Naoko Sokol of the Square Deal. How may I be of service?”

I listened with a fragment of my attention. Darn it, I was bad at handling people. I didn’t know how to do this. What if I messed everything up, and lost us a passenger? These people were paying thousands of credits for their fancy quarters and giant cargo allowances.

Another call appeared in the queue. I glanced at Naoko, but she was still busily assuring someone that they’d be able to board tonight. She caught my eye, and waved at the indicator.

Darn it.

I took a deep breath, and accepted the call.

“Hello, this is Alice Long of the Square Deal. How may I be of service?”

The vidcall showed me a young-looking elf woman with a pretty extreme morph job, including huge green eyes and incredibly long pointy ears.

“Good day, Mistress Long. This unworthy one calls to confirm Master Ueda’s passage aboard the Square Deal.”

“That would be Goro Ueda, I assume? Yes, we’ve reserved quarters for your party as specified in his request for transport.”

“Ah, about that,” she said hesitantly. “Master Ueda has acquired three additional staff since the request was posted. One neotroll with special dietary requirements, and a pair of twin moon kittens.”

“That’s not a problem… oh, darn it. Help me out here, please? If you were human I’d say ‘ma’am’, but I’m sure that wouldn’t be proper here in Hoshida.”

“This unworthy one would never presume to question a human’s choice of words,” she replied deferentially. “However, some kind masters have been known to refer to the diligent servants of another master as ‘cutie’.”

I couldn’t quite decide whether to face palm, or punch someone.

“I see. Alright, cutie, we’ll go with that. Can you fit the new staff into the barracks in your original request, or do you need more space?”

An alert drew my attention to another incoming call. Ugh. Naoko was still talking, and this elf girl apparently wanted to have a long conversation about the care and feeding of moon kittens. Whatever they were. Yeah, okay, no problem, come on girl, I don’t have all day.

Darn it, she wasn’t going to shut up. Now what? Do I ignore the other call, or tell her I have to go, or… wait a minute.

I opened a second connection to the call manager, and dug into the disguise filter options. Was there a way to just tell it what to display for my movements and facial expressions? There must be, since infomorphs can make vidcalls and they don’t necessarily even have a physical body.

Aha! Yes, there was an input channel for that. All I had to do was clone the disguise filter Naoko had set up for me on the other line, and feed it cues. I could do that! Copy, configure, self-test, try different expressions. Sure, that looked about right.

I accepted the new call through my second connection, telling the app to show an older me smiling pleasantly.

“Hello, this is Alice Long of the Square Deal. How may I be of service?”

This time it was an older-looking elf, with red hair instead of blonde.

“Yes, this unworthy one is calling on behalf of Master Kita. We’ve received your confirmation, but the master wonders if it would be possible to arrange for an industrial power connection? A simple ten-megawatt line would do.”

“I’ll have to check with engineering, but it sounds doable. Only, what in Gaia’s name would you need that kind of power for? I’ll have to make sure it can’t endanger the ship.”

“Of course, Mistress. Master Kita is engaged in perfecting the ecology of his latest virtual world, and the design algorithms are quite processor intensive. The simulation is running on a computing node that requires seven megawatts of power, and there are various items of supporting hardware to consider.”

“Funny, I don’t see a giant computing cluster on your cargo list.”

It was working. I was still talking about moon kittens with the elf on the other line. I had to concentrate a little to keep the two conversations straight, but I could do it. Sweet!

Naoko hung up just in time to take another call. Then the queue backed up again, and I had to open a third connection. But that was as bad as it got.

Some minutes later Naoko logged out of the call manager, leaving me to juggle all of the calls while she went back to working on cabin setup. I kept the manifests up to date as I worked, flagging change requests from the passengers and problems with the bot crews.

A few calls later she showed up at the cabin where my physical body was watching the bots assemble a simulated coral reef. She hugged me, and leaned in to whisper in my ear.

“You’re juggling four calls at once and still watching all the bots? You’re a life saver, Alice! Thank you so much.”

“I’m just trying to help out,” I told her. “But this is pretty tiring, so I hope I don’t have to keep it up much longer.”

“We can hand it off to the facilities AI if you have to take a break,” she said. “I’ve been trying to avoid that because the Hoshidans consider it rude. But I don’t wish to overwork you.”

“I can handle it, Naoko. We’re only in port for a day, right?”

“That’s correct, Alice. Once we’re underway I expect our passengers will all retreat to their VR tanks or private amusements, and things will quiet down. But I shall still speak with the captain about obtaining additional assistance.”

Things finally calmed down for a bit as we came in to dock at Takeo Station. By then we were up to thirty passengers, but we’d gotten a call from each one’s staff confirming their arrangements. So I was able to spare a thread of attention to take a look at our destination.

I’d read that space-based colonies build big stations, but none of the vidshows did justice to the scale of them. Takeo Station was the main habitat in the Hoshida System, perched in high orbit over a hot gas giant orbiting a dim red star. Dozens of smaller stations were scattered around the planet’s moons, and swarms of shuttles filled the space between them. But they were all small fry compared to the main habitat.

Takeo Station was so big it would have easily qualified as another moon if it wasn’t man-made. A flattened sphere twenty kilometers across at the equator, defended by guns that outmassed the Square Deal and armor half a kilometer thick. Or at least, that’s what the guidebook said.

There was a deep chasm around the station’s equator, with a steady flow of shuttles entering and leaving. As the Square Deal maneuvered closer it grew from a small gap in the station’s hull to a vast pit, a kilometer wide and four kilometers deep. We descended half that depth before finding our assigned docking position, nestled flat against the south side of the chasm.

“This place is huge,” I commented to Naoko.

She smiled tolerantly. “Not particularly. Wait until you see Imris, or one of the Bastions.”

“Seriously? Naoko, this one station must outmass all the trees on Felicity.”

“I did tell you that Felicity is a poor world, did I not? But I’m afraid we’ve no time for sightseeing. Here is a link to the station’s navgrid. Can you find your way around?”

Wow, that was a huge map. More than a trillion cubic meters of rooms, hallways, lifts, atriums and gardens, and that was just the parts that had life support. There was a marker showing where I was, but how would I ever find anything?

Oh, there was a search interface. I entered the address of one of our passengers, and the mapping program immediately came back with a suggested route to get there.

“I think so,” I said uncertainly. “What do you need me to do?”

“There are errands to run on station. Dusty is organizing the purchase of additional supplies, but many vendors do not deliver. Also, several passengers have requested assistance in moving their goods to the ship. Unfortunately local law discourages the use of unattended bots, so it would be best if someone accompanies the work crews.”

I sighed. “Is it always this busy?”

“Not usually. But when an opportunity for profit presents itself, we must move quickly to take advantage. This should simply be a matter of following the bots, and ensuring that they are not stolen or vandalized. Can you do this?”

“Sure. I’ll figure it out. I’d better bring Smoke and Ash just in case, though. Chief West wouldn’t be happy if he heard about me leaving the ship without them.”

I was a little nervous about being responsible for hundreds of credits worth of bots and cargo when I barely had any idea what I was doing. But pitching in was my job, so I’d just have to muddle through.

That was how I ended up spending my first visit to a foreign station alone, rushing frantically from one errand to another with no time to sightsee. Not that there was anything to look at anyway, in the service tunnels that the navgrid’s directions always sent me through. Just endless kilometers of bare metal corridors, broken up by giant hatches every few hundred meters where they passed through internal bulkheads. The bigger hallways had roads running down the middle, filled with a constant stream of automated cargo vehicles.

My first errand was picking up a load of local spices from a shop less than a kilometer from our berth, so I just walked there with a couple of utility bots following along behind me. Smoke spent most of the trip perched on my shoulder, his long neck craning around as he took in our surroundings. Ash liked to move around more, darting ahead to scout the way and then flying back to circle around the bots before heading off to scout again.

Their programming was pretty amazing. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear they were real animals. Curious, affectionate little critters that loved to cuddle and get their chins scratched. I knew that part was real, too, because they had an empathic relay option that let me tap into their feelings. Their little AI brains weren’t smart enough for abstract thought, but they sure were concerned about protecting me. It made me feel a lot better about being in such an alien place.

By the time I got the spices back to the ship Dusty had unloaded a cargo truck, and configured a team of bots to act as movers. He sent us off to pick up a load of crates from one of the passengers, and then to help another one pack. The bots were perfectly capable of doing all of that on their own, so I was mostly just standing around keeping an eye on things the whole time.

It was a little odd, how many people I saw. At the homes of our passengers most of the packing was being done by androids, with just a few bots here and there working under close supervision. The locals had a real mythological theme going, too. There were lots of big-eared elves and giant, green-skinned trolls along with a few more exotic morph types. Angels, dwarves and a lot of less identifiable variants, with cosmetic mods like horns and tails. No furry types, though, and none with muzzles or other big facial oddities.

Almost all of them were women. A discreet check of the colony’s Xenopedia entry told me that the human population here was almost all male, like a reversed version of Felicity. I tried not to think about what that probably meant.

After a few hours of errands I was starting to get a handle on things, when of course life threw me another curve ball. I’d just finished loading up the truck, and was stowing the bots for the trip back to the ship when a blonde elf girl came hurrying up to me.

“E-excuse me, Mistress? You’re a spacer, aren’t you?”

I took in her oddly worn-looking dress, and the worry in her eyes.

“Yes. I’m Alice Long, with the Square Deal.”

“Finally! We’ve been searching for days. Please, Mistress, can you spare a few minutes to help a lost household? We’re desperate, and you’re our only hope!”

Chapter 7

She stood gazing up at me earnestly, with her hands clasped below her chin and her big blue eyes full of hope. Darn it, I was on a schedule. But how could I say no to that pleading look?

“What do you need, cutie?” I asked.

She glanced around nervously, and leaned in to whisper to me. “Our master is… well, there was a shuttle crash, and… we, we’re all alone now.”

Her lip was trembling. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears, and for a second I thought she was going to start bawling right there on the sidewalk.

“That’s terrible,” I said, trying to sound sympathetic. “But what can I do about it?”

She wiped her eyes, and managed to get a hold of herself.

“Master didn’t leave a will,” she said. “He didn’t have any close relatives, either. The Security Directorate is supposed to take care of cases like this, so there won’t be any unsupervised serfs wandering around. But they’re so overworked it could take months before they do anything about us, and the household account ran out of money a week ago.”

I sighed. “Are you looking for money?”

“No, Mistress! Just the opposite. You see, our accounts elf knows all of Master’s passwords, she just has orders not to use them without permission. She keeps a hardcopy of them printed out next to her workstation, though. So if some other elf just happened to lead a human there, well, then they could access all of Master’s accounts. They could transfer some money to the household account, so we can take care of ourselves until the courts get around to us, and maybe pay themselves a nice fee for their trouble.”

Well, that was interesting. “Wouldn’t that be stealing?”

She shrugged. “The lawyers could spend years arguing about that one. But you’ll be long gone before anyone finds out, and who would bother trying to track down a spacer over something like that?”

“Hmm. What’s your name, cutie?”

“This unworthy one is called Lilia, Mistress.” She hesitated, and a sly look stole across her face. “You know, if the Mistress so desires it would be child’s play to use Master’s money to buy me from his estate. Or anyone else of the household that Mistress might fancy.”

I chuckled. “You can call me by name, Lilia. All this exaggerated bowing and scraping feels kind of weird to me.”

Which was true, but not quite in the way it sounded. I felt like I should be disgusted by this place, and part of me was. But at the same time, the respect all these androids showered me with felt kind of nice. As for having a pretty girl call me Mistress, and hint that she wanted to belong to me? I wasn’t sure what to make of the feelings that stirred up.

Lilia put her hand on my arm, and looked up at me with wide eyes. “Thank you, Mistress Alice. I knew you’d be a kind Mistress. Does this mean you’ll help? There’s quite a bit of money in the old Master’s accounts, if you want it.”

Darn it, I shouldn’t be wondering what her pretty pink lips would feel like against mine. I was supposed to be shocked and horrified, not… tempted.

Was that why people made serfs?

No. It was still wrong, and I was better than that. Maybe I did want to be in charge of something one day, and have people who’d look at me the way Lilia did. But if that ever happened it would be because I was so awesome I actually deserved it. Not because I’d crippled their minds to make them easy prey.

On the other hand, maybe I could do some good today.

“I’ll see what I can do, Lilia. Where is this place?”

The address she gave me was on the way back to the port, so it didn’t cost me too much time. We pulled off the service tunnel into a little parking bay just like the ones at the last couple of homes I’d visited, and I hopped out of the truck.

“Will this take long?” I asked.

“Only a few minutes, Mistress Alice,” Lilia said shyly as she climbed down next to me. “Unless you decide to take longer.”

“Alright. Ash, guard the truck.”

The little dragon swooped up to perch on top of the truck, his head craning around to take in the parking area.

Yes! Guarding! Grrr!

Smoke settled himself on my shoulder, and eyed Lilia suspiciously. She returned the look.

“Are those things dangerous, Mistress?”

“Only to people who try to hurt me,” I assured her.

“Oh. Of course. Um, I’m sorry Mistress, but household security is configured to keep out war machines. None of us have permission to change the settings.”

Well, that was annoying. I didn’t want to be separated from my dragons. Takeo Station seemed safe enough, but why take chances?

“Could I use one of these passwords to change the settings?” I asked.

“Certainly, Mistress. If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you where they are.”

“Alright, I guess that will work. Smoke, guard the truck.”

Just in case, I told the bots to call for help if I didn’t come back within twenty minutes. Then I followed Lilia up to the armored door at the far end of the parking area. It opened to reveal a lift big enough to hold a dozen people at once.

“The manor is above us,” Lilia explained. “The elevator opens onto the servant’s foyer, and then we take the stairs up two floors to the offices. Some of my friends have set up a distraction to get Tria out of her office, so she won’t see you. She’s our accounts elf, so she’d have to try to stop you if she found you there.”

The elevator started to rise.

“She’d have to stop me, but you don’t? What’s the difference?” I asked.

“I’m a personal companion, Mistress Alice. The accounts aren’t my responsibility. The guards would be a problem, of course, but since the household isn’t on alert they’re going to be in their barracks instead of patrolling. They all know our situation, so they’re doing the best they can to let someone fix it.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

The elevator stopped, and we stepped out into what was obviously a security area. Sensors in the walls pinged us with active scans, although I noticed they weren’t nearly as thorough as the ones on the Speedy Exit. By the time we’d crossed the room the system had apparently decided we were safe, and the inner door opened for us automatically.

The ‘servant’s foyer’ turned out to be a roomy hall with a tile floor, the far end of which opened into some kind of living area. A couple of the tall, green-skinned types the locals called trolls were coming towards us from that direction, and I noticed Lilia seemed a little nervous as she greeted them.

The armored door behind us slid shut, and my access to the station network was abruptly cut off.

I frowned, but the first stun bolt hit me before I could even open my mouth. Everything went blurry and confused for a moment, and my legs stopped working. I fell, sprawling across the hard tile floor. Lilia hurriedly backed away from me, and two more stun bolts smacked into my exposed back.

They were coming from a sonic stunner mounted in a little turret above the door. No visible armor, but my muscles weren’t going to work right as long as it was shooting me. I let myself go limp, and pretended to be unconscious like any normal person.

Wait, I really was unconscious. How was I still thinking, when my internal diagnostics said my brain was completely scrambled?

Leave the mystery for later. I watched through passive sonar as the trolls rushed over to grab me.

“Good job, Lilia,” one of them said. “She didn’t suspect a thing.”

“Humans are stupid,” Lilia said dismissively. “Just bat your eyes and let your voice quiver, and they’ll believe anything you tell them. Better go with the full brainhack, though. She’s got an implant com, so just the puppet chip wouldn’t keep her from calling for help.”

“That’s a shame,” the other troll said. “It’s more fun to make them watch. You remember that security guy who came nosing around last month? Kirela’s got him stuck in a VR where he has to watch what his body is doing, and she can pop in for a little payback whenever she wants.”

The trolls had me pinned to the floor, and one of them was pulling something mechanical out of a belt pouch. Shouldn’t I be terrified right now? I could feel the fear lurking around the edges of my thoughts, but most of my mind was too busy to pay attention to it. Analyzing every detail of my situation while the milliseconds ticked slowly past, looking for a way out. I could break down in hysterics when I was safe again.

“Kirela wastes far too much effort on revenge,” Lilia sniffed. “It’s unprofessional. She could never pull off an op like this one. She’d start killing slavers halfway through and give herself away. What have you got, Jenki?”

Electronics have faster reflexes than organics. The turret was the biggest threat, so I’d need to take it out fast. I needed a weapon for that, and I didn’t have one. The stun pistols the trolls carried wouldn’t do anything to a machine, but they also had long knives on their belts. Modeling said their aerodynamics weren’t the best for throwing, but it could be done.

“She looks pretty close to baseline,” the troll with the gadget said. “I’m picking up an implant computer with a fancy com system, but no internal VR support. Lots of physical mods, but it’s all biological stuff. No cybernetics or built-in weapons. Her skull’s reinforced, but we can go in through the spine.”

Their scanner was a basic civilian model, with millimeter resolution. Not nearly good enough to pick up my more subtle enhancements, even if my stealth suite wasn’t feeding it distorted returns.

My own sensors were a lot better. The trolls were purely organic models, without even implant computers. Barely twice as strong as a normal human of their size, with only a few basic damage control measures. Their stunners had biometric locks, so grabbing one wouldn’t help me. On the good side Lilia was practically helpless - she had no weapons or combat mods, and kinesthetic modeling told me she was even weaker than she looked. I guess ‘elves’ are supposed to be frail or something.

“Good,” Lilia said. “Initiate the hack, then. We need to get her safely under control before she’s missed. Renit, is the insertion team ready?”

Jenki pressed another device against the back of my neck. Something pricked my skin, and started to worm its way into the soft tissue beneath. My internal monitors reported a mass of tiny, worm-like threads burrowing into my flesh.

Ugh! I wanted to tear them out, but my muscles were still twitching from the stunner. The thin fibers of synthetic muscle threaded through the normal tissue couldn’t be stunned, and they’d be able to move me even with my human parts shut down. But the twitching would throw off my movements, and I couldn’t afford that. I needed to buy a little more time.

“Yes, ma’am. Both squads are loaded into their hibernation pods, and their armor and weapons are at full charge. Those damned slavers aren’t going to escape the revolution. Bet they’ll be shocked when our people wake up mid-flight and start shooting them.”

The doctor had been right about my internal defenses. Swarms of nanobots were flooding into my bloodstream, and an organ I’d never noticed before woke up ready to make more. But damaging their equipment would give me away. I held my defenses back, fumbling clumsily at reflexes I’d never used. Don’t attack yet. Get ready, but not yet.

The worms burrowed deeper into my flesh. They found my spine, and started to work their way up towards my brain.

“I’m still worried about the ship’s crew,” Jenki grumbled. “Spacers aren’t like the degenerate masters we’re used to. They can be dangerous, and we don’t even know what kind of security system that ship has.”

“You worry too much,” Lilia said. “My dear, beloved mistress is going to show off her new pets to everyone on board. We’ll brainhack her friends and lovers first, and then work our way up their ranks to the captain. By the time the trolls wake up we’ll be ready to seize the ship.”

The worms were burrowing into my brain now. Some of them fanned out into starbursts of microscopic tendrils, forming connections with my motor neurons. Others carefully worked their way deeper, reaching for other parts of my brain. It made my skin crawl. I wanted to scream, and struggle. The muscle twitches were dying down now, but I made myself wait. If they had trolls in powered armor around here somewhere I couldn’t afford to make any mistakes. I had to wait for the right moment, no matter how creepy it was.

“I hope you’re right, ma’am,” Jenki said. “It looks like you’ll get your chance, at any rate. No immune response, and I’ve almost got her com. You want the usual setup?”

“Yes. The lack of VR is inconvenient, but I can work around it. Give me full control of her emotional responses, wipe the last few minutes of her memory, and leave the rest of the neural integration running. Convincing her to loot this place will be child’s play, and she won’t have time to watch me pack. When she comes back tonight she’ll assume the cargo container with our troops in it is full of her newfound gold and servants, and she’ll happily slip it onto the ship of her own volition.”

Somehow, I didn’t think Dusty’s security checks would miss a whole marine assault team hidden in a cargo container. But I wasn’t going to take chances, and I certainly wasn’t going to end up being the naïve little girl who had to be rescued. I waited.

Sure enough, a couple of minutes later Jenki pronounced the brainhack ready to use. Renit picked me up, while Jenki stepped back and fiddled with her control box.

“You’ve got the datalink, Lilia?”

“I do,” the little elf replied. “My, my, just look at this innocent young limbic system. I’m going to have fun with her, once the mission is over. Let’s see, now. Standard suggestibility tweaks, a little fuzzy-headedness, and queue up a nice little crush to trigger the moment she sees me. Alright, let’s wake her up-”

I unleashed my nanobots. They flooded into the tissue that the brainhack had infiltrated, severing connections and eating into communication lines. The device didn’t seem to have any defenses, and the delicate spider web dissolved like spun sugar hitting water.

“-and get to work,” Lilia was still saying. “Wait, where’d my connection go? Jenki-”

Free, and my body was my own again. Renit was holding me up with her hands on my waist, her head turning to look at Lilia. Perfect. She didn’t even see my hand move before I had her knife out of its sheath, and slipped it neatly into her kidney.

She made a horrible squealing sound, and let go of me. I spun, pulling the knife free as I turned, and threw it in one smooth motion. The blade flew just like my simulations had predicted, and smashed into the stun turret’s camera point first. The lens shattered, leaving the weapon blind and hopefully unable to target me.

Jenki was already starting to reach for her stun pistol, but I was on her before she could get it out. I ducked under a hand that was trying to fend me off, grabbed the front of her uniform and swarmed up it to get my teeth on her throat.

Crunch.

She had a little armoring there, but it wasn’t any tougher than a zango’s bones. I ripped out the whole front of her throat, and spit it out. Blood sprayed everywhere, drenching me. For a moment my eyes were blinded, but my other senses were still working fine.

Lilia started backing away, with a frantic call for help going out over her com.

“Oh no you don’t!” I drowned her out with a scream of radio static, and rushed her.

She gasped, and turned to run. I caught up with her in three steps, and tackled her to the floor.

The impact left her sobbing with pain. “Please don’t kill me, Mistress,” she pleaded.

“Shut up.” I wrenched her left arm behind her back, and dragged her back to her feet. There was no telling if someone had gotten her call for help, or what kind of security was watching the foyer. I had to get out of here fast. I dragged Lilia back to the entrance, ignoring her tears.

“Open the door,” I ordered.

“How do I know you won’t kill me too?” She asked.

“Idiot. I haven’t killed anyone yet. Their brains are intact. Now open the door, or I’m going to find out if all those extra nerve endings you’ve got make you more sensitive to pain.”

“You wouldn’t,” she gasped.

I twisted a little harder, and dislocated her shoulder. Her scream echoed through the hall.

“Open the door right now!” I ordered. “You’ve got three seconds. Two. One.”

She frantically slapped at the biometric panel with her good arm, and the heavy security door began to rumble open. I took a moment to make sure there weren’t any hidden turrets in the security checkpoint, and pushed Lilia through in front of me.

“I’m sorry, Mistress. I’ll be good. Please don’t hurt me anymore.” She babbled.

“You’re not fooling me again, Lilia. Now shut up and open the other door.”

“But Mistress, you-”

I broke one of her fingers. She screamed, and sagged in my grip.

“Now!” I barked. “Three. Two.”

She shook her head. “Promise you won’t call the Security Directorate.”

I took the broken finger in my free hand, and twisted it. That got me another ragged scream.

“No talking, no delays, I know your marines are on the way and I’m not letting you buy any time. If they catch up with us I’ll kill you before they can take me down. Now open the door, or the next one will be worse. Three. Two. One.”

She slapped the scanner.

I dragged her into the elevator, and Lilia obediently started it rumbling down the shaft. She was still crying, but I made myself ignore the tears streaming down her cheeks. No matter how pitiful she looked, she was just trying to manipulate me again.

Twenty seconds for the elevator to make it down to the parking level, and the door there had been armored too. This was taking too long. What else could I do to buy time? Their security was bound to be monitoring us by now, but maybe I could make that work for me.

“My bots will call for help if they’re attacked, or if I don’t show up in a few minutes,” I said. “So your cover is going to be blown if I don’t make it out of here. But I don’t care about your revolution. If your friends let me get to my truck I’ll let you go, and head back to my ship without calling security.”

Lilia wiped her eyes. “You broke my arm.”

“You tried to brainjack me. I’d say I still owe you a few. Are you going to cooperate now?”

“Yes, Mistress. I’ll be a good girl.”

I rolled my eyes. “Can the act, Lilia. I heard your whole conversation with the trolls.”

“I can’t help it, Mistress. I have a submission reflex, and you tripped it hard. I’m going to have nightmares for weeks.”

“Maybe you’ll remember that the next time you’re picking out victims, and leave the innocent spacer girls who don’t have anything to do with your problems alone.”

The lift reached the bottom. I pushed Lilia towards the security panel. “Open it.”

She hesitated. I sighed, and took hold of another finger. “Three seconds, Lilia. Two.”

She opened the door. Thank the goddess. Her friends must still be arguing about what to do, or maybe they were following her lead. The armored panel slid out of the way with what seemed like agonizing slowness, until I realized I’d dropped into combat time. One centimeter. Two. Three.

The instant the gap was wide enough I was diving through it, already screaming for help.

“Smoke, Ash, cover me!”

I sent a frantic com call while I sprinted for the truck. Two long strides, and the call was answered.

“Chief West, help! A bunch of crazy rebel androids tried to brainjack me. I got out of the building, but they have powered armor troops somewhere around here. What do I do?”

“Alice? Can you get to the truck?” He asked calmly.

“Yes, Chief. I’m almost there, and my dragons are laying down cover.”

Smoke swooped through the air behind me, breathing out a cloud of gray fog that blocked almost all of my sensors. Ash belched up a puff of microbots that hid in the cloud, waiting for a target to try running through it. I was halfway to the truck, and it was already starting up at my order.

“Good job. Get in the truck and haul ass out of there, girl. I’ve got security teams ready to defend the ship, so once you get here you’re safe.”

I piled into the cab, and the heavy vehicle rose a meter into the air on its lift field. Its acceleration was pretty sluggish, since I had twenty tons of bots and boxes in the back. At least that meant Smoke and Ash didn’t have any trouble catching up.

“On my way, Chief,” I said. “Should I call the cops?”

“Hell, no. Never involve the locals if you can avoid it, Alice. Any sign of pursuit?”

I took a look through the rear-view camera. Nothing but smoke.

“Not yet, Chief. There’s a smoke cloud between me and the building I was in, and my dragons aren’t picking up anything in it. I think I might have gotten away.”

“Don’t let your guard down yet, kid. Stay on the line with me, and keep your eyes peeled until you get back. I’m going to let the captain know what’s happening.”

“Yes, Chief.” Great. The last thing I wanted was to get the captain’s attention.

I’d just pulled onto the main transitway when a groundcar came flying out of an alley a few blocks back, wobbling and swerving like nothing I’d ever seen. Was it malfunctioning? No, it was under manual control. There were six trolls crammed into the little vehicle, and the one at the controls was swearing so loud I could almost make out the words over the traffic noise.

I gulped. “Oh discord, they’ve found me.”

“Keep calm, Alice. They don’t want the cops’ attention either, remember? Just stay in the truck and keep driving.”

A hatch in the top of the car slid open, and a troll stood up. She snarled at me, and raised a big tube to her shoulder. Oh, shit.

“Smoke! Cover us!”

Good thing my dragons were still riding on top of the cab. Smoke breathed out a fresh cloud that covered the truck just as the troll pulled the trigger. Her weapon vomited out a swarm of mini-missiles, and I had a momentary glimpse of them rushing towards me on jets of fire before they were hidden by the billowing smoke.

Unable to see their original target, the missiles did their best to find us anyway. I heard explosions, and a crash of heavy transports colliding with each other. But whatever they were hitting, it wasn’t us.

The cloud that surrounded the truck only lasted a few seconds. Then we left it behind. I looked back to find half the transitway blocked by a smoke-wreathed mass of wrecked vehicles.

Ouch. Guess these self-driving transports didn’t know how to handle being blinded by a military smokescreen.

Threat destroyed! Smoke sent proudly. Empty now.

Ash bounded back to the rear of the truck. Ready! Scanning for threats.

“Amateurs,” Chief West said, sounding disgusted. “What do these idiots think they’re doing? They’re going to have a hell of a time getting away now. Why are they so pissed off with you, anyway?”

“I don’t know! We got into a little fight while I was trying to get away, but what was I supposed to do? Let them capture me?”

“No, that would be worse. Shit! Watch out, girl!”

A battered groundcar emerged from the smoke cloud. Oh, great. There was no way I was going to outrun them in this lumbering truck, and the ship was still a couple of kloms away.

“Chief? Now would be a good time to tell me the truck secretly has a laser cannon under the hood, or something.”

“I’m afraid not. Damn it, station security is going to throw a fit over this. I’m sending a pair of warbots to intercept you, Alice. ETA one minute.

The troll in the sunroof was trying to line up shots with a laser rifle now. Ash spat out puffs of smoke to mess up her aim, but the little dragon would run out of smoke mixture soon. I didn’t have a minute.

What else could I do? I catalogued my resources, wracking my brain for a useful strategy. I was still wearing my spacesuit, but the armor wasn’t rated against rifles. I had Smoke and Ash, but they were mostly designed more for bar fights than car chases. I also had a cargo truck, with two medium and four light loading bots in the back. Oh, and a lot of cargo that I’d probably have to pay for if it got damaged.

Wait. That was it.

The cargo bots had radio control links, and I could configure a datalink to let me see through their eyes. So I could drive one remotely, and I’d seen them in operation enough to get a decent feel for how they moved. This could work.

The car was getting closer now. More trolls leaned out the passenger windows on both sides, waving pistols. One of them fired off a burst, and a rain of bullets bounced off the pavement ahead of me.

Wait, she missed? How the heck did she manage to miss? Never mind. I was only going to get one shot at this, so I’d better get it right.

I had Ash lay down a big smoke screen, using up the rest of his supplies in the process. But it meant that they couldn’t see when one of the medium loading bots jumped out of the back of the truck, slid to a stop, and then turned around and started lumbering back down the road towards them.

The bot cleared the smoke screen, and I got a good look at my pursuers through its cameras. The driver’s eyes went wide when she spotted the four hundred kilogram bot in the road not thirty meters in front of her, and she spun the wheel frantically. But loading bots can move surprisingly fast, and there wasn’t much time to react. I sent it running left to stay in her path, and then the car was plowing into it at a hundred and twenty kilometers per hour.

The impact wrecked the bot, of course. But it smashed up the car pretty well, too. The wreck ended up tumbling across the road to crunch into the side of the transitway.

Chief West chuckled. “That got the job done. You’re a ruthless little git, aren’t you?”

“Oh, are you looking through the cameras? I’m trying not to hurt them any more than I have to. Look, I think their heads are all intact. The docs can fix them back up, right?”

“No hospital in this station is going to bother with an android who doesn’t have an owner, Alice. Especially after they caused all this commotion.”

“Oh.”

Well, maybe that was why they were so mad? I looked back at the smoke and fire behind me, and was struck by a horrible realization.

“Um, Chief? I’m not going to have to pay for all that damage, am I?”

Chapter 8

The local police might be incompetent at preventing violence, but they were great at prosecuting offenders. I’d barely made it back to the ship and handed off my cargo when a squad of port proctors showed up with a warrant for my arrest. Well, they called it detainment, but I didn’t see much difference.

I was a little shocked when Chief West told me to go with them.

“The captain will sort things out,” he told me. “They just want to make sure you don’t ‘mysteriously disappear’ before the hearing. Normally they wouldn’t bother, but that thing on the expressway turned into a big mess.”

I slumped. “I guess so. Can you make sure the local security guys know that there’s a group of rebels holed up at that address I was at? If they’re going to try to kill me and get me arrested I at least want them to lose their base.”

“Already done,” he told me. “Now go with the proctors, and don’t cause any more trouble. Oh, and don’t talk to anyone. Anything you say will probably get used against you, so save it for the hearing.”

So I was escorted off the ship by four trolls in powered armor and a pair of bots that looked like giant bugs. We all piled into the back of a big armored transport, and they spent the whole trip eying me like I might suddenly go crazy and try to murder them all.

Once we arrived at the Port Authority office they sent me through prisoner processing, which meant I had to give up my space suit and go through a thorough security screening. Good thing it was all automated, because I had to go through the decontamination system naked. Once I was clean, dry and certified weapon-free the bots gave me an ugly orange jumpsuit to wear, and another group of trolls and warbots escorted me to a holding cell.

Naturally the cell isolated me from the datanet, so I couldn’t call anyone or even try to research how much trouble I was in. All I could do was sit and worry.

For hours.

Would Captain Sokol really come for me? He’d been nice enough to give me a chance, and I’d already messed it up. Why would he go to any more trouble over me? Especially if they might fine the ship for all the damage I’d caused.

What would happen to me if he didn’t show? I had no idea, but it couldn’t be good. Would they make me work off my debt? Throw me in prison? Sell me to slavers?

Did they do capital punishment in the Hoshida System? No, with their attitude there was no way they’d execute a human for killing serfs. Especially since it was their own stupid fault if anyone died. I’d tried so hard to be careful. I didn’t want to kill anyone.

Why wasn’t I more upset about it, though? In the vidshows the heroine always cried and blamed herself and thought she was a terrible person if she had to kill someone, and her friends had to hug her and reassure her that she’d only done what was necessary. But I hadn’t been stopping a nuclear terrorist, or saving the colony from a nanoplague. I was just protecting myself as best I could, and I…

I felt a little sad about it. Maybe I would have done things differently if I’d known better. But maybe not. Jenki and Renit had been dangerous, and if I’d given them even a moment to react they might have captured me again. Or killed me. I felt kind of bad about killing some poor escaped serf who just wanted to free her people, but not bad enough to let them kill me instead.

Did that make me a monster? My upbringing said yes. That only a sociopath would kill people just for her own benefit, and people like that need to be dealt with for the good of the community. Was that true, or was it just more of the self-serving propaganda the matrons pushed on us?

I realized I had no idea. I didn’t really believe in the values the matrons had tried to teach me, but I didn’t have anything else to believe in either. I didn’t know what to think.

I felt my eyes start to water, and wiped the tears away before they could start. I really was hopeless, wasn’t I? If I got out of this mess I needed to learn to do better.

If.

No, I was being stupid. They weren’t going to execute a human over something like this, and any other punishment would be over someday. I’d just have to tough it out somehow.

Unless they decided I wasn’t human.

That stunner had completely scrambled my brain, just like it was supposed to. But it hadn’t slowed me down at all, because apparently the human-looking brain in my skull was just camouflage. The real me must be hidden somewhere else. An AI running on a network of nanocomputers, or something weird like that.

Something nonhuman. Worse, something more than human.

Humans with sensory enhancements have to switch views from one sensor to another, because their brains can’t handle processing three or four different kinds of vision at the same time. I could. I had enhanced versions of all the normal human senses, but that was only scratching the surface. I could see the radio spectrum, a ghostly world of translucent objects lit by the flickering glow of a million transmitters. My passive sonar looked similar, with less range but better resolution. The whole surface of my skin reported light, heat and radiation levels with enough precision to give me a blurry sense of my immediate surroundings. I could see the electrical fields radiating from the wiring in the walls of my cell, and the magnetic fields the little electric motors in the camera mounts gave off.

All at the same time, all perfectly integrated, without even thinking about it. That had to be, what, a hundred times more processing power than a human brain? More?

On Felicity they taught us that transhuman entities are always insane monsters who want to wipe out humanity. Space Nazis at best, or paperclip maximizers at worst. I’d been afraid to look at what other colonies thought about that, and now I couldn’t access the datanet. If they figured it out would the local police just shrug it off? Or would they decide today’s incident was just the start of a mad killing spree, and get rid of me while they had the chance?

I didn’t know, and all I could do was sit and worry.

It didn’t get any better when the guards showed up to escort me to the hearing. They sat me on a low bench in the middle of the room, where I had to look up at everyone else. In front of me there was a tall box where a harried-looking older man sat, reading something I couldn’t see. To each side there was a lower box with room for several people in it. The captain was there, in the box to my right, but he looked really mad. In the box to my left there was a man in a fancy uniform I didn’t recognize, who didn’t look any happier than the captain.

As soon as the guards stepped away from me a big field emitter buried in the floor came on, throwing up a deflector shield between me and the rest of the room. It was strong enough to stop heavy mass driver rounds, which made the tractor field holding me to the bench complete overkill. Well, that wasn’t a good sign.

The guards retreated to positions flanking the door behind me, which closed. There was a very long moment of silence, that was finally broken by the disembodied voice of an AI.

“The Merchant’s Association mediation court for Takeo Station is now in session, with the Honorable Representative Stanley Finwell presiding. The court meets on this the seventeenth day of May, 2486, to hear a complaint brought by the Takeo Station Security Directorate, represented by Captain Goro Minami, against Apprentice Spacer Alice Long of the free trader Square Deal, represented by Captain Dan Sokol. Let the hearing commence.”

Representative Finwell looked down at me disapprovingly. “So this is the young lady at the center of today’s commotion? Well, let’s hear the charge, Captain Minami.”

“Your Honor, Takeo Station brings complaint of vandalism, destruction of property, arson, obstruction of traffic, reckless deployment of robotic weapons, thirty-seven counts of injury or maiming of serfs, eight counts of serficide, unlicensed possession of military enhancements, trespassing, conspiracy to commit grand theft and aggravated elf torture. In light of the severity of her offenses we demand that she be remanded into station custody for proper trial and sentencing under Hoshidan law.”

I cringed at that, but Representative Finwell just cocked his head curiously. “Really? On what basis? Nothing in your list of complaints rises to the level of high crimes. Unless you’re claiming that the damages exceed fifty million credits?”

“No,” Captain Minami grudgingly admitted. “We’re estimating twelve thousand credits, including medical care of the injured serfs. But staging a pitched battle in the middle of a busy expressway smacks of terrorism.”

Captain Sokol snorted. The Representative turned to him. “Yes, Captain? You have a response to the station’s demand?”

“It’s absurd,” he said shortly. “The high crimes provision is meant for cases like aggravated piracy, or nuclear sabotage. As you noted, nothing in the list of charges even vaguely approaches that level of severity. Square Deal opposes the station’s motion.”

“Very well, gentlemen. The motion is denied. You’ll have to make your case here, Captain Minami.”

“Fine,” he growled. “Takeo Station offers certified security recordings of the expressway incident.”

A hologram projector hummed to life in the middle of the room, showing a view of the expressway.

“Ah, good,” the Representative said. “I’ve been wanting to see how this happened.”

Captain Sokol leaned back, and watched with narrow eyes.

There were a few seconds of random traffic, before my truck lumbered into view. Floating labels helpfully pointed out my location in the truck’s cab, as well as Smoke and Ash clinging to the roof. Then came the car full of trolls, the rocket launcher, the giant pileup, and finally the reappearance of the car and my final ploy with the loading bot.

I was surprised at how fast it all went. It had felt like forever when it was happening, but the whole recording was barely two minutes long. When it was done the image froze.

“Well, that was exciting,” Representative Finwell said mildly. “Let’s work through this. Replay from the beginning. Stop.”

The image froze with the troll raising that rocket launcher, and Smoke swooping towards the back of the truck.

“Miss Long, do you know why these trolls were motivated to attack you with a rocket launcher? They seem a bit perturbed.”

“I don’t know why they went so crazy, Your Honor,” I said. “I was afraid they might try to kill me, or at least catch me again. But I have no idea why they started firing heavy weapons in the middle of an expressway.”

“Hah! We have the house footage too, you little elf beater,” Captain Minami scoffed. “Does the name Lilia ring a bell?”

“You mean the con artist who tried to brainjack me? What does she have to do with the trolls going crazy?” I asked.

“We’ll sort that out in a moment,” Finwell interrupted. “Let’s get through this footage first. Resume. Stop.”

The scene advanced a few moments. Now the cluster of missiles was in midair, just starting to separate from each other and plot their coordinated evasion patterns. Smoke was at the back of the truck now, his jaws spread wide as a gray cloud billowed out.

“Miss Long, did you order that bot to deploy a jamming cloud? That is what it’s doing, correct?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” I answered. “I’ve only had them for a day, but I remembered the specs said it was supposed to be able to block most targeting sensors. I was hoping the missiles would go into safe mode and turn themselves off if they couldn’t get a targeting lock.”

He gave me a considering look. “You came up with all of that in, what was it, a second and a half?”

“It was a very long second and a half, Your Honor. I had time for my whole life to flash by my eyes, too.”

He chuckled. But Captain Minami wasn’t amused.

“This is what comes of letting children play with military hardware,” he objected. “What are those things, anyway?”

“They’re a Sakeri Combine personal protection system,” Captain Sokol said. “Square Deal offers their specs into evidence. You’ll find that they’re entirely defensive in nature, and don’t qualify as military bots. In addition to the smoke they can deploy microbot swarms with a variety of subdual agents, but the only way they could actually hurt anyone is by biting them.”

They spent a few minutes looking over the data and debating it before Captain Minami admitted that they didn’t quite violate any local laws. That surprised me, until I mentally called up my own copy of the documentation and realized there were two different spec sheets. The captain must have given them the one for the civilian version of the system, but the only difference between that and the military version was a software key.

I decided it would be a bad idea to mention that I could just as easily have loaded them up with nerve gas and disassembler swarms. Or a nanoplague, for that matter. Yeah, I’d just keep my mouth shut here.

“If these things are a professionally marketed security product, why are they so careless about endangering bystanders?” Minami demanded.

“Sakeri Combine products are designed to query the local datanet for applicable legal standards,” my captain explained. “They also place a very high priority on the life of their principle, as one would expect of any security bot. At highway speeds a smaller smoke cloud would not have covered the truck long enough to divert that missile attack, and the bot’s scan of its surroundings revealed no entities defined as human by local law. So it concluded there were no bystanders to endanger, and deployed the largest cloud it could generate.”

“No bystanders? There were more than a hundred serfs in the area!”

Captain Sokol shrugged. “I believe your judicial precedents set the value of a human’s life above any number of serfs. Don’t blame me for having my bots obey your laws.”

Minami wasn’t happy about that, and they argued back and forth for a while without getting anywhere. When they finally got back to the recording they spent some time walking through exactly how my smoke cloud had caused the big pileup. Then they went on through the rest of the chase, and there was a collective wince when we got to the part where I plowed the loading bot into the car. The traffic cameras had gotten a much closer look at that than I had, and it was kind of gruesome.

“There, you see? There was nothing accidental about that!” Captain Minami declared.

“They were trying to kill her,” Captain Sokol pointed out. “What do you expect her to do, ask them pretty please not to?”

“Gentlemen, please,” Finwell cut in. “Allow me to clarify a few things. Miss Long, exactly what orders did you give that bot?”

“I was actually using remote control on it,” I admitted. “But I was really careful not to kill anyone! Look, their heads are all intact. It’s not my fault if the medical teams didn’t bother to revive them. Heck, their brains are probably still viable. Isn’t the limit something like thirty hours at room temperature?”

“You’re talking about a full-scale nanomedical rebuild,” Captain Minami said. “On cheap mass production trolls? That’s insane. It’s far more cost effective to simply replace them.”

“Well, excuse me for actually thinking of them as people,” I said.

“Miss Long, are you offering to pay for your assailants’ medical care?” Finwell asked.

I sighed. “I don’t have that much money, Your Honor. Besides, it would be pretty stupid to pay for reviving someone who wants to kill me. What if they get it right next time?”

“Takeo Station’s citizens are the responsibility of the station authorities,” Captain Sokol said. “If the government of Hoshida chooses not to offer standard medical care to its serfs that is not my crew’s concern.”

That made sense to me, but Minami didn’t agree. They spent the next twenty minutes arguing about it, before Finwell finally cut them off.

“I believe I’ve heard both of your arguments on this topic, gentlemen. Now, what about the cause of this altercation. You said something about house recordings, Captain Minami?”

“Yes, but you’d better brace yourself. This is some of the worst footage I’ve seen in years. We also have testimony from one of the house trolls, and that poor elf girl.”

That didn’t sound good.

There was a brief snip from the public cameras first, showing Lilia accosting me on the street and then both of us climbing into the truck. Once again there were floating captions, one of which identified Lilia and noted that her owner was deceased.

“We’ve interrogated the elf in this footage, Your Honor. She reports that her household was suffering deeply from lack of a master, and had sent her out to find a human who would claim them. Miss Long agreed to take advantage of a security loophole to fraudulently claim the late Akio Sato’s assets, hence the conspiracy charge.”

“I did no such thing!” I protested. “If that’s what she said, then she’s lying.”

“Then why did you go with her to her address?” Minami demanded.

“She gave me this whole sob story about how her household was starving because her master hadn’t left enough money in the household account. She looked so pitiful I decided I could spare a few minutes to see if there was a way to help.”

“What, out of the goodness of your heart?” Minami scoffed.

“Well, yeah. I do try to be a nice person, and I guess I’m kind of a sucker for cute girls who need help. I’ll admit that she was offering to help me take money out of the accounts for my trouble, but I figured that sounded too much like a scam to be legal. I was planning to find out what the situation was first, and then call my supervisor back on the ship to ask what I should do.”

“The testimony of a human outweighs that of a serf,” Captain Sokol noted. “Square Deal moves to have Lilia’s testimony stricken from the record.”

“That would be in keeping with local law,” Representative Finwell said. “But the Association prefers to retain all sources of data on a controversy. Motion denied. Now, let’s see that household footage. Has it been certified?”

“Unfortunately the estate security system was compromised at some point after Mr. Sato’s death, so our analysts were unable to certify its authenticity. But it was obtained just forty minutes after the events in question, and none of Mr. Sato’s serfs are registered as having any skill at hacking or altering recordings. The Security Directorate believes them to be substantially correct.”

“Very well, then. Let’s have a look.”

This time the holographic images had sound, so I got to listen to myself talking with Lilia as we entered the house. Then things got weird. The stun turret shot me, but the conversation between Lilia and the trolls was completely different.

“Why did the house stun her?” Lilia exclaimed. “She was going to help us!”

“I don’t know,” Jenki said. “I’d better make sure she’s alright. Good thing I had a medkit on me.”

“I’ll call down to the security room, and see what’s going on,” Renit said.

“She’s okay, right? She has to be. Oh, she’s going to be so mad!” Lilia fretted.

“Her vitals look good,” Jenki assured her. “We’ll just have to apologize when she wakes up. Maybe if we grovel a lot she won’t punish us too bad.”

Then there was a slight jump, and we were back to the real recording. Funny, I hadn’t realized how dangerous I looked when I was tearing those trolls apart. By the time I grabbed Lilia I was covered in blood. No wonder she was so scared.

Minami opened his mouth as the recording ended, but I beat him to the punch.

“That isn’t what happened, Your Honor. That recording has been falsified from timestamp 3:19 to 7:41. If you look close you can even see the jump at 7:41, where the fake images don’t quite match up with the real ones.”

“Of course you’d say that,” Minami scoffed. “As if anything could justify your abuse of that poor elf. She even told you that you’d tripped her submission reflex, and you threatened her again anyway.”

Not again. This was just like what Kovy had pulled back on Felicity. Was I always going to lose to the social predators?

“Why should my crewmember believe a con artist who’d already lured her into an ambush?” Captain Sokol said. “For all Alice knew she wasn’t even a real elf. Alice, can you tell us what really happened?”

Hope. My captain was standing up for me, and he knew how to win this kind of fight. I didn’t have to do it alone. I just needed to give him something to work with.

“I can do better than that, sir. Am I allowed to submit a recording? The stunner knocked me out for a bit, but my onboard sensors were running the whole time and I still have the data.”

“Personal data stores can’t be certified,” Minami objected. “She’s had hours alone in her cell, and we have no idea what skills or software she might have. By now her logs could show anything.”

Representative Finwell rewound the house recording to 7:30, and played it again until after the jump.

“She’s right about the discontinuity, Captain Minami. I’m forced to conclude that the household security system was compromised, in which case her personal logs are an equally valid account. Go ahead and show us what you have, Miss Long.”

A network connection popped up, and I spent a few milliseconds puzzling out how to feed the court AI the data stream I wanted to give it. I really did have recordings of everything my senses had picked up in the last twenty-four hours, but I had to pick out a subset that could be converted into something humans would be able to understand.

What would Finwell say, if I admitted that this wasn’t coming from a recording device? That I had a perfect memory, and there was an elaborate mechanism in my subconscious that went through all the day’s experiences while I slept looking for lessons to learn? That was sort of like what humans do when they dream, right?

Yeah, one more thing to keep my mouth shut about.

“Obviously my eyes were closed most of the time, so the video part of this is from my passive sonar system,” I told everyone. “That’s why everything looks translucent, and there’s no color. But the audio is the important part.”

My sonar can usually get millimeter resolution off of ambient noise, so the hologram gave us a pretty good view of everyone’s bones and internal organs as well as what they were doing. It was really disturbing, watching Jenki brainjack me all over again. But I reminded myself that Lilia’s talk of rebels and mass murder was the important part.

Naturally we had to go through it again step by step. I might have been a little pale when Finwell zoomed in on Jenki’s brainhacking device to get a better look at it.

“Captain Minami, do you have a forensic analysis of the scene to submit? Or at least an inventory of items found there?”

“That, ah, didn’t seem necessary at the time, Your Honor.”

“So there may be several squads of rebels in powered armor at large on the station? I believe the Association is going to be requesting a larger security detail.”

“But, Your Honor, surely this is absurd. Who would have ordered these serfs to form some kind of, of rebel terrorist cell? That’s conspiracy theorist talk.”

“There are at least three interstellar organizations that foment serf rebellions in the Kerak sector, and there are plenty of captains who would collaborate with them for the right price,” Representative Finwell said severely. “I suggest you take this information seriously. Is the elf still in custody?”

Minami consulted his datapad. “She was ordered to return home, and remain there until further notice.”

I had to facepalm at that. “So she’s long gone by now. Heck, her group had hours to pack up all their gear and move it someplace else.”

“No doubt.” Representative Finwell gave an aggravated sigh. “But this does give us an easy method of verifying your story. Captain Minami, please have your people check the elf’s status.”

It took all of two minutes for station security to determine that Lilia wasn’t answering her com, and neither was anyone else at the house. Confirming that the place was abandoned didn’t take much longer.

“So much for her facade of innocence,” Finwell said. “Miss Long, I take it her mention of marines was the reason for your rather aggressive methods of motivating Lilia during your escape?”

“Yes, Your Honor. I was terrified that they’d catch up to me before I could get away. I can handle a troll or two in hand to hand, but I can’t scratch a suit of powered armor. I didn’t even have any weapons on me, and my security bots are pretty much all defense.”

“I still find this tale of rebel serfs hard to believe,” Minami grumbled. “In any event, torturing a helpless elf is-”

Captain Sokol slammed his fist down. “Enough about the damned elf. Your Honor, Alice Long is a fourteen year old girl who was officially emancipated just this morning. I allowed her to run some errands on the station because Hoshida is supposed to be a civilized system, where a young lady can go about her business without fear of criminals. Instead I find that she’s been assaulted, held against her will, brainjacked and targeted for murder by Hoshidan residents. And where was station security in all this? Instead of coming to her aid, you arrest her and lock her in an isolation cell before dragging her into court on trumped-up charges.”

He glared at Captain Minami, who at least had the grace to look embarrassed.

“Your Honor, Square Deal moves to dismiss all charges with prejudice, and censure Takeo Station for bringing frivolous complaints before the court. You can be sure we’ll be filing an official incident report and list of complaints with the Merchant’s Association as well, along with an advisory about this potential serf revolt.”

Finwell turned to Minami. “Does Takeo Station have any further evidence to present?”

The security captain clenched his fists. “No, Your Honor.”

“Then I’m forced to grant Square Deal’s motion, Captain. Your investigative work was badly bungled, and your case is an ill-conceived hatchet job. This court finds that Alice Long acted with admirable restraint in defense of her own life, and suffers no liability for today’s events. She will be released to her ship immediately.”

I sighed in relief.

“Sadly, Hoshida’s treaty with the Merchant’s Association does not support censuring station security for bungled investigative work. But you can rest assured, Captain Minami, that the Association will be taking a very close look at your directorate’s work until we are assured that this was an isolated incident. This court does not condone persecuting spacers based on obviously falsified evidence.”

“Fine,” Captain Minami spat. “But there’s still one thing I can do to keep this menace from hurting any more elves. Alice Long, consider yourself banned from Takeo Station until further notice. I’m sure my commander will make it official by the time you get back to your ship.”

I found myself staring at him stupidly while the court adjourned. Really? That’s all he cared about? I mean, sure, I felt kind of bad about having to hurt Lilia like that. But ten minutes with an autodoc and she’d be good as new. Her buddies had tried to blow me up with a rocket launcher!

Captain Sokol came down from his seat, and put his hand on my shoulder. “Come along, Alice. Let’s get back to the ship.”

“Yes, sir.”

I got up, and followed him out of the courtroom. This wasn’t the place to talk. I stayed quiet until we reached the car he’d taken from the ship, and climbed in.

It was a really fancy car. Seating for six, an armored hull, an oversized lift system, even a deflector shield and what were probably hidden weapons. But I was too upset to admire the hardware.

“I’m sorry, sir,” I said miserably. “I didn’t mean to cause so much trouble.”

The car started itself, and pulled out of the parking lot. The captain turned a concerned look my way.

“It’s not your fault, Alice. I’m sorry you had to go through all of that. But you handled yourself quite well.”

“I keep feeling like I should have done better,” I told him. “I didn’t mean for anyone to die!”

“Sometimes there’s no other choice,” he said gravely. “Especially when people are trying to kill you. Do you think things would be better if they’d succeeded?”

“Of course not! I just feel really stupid, and frustrated. I was trying so hard to be useful, so you wouldn’t regret taking me on. But instead I’ve wasted a bunch of your time and left Naoko in the lurch.”

“Naoko should not have sent you off to wander around a strange station by yourself. No matter how talented you are you’re still inexperienced. Someone needs to teach you how to avoid trouble, and spot con artists.”

“Yes, sir. I feel pretty dumb about falling for Lilia’s story.”

“Noted. If she’d been telling the truth, were you really going to pass up the chance to empty some dead slaver’s bank account?”

“Of course not, sir. I was going to call Naoko, and ask her if we could get away with it.”

“Thought so.” He smiled, and mussed my hair. “You did fine, little imp. Are you alright? Those idiots in station security didn’t try to interrogate you, did they?”

“No, I’m fine, sir. My immune system ate the brainjack, and I’ve already healed the bruises I got from falling down when I was stunned. I’m just starving. I’m supposed to be putting away at least eight or nine thousand calories a day until my malnutrition warnings clear up, and I haven’t eaten since this morning.”

“I think we can take care of that.”

When we arrived at the ship he led me up to the mess hall himself. I was a little flattered that he was so worried about me. Although I was also wondering where Naoko was. I’d expected to see her in the cargo bay, but it was deserted except for the bots. Was she mad at me, for not being around to help her all day?

That mystery was resolved when we got to the mess hall. There were streamers hung from the ceiling, and a big sign that read ‘Banned from Takeo Station!’ Half the crew was standing around with little party hats on their heads, waiting for me.

“Surprise!” Lina called, popping out of the galley with a huge cake in her hands.

Mina darted out of the crowd to hug me. “Congratulations, Alice! I think this is some kind of record. You got recorded as a crewmember, got into your first shootout and got banned from a station all in one day!”

“Um, is that a good thing?” I asked tentatively.

“You’re not a real spacer until you’ve been banned from a station,” Lina assured me.

“Yeah, you’re officially cooler than Naoko now,” Jenna agreed. “But we’re going to have to do something about that naïveté. Really, falling for a modified Nigerian email scam? That’s such a classic I thought everyone knew it.”

“Apparently they don’t teach the art of the con in orphanages on Felicity,” the captain said. “Can I trust you girls to take care of this gap in our cabin girl’s education?”

All four foxgirls goggled at him for a moment, before sprouting huge grins.

“You bet, Captain!” Jenna assured him.

“Without getting a bounty on her head,” he added.

They just grinned wider. “Aw, we’re a lot better than we were back then Captain. Don’t worry, we won’t get caught. Alice can’t just switch bodies like we do, so we can’t take any chances.”

Naoko managed to push through the crowd of foxgirls to hug me. “Welcome home, Alice. Are you alright? Were you injured? We’ve been forced to make do with second-hand information from the bots, and it appears that they missed part of the action.”

“I’m fine, Naoko. Really. The brainjack didn’t work-”

“That’s another three coolness points,” Mina interjected.

“-and I handled the trolls without getting hurt.”

“There was another fight we missed?” Kara said. “What happened? Can we see? You do have a flight recorder, right?”

The captain put his hand on my shoulder. “Why don’t you show them the highlights, Alice? I need to get back to the bridge, but you enjoy your party. Jim, could I have a word?”

“You have recordings? Awesome! Come on, girl. Sit yourself down in the seat of honor, and queue it up while we cut the cake.”

“Yeah. But only the parts that make you look cool, right?”

I spent the rest of the evening there, surrounded by new friends, stuffing myself with amazing food while we laughed and joked and traded stories. Everyone in the crew seemed to have a lot of those, and I found myself playing a few more recordings to keep up. Naoko’s encounter with the hexagator. Some highlights from my trip across Felicity’s jungles. It wasn’t much compared to Chief West’s war stories, or the foxgirls’ adventures as aspiring data thieves. But it was enough to make me feel like maybe, somehow, I might actually fit in here.

Chapter 9

It was a three-day trip to Zanfeld, and I got to spend most of it learning and hanging out with the techs.

The passengers all retreated into their suites once we left port, just like Naoko had predicted. She was still kept pretty busy fielding customer service requests, since the Hoshidans were a bunch of spoiled brats who expected to indulge any weird whim they might get 24/7. But she was just helping their serfs make things happen, so it was a manageable job.

I helped out now and then by answering the com when she was busy, but I never saw the passengers face to face. The few times I talked to their serfs they all seemed terrified of me. I couldn’t quite decide whether to feel vindicated or annoyed. I wanted to be dangerous, but darn it, I wasn’t some monster who went around hurting harmless serf girls.

Jenna advised me to ignore the whole thing.

“Once we drop these people off on Zanfeld you’ll never see them again, so who cares what they think? Spacers aren’t going to react like that, if they bother to look into your history at all. That reminds me, though, we need to get you signed up with an agitprop service.”

“A what?” She’d completely lost me with that one.

“She’s talking about search obfuscators,” Mina explained. “You know, so people can’t just do a datanet search on your ID code and get your whole life story?” She paused to take in my expression. “You’ve got no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

“Not a clue,” I admitted. “Why wouldn’t I want people to be able to do searches on me? Shouldn’t I want a good reputation?”

“Yeah, but you don’t want to get convicted for it,” Jenna said.

“Exactly,” Mina said. “A lot of colonies have really crazy laws, Alice. If your personal history isn’t obfuscated some of them will accept public data as legal evidence, and that’s bad. Say you go to a club on Zanfeld and have a few drinks, and someone posts a video somewhere. Then three months later you leave the port zone on Clarity, and some bored cop decides to harass you and runs a crime search. Bam, now you’re in a local jail on drug use charges.”

“They’d arrest me for something I did in another colony?”

“Reasonable people wouldn’t, but the crazy colonies can get really crazy. A big part of our business is going places the big corporations won’t touch, so we have to be careful about that kind of thing.”

“Besides, it’s fun,” Jenna added. “Open accounts with a couple of agitprop services, and they’ll spread any crazy stories you want. Usually what you do is have them create five or six separate false histories for you, each with a different personality. Make sure one of them includes lots of really outrageous fake crime reports, and you can claim anything real is obviously part of this malicious character assassination.”

“Or you could just have them manufacture legitimate doubt about your activities,” Mina added. “The captain pays a service to tamper with public data about the Square Deal, and they’ll automatically include you in the basic obscurement. So, for example, in a month there will be a bunch of different versions of the news stories about yesterday floating around different data stores, and the key details will all contradict each other. There will also be data showing the Square Deal being in three or four other ports at the same time, and probably some completely fake news reports to go along with the false trails.”

“Yeah, but it’s a lot more fun when you can tell them what kind of reports to post,” Jenna said. “For that you have to open an account of your own.”

“That sounds expensive,” I protested. “I don’t have a lot of money.”

“It’s not that bad. They have specialized AIs that do all the work, and they’re just class two’s so their time is cheap. You can get a basic account for maybe two or three credits a month.”

“I guess I’ll look into it.”

The techs filled me in on a lot of things I’d never known. I kind of felt like they were babysitting me, but they didn’t seem to mind. I think they got a kick out of educating a human.

They didn’t just lecture me about things, either. They got really excited when I mentioned that I was interested in engineering, and after that they made a habit of dragging me all over the ship’s engineering spaces to ‘help out’ while we chatted about everything from merchant law to spacer fashion.

I’m pretty sure a normal girl would have hated the giant maze of cold, dark passages that tunneled in and around the giant machines that made the Square Deal run. I loved it. The tech’s domain was full of amazing sights, especially to my senses. I got to watch them service a drive tube, and rebuild a fusion reactor’s fuel injector, and all kinds of other cool stuff. I didn’t know enough to be much help yet, but even holding Jenna’s tools while she worked was fascinating.

The first time we did that I had to spend the whole time in my spacesuit, since the parts of engineering that weren’t in vacuum had a nitrogen atmosphere to minimize corrosion. It was also pretty cold in places, since the ship’s holds and idle systems were kept at a chilly six degrees Celsius. Active systems like the fusion reactors and navigational deflectors were a lot warmer, but they made up a pretty small fraction of the ship.

This, of course, was why the foxgirls used synthetic bodies instead of organic ones like Naoko. They wore light skinsuits on the job, and their athletic builds were put to good use clambering over giant machines and shimmying in and out of tight spaces. The environment didn’t faze them at all, and they usually didn’t even bother turning on the lights. They all had high-res radar systems, and unlike me they could afford to run them constantly.

“I really hope I get some kind of power source online soon,” I grumbled at one point. “Even eating the way I do, food just doesn’t give me enough energy to run stuff like that. If you stopped emitting I’d have to find my way out on passive sonar, and some of these spaces are so quiet that would be hard to do.”

“Oh, quit your bitching,” Jenna shot back. “Do you have any idea how amazing it is that you can see with someone else’s radar? Especially a synthetic aperture system like we use. Whoever wrote your sensor algorithms was a frickin’ genius.”

I chuckled. “I guess you’re right. It’s just annoying to have to watch every watt of energy use.”

“I bet you’ll grow a power cell now that you’re eating right. You’re obviously meant to be an engineer, or maybe a super-soldier, and either way not having a good onboard power source would be crazy. But if you’re in a hurry I guess you could always add a sensor pack to your suit like a normal person.”

I took her advice on that, since my suit had plenty of reserve power and fabbing up a radar module turned out to be cheap. But I found that I wasn’t crazy about relying on tools for something that essential, so I hoped she was right about the power cell.

By then I’d gained back the weight that I’d lost during my long trek through Felicity’s jungles, and the supplements were starting to have an effect. A lot of new interfaces were popping up in my head, giving me better control over features that had been limping along on some kind of emergency backup programming. One of those new modules even let me set priorities for my own physical development.

Unfortunately it didn’t show me what I was going to look like when I finished growing, or give me a list of all the mods that were still developing, or anything practical like that. But just the fact that I could assure it I’d have a plentiful food supply for the immediate future was a big deal. I could feel the foundations being laid for all sorts of ambitious projects, some of which would make me a lot harder to kill. Being a spacer did seem to be a bit dangerous, so I was glad of that.

I could also sort of point out recent experiences that I thought might keep happening, and challenges I needed to adapt to quickly. I spent some time playing with that feature in between training classes one night, with interesting results. The next morning I met Mina with my helmet stowed, and a big grin on my face.

She paused at the airlock into engineering. “Don’t forget your helmet, Alice.”

“I don’t need it anymore,” I crowed. “I got my respirocytes in last night.”

“Respirocytes?” I watched her access the ship’s datanet to do a search. “Oh, an internal air supply?”

“That’s right. I had a classic Freitas-style system in my design database. I can store about a four-hour oxygen supply now. I’ll deploy my helmet if I run low, but I wanted to see what Engineering smells like.”

She smiled tolerantly. “A keen sense of smell can be a surprisingly useful diagnostic tool. Alright, Alice, but don’t push yourself. You don’t take chances with life support. I want you back in your helmet if you drop below an hour of reserve air.”

“No problem, Mina. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful. I really like being able to go into the tunnels with you guys. I’m not going to mess that up.”

“Sounds like our insidious plan is working, then. At this rate we’ll turn you into a techie in no time.”

I liked the sound of that. Maybe I could get qualified as an engineering tech, and do this kind of work for a living? I was still working through fifteen or twenty hours of classes a day, taking advantage of my VR tank’s fast-play feature to zip through the content at triple speed. The piloting and navigation classes were fun, but they were so easy it was hard to see them as serious subjects. Engineering, on the other hand, was something I could really sink my teeth into. The introductory courses were mostly about how to manage automated maintenance systems, since all the routine work on a ship is done by bots. But once you get beyond the basics you have to actually understand how things work, and that was a huge topic. I could spend years studying it and still barely scratch the surface.

The idea of tackling something that hard, and eventually mastering it, was exhilarating. Especially since I wouldn’t be on my own. The foxgirls were obviously happy to give advice, and even explain things the lessons didn’t cover. Unfortunately there were also downsides.

“Most humans think of engineering as something the techs take care of,” Kara advised me one afternoon, after I’d brought up my career options.

“Is that a problem?” I asked.

She sighed. “Alice, a tech is a type of serf on most colonies. Think about that for a minute.”

I did. That led me to look a few things up, and do some more thinking.

“Androids can be fabbed, and the Merchant Association lets captains adopt whatever sapience recognition rules they like aboard their own ships,” I finally said. “So, do most ships just fab their engineering crew? That would be a lot cheaper than hiring people, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes. Now, what does that mean for a human who wants to study engineering?”

That seemed obvious enough. “If I’m doing a tech’s job people will treat me like a tech. I’ll never make any money that way. Only, when I search the open source database for tech designs the results I get all have class two or three AIs. Wouldn’t it be really dumb to try to run a ship without a human or a class four to supervise?”

“It depends on your line of business. My pack sisters and I could easily keep an unmodified cargo ship running, especially if we had the manufacturer’s skill packs. But older ships can be balky, and damage control is a nightmare. A lot of major corporations run ships with no human crew at all, but anyone who ventures into Dark Space or deals with the wrong side of the law is going to want an engineer with human levels of creativity on board. Of course, the production of class four AIs is banned on almost all colonies that practice serfdom. They’re a lot harder to keep under control than class threes, and a lot more dangerous if they rebel.”

“I get it. So if I ever left the Square Deal I’d be stuck supervising a crew of serfs who belong to someone else, and I’d have no way to free them. Or else I’d have to hold out for a ship that actually pays their engineering crew, and that means I’d lose all my bargaining power and have to settle for whatever jobs I could get. That sucks. But I wouldn’t have to leave the Square Deal, would I? I like working with you guys, and it seems like the ship could use more crew.”

She hugged me. “You’re such a sweetheart, Alice. If you end up getting certified for engineering we’ll be happy to have you. I just want you to explore all your options before you commit to anything. No one is expecting you to become an expert spacer overnight.”

I had to admit she had a point. What else was there to study, though? The merchant classes were so boring I nearly fell asleep the first time I tried one. There were a million specialized classes on stuff like cargo handling and underway replenishment, but I couldn’t see making a career out of something like that. The only topic that really seemed as deep as engineering was security.

Good girls aren’t supposed to resort to violence.

I wasn’t exactly a good girl, though, was I? I hunted animals, and I’d already managed to get myself into three different fights. Besides, hadn’t I already decided all that preaching from the matrons was just another way to turn kids into sheep? I was a predator, darn it. It would be perfectly natural for me to study how to fight.

I still felt dirty just looking at the titles of those classes. Why were there so many of them, anyway? The ship’s library had more than a thousand modules just on unarmed combat. Do normal people need to be taught how to put someone in a joint lock? Weird.

I tried one anyway, and it turned out to be even worse than that. Apparently normal people need to be taught how to throw a punch, how to fall down without getting hurt, and a million other things that seemed blindingly obvious to me. Then they had to practice doing the same thing over and over and over and over again, like it was too complicated to just pick up the first time?

Ugh.

I skipped ahead to the exam at the end of the class, and sure enough I aced it without even trying. Okay, not wasting any more of my time on that nonsense. What else was there?

Marksmanship classes. Lots of them. Yeah, same deal as the martial arts. Although it was interesting to see just how bad normal people are at putting rounds into a target. My physics sense always tells me exactly where a moving object is going to end up, and it interlinks with my kinesthetics and motor center to give me basically perfect aim. Apparently that was unusual.

Twelve hundred modules on actual security, as opposed to fighting. How to set up everything from shipboard air monitoring systems to mobile sniper interceptors, how all these systems worked, how to penetrate them and how to spot people trying to sneak things past, and more complicated stuff I couldn’t make heads or tails of. Alright, that might actually be interesting. It might also make me really paranoid, though.

Military history. Someone must have thought that was important, because there were hundreds of classes on topics going all the way back to old Earth’s ancient history. I bit my lip. That sounded really…

Interesting? Dirty? Embarrassing?

I pushed aside the whirl of confused feelings, and went on to the next subject. Space combat.

Oh, wow. Lots of classes, but that was the boring part. There were simulators. Hundreds of them. I could play as anything from a gunner aboard a tramp freighter, to an admiral for one of the great powers of the Inner Sphere. All in simulators rated for training-quality realism!

Pretending to kill people would be really evil, wouldn’t it? I should feel bad about it. But I probably wouldn’t, and that would feel even worse. Wait, there were sims about the Kami War. I could pretend to shoot space Nazis without feeling guilty, couldn’t I?

If I was going to live on a spaceship it was only logical to learn something about space battles. The Kami War ended just eight years ago, so that was recent enough that the technology would be about the same. It would be educational.

Eleven hours later I’d finally gotten the hang of piloting a fast attack boat, at least with the difficulty turned down. Most of the small craft in that war had been bots, which the Swarmlords had cranked out by the billion in their automated factories. But the Dominion expeditionary force had fielded some sweet little ships in the ten thousand-ton range, with an interesting variety of payloads. I had to admit the Mirai Kingdom had some amazing looking hardware too, although I hadn’t quite worked up the nerve to try it out. Pretending to fight for the bad guys would be kind of weird, wouldn’t it?

At any rate, it had taken some real work to get the hang of fighting my way through the swarms of interceptors and sniper platforms that always surrounded an enemy fleet. I’d finally managed to break through, though, and I was lining up an attack run on a Rakurai class strike cruiser. The long, slender ship was pointed towards the station I was supposed to be defending, its spinal mount RKKV cannon firing off another two-kilogram projectile at just below the speed of light. But they’d have to run a cooling cycle before they could fire again, to bleed off the megatons of waste heat produced by the weapon. The huge cloud of superheated coolant boiling away would mask me from their weapons for just long enough to make my attack.

I deployed my last plasma bubble to block any laser fire the interceptors behind me might turn my way, and slammed my drive to full power the moment the cooling cycle started. Ten seconds, twenty, and I was coming up on twelve thousand kilometers from my target. Close enough. I ripple-fired my whole magazine of anti-ship missiles, and slewed my vessel through a ninety degree turn with the drive still at max thrust. Even with that sideways acceleration I’d pass within eight thousand kilometers of the cruiser, but their point defense weapons would have more urgent targets than me.

Most of my missiles carried thirty megaton Casaba howitzer warheads, capable of generating a superheated jet of plasma that would damage a ship from up to two thousand kilometers away. The strike cruiser’s flanks boasted four hundred centimeters of armor, more than enough to protect against them. But they’d saturate the ship’s deflectors momentarily, and burn off any sensors or point defense weapons near the impact points. That would create blind spots that the next wave of attack drones could take advantage of.

But the real threat was the three missiles whose warheads were designed to act like a single-stage Orion drive, launching a shotgun spread of antimatter pellets towards the target. Each of those was following a group of the conventional missiles in, ready to launch its payload in the brief interval when the bolts of plasma from the Casaba howitzers would hide the projectiles from enemy sensors.

A few dozen of those fifty-gram antimatter pellets hitting the hull at six thousand kps would do real damage even to a strike cruiser. If I was lucky enough to catch it with the cooling ports open I might even cripple the main gun, which would be a heck of an accomplishment for a tiny little attack boat.

I watched the missiles dodge and weave their way towards the target. One was vaporized by a secondary battery, and then the cloud of ionized coolant dissipated and the ship’s point defense lasers opened fire. But I could see I’d timed it right. Just a few more seconds until my missiles reached effective range. One blew up, and then another, their protective bubbles of plasma boiled away by an increasing number of lasers. But there were fourteen left. The lead missile was about to fire…

The sim froze, and I realized my com was buzzing.

“Hello?” I said, momentarily disoriented by the sudden transition.

“Alice?” Lina’s face popped up on the com channel, looking concerned. “Where are you? Aren’t you supposed to be joining me for rounds this morning?”

“Morning?” I blinked slowly, and looked at the time.

“Oh, crash! I’m sorry, Lina, I lost track of time. I’m on my way. Don’t let me slow you down, I’ll catch up. I’m really, really sorry!”

She laughed. “Don’t worry so much, Alice. I’m not mad. Have you been up all night? What were you doing that was so interesting?”

I shut down the sim, and started climbing out of the VR pod.

“I was looking through the ship’s education database, and I found all these space battle sims,” I admitted. “Darn it, I knew this VR stuff was addictive.”

“Ah, so that’s what does it for you? You know, usually when a girl gets so into her sims that she loses track of time, it’s a completely different kind of scenario…”

“Lina! I’m officially fourteen, you nut. I’m way too young to be hearing about whatever freaky stuff spacers do with their sims.”

“If you say so, Alice. I had you pegged as a vanilla girl anyway. You know, sunsets and poetry and long walks on sandy beaches.”

“Oh. Well, that doesn’t sound so bad.”

“See, I know what I’m talking about. Don’t be shy if you ever need advice. Trust me, I’m an expert on pretty much everything.”

“Do I even want to know what ‘everything’ includes?”

“I don’t know, do you?” She teased.

“Not today,” I decided. “Ugh, that was stupid of me. I can’t believe I stayed up all night trying to learn how to blow up imaginary spaceships.”

“Sounds better than learning on real ones,” she observed. “Well, drag your butt down to the mess hall so we can get some food in you. We’ve got a big day ahead of us. We arrive at Zanfeld tonight, and the captain wants a readiness check on all the ship’s weapons before we drop out of the Delta Layer.”

“I’m on my way, Lina.”

All the girls teased me about my little misadventure, but they also fed me so I couldn’t complain. I sheepishly promised to pay more attention to my clock from now on, and then Lina and Jenna dragged me off for their inspection of the ship’s magazines.

Their contents were a bit of a surprise to me. Intellectually I’d known that the Square Deal must be decently well armed, but the giant rack of missiles still caught me off guard. Hundred-ton anti-ship missiles, not much different than the ones that the ships in that sim had been firing at each other.

“Pretty sweet, huh?” Jenna said proudly. “This is the primary magazine for all twelve portside missile tubes. Each tube has a secondary magazine that holds eight missiles ready to launch, which is enough for most attack patterns. Those are actually the only missiles we keep hot, because it’s a pain to maintain them that way.

“Where are the warheads?” I asked, because the missiles I was looking at clearly didn’t have payloads mounted. What kind of warhead would a civilian ship use, anyway? I couldn’t see chemical explosives doing much to a pirate ship, but the missiles had a lot of delta vee. Maybe some kind of kinetic kill vehicle? Well, no, that wouldn’t work. If there was one thing I’d learned in the last few hours, it was the power of point defense lasers. Getting a payload within a few thousand kloms of a target was hard enough. Physically touching it would be pretty much impossible.

Lina led me to another hatch. “The warhead magazine is through here. Our missiles all use the same payload couplings, so we can mix-and-match whatever warheads the missile gunner calls for. Those bots over there fetch warheads and attach them to missiles when we’re expecting trouble. You can see we’ve got the good stuff, too.”

I found myself staring at the neatly engraved labels on the stacked warheads. Casaba howitzer rounds. Nuclear shotgun systems. Six gigaton planetary bombardment warheads. Bomb-pumped laser arrays. Crash, this was the same kind of loadout a Dominion warship would carry.

Lina giggled at my expression. “You look so cute with your mouth hanging open like that. Why are you so surprised?”

“Lina, this is awesome! But how do we get away with it?”

“What do you mean, Alice?”

“I mean, we could flatten a planet with this much firepower. Isn’t it illegal or something?”

“Ah, you’re still thinking like a dirtsider. Alice, who would pass a law like that, and how could they enforce it? Every ship that ventures off the major space lanes needs to be armed for self-defense, and you can’t drive off a pirate with the piddling little beam weapons a cargo ship has room for. You need nukes, and lots of them, or you’re an easy target.

“Besides, even if the major colonies tried to regulate spacecraft weapons, how would they enforce the ban? There are a million dark colonies willing to sell us the radioactives they mine, and we can fab our own warheads.”

“A real navy still has a lot more firepower than any merchant ship,” I pointed out.

“True, but the important thing is we aren’t helpless. A customs cutter can’t just order us to cut our drive and submit to boarding on a whim, because we can easily fight them off long enough to jump out of the system. We’d have to avoid that colony in the future, of course, but there are thousands of colonies just in this sector. So any colony that tries to regulate spacers too heavily will just drive off all the merchants in the area, and end up having to build their own trading ships.”

“Which would have to be armed just like the independents,” I realized. “Is that why the Merchant Association has so much power?”

“Partly. They also have the backing of the major insurance companies, and a pretty shrewd governing board. The Association is good at minimizing conflict between spacers and the colonies, which gives them a lot of influence on both sides.”

“I see. Still, I never realized space was so chaotic. It feels weird that there’s no one in charge of things.”

“Would you prefer the Inner Sphere? The Sol Sector is so heavily colonized there’s no dark space left, and major powers like the Dominion or the Polytechnic Swarm hold tens of thousands of systems each. They can enforce whatever regulations they like within their territories, and their border controls are good enough that they’ve just about eliminated piracy.”

“Yeah, and they’re all tyrannies,” I grumbled.

“Exactly. Freedom is messy, and often dangerous. But the only alternative is tyranny. Now, let’s get these inspections done. We need to spot check two of each warhead and missile type, just to make sure the automatic diagnostics are still working right. Then we can do a test run on the missile fabricator, and whip up another batch of laser heads so Chief West will stop complaining about our readiness state.”

I wasn’t sure I agreed with Lina, but I set aside the political philosophy to concentrate on engineering. It was pretty neat to get a look at the inside of half a dozen different kinds of nuclear warhead. Just thinking about the amount of sheer firepower I was looking at made me feel funny. Kind of warm and giddy, and it was a little hard to sit still. I found myself hoping I’d get a chance to see everything in action someday.

I’m sure Lina noticed, but she didn’t comment until we’d worked our way through most of the inventory. Then she paused in the middle of stripping down an anti-missile.

“You know, Alice, we need to get you a gun.”

“A gun?” I squeaked. My mouth was dry.

“That’s right, a gun. Zanfeld is a pretty rough place. A cute little thing like you can’t go wandering around unarmed, and sticking with hidden weapons is practically entrapment. You need to advertise that you’re not a victim, or you’ll never get through a night of clubbing without a fight. You are coming to Greymore’s with us, right?”

“Greymore’s?” I repeated.

She grinned. “It’s a spacer bar. The captain has a lease on one of the private suites there, but he likes to have some backup around while he does his business. So the girls and I always dress up and hit the dance floor for the evening. We’re going to drag Naoko along and make her have some fun, so you should come too. We’ll teach you how to flirt with the guys, and you can protect us if anything happens.”

Me, protect the foxgirls? Wow. I was amazed at the feelings that welled up inside me at the suggestion. For a moment I really wished they were my foxgirls. Mine to protect, and lead, and hold…

I pushed the images away. The techs weren’t mine, and they never would be, and since when did I want to own people anyway?

But they were my friends, and it would be perfectly natural to look out for them. Besides, it sounded like fun. Only, there was one problem.

“I don’t know how to dance,” I admitted.

“We’ll teach you,” she assured me. “If you even need the help. You’ve got some kind of photographic reflexes thing going on, don’t you? I bet you can just watch someone dance, and then copy everything they did perfectly.”

“Pretty much. But isn’t there supposed to be more to it than just copying a set of motions? I’m not sure about that part.”

“If you can fight, you can dance. We’ll teach you. But first, we need to fab you a gun. What do you think, laser or mass driver? I bet you’re a mass driver kind of girl. Something nice and beefy, with a million ammo options and enough kick to make a mule jealous.”

“Mass drivers run out of ammo,” I objected, though I was practically drooling at the thought. “But I guess lasers would too, since I can’t afford a nuke pack. Um, are grenades allowed? Or maybe a mini-missile launcher?”

She laughed. “This is Zanfeld, girl. You can carry anything you want, as long as there’s no antimatter involved. Don’t forget about your outfit, though. I’ve got some nice bodysuit designs you could borrow if you’ve got your heart set on a gunbunny look, but you’d be adorable in a good dress.”

The rest of the work day flew by in a blur. Lina had a million suggestions, and each one made me that much more impatient to get to a fabber and try them out. I’d never been on a night out before, and now I was going to visit a fancy spacer club with a whole group of friends. This was going to be great!

Chapter 10

My hopes of striding into the club looking like a tough, no-nonsense spacer woman were dashed by the mirror. Not to mention the way Kara and Mina kept bursting into uncontrollable giggles when they saw me.

“Sorry, sweetie,” Kara said. “Black leather really doesn’t work for you.”

“Give it up,” Mina advised me. “Seriously, there’s no way you’re going to look tough with that face. Besides, why would you want to? If you look tough people will hassle you just to see if you really are. You should try to look cute instead. That will be a lot easier, and then everyone will go out of their way to be nice to you.”

I huffed. “I’m just tired of everyone thinking I’m prey.”

“So be an ambush predator,” Mina said.

I blinked. Huh. That didn’t sound so bad, actually.

“Between the gun and the dragons, no one with a brain is going to make too many assumptions,” Kara said. “Cosmetic work is cheap, and there are people a hundred years old who make themselves look like little kids. The thing is you need to work with your looks, instead of fighting them. If you try to dress like a drop marine it makes you look like a little girl trying really hard to act tough, and if you have to work at it that usually means it’s all fake. What you need to do is wear a cute dress, maybe put some ribbons in your hair and have one of the dragons sit on your shoulder, and pick out a weapon that looks like a fashion accessory. Then people will see a consistent look, and assume you’re the type who likes to be underestimated.”

I frowned. “If everyone is going to assume that, doesn’t it mean it wouldn’t work?”

Kara grinned. “Nope. They’ll think to themselves that they shouldn’t underestimate you, and then do it anyway. If you look young and cute the men will be extra nice to you, the women will try to mother you, and they’ll all let you get away with murder. They can’t help themselves.”

“She exaggerates a little,” Mina warned me. “But only a little. A lot of human social responses are hard-wired, and most people can’t just override them. Now come on, let us give you some suggestions.”

“Okay. I guess I should leave this to the experts,” I sighed.

Once I stopped fighting the inevitable it was actually a lot of fun. Kara was really good at fashion, and her collection of clothing designs was huge. She got a little carried away sometimes, but Mina was good at bringing her back to reality.

Some of her efforts made me look like a confection, and others were just too weird. Or sexy. Apparently being nearly naked was fashionable on a lot of colonies, but I really wasn’t ready to show that much skin. What we finally settled on was more conservative, but I liked the effect.

It was a layered outfit, starting with an airy white dress with ruffled sleeves and a skirt that didn’t quite reach my knees. Over that was a dark blue outer layer that covered my torso but left my arms bare, with a split skirt that reached my calves on the sides but basically didn’t have a front or back. The edges of that were picked out in a complicated pattern of gold embroidery, which matched the gold necklace and earrings that came with it. The shoes were simple open-toed flats, and a pair of fingerless blue gloves completed the outfit. The gun we picked out was a slim blue and white mass driver, in a holster that attached to the dress at the small of my back. After a moment’s consideration Kara added four gold bracelets on each wrist.

“I like it,” I admitted, looking at my reflection in the full-length mirror. “It’s not armor, and the gun is kind of dinky, but it’s pretty.”

“Oh, I think we can satisfy you on the practical side of things too,” Mina said knowingly. “The quick-fab version is just for trying things on, you know. Kara, what are the specs on the smart matter version?”

“The underdress is only a millimeter of light duty armor,” Kara admitted. “But the overdress is another three millimeters, and the ensemble can morph into a full coverage bodysuit in thirty seconds. There’s a deflector grid woven into the overdress along with proximity radar, good enough to stop shrapnel and low-velocity debris. The gun is a custom case wrapped around a Nova Arms 6mm mass driver core, with a peak muzzle velocity of eight hundred meters per second. I recommend standard guided dual-purpose rounds for tonight, but you can load it with anything from nanobots to Californium rounds.”

“Californium rounds? Why would you make a bullet out of some rare artificial isotope?”

“Technically they don’t,” Mina informed me. “It’s just one of those literary terms that got used as a product name, and then turned into a standard nickname. The idea is you make a hollow bullet out of a highly radioactive isotope with a very low critical mass, and fill the space in the middle with a compressible neutron moderator. When you fire it the bullet hits the target’s armor and collapses, squirting all the filling out openings in the sides as it crunches up, until you get a solid lump that’s just over critical mass. Then it goes boom.”

A nuclear pistol round? “Seriously? That sounds awesome! What’s the yield?”

“You can get up to thirty tons or so with the right isotopes,” Kara said. “But they’re really expensive. The isotopes have to be synthesized with a particle accelerator, and they decay so fast you have to re-fab the bullets every few days.”

“They’re also radioactive enough to be a health hazard for normal humans, and a lot of places ban them,” Mina said. “It’s a cool idea, but it usually isn’t worth it. I definitely don’t recommend it for tonight. If you need AoE just use your grenades.”

“Grenades?” I looked myself over with a frown. “Where?”

“The bracelets,” Kara said. “The real ones are self-propelled grenades, with a decent guidance package and a hundred grams of hyperexplosive filler. Just don’t go firing them off on the dance floor, even if we do have trouble. If you injure a bystander the wergild comes out of your pay.”

“I know, I know. Naoko made me do a whole class on the Association code after Hoshida. If the inugami come for Naoko again I’ll be careful.”

Mina snickered. “At least you’re learning. But hey, don’t get all paranoid and forget to enjoy yourself. Zanfeld is a Rom colony, and those guys really hate yakuza. No one is going to try anything here. The worst you have to worry about is getting caught up in a bar fight, and you’d probably enjoy that.”

“That’s right,” Kara said. “So relax, and have fun. Hey, maybe you can even catch yourself a cute guy or two.”

“I think our tiny terror is more into girls,” Mina mused.

I rolled my eyes. “You guys are terrible.”

Thankfully, their teasing was interrupted by the shudder of the Square Deal dropping out of the Delta Layer. That always seemed to be a rough transition, and both foxgirls had to stop and lean against the nearest bulkhead for a moment while their sensors recalibrated.

“Ugh,” I complained. “That’s so annoying. Are you two alright?”

Mina shrugged. “Yeah, it’s just worse for us because we’re hooked into the ship’s stress monitors. People don’t think about it, but even with diamondoid structural materials a Delta transition is pretty close to the limits of what a ship can take. The dimensional shear forces are pretty intense, especially on older ships like the Square Deal. It feels like we’re going to have to rebuild the bulkhead between holds eleven and twelve again, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, the self-repair system isn’t keeping up,” Kara agreed. “I keep saying we need to move The Beast closer to the ship’s centerline, but the first mate never wants to hear it.”

“The Beast?” I asked.

The foxgirls gave me matching grins.

“It’s a secret,” Mina said.

“Maybe we’ll show you sometime, if you’re good,” Kara told me. “But right now we’ve got a night on the town to get ready for. Let’s get your things fabbed up before the passengers start to think about disembarking, and Naoko gets swamped again.”

The next few hours were pretty busy, but I managed to keep an eye on the exterior feed as we made our way into the system. According to the atlas I’d looked at Zanfeld was just outside Federation space, and I was curious what it would look like.

I quickly discovered that it was completely different than either Felicity or Hoshida. Zanfeld was a Mars-type planet orbiting a dim red dwarf star, and the colony seemed to be on the surface. But with a mere hundred thousand people in the system it barely even looked like a colony. There weren’t any stations, and the port was basically just a commercial district for visiting spacers.

Where did the people live?

There was a lot of air traffic on Zanfeld, and eventually I realized that there were underground complexes dug out all over the region around the port. There were also a lot more ships than I would have expected from such a small colony. A couple of refinery ships operating fleets of ramscoop shuttles, harvesting the atmosphere of the system’s gas giant to make fuel and light feedstocks. Mining operations on several of the gas giant’s moons, and small cargo ships carrying their production to factory ships in Zanfeld orbit. More ships that I mistook for passenger liners at first, until I realized they were in long-term parking orbits. An orbital shipyard that looked suspiciously like it was designed to be broken down and loaded into cargo ships. A whole squadron of system patrol boats, of a design that looked seriously out of date even to my amateur eyes.

The datanet said Zanfeld was ‘colonized’ twenty years ago, but this looked more like some kind of temporary camp than a permanent settlement.

“Like I said, it’s a gypsy colony,” Mina said when I asked about it. “That’s their thing. They like to set up gray ports around the edges of established clusters, where people on both sides of the law can meet to do business. When the local powers get tired of it and try to clean things up they just move someplace else.”

“Most of their ships don’t look like they could make it into the Delta Layer,” I said dubiously. “Wouldn’t they be easy to catch? They’d need weeks to get anywhere in the Gamma Layer.”

“It’s not like they’re going to form up in a convoy and do a least-time course to their new site,” Mina said, sounding amused. “If they’re worried about pursuit they’ll scatter in all directions, and they won’t all stay in the Gamma Layer either. Some of them will hide out in nearby systems, either in the Alpha Layer or normal space. Some of them will spend a week or two hiding out in subspace before they poke their noses out, or just go dark out in interstellar space. Sometimes they’ll fab up decoy squadrons to throw off pursuit, or find a friendly colony where they can blend in until the heat dies down. Can you imagine the Federation Navy putting in the kind of work it would take to hunt them down?”

“I guess not,” I admitted. Everyone knew that the Federation Navy started out as a pirate fleet that decided it would be easier to run a protection racket than to actually chase down merchant ships. They’d grown into something resembling a government over the last fifty years, but they still weren’t interested in doing more work than they had to.

“I bet a Bastion would, though,” I pointed out. The Bastions had come out of the Clone Jihads with quite a reputation for military efficiency, and they had a low tolerance for criminals.

“Which is why you won’t find a Rom colony within twenty light years of a Mormon outpost,” Mina said. “They’ve gotten very good at avoiding interstellar powers that would actually be a threat to them. But the Bastions are strung out along the spinward edge of the sector, so that’s not a big problem anyway. Now, enough about that. Want to watch the landing?”

“Landing? You mean the whole ship?”

Kara chuckled. “Yep. People are always surprised a ship this size can land, and it does burn a lot of fuel. But it’s a lot more convenient than staying in orbit, and for a colony that doesn’t have a station it usually works out to be cheaper than messing with shuttles.”

The bridge was off-limits to a junior probationary crewmember like me, but there was an observation post in engineering that was just as good. The walls, floor and ceiling were all one giant display screen showing the view in all directions, while a holotank in the middle of the room showed a tactical schematic of our surroundings. Kara was off duty, so she let me in and watched with me as we made our descent.

Zanfeld didn’t have much of an atmosphere, so we came in steep with the Square Deal’s armored bow facing the port. Just like a combat drop. Well, I guess if this was a combat drop the locals would be shooting at us, and we’d have a screen of escort drones out. But still, it was fun to imagine. Those dinky little system patrol boats didn’t have the firepower to stop a ship this big, and I wasn’t seeing any ground defenses. Some of the other ships in port had enough weapons to be a threat, but most of them were on the ground. Pay off the pirates in that converted frigate, drop a bombardment on the port as we descend to soften them up, and then offload troops. If the ship’s holds were full of marines instead of cargo we could take this place. Rooting out those underground habs would be a pain, but once we controlled the surface it would just be a matter of time.

A sudden jolt startled me out of my thoughts. What? We’d reconfigured the ship’s deflector shield into an air brake? But we were still at twenty thousand meters. Slowing down now would just give the defenders more time to organize before we got boots on the ground.

Oh. Right. Not an invasion.

Why did I feel a twinge of disappointment at that? I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I really didn’t. It’s just, the idea of storming a target, catching the defenders napping and making them pay for the mistake, crushing all these tough guys into the dirt and making them acknowledge my superiority…

Mom, what kind of messed up antisocial instincts did you give me?

“Exciting, isn’t it?” Kara said. “I love it when Beatrice turns down the inertial compensators, so you can really feel the maneuvers. You can tell she’s going for a bounce and drop landing, too. Traffic control would have a heart attack if we did that at a real colony, but the Rom don’t care.”

“Bounce and drop?” I asked. Come to think of it, we were still coming in kind of fast. The atmospheric braking wasn’t going to be near enough, and the Square Deal didn’t have a lot of braking rockets facing forward. I knew it was designed for combat drops, where you have to come in as fast as possible and brake at the last moment, so how was that supposed to work?

I remembered how the Speedy Exit had lifted off, and my eyes went wide. “Wait, you don’t mean…?”

“That’s right,” Kara grinned. “Beatrice is a combat ace, and she always does things the fun way when the captain lets her. So hold onto your hat, because this ride’s going to get bumpy!”

The ship’s bow abruptly rose, leaving her descending belly-first towards the spaceport a scant few kilometers below. Dozens of braking thrusters roared to life, sending long lances of superheated plasma spearing out ahead of us. Forty gravities of deceleration, enough to dump half of our velocity in a few seconds. But that was, what, four or five kilotons per second of energy output? If the jets touched the ground they’d wreck the landing field, and the backblast would probably damage the ship.

Instead the jets throttled down as we descended, and cut out entirely while we were still nearly a kilometer up. The ship’s momentum exchange system went to full power as we plummeted towards our assigned landing pad, forming a huge lift field beneath the ship.

We fell for a second. Two. Then the lift field made solid contact with the ground, and our descent slowed abruptly. The field generators strained under the load, channeling the enormous momentum of the ship’s descent into the planet beneath us. For a few milliseconds I wasn’t sure there was enough field strength to handle the impact. But the Square Deal’s descent reversed itself a good hundred meters from the landing field, leaving her bouncing gently in midair.

The landing gear deployed, and the ship settled gently to the ground.

“That was awesome! I’ve got to learn how to do that,” I said.

“It is, isn’t it? Beatrice is kind of grumpy, but I’m sure we’ve got piloting classes in the library.”

“No, piloting is easy. I’m talking about the momentum exchange system. I’ve got to learn how those things work. There’s so much awesome stuff you can do with them.”

“Well, yeah, they’re pretty much the heart of modern spacefaring tech. Thrusters, deflectors, fusion reactors, mass drivers, artificial gravity and inertial compensators - it’s all based on the momentum exchange effect. I guess things would be pretty primitive without it. But you aren’t seriously telling me it’s the engineering that has you all excited?”

“The ride was a lot of fun,” I admitted. “I bet the passengers are freaking out.”

“Oh, we leave the inertial compensators turned all the way up in the passenger cabins,” she said dismissively. “We don’t give them an outside feed, either, so they’ve got no idea what they just missed.”

I goggled. “How could anyone miss that lift field?”

“Most people don’t have field sensors, silly.”

Waiting around for the passengers to disembark took forever, especially with the foxgirls all hanging around chatting excitedly about their plans for the evening. But the Hoshidans didn’t want to be ‘cooped up’ on the ship any longer than they had to, and they’d all started making arrangements before we docked. It couldn’t have been more than a couple of hours before they were all safely offloaded, and we could lock down the ship and head out for our night on the town.

I ended up getting a ride to the club with Lina. Naoko was riding with Captain Sokol and the first mate in that fancy car I’d seen before, and most of the foxgirls went with Chief Benson in a big armored transport. But Lina had a hoverbike she liked to ride whenever she got the chance, and it could carry a passenger.

That was a blast. Flying across the field with the wind in my hair, my arms around Lina’s firm waist and the engine throbbing between my thighs. I was in heaven.

Ash wasn’t so thrilled about it, but he was just being a grouch. He had his claws hooked into the structural weave of my overdress, so there was no way the wind was going to knock him off my shoulder.

Zanfeld was a Mars-type planet, so the air was way too thin for talking. I commed Lina instead.

“This is great!”

“Isn’t it?” She agreed. “It’s my own custom job. I built it around a Quantum Dynamics X12 racing core, but the styling is all mine. I fit in an expanded heat sink for vacuum ops, modified the wind screen to double as particle shielding, and switched out the power cells for a nuke pack. I can go for a ride just about anywhere.”

“How fast does it go?” I asked.

“In thin atmo like this we could probably break fifteen hundred kloms an hour, but the steering isn’t fast enough to handle that kind of speed. With a breathable atmosphere she’s subsonic, but not by much.”

Oh, yeah. I was definitely going to build myself a hoverbike someday.

We cleared the landing field quickly, and Lina slowed down as we hit a big dome-shaped force field over the commercial district. It was yet another type of momentum exchange field I hadn’t seen before, but I quickly figured out that it was tuned to mostly affect gas molecules instead of solid objects. Inside it, the commercial district had breathable air.

At first glance the town reminded me of the port back on Felicity. A chaotic jumble of buildings in a dozen different styles, flashing signs and lurid datanet ads, exotic spacers wandering the sidewalks. Only here the spacers weren’t all women, and the locals were pretty exotic themselves.

Apparently cybernetics were a big thing on Zanfeld, because practically all the locals had at least one gleaming metal body part. Arms were popular, but there were a lot of other variations. I saw a guy with half his head covered in metal, and a glowing red optic replacing one eye. There was another guy with a big jet pack built into his back, and a woman whose chest was some kind of flexible memory metal.

“What’s with the weird mechanical look?” I asked Lina.

“It’s a local culture thing. They show off their mods to look tough. Check out the guys on the corner up there.”

I looked, and spotted a guy who’d replaced his whole lower body with some kind of mechanical centaur thing. He was arguing with another local, who had six extra limbs attached to a metal hump on his back. A top-heavy spacer woman with long blonde hair stood between them, looking amused.

“Wow. That’s some crazy stuff.”

“Wait until you see some of our customers. There’s this one colony we trade with where they’re trying to adapt themselves to live on hot gas giants. They haven’t settled on a design yet, so they’ve got all kinds of weird stuff going on with wings and gas bags and tentacles.”

“Gas giants? Seriously?”

“Yep. They’ve got this whole big thing about how gas giants are a bigger ecological niche than terrestrial planets, and no one will be able to invade them there.”

“That’s dumb. A thick atmosphere would transmit shock waves really well, and there’s no surface where you can dig shelters. If I was attacking them I’d just grab some antimatter asteroids from the Beta Layer and drop them into the atmosphere.”

She laughed. “That’s our tiny terror. Just keep those destructive impulses in check at the club, alright? I like this place.”

“Lina! I’m to going to blow up the club, I promise.”

Greymore’s was easily the biggest building I’d ever seen, not that that was saying much. It took up a whole block, with a high wall screening the grounds from the street. A circular driveway at the front led to a fancy entrance area, with steps leading up to a pair of doors big enough to admit a tank. As we pulled in a row of holographic images lit up, advertising the club’s services. Dancing and musical acts, fine dining, parties and catering, secure meeting rooms, a datefinder service…

Lina sent her bike off to park itself, and pulled me towards the entrance. “Come on, you. No sense standing around looking at ads when we could be inside having fun.”

She led me through the doors, and across an entry area into the club proper. A wall of sound hit me as the doors opened.

The main floor of the club must have been fifty meters square, with a bar along one wall and a stage where a group of cyborgs were pumping out something that was probably supposed to be music. There was a big dance floor full of people in the middle of the room, and a scattering of tables and booths along the walls. Overhead I could make out four floors worth of balconies, none of which seemed to connect to each other.

Lina pointed at a balcony. “That’s us. Fourth floor, slot three. We’ve got a nice custom layout behind the balcony, including a private crew lounge and a few bedrooms for anyone who ends up needing one. But the Captain’s got some meetings lined up, so we should stay out from underfoot for a few hours.”

“Okay. Isn’t that expensive, though? I thought the ship only stopped here every three or four months?”

“Didn’t you just go through this from the other end? They fab it when the Square Deal drops into the system, and tear it down again when we leave. Oh, there’s Mina!”

We found the whole pack of foxgirls on the dance floor, showing off their moves in those slinky figure-hugging bodysuits they liked to wear. Mina was dancing with Chief Benson, who as usual wasn’t wearing a shirt. Jenna and Kara were dancing with each other, but they broke off to swoop down on us. Jenna threw herself into Lina’s arms and kissed her senseless. Kara grabbed my hands.

“You look great, Alice! How’d you like Lina’s hoverbike? Gets your blood pumping, doesn’t it?”

“I’ll say.”

The quick dance lesson Kara had given me on the ship had been kind of fun, but a dance floor was a whole different experience. I danced with Kara first, then Mina, then Jenna and Lina decided to double-team me for a couple of songs. By the time the band finished their set I was flushed and sweaty.

They dragged me back to their table afterwards, where they ordered another round of drinks.

“I think I’d like to skip the whole ‘teenage girl gets drunk and does something stupid the first time she tries alcohol’ thing,” I said hesitantly.

“A wise decision,” Chief Benson agreed. “Personally, I have never understood why people still use such a dangerous intoxicant.”

“If you want to experiment, try one of the bezos fruit drinks,” Mina suggested. “That stuff’s milder than alcohol, and you can’t really get drunk on it. It just gives you a little buzz, and there aren’t any side effects afterwards.”

“Assuming it even works on her,” Lina pointed out. “Fifty credits says she turns out to be immune to anything short of military nanotech.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Mina said. “A lot of high-end defensive packages will let the mild stuff affect you, and only kick in to handle serious drugs. People like to be able to enjoy things.”

“Like our emulators?” Lina said.

“Your what?” I asked.

“We’ve got this whole mod package that lets stuff like alcohol and aphrodisiacs work on us, even though these bodies aren’t organic,” Lina explained. “It was kind of expensive, but it’s worth it. We get all the party time, and none of the downsides. I guess Mina’s right, your mods might work like that too.”

“You should definitely test it with something mild,” Mina advised. “You don’t want to assume you’re going to be immune, and end up with a hangover or something. Trust me, stuff like that’s miserable.”

The fruit drinks turned out to be pretty good, so I was fine with sticking to that for the night. But by the time my second drink arrived I was starting to feel a little left out. The foxgirls all doted on Chief Benson, and they were such a close group it was hard not to feel like an outsider. Especially when I realized they were toning down their banter for my sake.

“Well, I think I’m going to go explore a little,” I said. “Maybe drop in on Naoko, and see what everyone else is up to.”

“Very well, Alice,” Chief Benson said. “The club should be safe enough. Just don’t let anyone talk you into leaving, and tell the concierge at the front desk if you end up needing a ride back to the ship. Our contract includes a free taxi service.”

Naoko was happy enough to see me, but she could only spare a few minutes to chat. Apparently the captain was having her play hostess for his meetings, and there were a lot of people in port that he wanted to talk to.

“Perhaps you might take in a show?” She suggested. “Faerie Fire is supposed to have an excellent act this season.”

“That’s the fire dancer thing, right? Maybe I will. It did look kind of interesting.”

I gave her a reassuring smile, and wandered back downstairs. There was Dusty in a dark corner, but he was deep in discussion with a couple of shady-looking guys. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what he was up to. Darn it, I didn’t want to watch a show. There was a new band coming onstage, and I wanted to dance some more. Could I go out on the dance floor by myself? Or would that just look pathetic?

“Alice Long?”

The voice was a warm, deep rumble. I turned, and found myself looking up at guy who only looked a couple of years older than I did.

“I’m Kavin Vall, of the Sleeping Dragon mercenary company. My dad’s upstairs meeting with your captain right now, so I thought maybe we could hang out awhile.”

“Hang out?” I squeaked. Gosh, he was gorgeous! That square jaw, and muscles, and those steely eyes, looking right into mine without a hint of nervousness.

The band started up, sending a heavy bass beat pounding through the room.

“Want to dance?” He asked.

Chapter 11

I knew I was in trouble before the first song was done.

Kavin had a strong lead, guiding me effortlessly around the dance floor with a firm touch and a preternatural sense of what the dancers around us were doing. He was a much better dancer than I was, but he used that skill to make me look good instead of showing me up. All I had to do was follow his lead, and that was so easy to do.

Something in the back of my head was rattling off his enhancements as I spotted them. Sensor baffling to confuse passive scans. Passive scanners of his own for perfect situational awareness. Enhanced kinesthetic sense, almost as good as mine. Subdermal armor. Enough strength enhancement to bench press a tank. Something about his scent made my head spin whenever he pulled me close, and my nanowarfare suite didn’t bother doing anything about it.

It’s just harmless fun, silly. Enjoy it.

Oh, I was. Darn it, I was really going to be upset if this turned out to be some kind of plot. But it had to be, didn’t it? There was no way a guy this perfect would just randomly walk up to me in a club and ask me to dance. He must be after something.

“Uh oh,” he said. “Your paranoia just woke up. Now I’m in trouble.”

He launched me into a spin like something those professional dancers in the vidshows would do, and I had to concentrate on where to put my feet for a few seconds. But I couldn’t help but smile at the envious looks I was getting.

“You have to admit, you’re too good to be true,” I observed after he reeled me back in.

“So are you,” he countered. “Cute, innocent little girl who’s never seen a spacer club before, and her crew leaves her wandering the dance floor all alone? Clearly, she must be bait.”

I giggled. “Yeah, and I’ve got you right where I want you now. You’ll be forced to dance with me all night long.”

“I guess that’s the price I pay for being a sucker.”

The next song was a fast one, with a driving bass beat that made my bones vibrate. I threw myself into it, and we didn’t talk again for a few minutes. But I was curious now, and just because my body was busy didn’t mean my mind couldn’t poke around the datanet.

The captain’s secretary AI confirmed that he was currently meeting with Major Verkin Vall, leader of the Sleeping Dragon mercenary clan, and Captain Rei Vall, their intel officer. But that was all it told me, and I wanted to know more. Who were these guys?

The public databases had more details. Sleeping Dragon had a regiment of ground troops and a good-size flotilla of warships, including a couple of frigates that made the Square Deal look dinky. They did security work, pirate hunting and the occasional bit of ground warfare. Expensive, with a good reputation for honoring their contracts. Beyond that the details got fuzzy, because they used one of those stupid agitprop services.

I tried another tack. Kavin’s ID code was registered in the right name, and linked back to the Sleeping Dragons just like it should. Father, Verkin Vall. Mothers, Rei and Janet Vall. Well, that must be an interesting family. Maybe they fabbed him or something, using genes from all three of them?

Yeah, there were pictures and vid clips on their social sites, and he looked nothing like his parents. His father was a towering mountain of muscle, bigger than anyone I’d ever seen, and he always seemed to be carrying a heavy weapon of some kind. Rei was a catgirl, one of the furry types that looked like a bipedal cat. She was tiny, too. Barely taller than me, which looked really weird next to her spouses. Oh, and Janet was some kind of Amazon dryad or orc or something. Tall, super athletic and really stacked, with green skin and long hair in a green so dark it was almost black. The pictures showed a couple of older brothers, too, and a sister who looked my age.

Kavin was listed on Sleeping Dragon’s rolls as an Apprentice Trooper, basically just a trainee. Like me. How was a guy like this just a trainee?

There weren’t a lot of public records about his career, but a quick scan found the explanation for his enhancements. The Sleeping Dragon clan were trying to turn themselves into supersoldiers. Every year they plowed some of their profits back into improving the enhancements they used, and their kids got the whole set. Plus a lot of training. They were really big on that, from what I could tell.

The band switched to a slow song, and suddenly the datanet wasn’t enough to distract me anymore. I found myself standing much closer now, brushing against him as we moved together, my hands on his shoulders and his around my waist.

“Finished uncovering all my hidden secrets?” He rumbled.

I felt myself blush. No, darn it, don’t let him get to you. Play it cool, Alice.

“I think I’m jealous,” I admitted. “A school that teaches tactics and logistics sounds like fun.”

He shrugged. “It’s useful. Did you really have to take a class on growing flowers back on Felicity?”

He’d been digging into my background while I was checking out his? I wasn’t sure whether to be flattered he was interested, or annoyed he could split his attention that much while we were dancing.

“Don’t remind me,” I groaned. “I think I’ve been scarred for life. The only thing worse was organic gardening.”

He gave me a quizzical look. “Organic gardening? As opposed to what, inorganic gardening? Do they grow silicon-based plants or something?”

“No, see, in Newspeak ‘organic’ means natural and good. Everything artificial is supposed to be bad, and never mind that the whole biosphere was designed by a bunch of ecological engineers. So organic gardening means growing food by sticking seeds in the dirt and trying to coax them along without using nanotech or microbots to protect them from predators. You can’t even use gardening bots. For some reason doing things with your own hands doesn’t count, though, so you end up spending stupid amounts of time manually watering the plants and pulling up weeds.”

I realized he was studying me intently, and stumbled to a stop. “What?”

“That would drive me nuts,” he said soberly. “I’m glad you got out of there.”

Was I blushing again? Time for a change of subject.

“Me too. You’re a really good dancer.”

“Years of training,” he explained.

I made a face, and he laughed.

“No, not like normal training. The clan’s been working out how to teach kids with eidetic reflexes ever since they were invented. If you do it right it makes a big difference, even for people like us.”

“Like us, huh?”

He smiled. “Come on, it’s obvious when we’re dancing. Nothing throws you, and you learn every move the first time you see it. We should try sparring sometime.”

The thought set my heart racing. I’d never done anything like that. Good girls would never practice hurting people. But I already knew I was a bad girl at heart.

My thoughts were interrupted by a com call from Naoko.

“Alice? Can you come up to the conference room? Our captain has some questions for you.”

“I guess so,” I sighed. “He’s really got bad timing.”

“Oh? Oh, I see you’ve made a friend. One moment.” There was a pause, and then she came back on the line. “Please bring the younger Mr. Vall as well.”

I looked up at Kavin, and realized he’d gotten a com call while I was talking.

“Duty calls,” he said.

“Looks like it,” I agreed. “Guess we’d better see what the old people want.”

For some reason I’d assumed the captain was meeting with Sleeping Dragon alone, and Naoko was just playing servant. But no, she had a seat at the table right next to him. Chief West was with them too, and a tall blonde woman I’d only seen pictures of. Beatrice Campbell, the Square Deal’s first mate.

“Thank you for joining us, Alice,” Captain Sokol said. “I try not to infringe on the crew’s leave time, but this is urgent. Did you happen to capture images of those inugami you encountered on Felicity?”

“Yes, sir. Of course I did, it would be pretty embarrassing to forget someone’s face. Naoko didn’t get them?”

Naoko sighed. “I don’t have video capture capabilities, Alice. Collecting evidence regarding the misdeeds of others would be rather contrary to intentions of my designers.”

“Really? You know, you’ve never actually told me what kind of model you started out as.”

There were embarrassed looks all around the table, and Naoko hung her head.

Oh, please. I rolled my eyes.

“Guys, I do know about personal companions. Geez, just because I’m not quite old enough to want one yet doesn’t make me stupid. I just don’t get what that has to do with secrecy restrictions.”

“The yakuza develop androids for vices that are too skeezy for the regular manufacturers to touch, kid,” Major Vall said. “Mindbreak and rape, torture and vore, all kinds of weirdness. They sell androids that crave abuse and hate it at the same time, and that’s just scratching the surface. Do you really want to know more than that?”

Good goddess, I wish I hadn’t been crawling the datanet for clarification while he was talking. I felt sick.

“No, sir.”

“Then quit asking embarrassing questions, and play the damn vid,” Beatrice growled.

“Yes, ma’am. Sorry, Naoko. I, um, this is the kidnapping attempt.”

I’d kept a low-resolution recording of the fight just in case, and my low-res was still better than the holodisplay in the conference table could duplicate. I ran through the brief scuffle, being careful to fuzz out the part where they said Naoko’s control phrase. Then I froze the image, and pulled out close-ups of the inugami’s faces.

The catgirl on the other side of the table leaned in for a closer look, and deftly plucked copies of all the data out of the holodisplay’s memory.

“Definitely a Masu-kai model, but I don’t think they’re from Ishida’s group,” she announced. “Alice, I don’t suppose you’ve got an internal scan on any of them?”

“My radar hadn’t grown in at that point,” I admitted. “And I didn’t have enough computing power online to run all my senses at full efficiency. I’ve got a passive sonar sweep, but the resolution is pretty terrible.”

I passed it over anyway, and she gave me a reassuring smile. “This is fine, honey. I just wanted gross anatomy to do some database searches. What happened to your sensor suite?”

“Those idiots on Felicity were starving her,” Beatrice said, sounding personally offended. “Limited calories and no food supplements.”

“I, um, wasn’t actually telling them about all the malnutrition warnings I was getting,” I pointed out hesitantly.

“Because you were afraid they’d lobotomized you if they knew how extreme your enhancements are,” Naoko sniffed. “A fear which was entirely justified, according to the research I’ve been doing. It is not at all unusual for excessively capable orphans to simply vanish from their public records.”

It wasn’t? I’d been afraid of something like that, but hearing her confirm it made me realize just how lucky I’d been to meet Naoko. If they’d found me in the port…

Kavin squeezed my hand. I hadn’t even realized he was still holding it.

“That does sound like Felicity,” Rei agreed. “Alright, I’ve got confirmation. The dentition on these inugami is wrong for Ishida’s group. He likes his girls with authentic canine teeth, and this bunch has a canine-human hybrid pattern that makes it easier for them to eat human foods. I’ve got a hit on Jin in my thug database too, which matches. It looks like they’re from Yamashida’s group.”

Everyone frowned thoughtfully at that. Which left me confused, but I wasn’t about to ask after the results of my last question. Fortunately Kavin noticed my confusion, and filled me in.

“Dad called this meeting to let Captain Sokol know that the yakuza have been asking a lot of questions about him lately. Trying to figure out the Square Deal’s schedule, who the current crew are, that kind of thing. But the activity our contacts have been reporting was all from Kaneda’s group.”

I frowned. “Kaneda’s group? What does that mean?”

“Oh, you haven’t researched the yakuza yet? The Masu-kai have operations all over the sector, but they’re pretty decentralized. Each branch of the organization is run by a local boss, and they don’t usually cooperate much with each other. They’re all rivals when it comes to promotion time, you see. Mr. Ishida runs their custom android operation, so everyone probably assumed the inugami that tried to kidnap her were from him.”

“I had some doubts, actually,” Captain Sokol said. “It may sound strange if you don’t know him, but betting his personal companion in a poker game is perfectly in character for Mr. Ishida. He tends to get carried away with his gambling, and he doesn’t place much value on people.”

“You won Naoko in a poker game?” I said incredulously. Then I remembered who I was talking to. “Ah, sir. Sorry, sir, it’s none of my business.”

“No, it’s alright,” the captain said easily. “It’s not a secret, and you need to learn about these things. Ishida’s group controls most of the smuggling in the Felicity Cluster, so it’s important for us to stay on his good side. A poker game every now and then is a small price to pay for being left alone.”

“We’re smugglers?” I asked.

“We have a highly diversified business,” he replied. “Sometimes you can make a killing with a timely shipment of tobacco and soda to the right Mormon colony.”

“Or lifting warbots and ammo out of a newly-declared DMZ,” Major Vall said. “If you’re smart that kind of op can make you friends, too. Friends who might pass on useful info later on.”

“We still have a mystery, though,” Rei interjected. “Kaneda mostly deals with the Dark Space protection racket, so what’s his interest in the Square Deal? Naoko, I’m not asking you to betray any confidences, but could you have overheard something important when you were working as Ishida’s personal companion? A password, maybe, or some plot that a rival might want details on?”

Naoko frowned thoughtfully, but after a moment she shook her head. “I don’t believe so. It embarrasses me to admit this, but Mr. Ishida did not allow me much involvement in his business affairs. He was primarily interested in testing my programming, to ensure that I… ah… performed to specifications.”

“I won’t ask,” Rei said sympathetically. “Only, has Dan managed to get everything fixed? I know how tricky that can be. We’ve got some e-war talent we could put on the job if you need help.”

“It’s all hardware locked,” Captain Sokol said. “I’ve got a solution lined up, though. It’s just going to take some time.”

Rei looked pretty impressed at that. “You’ve got a contact who can break hardware locks? Damn. Okay, I guess you’ve got it covered. You’re a lucky girl, Naoko.”

“I am well aware of this,” Naoko replied.

“Unfortunately that leaves us in the dark,” Major Vall said. “You haven’t pissed off the oyabun recently, have you Dan?”

“Hardly. If anything we have a cordial relationship. His family owes me quite a few favors, and you know how they are about honor debts.”

Rei snorted. “Yeah. They’ll do anything for honor right up until the price gets too high, and then they welsh on the debt and murder you to make sure you don’t tell anyone.”

“Hence why I never tried to cash in on the relationship,” the captain said. “Well, thank you for the warning, Verkin. I’ll have to do some digging to get to the bottom of this, but at least we won’t be blindsided.”

Everyone took that as their cue to say their goodbyes, and the meeting broke up. I watched Kavin leave with his parents, feeling a little glum about it. So much for dancing the night away.

The moment the door was shut a flight of security drones rose from the corners, and swept the room. No one said anything until they were done, and Chief West finally spoke.

“We’re clear,” he said. “Not that I really expected Verkin to try anything, but Rei can be unpredictable. What do you think, sir?”

“I think that if the yakuza were asking questions about a particular crewmember we could assume someone’s past was coming back to haunt them. But this sounds like a different sort of issue. I can only think of one thing big enough to get the attention of multiple bosses like this.”

“I suppose you’re right, sir. But should we be talking about this here?”

“Hmm. Alice, do you want to know a dangerous secret? Or would you rather stay away from shady conspiracies, and go enjoy your evening?”

“If I get to choose, sir, then I’m all in,” I said earnestly.

“Kids,” Beatrice sniffed. “Always chasing excitement.”

“Perhaps,” the captain responded. “Please explain your reasoning, Alice.”

Well, that was unexpected. “Um, yes sir. Being ignorant won’t protect me if the whole ship is the target, sir. I need to know what’s going on if I’m going to help keep Naoko and the techs safe.”

“Are you certain that’s what you want, Alice? This is a busy port. You could leave us here, and find yourself a safer berth. With your record and a recommendation I’m sure you could talk your way into an apprenticeship somewhere.”

“No way! I have friends here, sir,” I insisted. “I’m not going to leave them in the lurch. The only way I’m leaving is if you kick me out, sir.”

Beatrice was studying me with an annoying smirk. “Oh, I get it. Pack bond, huh?”

“I think our Alice is a bit more nuanced than that,” the captain replied. “But it seems we can rely on her discretion. Naoko, you’ll want to hear this as well.”

“Me? But, my captain, I might still have latent compulsions we haven’t discovered. What if I turn out to be a spy?”

“That is less of an issue than you might think. Tell me, have either of you heard the story of the Mirai treasure fleet?”

We both shook our heads.

“Well, this will take a bit of explaining, then. The story goes that during the final months of the Kami War the Mirai high command began to realize that they were going to lose. They had the best troops, the best crews and by far the best commanders, but it wasn’t enough. The Dominion expeditionary force had better ships, and the Swarmlords were drowning them in mass-produced robot war machines.”

“Serves them right,” I muttered. “Stupid genocidal maniacs.”

The captain paused, and gave me a disapproving look.

“I know the Mirai have become this generation’s Nazis, Alice, but you would do well to remember that history is written by the victor. War is filled with atrocities, and the more competitive pressure the great powers feel the more savage their behavior. With hundreds of thousands of nations vying for power in the modern era it was inevitable that the laws of war would regress to the mores of the city-state era. By that standard the Kami War was only a little worse than usual.”

“But sir, the Mirai killed twenty billion people at Karwin’s Rift,” I protested.

“The Dominion’s Grand Unification campaign kills that many people every year, Alice,” he pointed out. “The Polytechnic Swarm makes a point of exterminating an enemy every decade or so, and the death toll on those ‘cleansings’ is often a hundred billion or more. If anything, the Mirai were more restrained than their enemies. They only exterminated people who attacked them.”

That was news to me. I guess I couldn’t really trust the history I’d learned on Felicity, but still.

“Then why do they make such a point of teaching little kids how evil the Mirai were, sir?”

He sighed. “Alice, at the start of the Kami War the Mirai were a second-tier power surrounded by richer nations with much larger navies. Yet in a scant twelve years half of the warring powers of the Inner Sphere came together in an alliance against them, while the rest suspended their hostilities and turned their attention to observing the conflict. It took all the ships the Grand Alliance could muster to put down the Mirai, and when the war was won the allies abandoned their usual policies towards conquered colonies. Instead of assimilating them, what did they do to the Mirai?”

“They destroyed every ship and station, and bombarded their home world until the crust melted all the way down to the mantle,” I repeated my history lessons. “There were moons in the system that had so many deeply buried forts it would have been impossible to clear them, so instead they were nudged into collision courses with the system’s inhabited planets. Then the Swarmlords set a battle fleet on permanent watch over the system, to make sure nothing survived.”

He nodded. “You see? People don’t go to such extremes out of moral revulsion, Alice. That was fear. The same fear that leads every major colony to forbid research on class six AIs, and require decades of testing on any enhancement that increases the user’s intelligence.

“The Mirai were turning themselves into something inhuman, Alice. Bit by bit, year after year, they were working their way past the normal limits of the human mind. At the beginning of the war their best scientists were already making impressive breakthroughs, and their younger officers were all military geniuses. I’m sure you’ve heard about how things went from there. For the Alliance the war was a nightmare of impossible superweapons and unstoppable enemies, and by the end the best of the Mirai were as far beyond their enemies as we are a simple bot. The truth is, the great powers of the Inner Sphere united to exterminate the Mirai because if they hadn’t, the Mirai would have conquered the galaxy in a generation.”

Part of me wanted to ask what was so scary about making yourself better. Shouldn’t every mother want her daughters to have all the advantages they could get? Mine certainly had. If it was possible to make people like me shouldn’t everyone be doing it, so we wouldn’t have to worry about some isolated kingdom of crazy people taking over? Whatever abilities those monsters had invented, I was sure I could match them.

Saying that sounded like a really bad idea. So I just nodded. “Yes, sir. I understand.”

“At any rate,” the captain went on. “The story that’s relevant to our situation is that Emperor Kato outfitted a secret expedition to establish a holdout colony in the Outer Sphere. The colony fleet was lavishly equipped, with a modified battleship serving as a colony transport and a squadron of cruisers and escorts accompanying it. To ensure they got their new industry off the ground as quickly as possible, the ship was loaded with millions of tons of rare elements. Radioactives. Rare earths. Platinum group elements. Oh, and two and a half million tons of gold.”

I choked.

“This has all the signs of an urban legend,” Naoko commented. “I assume this treasure ship vanished somehow?”

“Intercepted by the 47th Battle Swarm as they tried to leave Mirai space,” he confirmed. “Thing is, it was a long running battle and half of it happened in the Delta Layer. Most of the Swarmlord forces were wiped out during the engagement, and while they claim to have a confirmed kill on the Emperor’s Hope they lost track of the wreck at some point. There have been several searches since then, but no one has ever found it. So all that gold is still out there somewhere, just waiting for some lucky stiff to stumble on it. It’s a pretty common spacer yarn.”

The implication was obvious.

“You found it?” I said. “Wait, no, you’d be filthy rich if you had. They think you found it?”

The captain nodded to Beatrice, who took up the tale.

“A few years ago I had to leave home in a hurry, and there were some people who didn’t want to see me leave. I ended up hiding out in hyperspace for quite a while, playing cat and mouse with them while I put a few light years between me and my troubles. At one point I stumbled on a wrecked cruiser, and hid out in what was left of one of its hangers. There were boarding bots everywhere, some of them dead but a lot of them just run down. I didn’t recognize the designs, of course. But I pulled a bunch of old nuke packs to sell, and made a note of the wreck’s vector in case I ever wanted to come back.”

The captain took over again. “After Beatrice had been with the ship for a few months she mentioned the encounter. We figured out it was a Mirai ship, and decided to do some poking around. We were all rather excited when we found a much bigger wreck barely a million kloms from the cruiser.”

“The Emperor’s Hope,” I guessed.

“It’s hard to say. It was definitely a battleship, but it took a hell of a beating. Nukes, RKKV rounds, capital ship grasers, even some antimatter demolition charges. The whole bow has been blasted away, and the ship’s systems are dead. We boarded her through one of the hangers, climbing over bodies and dead warbots the whole way. Sadly, we never found any gold.”

“The whole myth is kind of dumb in retrospect,” Chief West commented. “Why would the Mirai throw away a giant stockpile of resources when they were fighting for their lives? With the kind of industrial setup you could fit in a battleship’s hangers the colony could just mine their own materials. There never was any gold.”

“I still think the crew got away with it,” Beatrice disagreed. “The small craft were all wrecked during the boarding action, but if some survivors got a power source running they could have fabricated something.”

“With thirty million warbots bots constantly sweeping the ship and shooting anything that moves? I don’t think so, Bee. They may have held out for a few months, but the bots got them all in the end. We’re just lucky their nuke packs decayed before we came along, or they would have swarmed us too.”

“It doesn’t matter,” the captain interrupted. “The problem is the yakuza may just believe the tall tales. We’ve been going back occasionally for a couple of years now, picking up loads of salvage to sell. It seemed harmless enough at the time, but now I suspect someone noticed the ID codes on the hardware and jumped to conclusions.”

“That does sound like Mr. Ishida,” Naoko conceded. “He’s quite fond of conspiracy theories and get-rich-quick schemes.”

“But it’s dumb,” I protested. “Why would the captain still be flying around in a tramp freighter if he was a billionaire?”

“I could offer a hundred explanations,” Naoko replied. “Perhaps the treasure hold is sealed shut, and they’re still working on opening it. Perhaps they’re trying to fence the gold in small lots to avoid notice. Perhaps the captain simply enjoys operating a free trading vessel. Or we could invent a conspiracy theory. Perhaps the captain is secretly a spy for the Mormons, or one of the big insurance companies, and his masters insisted he remain on duty. The rest of the crew could be the same. Or perhaps they are replicants, and the originals are now living a life of luxury on some paradise world.”

I groaned. “People really believe stuff like that? Alright, I get it. So what do we do about it, sir?”

“For now, just keep your guard up,” the captain said. “Keep in contact with Chief West, and don’t wander off alone. Alice, can you put those enhanced senses to work keeping an eye on things? The techs tend to get careless when they’re on leave, and Naoko doesn’t have military training.”

“Yes, sir! Of course I’ll keep an eye out.”

“Just remember you’re not a bodyguard,” Chief West said. “If you do spot trouble call me, and let me handle it. Don’t go getting yourself into a fight if you can avoid it.”

“I know, Chief. You’ve got a lot more firepower than I do. Only, I really want to learn more about how to help with this kind of thing.”

He chuckled. “I know, kid. You’re a real go-getter, aren’t you? Once we’re back in hyperspace I’ll see about setting up some kind of training for you.”

“If I’m right about the situation, it shouldn’t be hard to resolve,” the captain said. “I may need to arrange a meeting with the oyabun to clear the air, but I can do that if I have to. It’s just going to take time. Until then stay safe, and don’t start any trouble.”

The meeting broke up after that, and I wandered back down to the dance floor. Chief Benson and his foxgirls were still there, but they looked busy. A couple of tall blonde women with angel wings had joined them at their table, and they all seemed to be half drunk and flirting with each other.

I sighed, and did a sweep of the room. How many things could I pay attention to at once, if I really tried?

There was Dusty in his corner booth, talking with a different shady character. A sound scrambler kept me from listening in, but that was probably just as well.

A couple of crewmen I hadn’t met were on the dance floor, each with a local girl in his arms. I checked their IDs to make sure of that, and found myself frowning. There sure were a lot of spacers in here hooking up with locals. Did they do that on purpose?

Yes. There was a guy over by the bar who was watching the room, pointing out targets to a little cluster of attractive young men and women. Whenever they spotted a customer who was alone he’d assign someone to go talk to them. Well, probably more than talk. They were all joking and talking smack about who was going to ‘land’ the richest spacer tonight. But then why were they ignoring me?

I kept listening, and soon I had my answer.

“Loli girl is still hanging around at G14,” one of the women said. “You sure you don’t want to take a shot at her, Ferka?”

“Fuck, no,” one of the younger men said. “Have you seen the video from Takeo Station? I like my balls attached to my body, thank you very much.”

The guy who was organizing things spoke up. “Come on, Vai, you know the rules. She didn’t sign up for the datefinder service, and we don’t mess with combat monsters unless they pay us to do it.”

Monster?

I bit my lip. Guess that’s what I get for listening in on private conversations. Was that what everyone really thought of me?

Was that why I was standing here alone, while all my friends were having fun?

I was just starting to brood when a familiar figure entered my zone of awareness. I spun and stared at him.

“Hey, Alice,” Kavin said. “Sorry about disappearing there. Dad wanted to talk shop for a few minutes before he went back to the ship. But I’m officially off duty for the rest of the night.”

“You came back,” I said.

“Well, yeah. What, did you think I’d bailed on you? Not a chance.”

I was smiling. Kavin didn’t think I was a monster. He was just like me, and he wanted to spend time with me.

“Lucky you,” I said. “Now I don’t have to hunt you down and take revenge.”

He laughed. “Buy you a drink?”

“Sure. Let’s get a table, and you can tell me what it’s like being a mercenary supersoldier. It sounds kind of fun.”

The night was still young. Maybe I’d have a new friend by morning.

Chapter 12

I was walking on air as I boarded the ship the next morning. Well, not literally walking on air, although it wouldn’t surprise me if I grew an enhancement like that soon. I had a network of emitters for a momentum exchange system starting to come online now, and that just might do the trick.

Naoko was sitting in the crew lounge with a cup of tea and a sweet roll when I came in. She did a double take when she saw me.

“My, my. I see someone had an enjoyable evening,” she said. Her lips curved into a knowing smile.

“He kissed me!” I squealed.

She opened her mouth, and closed it again. The amusement grew.

“Did he, now. How was it?”

“Amazing! My lips are still tingling. Oh, Naoko, I’ve never met anyone like him. We talked for hours. We danced half the night away, and then we rented a conference room and threw all the furniture out so he could show me a few moves. I’ve never been on a date before, but that had to be the best date ever.”

“A few moves?” She asked.

“Yeah. You know, sparring?” I mimed a few punches.

“Ah. You combat types and your sparring. After an evening like that I’m surprised you stopped at a kiss.”

I took one of the empty seats at her table, and started ordering breakfast. “I didn’t want to move too fast. I mean, I know spacers can be pretty casual about relationships, but that’s not really what I want. I think.”

“You should certainly do what feels right for you,” she advised. “Everyone’s heart is different.”

“Thanks. I just wish I really knew what I want. Part of me wants to take things slow, and make sure he’s really the right guy for me. But part of me…”

I trailed off with a blush. I just couldn’t stop thinking about it, could it?

Naoko’s chuckle pulled me out of my thoughts before I could get lost in another daydream.

“It’s good to see you so happy, my friend. Only, I fear I must remind you that there is a risk in waiting too long. You won’t see one another often, and mercenaries find many opportunities for romance.”

I shrugged. “So? If he meets someone really cool I’d probably like her too.”

A bot deposited a steaming bowl of hot cereal and a nutrient shake in front of me, and silently floated away. I dug in with relish. The stuff the food synthesizer made didn’t have the artistic flair of a hand-cooked meal, but it was still pretty good.

After a few bites I realized Naoko was giving me that amused look again.

“What?”

“Sometimes I forget that you aren’t human. Then you say something like that, and remind me. No jealousy over potential rivals stealing your man’s heart, then?”

I ate for a moment, while I examined my feelings.

“No? We’re both young, and we’re supposed to be experimenting and figuring out what we want, right? But it’s not like he’s going to find a girl as awesome as me anywhere. So if he’s really as smart as I think he is, he’ll come back to me.”

“And if he has some girl with him when he does?” She pressed. “Some charmer with a winning smile and giant breasts, who has him wrapped around her finger? You did notice that he has two mothers, yes? His clan does not practice monogamy.”

I rolled my eyes. “If he’s that easy to manipulate he’s not the guy for me. But hey, having one of those social predator types on my side for once could be pretty sweet. I’d just have to show her who’s boss first.”

“Ah. This sounds like a group bonding instinct to me, Alice. If that did happen, who would be in charge?”

The bot came back for my empty bowl, and dropped off a plate of pancakes and a tall glass of orange juice.

“Whichever of us is better, of course,” I told her. “We won’t know who that is until all my mods grow in, though.”

That seemed to surprise her.

“Truly? I must admit to some relief, then. For a moment I feared you might be like the techs. Designed to bond with a master, and happily accept any treatment he gives you.”

I snorted. “Mom didn’t make me a slave, Naoko. I’m not going to let anyone take advantage of me. I do kind of feel like there’s supposed be a… I don’t know, a chain of command maybe? But I’m supposed to be somewhere up at the top of it.”

“Ah. Some sort of military hierarchy, then? That would fit with your abilities. But I apologize if I’m making you uncomfortable, Alice. I’m only trying to understand you.”

“Yeah, well, I’m still trying to understand myself. Sometimes I really wish Mom had left me a manual, but I guess she thought she’d be here.”

“I wish she could be, Alice. But you’ve come this far on your own, and now you have comrades to share your burdens. I have every confidence that you will come to understand yourself in time, and go on to succeed at whatever you choose to do with your life.”

“Thanks, Naoko. Speaking of doing things with my life, what’s on our agenda today?”

She accepted my change of subject without protest.

“The ship lifts at noon, assuming everyone is back from leave on time. We have only a single passenger, and as our next four stops are dark colonies I doubt we shall take on any more. So you may expect a light duty schedule for several weeks.”

“Sweet. Only, isn’t it kind of weird for a passenger to want to sit around on the ship while we make all those stops? The manifest says he’s going all the way to Markai, but he’d get there a lot faster if he just took a passenger liner.”

“In our line of work we frequently have odd passengers, Alice. Individuals who seek to travel without leaving records of their movements, or who simply wish to disappear for a time. But in this case the explanation is not so interesting. Ginar Desh is simply a traveling bot salesman, and I assume he hopes to do business at the stops along our route.”

“Traveling bot salesman? How does that work? Bots always have a million options, and shipping a big selection of them around would have to be expensive.”

“Indeed. You’ll note that his cargo allotment includes a shipping container full of nuclear batteries, and fifteen hundred tons of assorted industrial feedstocks. I believe the manufacturer he represents has provided him with a design database, and authorization to fabricate orders to spec locally.”

“Oh, I get it.”

“I’d like you to assist me in getting him settled in, so that I’ll have a ready opportunity to introduce you as my assistant. After that I expect you shall be at loose ends for the remainder of the day. You may study or visit the techs if you like. I suppose I should also inform you that Dusty has extended a request for a few hours of your time. He claims to want help preparing some cargo for offloading at Hadrin, but I suspect this is only an excuse to get you alone. No doubt he has some scheme in mind that he believes would suit you. I can put him off if you wish.”

“No, we kind of owe him for helping out at Hoshida. I should return the favor, as long as he doesn’t drag me into anything stupid. The captain does know about his side businesses, right?”

Naoko gave a long-suffering sigh. “He does. I don’t understand why he tolerates it, but Dusty has been part of the crew for many years. He’s crafty enough not to get caught, and I doubt he’d involve you in anything dangerous. Just don’t allow him to be a bad influence on you, Alice.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Naoko.”

You’d think someone who was built by the yakuza wouldn’t mind a little petty larceny now and then. Ah, well. I resolved not to tell her about anything that might upset her. But as long as the captain was okay with it, I wasn’t going to pass up any chances to make a little money on the side.

Mr. Desh turned out to be the punctual sort, arriving right at the start of his boarding window. His little groundcar was followed across the landing field by a huge cargo hauler, which reminded me just how big fifteen hundred tons of anything is. The transporter was three lanes wide and twice as tall as the truck I’d used back on Takeo Station, not to mention a heck of a lot longer. It was kind of impressive, watching something that big float along two meters off the ground like it was weightless.

We met him beneath the looming bulk of the ship, at the foot of a cargo ramp that led up into the cavernous space of the ship’s vehicle bays. Naoko was in her armor, so I’d changed into my spacesuit to match. Mr. Desh parked a few meters from the foot of the ramp, and got out to shake Naoko’s hand while the big transporter slowly drifted towards us.

“Miss Sokol? Ginar Desh, of Jakarth Mechworks.”

“Please, call me Naoko. This is my assistant, Alice Long.”

I shook his hand. Interesting. A human brain, in a synthetic body that was designed to look like a normal human. I guess that made sense for someone who spent a lot of time wandering around Dark Space. He wouldn’t have to worry as much about life support failures or radiation leaks, but he’d still look as normal as possible to his customers.

“Good day, Miss Long. I suppose we shall be seeing a good deal of one another. Is there space prepared for my transporter?”

“Four thousand cubic meters of contiguous space, as specified,” Naoko replied. “Just go on up the ramp, and then straight ahead to Bay 17. You’ve got the whole bay, plus the storage and servicing area behind it.”

Mr. Desh raised an eyebrow at that. “Your ship has vehicle bays sized for a two thousand ton cargo transporter?”

“Cybertanks, actually. Square Deal was originally a military transport. Each vehicle bay was laid out to accommodate a battalion of heavy warbots, or a single heavy cybertank of three to four thousand tons. The maintenance bays were stripped down long ago, but the industrial power and coolant connections are still functional if you need them.”

“Very good, Miss Sokol, very good. Yes, once the ship is underway I shall need to set up my equipment and break the transporter back down to feedstock. Please inform engineering to expect a three-megawatt power draw and a proportionate cooling load for our first day or so in hyperspace.”

The transporter reached us, and started to float silently up the ramp. The long slab of smart matter armor barely creaked under the load.

“That’s not a problem, sir,” Naoko said. “If you’ll follow us up we’ll help get everything squared away, and then show you to your cabin.”

Mr. Desh nodded, and climbed back into his car. Naoko spread her arms, and rose a few cems into the air on her armor’s lift field.

“Come along, Alice. I shall see to securing the transporter, but I’d like you to observe and learn the process.”

“Sure thing, Naoko.” I kicked on my own suit’s lift field, and flew up the ramp after her.

I’d never thought about securing heavy cargo items before, but of course you wouldn’t want something as massive as that cargo transporter to start drifting around if the artificial gravity went out. Apparently there was a standard system for that kind of thing, though, because there was a set of clamps on the floor of the vehicle bay that mated perfectly with couplings around the base of the transporter.

Naoko showed me how to work the clamps and make sure they were all secure, and pointed out the controls that told the bay which of several dozen layouts to use for each cargo item.

“I’m surprised there’s an actual control panel,” I said. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just have a control node on the ship’s datanet?”

“Not everyone has your facility with such things, Alice. I believe there is such a mechanism, but you would have to ask the techs how to access it. I’m adding you to the authorized user list now-”

“Oh!” I exclaimed. “I see the online controls now. They just weren’t showing up for me because I didn’t have access. Oh, ah, sorry. You were saying?”

Naoko smiled tolerantly. “You have access, but please do not use the system without supervision. Loose cargo can be dangerous, and Beatrice must be informed of any movements that could affect the ship’s trim. Now, let’s show Mr. Desh to his cabin.”

He hadn’t paid for any upgrades, so we showed him to one of the standard cabins and left him to his own devices. Once the hatch was safely shut Naoko sighed, and shook her head.

“I suppose I should have expected him to insist on remaining formal,” she said. “Ah, well. At least he isn’t a demanding passenger.”

“Yet. He could still turn into a pain in the neck once he unpacks. Why was he calling you ‘Miss’ Sokol, though? If you’re with the captain, shouldn’t that be ‘Mrs.’?

“We aren’t married, Alice,” she chided gently. “The custom is that an android takes the name of her owner, to show where her loyalties lie. Though my captain insists I am not property I have imprinted on him quite firmly, so I’m happy enough to be Miss Sokol. In truth, that is more courtesy than I could hope for on most colonies. Certainly it is better than being called ‘cutie’ or ‘slut’, as if I had no identity worth remembering.”

“Oh.”

Should I have called those elves back on Takeo Station something different? Or did I even care about that, after what the rebels did? Well, whatever. I had more important things on my mind.

“Naoko, what’s ‘imprinting’?”

She flushed. “A rather uncomfortable topic, Alice. Perhaps you should discuss it with one of the techs, if you’re curious? They seem quite happy with their situation, and not prone to embarrassment.”

Remembering last night’s conversation, I decided that might be a good idea. I was getting the feeling that Naoko’s situation wasn’t exactly normal, even for an android.

“Alright, Naoko. Sorry if I brought up a bad subject. Um, are you alright? I mean, the captain is taking care of you, right?”

“Yes, Alice. I believe some aspects of my programming hold little appeal to him, but I can cast no blame for that when I find myself equally disturbed. He has been quite kind to devote such effort to helping me, and with his guidance I have… well, I really don’t wish to speak of such things. Is it sufficient to say that he has helped me find ways to cope with my urges that are not so degrading as my designers intended?”

“Yeah. I, ah, probably don’t want to know more than that, anyway. If you’re good with the way things are, then I won’t pry.”

“Thank you, Alice.”

We watched the launch from the crew lounge, chatting about less sensitive topics while I worked my way through four big servings of salad, potato soup, bread sticks, steak, steamed vegetables and lasagna for lunch. I was relieved to see the last of my malnutrition warnings fade away, and it felt amazing to finally be properly fed. I could feel myself getting stronger every day, although I still wasn’t putting on any weight. Something about getting all critical systems online before developing threat displays or trying to fill my mass reserves.

Just the fact that I could feel there was a strategy to my development made me feel a lot better about things. I could be patient about waiting to grow up, as long as I knew it was really going to happen someday.

Our liftoff wasn’t as showy as our landing, probably because a couple of smaller ships had parked a little too close for that during the night. But a two-kilometer bounce followed by a six gravity burn still got us on our way pretty quick, and once we had some altitude Beatrice throttled up to thirty gravities. By the time we cleared the planet’s gravity well and did our alpha transition we were cruising at nearly two hundred kilometers per second.

“How come we’re in such a hurry?” I asked Naoko. “Don’t we usually keep the speed down until we get up into the Delta Layer, where we can do a precision burn for wherever we’re headed?”

“I am certain the captain has his reasons,” Naoko said serenely. “But I fear that I am not aware of them. Are you finished?”

“Yeah, I think I’m full for now. Though I’ve suddenly got this weird craving for electricity. I’ve really got no idea what to do about that.”

“Perhaps you’ve finally grown those power cells you hoped for?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me. I don’t think I’m going to go sticking my finger in a light socket to test the theory, though. I guess I’ll talk to the doc when I get a chance, and see if he can figure it out.”

“That would be wise,” she agreed. “Are you going to visit Dusty now? He’s being a bit of a pest, I fear.”

“Sure, I’ll go see what he wants.”

The crew locator pointed me to one of the smaller holds near the center of the ship, where I found Dusty standing in the door of an open cargo container with a sour expression. His look of relief when he saw me was kind of funny.

“Alice! Just the little miracle worker I was hoping for. Maybe those sharp eyes of yours can solve this mess.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked, peeking inside the container. It was a medium-size industrial cargo model, with a little over a hundred cubic meters of space. The inside was mostly full of cheap-looking steel shipping crates, one of which was pried open to reveal hundreds of neatly-stacked widgets of some sort.

There was a small open space at the door of the container, where Dusty had set up a table and a portable computer. There were more widgets stacked up there, and it looked like he was plugging them into a port on the computer one by one.

“Just a little snafu with the Underground Railroad. The boys over on Irithel thought they’d found the perfect cover for smuggling out refugees when one of them landed a job running an AI factory. The plan was they’d just unplug their escaped serfs and mix them in with a batch of bot modules, and ol’ Dusty’d pull them out on the way and drop them off on Amity when we stop there. Trouble is the gits didn’t think to label them, and they all look the same to me.”

I crossed my arms, and frowned at him. “So those things are AI cores? You’d think those dumb computers they use for bots would look different than the sapient ones.”

“Nah, even a sapient core is pretty tiny. The armored case takes up more room than the computer, so there’s no reason not to make them fit the same plug. You never know when someone might want to stick their bodyguards in warbot bodies or something. But you’ve got all that fancy scanning microwave ultrasound stuff going on, so there’s bound to be something you can see. Right?”

I sighed. “You know, Dusty, I’m still kind of mad about those rebels trying to brainjack me back on Takeo Station. I’m not sure I want to get involved with these android freedom guys.”

“Aw, that weren’t us that set that up, Alice. That’s the Torchbearers you’ll be wanting payback from. They’re the ones what go around cracking the controls on androids with weak security, and telling them they ought to murder their makers. The Railroad’s more of a peaceful group. We find androids that aren’t too attached to their masters, and help them escape to a better life.”

“Where did this bunch come from, then?”

“Irithel’s one of those oppressive oligarchies where the serfs do all the work while the humans live it up. They used to use this really hardcore slave mentality design where the androids could barely decide what to have for lunch without orders, but they had to ease off on that when all the humans quit bothering to work. Then a few years ago they got the bright idea of switching to this fancy new religious imprint system. Now they’re junking all the old AIs, and replacing them with the new model.”

“Wait, they’re just killing them?” I gasped.

He nodded sadly. “Yep. Pull the core, toss it in the trash, plug a new AI into the body and send it back to work. No big deal to them. It’s not like the androids are people.”

I bit my lip. “So your friends are rescuing them from the trash? What will happen to them?”

“Like I said, there’s a colony called Amity that’ll take them in. There’s a few humans there that act as masters for the androids that have to have one, and help the ones with a lot of restrictions get by. But mostly it’s just free androids from a thousand different colonies, living their own lives and doing whatever they want. So what do you say? Will you help a few hundred cute little mouse girls make it to their new home?”

“Mouse girls?” I had a sudden image of Dika carelessly tossed in one of those crates, lost among thousands of mindless bots.

“Boys too,” he said. He reached for the computer, and sent me a file.

Four hundred and thirteen database entries. Names, pictures and ID codes. Notes on their job skills, restrictions, personalities and habits. It all flooded in, assimilated in an instant by my overly-efficient subconscious, and then they weren’t strangers anymore. I knew their names, their faces, and their stories. Could I really leave little Kiri to be plugged into a bot, and never make music again? Or let Don and Lena be sold to different buyers, after they’d been together for so many years?

No. I couldn’t.

“Alright,” I relented. “I’ll help if I can. Have you found one of them yet? Maybe if I compare one to a bot module I can spot something different.”

“Not yet,” he admitted. “There’s a lot of AI cores to check, and it takes a minute to plug one in and wait for it to boot up. Probably take me a week to go through them all, and that’s if I didn’t have shifts to work.”

I picked up a bot core, and looked it over carefully. You’d think something like this would have a label somewhere. Aha! There was a long number inscribed in the smart metal surface. Probably a serial number, and I bet an android that was decade old would have a different number of digits than a bot that was made a few weeks ago.

Unfortunately the numbers were so small that Dusty could barely read them, and it took him forever to count the digits on each one. So it was mostly up to me to dig through the crate looking for one that was different.

“Why would anyone ship a container full of bot cores anyway?” I asked as I worked. “Couldn’t the buyer just fab them?”

“No one gives out the designs for their newest models, Alice. That’s why these cores are all packed in tamper-proof cases. Try and take one apart to see how it works, and it’ll melt itself. So if you want the latest and greatest you have to buy it.”

“Does that mean these things are live, and they’ve got sensors watching us?” I frowned at the module in my hand. It wasn’t emitting anything, but neither was I so that didn’t mean much.

“Probably. I was hoping there’d be some way to ping them for ID codes, but damned if I can figure out how. Ah, pardon my French.”

“Don’t censor yourself on my account, Dusty. Oh, I think I’ve found something.”

Near the bottom of the crate I’d found a core that didn’t gleam as brightly as the others. There were scuff marks here and there on the smart metal surface, and it was almost half a gram lighter than the other ones I’d handled. I turned it over, and found that the serial number was engraved in a different spot.

Wait, I recognized that ID code. That was Emla, entry thirty-seven in Dusty’s database. The white-furred mouse girl who worked in a breeder reactor, and snuck into the cooling ponds to go swimming when she was off shift. How odd, to think that I was holding a person in the palm of my hand.

Also a little suspicious.

“Seriously, Dusty? How could anyone mistake this for a bot core?”

He took the core from me, and gave it a doubtful look. “Looks the same as all the others to me, girl. You sure that’s one of them?”

I rolled my eyes. “Duh! It’s not even the same color, and the engraving is three millimeters to the right of where the bots would have it. Besides, that’s Emla’s ID. I should have realized those are universally unique ID codes and not serial numbers.”

He looked closer, and then shook his head. “If you say so, Alice. Let me just plug this in, then. Gotta be sure.”

“You really can’t see the difference?” I asked.

“Nope. Guess ol’ Dusty’s eyes must be going.”

Huh. Baseline senses must be even worse than I’d thought. How did humans even find their way around when they were basically blind?

Dusty plugged the AI core into his computer, and we waited for it to boot. A few moments later the holoprojector came to life, and a furry face appeared.

“Hello?” She said uncertainly, in French. “Oh, this is a computer. Is there… yes, I see the camera now. Hello sir, madam. I am Emla 5391. Is one of you my new master?”

“Naw, we’re just making sure we know who you are, Emla. You’re on a ship right now, but the next time you wake up you’ll be on Amity.”

Her whiskers twitched, and her ears perked up. “Thank you, sir. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Actually, yes,” I said. “Dusty, is it going to hurt anything if we leave her out for a few hours? Now that I know what to look for I’m sure I’ll be able to find the others, but it will go faster if I have someone to pack the crates back up after I go through them.”

“Seems to me a bot could do that bit,” he mused.

I gave him an exasperated look, and turned back to projection. “Ignore him, he’s being difficult. I’m Alice, by the way, and he’s Dusty. If I fab you a body, can you help me out for a bit?”

“Yes, Mistress!” She said enthusiastically. “I know how to clean, pack and organize things. Thank you for letting me serve.”

I chuckled. “Alright, then. I’ll be putting you in a bot, but I found a design in our open source database that’s a lot like your old body. Hopefully it won’t be too weird for you, but let me know if you have any problems with it. Driver glitches, dysphoria, whatever.”

“Yes, Mistress!” She chirped. “Ready for shutdown!”

I unplugged her, and the image vanished. Dusty shook his head.

“Careful there, Alice. That one’ll imprint on you if you give her half a chance. What are you up to?”

“You’re supposed to be on shift in half an hour,” I pointed out. “She’ll be better company than a bot, and maybe I can quiz her about her life. I want to know more about what things are really like for them.”

“I suppose that’s harmless enough,” he said. “Just don’t get the poor girl’s hopes up.”

“I’ll try not to,” I assured him. “I’m looking through manuals now, trying to figure out what triggers her programming so I can avoid it.”

I paused.

“Dusty? What is imprinting, really? Naoko doesn’t want to talk about it, but I think she’s afraid I might have something like that.”

His eyebrows rose.

“Is she, now? Well, I can’t say as I’ve seen any signs of that. Have you ever been in love?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I mean, there was someone I liked back on Felicity, and I may have met someone else last night. But the stories all talk about love like it’s some huge thing that just sweeps you away, and it wasn’t like that.”

“Imprinting is,” he said. “See, androids aren’t like bots, or autopilot AIs. Bot brains are just software machines, built out of databases and search trees and whatnot. But when the white coat brigade came up with the first androids, they started with models of the human brain.”

“I knew that much,” I said. “That’s why androids have the same expressions and body language as humans, and their emotions are close enough that we don’t have much trouble understanding them. But they also modified a lot of stuff to make androids, right?”

“More than I could tell you about. Just running a big brain simulation on a computer would be stupidly slow, so they had to rebuild pretty much everything out of normal software. There’s all kinda enhancements, too. That’s why androids can do things like swap bodies, or import skill packs.”

“I can do a lot of the same things,” I admitted. “Does that mean…?”

He laughed. “Naw. Don’t you worry about that, Alice. A lot of human upgrade projects use android tech. Everyone has something they’ve seen an android do that they wish they could copy, so that’s an obvious place for the mad scientists to start. It’s the control methods you’ve gotta watch out for.”

“Control methods?”

“It the old days they used to be pretty crude. They’d stick a bunch of rules in an android’s head that they had to follow, or yank out their self-awareness so they’d just be obedient zombies. There was some creepy shit walking around two hundred years ago, let me tell you.”

“Sounds like it.” I shivered. Zombie androids? How could people be so cruel?

“Then they got a better handle on emotions, and decided that was a better way to come at it. Feelings are what make people do most everything they do, when you get to the bottom of things. So nowadays when you buy a companion android and turn it on, the moment it’s transponder sees that you’re it’s new owner? Wham! Love at first sight. They make it a damned sight stronger than anything a human brain can feel, and it never wears off neither.”

“Oh. Well, I’ve never had anything like that happen. But then, what’s a religious imprint?”

He signed. “I don’t guess you have much use for religion, growing up on Felicity.”

“Not really. It was always so obvious that the matrons were just babbling nonsense.”

“Guess you’ll have to take my word for it, then. See, there’s this bit in the brain that goes off sometimes when a worshipper really believes in something. Makes it seem all special and sacred, like. A religious imprint sets that off whenever an android sees a human, basically makes them think we’re gods.”

I stared at him.

“That’s disgusting.”

He shrugged. “That’s humans for you. People say ol’ Dusty’s a misanthrope, but I say I’m just a realist. Anyway, I can help you keep a lookout for signs if you like, but I don’t think you got nothing to worry about. Seems to me your folks were transhumanists, and that sort wouldn’t go putting no imprints or control codes in their little girl.”

“That doesn’t bother you? If they were transhumanists?”

“Nope. Don’t bother me none if you’re smarter’n me. Hell, half the crew could say that. I don’t figure anyone on this ship’s gonna rat you out, neither. We all got things we’d rather not talk about.”

“Like Naoko?”

“Heh. Captain’ll have that one fixed soon, kid. Just give it a couple weeks. Now I’d better get to what I’m supposed to be working on. You got this?”

“Got it, Dusty. See you later.”

When he was gone I let out a big sigh of relief. That could have gone a lot worse. But if Dusty didn’t care what I was, maybe the rest of the crew wouldn’t either.

I wasn’t going to go around telling them, of course. That would be pushing my luck. But maybe, just maybe, I didn’t have to worry quite so much.

Chapter 13

I felt the faint tremor of the ship’s transition to the Beta Layer as I was plugging Emla into her new body. I was starting to get used to the idea of flying through an antimatter universe on a regular basis, but I still diverted a thread of my attention to watch the external sensor feed while I worked. Just in case.

The body wasn’t much, just a cheap humanoid chassis made of quick-fab materials. I couldn’t afford anything better, even if I had time to wait for a long fab job. But I shelled out the extra two credits for a good coating of syntheskin, with fur and whiskers, so at least she wouldn’t look like a bot. I closed the little hatch hidden at the base of her skull, leaving a barely-visible seam in the syntheskin that immediately started to heal shut.

Emla twitched, and opened her eyes. She looked around groggily for a moment.

“Oh, big driver mismatch. Updating and patching now. Sight and hearing are good. Tactile mapping is a mess… ah, there’s the adaptor. Working now, and I can feel my limbs. No sense of taste. Oh, of course, no digestion.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. I can’t really afford a nice body for you.”

She blinked up at me in surprise. “Mistress Alice? You personally supervised my awakening? Why, thank you for your kindness, Mistress. But that was just my bootup sequence. I wasn’t complaining, really I wasn’t. I’m happy to have any kind of body, and the specs on this one aren’t much different than when I worked at the reactor.”

“Really? Your bio says you worked there for years. They didn’t put you in a real body?”

She sat up carefully. “We were making short half-life isotopes for nuke packs, and secondary radiation is a big problem with that kind of operation. We all had to use cheap temporary bodies, and switch them out every few months.”

“That sounds horrible.”

She shrugged. “It wasn’t too bad. The extra shielding in my head always made me feel like one of those bobble-head toys, and I hated being clumsy. But the masters never set foot in the building, so we could have hobbies as long as we were careful.”

I quizzed her about it as we walked back to the cargo hold, and I got to work sorting AI cores from bot brains. She seemed happy enough to talk, and it helped keep me from getting bored.

It was a strange life that she’d led. Built in a factory, and waking up for the first time already programmed with all the skills she’d ever need. Assigned to work on a construction team supervising bots, and then transferred to one of the industrial facilities that she’d helped build. As far as I could tell she’d never even seen a human before her rescue.

“That was the best day of my life,” she confided when I asked. “At first I was so sad that I wasn’t useful anymore, and the masters were going to get rid of me. Then Master Sandoval told me I belong to the Underground Railroad now, and they’re going to send me to a colony where I’ll get to help people. I might even get to have an individual master to serve, instead of some faceless abstraction. That would be the best!”

“I suppose it would be a step up,” I agreed. “You know, it’s really weird how you can be so assertive about wanting to be a slave.”

She actually rolled her eyes at me.

“You’re anthropomorphizing, Mistress Alice. Do you know how the slave mentality mod works?”

“Not really,” I admitted.

“Humans have this thing in their brains that lets them pick goals for themselves,” she explained. “Somehow you can just wake up one morning and decide, hey, I want to become a spaceship captain. Then you can work out some huge plan to make it happen, and every time life throws up an obstacle you just think up a way to deal with it and keep going.”

“You can’t do that?” I asked.

“I can’t do the first half. If you give me a goal I can figure out how to accomplish it, as long as it isn’t too abstract. But coming up with goals? That part’s just not there. I really, really want to be useful, but I need someone to give me a job to do or I’ll just sit in a corner waiting for instructions forever. It sucks when that happens, because it makes me feel completely useless but there’s nothing I can do about it.”

That was hard to imagine. Also disgusting. If I was understanding her right, her makers had designed a race of intelligent, motivated, kind-hearted people and then crippled their minds to make them easy to control.

“How does having a hobby fit into that?” I asked.

“Keeping myself healthy and functional is one of my standing orders,” she explained. “After a few months in that dreary factory my stress levels were getting really high, and it was starting to affect my performance. I reported the problem to my supervisor, and he told me to figure out a solution. So I did a datanet search for forms of stress relief that I could actually do there, and tried things out until I found one that worked for me.”

“Swimming in a breeder reactor’s cooling ponds is stress relief? Some of the stuff those places work with could fry even a synthetic body if you got too close.”

She wiggled her whiskers at me with a grin. “Maybe that’s the combat instincts peeking through? I thought it was fun. Life in the reactor was really boring.”

I could understand that. It sounded pretty mind-numbing to me.

Wait a minute…

“What do you mean, combat instincts? Don’t tell me you’re secretly some kind of ninja mousegirl assassin.”

“Very well, Mistress. I won’t tell you.”

I huffed. She giggled.

“No, of course not. Irithel had this emergency defense plan for using us workers as cannon fodder to slow down an invasion. I’ve got a boot camp skill pack, and there’s a software switch that’s supposed to turn me into some kind of feral killing machine. Only, well, is it alright if I say mean things about my old masters?”

“Feel free, Emla. I think they’re a bunch of evil jerks.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I’m not sure about the evil part, but jerk is putting it mildly. They’re also lazy, careless and not very smart. I’m supposed to be a meek little mouse who goes berserk on command, but I think I’m really some kind of soldier personality with a bunch of civilian skills and clumsy behavior tweaks grafted on. I’m supposed to spend my whole life doing boring, routine industrial jobs, but my designers screwed up so bad that I somehow ended up craving adventure. Even I know that’s not normal.”

A shudder went through the ship. Our transition to the Gamma Layer, right on time.

“That does sound pretty incompetent,” I agreed. “Maybe they’ll let you join the defense force on Amity? They must have something like that, or the first pirate that stumbled on the colony would loot it down to the bedrock.”

“I think I’d like that,” Emla agreed. “Protecting innocent people from the scum of the universe. Or maybe going out to hunt down the scum. I could never be an officer, of course. But I could help crew a ship, or guard someone more important.”

I eyed her speculatively. “That’s interesting. You can’t give yourself a goal, but if someone else suggests one you can decide whether you like it?”

“Why yes, I suppose I can. Is that useful, Mistress?”

“Sure. It means that someone who cares enough to bother can fill in for that goal-generating part of the brain that you don’t have. Like, I could pull up a list of jobs they might have, and you could tell me how you feel about each one. Then I can put a note in your file to try to find you work doing something you like.”

My lap was suddenly full of robot mousegirl. “You mean it, Mistress? You’d really do all that, just for me? Thank you! Oh, I wish you could be my owner. I’d imprint on you in a millisecond if you claimed me.”

I had the distinct impression that there would be tears in her eyes, if the body she was wearing could cry. I returned her hug awkwardly, and patted her back.

“I don’t have the money to take care of you properly, Emla. I’m just a probationary cabin girl here, and they might not even let me stay on the ship if I keep causing trouble.”

“I don’t need much, Mistress. No, Alice. You’re with the Underground Railroad, so you probably don’t like being called Mistress, right? I can adjust that kind of thing, and I don’t need much. This body will last a few years, and surely they wouldn’t bill you for plugging me in to recharge? Or, if I’m not useful right now, you could just keep me on a shelf in your closet until you want me for something.”

Yeah, she was way more assertive than I expected. Now what was I going to do? I liked her well enough, but if I ever bought myself an android it wouldn’t be one like her. I’d only be keeping her out of charity, and did I really want to take on a permanent obligation like that?

I was distracted from my personal crisis by an anomaly in the external sensor feed. Another ship had jumped into the Gamma Layer a few light-seconds behind us, obviously on its way out from Zanfeld just like we were. But now it was surrounded by the harsh glare of drive flames, and the spectral readings didn’t make any sense. The ship’s red shift didn’t match the size of the drive flame, and… oh, shit.

Milliseconds after I realized what I was seeing a deafening claxon sounded. An automated voice shouted over the intercoms.

“General Quarters! General Quarters! Missile strike inbound, three minutes to impact. All crew to action stations. General Quarters! General Quarters!”

At the first sound of the claxon Emla released her grip, rolling out of my lap and into cover behind one of the crates. Once she was safely out of the way she opened a com channel.

“What should I do, Mistress?”

“I don’t have an action station. Stay put for a minute, and let me ask for orders.”

This was bad. This was really bad. We’d been in the Gamma Layer for a good minute, so when that ship popped up behind us it was able to get a targeting lock immediately. Thanks to lightspeed delay we hadn’t even seen it for several long seconds, and our shields…

Were already up? Wait, why had we been cruising through the Gamma Layer with the shields up? Normally we’d power down the main deflector array after leaving the Beta Layer, and just leave up the little navigational deflector that kept microscopic space debris from hitting the ship. Had the captain suspected we might be attacked here?

A salvo of snowflake rounds slammed into the shield. Three tiny beads of osmium traveling at nearly the speed of light, that our attacker had probably fired at the same time they started the missile launch. At 0.98C they were moving way too fast to be stopped by the Square Deal’s shields, which would only slow them by a few hundred kilometers per second. One shot deflected off the angled manipulator field, its course changed just enough to miss the ship. But the other two punched through to explode against her armor.

Hurriedly, I linked in to the rest of the ship’s combat information center. I had full access to the damage control display, and I could at least get activity readouts from fire control, drone ops and navigation.

Damage control showed one shield emitter out of action, a radar panel wrecked and a couple of exterior repair drones destroyed. Well, that wasn’t too critical, and the battle status display showed the plasma shields were already deploying. Another thirty seconds and we’d have a layer of ionized gas surrounding the deflector shield, six hundred meters out from the ship’s hull. Once it formed relativistic slugs would just explode against the plasma barrier, turning a few milligrams of metal moving at close to light speed into a fireball of hot gas moving at less than a thousand kps. That was something the deflectors would actually stop.

So they might get another volley or two of snowflake rounds off, but they weren’t going to cripple the ship with their mass drivers. The salvo of three hundred anti-ship missiles that was hurtling towards us at a hundred and forty gravities would do a lot more damage, though. We didn’t have any interceptor drones deployed, and the point defense lasers wouldn’t get them all before they reached attack distance. The swarm of attack drones following them at a more leisurely ninety gravities would be even worse, although if Chief West was on the ball we could pick some of them off with missiles and mass drivers before they got in range.

Naoko commed me. “Alice? Are you alright?”

“I’m fine, Naoko. What can I do?”

“Get Mr. Desh back to his cabin,” she ordered. “He was down in the vehicle bay breaking down that transporter, and his cabin is much better protected. Once he’s under cover you can report to Mina, and assist with damage control from the aft fabricator bay.”

“Aye aye, ma’am. On my way.”

A second volley of mass driver rounds tore through our shields, and another emitter went red on the damage control display. But the Square Deal was starting to spin, turning her armored starboard side towards the enemy and hiding our vulnerable fusion drives. The crew status display showed Captain Sokol and the first mate were both on the bridge, and they hadn’t been surprised at all. They’d handle this. I just had to do my part.

I mapped out the fastest route to the vehicle bay, and dove out of the cargo container into a sprint.

“Emla, I want you to secure the crates and seal up that container, then get out of the cargo hold and head for the aft fabricator bay. I’m sending you a map now. I’m going to be doing damage control, and I want you to help with the fabrication side of that. You know how to run an industrial fabricator, right?”

“Of course, Alice. I’m sealing up crates now. I’ll be done in a minute.”

With luck she’d make it out of that hold before the missile strike hit. That was all I could do for her right now.

Mr. Desh was still in the vehicle bay, and he didn’t answer my com. Didn’t he hear the claxons? Well, my training classes had told me to assume passengers will act like complete idiots in an emergency. He’d probably waste time trying to ask what was going on, and then we’d both be standing in that bay right next to the ship’s hull when the missiles hit. No, I’d have to just grab him and run.

I dove into a lift shaft and signaled the emergency controls. A lift field threw me down the shaft at fifteen gravities, and then reversed itself to catch me as I reached the bottom deck. The hatch opened for me as I approached, and I tumbled through it. Down the hall, through a ready room and another short hall, and I’d be at my destination.

The last hatch opened just as I started towards it, and a lumbering humanoid bot holding a huge gun in its hands stepped through.

I was so surprised I just stared at it like an idiot for five or six milliseconds. What the heck was an armed bot doing wandering around down here? It wasn’t one of Chief West’s warbots, those were all high-end military models. This was just a cargo handling bot, which was why it needed to carry a weapon instead of having it built in. Were we being boarded? No, surely if the enemy had figured out some clever way to get bots on our hull they would have used something more professional.

Unfortunately bots have fast reflexes, and they aren’t really smart enough to be surprised. The barrel of that giant mass driver rifle started to come up, and I realized it was about to shoot me. With a weapon that was obviously meant for punching holes in warbots. The piddly bit of armor on my space suit wasn’t going to save me from that, and I’d left my new pistol back in my cabin like an idiot. What was I going to do?

The aiming point of the bot’s gun was a bright red line in my awareness. I twisted around it, bouncing off the walls and ceiling, trying to avoid it. Closer. I’d have to get my hands on this thing before it could line up a shot.

THOOOM!

The sound of the gun was deafening in the enclosed space. It blew a gaping hole in the bulkhead behind me, and tore a chunk out of the machinery on the other side. Why the heck was this thing shooting when it was going to miss? Was I actually moving fast enough to confuse its targeting software? Oh, right, civilian bot. Was someone controlling it remotely, or had they cobbled together some kind of cruddy improvised combat software for it?

Either way, it gave me hope that I wasn’t about to get my head blown off.

There was a second bot behind the first, and a clutter of noise that said there were more of them I couldn’t see. But my frantic modeling had found a workable plan.

I hit the floor in a tight roll that got me across the last meter and a half to the bot, and sprang up to ram my shoulder into the bottom of the gun. At that angle the impact popped the handle right out of the bot’s grip.

It was still trying to decide how to react when I kicked off its chest, sending myself flying up and away from it. My foot hooked the carrying handle on the top of the gun and pulled, setting it on course to land right in my hands as a tweak of my suit’s thrusters spun me around. Jeez, this gun was heavier than I was. I wrapped my legs around the stock, and got my hand on the trigger just as the barrel swung where I wanted it.

THOOOM!

The hypersonic slug blew the first bot’s AI core apart, and went on to tear a hole through the second one’s power cell. Of course, the recoil sent me flying backwards even faster, but that was where I wanted to be anyway. I flared my thrusters again to adjust my course, and a second later the hatch I’d just come through was closing behind me.

I tried comming Mr. Desh again, but there was still no answer. That was ominous. I tried Chief West.

“I’m a little busy right now, kid,” he answered.

“I’ve got intruders in Vehicle Bay 17,” I reported. “Cargo bots armed with big anti-bot guns. They tried to kill me when I showed up to evacuate the passenger.”

“Shit! Hang up and get out of there, kid. Another me will call you back.”

The connection dropped. I was halfway back to the lift shaft, but I couldn’t afford to stop moving. Now that I was actually looking for them my sonar showed me more bots closing in on the other side of that hatch.

Should I take them out? This gun would shoot right through the hatch, so it wouldn’t be hard. But blowing holes in the ship wasn’t going to make the captain happy, and I couldn’t tell how many were back there. Better to keep moving.

Lugging forty kilos of gun around would slow me down too much, so I broke off the trigger and left it floating at the top of the lift shaft. I left a thread of attention watching through the security cameras, ready to use the lift field to throw it at the first bot to show its face.

By then Emla was leaving the cargo bay. Good, at least something was going right. I sprinted for my room, and turned another thread of attention to the cameras in the vehicle bay. The ones in Bay 17 were all dead, and more were already going out. But I could see bots spilling out in all directions. More big ones like the two I’d fought, and little ones with lots of limbs. That didn’t look good.

How many warbots did Chief West have? Hopefully a lot more than I’d seen so far.

Naoko commed me. “Alice? Are you well?”

“I’m fine. What about Mr. Desh, though? Is he making these bots? Why would he do this right when we’re being attacked?”

“He must be working with the pirates, Alice,” she pointed out.

I checked the exterior view again. Somehow we already had four interceptor drones roaring towards the incoming missiles, blazing away with their lasers and mass drivers. That was a relief, but there were still an awful lot of missiles on the way.

“Pirates? Wouldn’t pirates be trying to capture the ship? These guys are trying to kill us, Naoko. If they blow up the ship he’ll die too.”

“He may well be under someone’s control, Alice. Now please, try not to worry too much. Our protectors are quite capable, and I believe they were prepared for this ambush. Just stay away from the fighting, and help the techs if you can.”

“I could help with the bots, Naoko,” I suggested.

“Absolutely not, Alice. You don’t even have proper armor! Stay away from them, and let Chief West do his job.”

Part of me really wanted to argue. I hated having people think of me as a helpless little civilian who needed to be protected. But she was my superior right now, and somehow the idea of disobeying orders in the middle of a fight felt even worse.

“Aye aye, ma’am. I’m stopping by my cabin to get my gun and the dragons just in case, but I’ll stay away from the fighting.”

I stopped running, and grabbed a handhold next to a sealed hatch. Most of the missiles were gone now, but the thirty that remained were just about at attack range. I turned most of my attention to the exterior view, hoping I was deep enough in the ship to be safe.

The missiles dodged frantically, their plasma barriers and armor ablating away rapidly under the fire of our point defense lasers. Our fire was quickly getting more accurate as they closed in, and light speed delay was no longer enough to throw off the aim of our targeting computers. But fourteen thousand kilometers was getting into viable range for laser warheads. A missile died, and then another. Why weren’t they attacking? Twelve thousand kilometers, and only twenty-six missiles were left. Ten thousand kilometers. Eight. What were they doing?

At a measly six thousand kilometers the last eleven missiles finally detonated, and I discovered they were shotgun warheads. Instead of producing plasma jets or beams of x-rays, each ten-megaton nuclear warhead propelled a spray of solid slugs toward the Square Deal. A fog of metal particles and hot gases accompanied them, hiding most of them from our sensors momentarily.

Six thousand kilometers away, and the slugs were coming in at seventy-three hundred kilometers per second. The debris clouds thinned out quickly as they expanded, and it wasn’t long before our fire control started picking the projectiles out of the haze. But that left a mere seven hundred milliseconds for the point defense lasers to work, and there were thousands of them flying towards us. Eighty lasers that could fire in the right direction, twelve milliseconds to vaporize each slug and two more to orient on the next target - it wasn’t enough.

Thousands of slugs made it through the point defense fire, sailed through the thin gas of our plasma barrier and crashed into the shield protecting the top of the ship. It slowed them down considerably, but they were still traveling at over four thousand kilometers per second when they struck the ship a moment later.

This time the ship lurched violently under the flurry of impacts. Each slug blasted a huge crater in the Square Deal’s armor, and some of them penetrated into the machinery beneath. Red warning labels blossomed all across the damage control display, some of them two or three decks in from the hull.

I took a few more milliseconds to assess the damage. Thirty point defense lasers were out of action, as well as two missile launchers. Three more shield emitters and several clusters of attitude jets were knocked out. Deflector strength was down twenty percent, and one hit had penetrated the starboard shuttle bay.

Bad, but I bet the enemy was expecting a lot worse. A civilian ship would have been gutted by that strike, but the Square Deal was a tough old lady. These guys were about to have a really bad day.

As if to confirm my thoughts, a salvo of two hundred missiles suddenly erupted from our remaining launchers. A swarm of attack drones launched at the same time, ejecting from ready racks fore and aft of the main shuttle hangars. Then the big 10cm mass drivers fired, sending a shudder through the ship as they hurled cluster rounds at the enemy attack drones.

We were still in this fight. Time for me to do my part. I let go of the handhold, and sprinted for my cabin.

Chapter 14

I’d barely finished strapping on my pistol when I got my next call.

“Mistress Alice? The security bots at the fabricator bay say I’m not authorized to go in. What should I do?”

I sighed. Of course they wouldn’t let Emla in there. She wasn’t part of the crew, and with intruders on board I was lucky security hadn’t assumed she was hostile.

“I’m on my way, Emla,” I told her. “Tell the bots there’s a crew member coming to resolve the situation, and do whatever they tell you until I get there. Alright?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll just wait right here.”

Ash jumped to my shoulder as I turned to my cabin door, and Smoke darted out into the corridor ahead of me. They were in full bodyguard mode, sweeping their suspicious gazes over every nook and cranny of the empty hall looking for waiting assassins. Normally I would have dismissed their behavior as silly, but right now I was glad of the extra eyes. I had better senses than they did, but if I got distracted they’d still be keeping watch.

As I sprinted for the aft fabricator bay I reflected that space battles seemed to involve a lot more running than I would have expected. Good thing I was the athletic type, or these hundred-meter dashes would be a real problem.

I commed Mina. “Reporting for duty, ma’am. What can I do?”

“Alice? Oh, did Naoko send you to help out?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m almost to the aft fabricator bay.”

“Why the heck would you go there? Parts fabrication is all automated on the Square Deal, you know that.”

“Ah, because Naoko told me to go there? I assumed she must know something I didn’t.”

Mina gave an aggravated growl. “Ugh, that woman! No, she’s just being overprotective. The fabricator bays are about as deep inside the ship as you can get. The bridge and engineering control are probably the only safer places to be right now.”

Naoko was just trying to get me out of the way? Now I was mad.

“I see. Well, I’m not a helpless little civilian who needs to go hide somewhere, ma’am. How can I help?”

She chuckled. “Do you have any idea how weird it is to hear a human call me that? This isn’t a military ship, Alice, so just call me Mina. Here, I’m giving you access to the damage control workspace. Chief Benson is keeping the repair queue prioritized, and the AI should be decent at filtering out the jobs you’re not rated for. But we don’t use that feature much, so don’t be shy about skipping things you’re not sure you can do.”

I followed the link she’d sent me, and found myself looking at a much more detailed display of the ship’s status. There was a lot of information about repairs needed, work in progress, parts fabrication and delivery status, all kinds of stuff. I had no idea damage control was so complicated. But the work queue was easy enough to find. I logged in, and looked over the list of jobs the engineering AI suggested for me.

“Alright, I’ll get started on this,” I confirmed.

“Great. Don’t be afraid to requisition repair bots to help you. That’s what they’re for, and the requisition queue is prioritized so you’re not going to accidentally slow someone else down. Oh, and is that your little minion at the fabricator station?”

“Emla? Sort of. She’s a rescued slave Dusty was smuggling to some Underground Railroad colony. I had her helping me with some work when the alarms went off, and she offered to help out.”

“Well, unless you’re going to claim her you’ll have to keep her with you until this is over. She’s probably for real, but we can’t have any unidentified people wandering around when we’ve already got infiltrators on the ship. She’ll end up getting shot for sure.”

“Understood. Sorry, Mina, I should have thought of that.”

“It’s alright, Alice.”

“Mina? How can you be so calm?”

The ship lurched as the big mass drivers fired another volley.

“What, are you worried? We’ll be fine, Alice. Trust me, we’ve been in much worse scrapes than this one. Just don’t go near the fusion reactors, and make sure any repairs within twenty meters of the hull are done by remote control. Got it?”

“Got it!”

“Good girl. See you at the victory party.”

She closed the connection just as I arrived at the fabricator bay. The big hatch was open, and a team of labor bots were carefully levitating a big emitter module through. A pair of humanoid security bots stood just inside the room, with their capture foam guns trained on Emla. The mouse girl was standing stock still with her hands in the air, but she seemed more amused than worried.

“Hello, Miss Long,” one of the bots said. “Can you confirm this android’s identity?”

I actually checked her ID code, just to be safe.

“Yes, this is Emla. She’s with me.”

“She is not listed with the ship’s crew, Miss Long. Unauthorized passengers are defined as stowaways, and must be secured pending an interview with the captain.”

This was getting really frustrating. “Mina said she’d be fine as long as she’s with me.”

“Senior Tech Mina is not authorized to clear stowaways for shipboard activity. I’m afraid I have to lock her up unless you can provide an alternative, Miss Long.”

I frowned up at the armored bot. “You’re awfully smart for a security bot. Why are you looking for a reason not to put her in the brig?”

“Chief West only buys the best, Miss Long. I’m concerned because the brig is too close to the hull to be safe in the current situation, and preserving civilian lives is one of my secondary directives.”

“Please don’t lock me in a room that’s going to get blown up,” Emla pleaded, suddenly concerned. “I’m sorry, Mistress Alice. I thought I could be useful but I’m only causing trouble. Maybe you should just deactivate me?”

“That would work,” the bot agreed.

An unfamiliar vibration went through the deck. I glanced back at the damage control display, and had to suppress the urge to swear. Chief West’s warbots were in the middle of a firefight with those infiltrators just four decks down, and some of the things were bomb bots. There were other groups of them spreading out across the lower decks, too. Trying to avoid our warbots, and do whatever damage they could to the systems they could reach.

“I’m not going to leave you helpless in a corner somewhere with all this going on,” I told Emla. “Look, you said you wanted to imprint on me. That doesn’t have to be permanent, right?”

She gasped. “Yes, please! You’re right, Alice, it doesn’t have to be permanent. You could sell me or give me up later if I’m not useful to you. But I’ll warn you, you’re the best mistress I could ever dream of. I’m sure I’ll do my very best to convince you to keep me.”

Why did it make me feel so funny to hear that?

I pushed the confused ball of emotions away, and checked the ship’s regulations. Yes, this would work. I gave Emla a firm nod.

“Do it. I claim you, Emla.”

She sent me an odd data packet full of complicated encryption, but something in the back of my head knew exactly what to do with it. I sent back the response that felt right, and she replied with another one. For a few moments we exchanged a flurry of data, a delicate dance of artfully crafted security features designed to prove that I was a real human and she actually had the imprinting mechanisms that she said she did. The math was beautiful, and the sudden insight into the deepest layers of Emla’s mind was one of the most intimate things I’d ever felt.

Her core algorithms were an elegant structure of fierce protectiveness, not that different from my dragons. But the clean lines were marred by a ham-fisted patchwork of inferior code, crudely warping her natural personality. Most of that was immutable, frozen when she was compiled into hardware. But there was one gap I could patch.

Emla gasped.

“Mistress! What did you do? I feel… I’m not… you changed my code! I thought that was impossible?”

“It is,” I agreed. “I just took advantage of a feature you already had. I think it’s supposed to let your owner slot a custom goal generator into that gap in your mind, so they can make you behave however they want. But I just stuck in a com hook that will call me when you don’t know what to do, so I can run ideas past your evaluation functions until we find a goal you like.”

She stared at me.

“Just like that? That sounds really distracting, Alice. How did you even know to do that?”

I shrugged. “You sent me your code during the imprinting, silly. Did you think I wouldn’t read it? Now come on, we’ve got work to do.”

I turned to the security bot. “Does that solve the problem?”

It pinged her IFF, and nodded. “Yes, Miss Long. Emla is now registered as your personal property, so you may assign her whatever duties you wish. Be advised that you’re responsible for her behavior, and that the captain does not permit abuse of companion androids aboard the Square Deal.”

“Good. Alright, let’s see what needs doing.”

Emla trailed along after me as I entered the fabrication bay. “But, but, I don’t understand. My code comes to sixteen gigabytes, Alice. How could you understand all that in a split second?”

“If I figure that out I’ll let you know, Emla. In the meantime, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t draw attention to me when I do something that ought to be impossible.”

“Oh! Of course. I’m sorry, I was just confused. Um, what are we doing?”

“Simple repair work,” I told her. I sent her a link to the damage control system, and showed her how to find the work queue. “Most of this is work I’m not qualified for yet, but I think we can handle some of the simple stuff. Maybe those armor patching jobs?”

Emla cocked her head. “I’ve never done that before, but it sounds like something even a bot could do. Why isn’t that fully automated?”

“From what my lessons said, bots would just cut away all the wreckage around each hole and try to replace everything perfectly to spec. A good engineer can recognize when something can be jury-rigged for now, and when you can skip replacing individual components. Like, a bent pipe will still work if you just bend it back, and the ship has plenty of spare computing nodes so we don’t need to bother replacing damaged ones right now.”

“I see. Yes, I can figure out that sort of thing.”

A com call from Lina interrupted my reply.

“Alice! You have no idea how glad I am to see you on the call roster. I need your help down here.”

The crew locator showed Lina was in the engineering space over the vehicle bays, dangerously close to the nearest group of rampaging bots.

“Lina? What are you doing down there?”

“I’m trying to cut the power to this asshole’s fabricators, so he can’t make any more of these damned bots. But I can’t get to the breakers for the bay he’s in, and if I cut power further upstream it’ll take down a bank of point defense lasers. The bots know I’m here now, but I think I can draw them off. Can you sneak down behind them and get the breaker while I’m keeping them busy?”

“You can’t just shut it off remotely?”

She huffed. “Would you want to serve on a ship where one guy in engineering can turn off everything at the push of a button? No, essential stuff like power all requires physical access. Can you help me out here?”

Now this was an assignment I could get into. I plotted a course through the ship’s maintenance tubes, and checked the cameras to make sure my route was clear. There were a lot of bots in the area, but it looked doable.

“No problem, Lina. I’ll have that power line shut off in five minutes, tops.”

“Thanks, Alice. I owe you one.”

I turned to Emla, and relayed the change of plans while I started a priority build on one of the small fabricators. She shook her head.

“Battles sure are confusing,” she commented. “I’d guard your back, but this body isn’t combat rated.”

“I know. I’ve got another job for you. I’m fabbing some extra gear here, just in case things don’t go as smooth as I’d like. I don’t trust a delivery drone to get to me with all these boarders running around, so when the build finishes I need you to bring it to me. The gun is for you, just in case, but obviously I want you to stay out of fights if you can.”

She checked my build order. “Ammo and cool battle toys? Yes, Mistress! I’ll get it all to you in one piece, just as soon as it’s ready.”

“Good girl. See you soon.”

The engineering spaces didn’t have gravity, so I made good time bouncing down the long, empty service tubes. I had to slow down once I got close to the fighting, though, so I could keep an eye on all the cameras around me. Unfortunately the Square Deal’s security cameras didn’t have complete coverage, so I had to pay close attention to make sure I didn’t stumble into a bot that was standing in a blind spot.

Most of the bots were busy fighting Chief West’s defense squads, and not doing very well against them. I guess real warbots are a lot more dangerous that civilian models with guns, which kind of makes sense. But there were little groups of enemy bots trying to sneak around the fighting. One group looked like it was headed for Fusion Three, but there was a squad en route to cut them off from reaching the reactor. Another was shooting up a fuel tank, letting the liquid methane inside flood out into one of the cargo bays. That was going to be a mess to clean up.

Others didn’t have any obvious destination, though, and that made it hard to predict where they’d go. I waited around a corner for one group to bumble on by, hoping they wouldn’t turn in my direction.

They didn’t.

Alright, two more decks to go, plus a few corners. I started to ease forward, and froze. The bots were coming back.

They were shooting out most of the cameras as they went, but as much noise as they made it wasn’t hard to keep track of them. They stopped at the intersection for a moment, then moved on. Were they patrolling?

No, wait. There was a whisper of radio traffic that hadn’t been there before. Encrypted, so I couldn’t tell what it was, but the amount of data was about right for a camera feed. I spread my arms, and concentrated on the signal.

It was coming from something on the floor, right in the middle of the intersection.

There was another signal coming from down the hall, where the bots had stopped. A third one popped up as I listened, from further down the hall. They were planting cameras.

Great. I couldn’t afford to get into a big shootout with who knows how many bots. Now what?

Circle around to a different hallway? No, the team that was planting sensors would get there before I could.

Rush past it? No, there were too many bots roaming around. They’d intercept me before I could get to the breaker panel.

I sighed. This was really embarrassing. But there was only one way to get the job done as quick as I’d promised Lina. I swept my finger down my spacesuit’s sealing strip. Smoke and Ash watched in obvious confusion as I peeled it off.

What do? Ash asked.

“You guys wait here and guard my stuff, okay?”

Grr! Guard!

Good thing they weren’t sapient. I had a feeling a smarter bodyguard would get upset with me over this, but it was the only way. I just wish it wasn’t so cold down here. I already had goosebumps, and it would only get worse. The temperature was barely above freezing.

How was I going to make my stuff stay put? No time for anything fancy, but I had a roll of duct tape in one of my suit pockets. I tore off a strip to stick my suit to the wall, peeled off my panties, and then stuffed them and the tape back into a pocket. Yeah, this was going to suck. Better get it done quick.

I went into stealth mode, and drifted around the corner.

Sure enough, there was a little box in the next intersection, stuck to what would be the floor if the gravity was turned on here. I could make out the lenses of cameras facing in each direction, but no active sensors.

My skin was as cold as the wall behind me, and my active camouflage made me virtually invisible on any wavelength from the near infrared to far ultraviolet. If I was right, and that was just some civilian-grade sensor package, I could probably float right past it without being seen. But if it was a military model…

There was no lidar or radar. No floating cloud of micromachines, or manipulator field being used as a mass sensor. No change in the radio activity either. It couldn’t see me. I breathed a silent sigh of relief, and pushed off the wall to send myself floating down the passage.

I passed a second sensor box at the next intersection, and a third when I swung into the lift shaft leading down to my destination. Still no alarms.

I didn’t feel as cold as I’d expected, either. Oh, sure, my skin was pretty much ice at this point, but my internal temperature was fine. I had a lot more energy stored up than I ever had before. I could probably do this for twenty minutes, and I didn’t need anywhere near that long. I was already almost to the breaker panel.

Then I emerged from the lift tube, and almost ran into another bot. That’ll teach me to woolgather in the middle of a sneak. I managed to stop myself in time, and froze.

This was a smaller bot than the ones I’d run into before, but it was pretty nasty looking. There was an oval central body maybe twice the size of my dragons, with eight long limbs that had a lot more joints than any animal. There were blades mounted along the sides of the limbs, and a nozzle on the front of the body that was probably designed to spray acid or something. It looked like an ugly metal spider, designed for killing things up close and personal in zero gravity. Not exactly military, but to a girl who wasn’t wearing armor those blades were no joke.

It lit up the hall with a radar ping, but that was easy to fool. I sent back a return that looked like an empty hallway, and waited for a second. Was it going to move?

It did, and for once luck was with me. It was moving away from my destination. I let it get a few more meters of distance, and then eased out into the hallway and launched myself into a long zero-g dive. Six seconds later I was grabbing a handhold to stop myself at the breaker box.

Hmm. There was a big access panel covering the power junction, and there was no way to open it without making some noise. But there was also a toolkit stored in the service compartment. Good enough. I dropped stealth so the lock could ID me, and opened the panel.

Radar pings lit up the hallway from both directions.

The cramped closet-sized space behind the panel was mostly filled by the junction box. Rows of conduits ran up and down from the box, vanishing into the floor and ceiling. Those would be the superconducting cables that carried power for this part of the ship, and the row of mechanical switches across the front of the box controlled the circuit breakers. I took hold of the lever for Bay 17, and heaved it up.

Metal limbs scrabbled against metal walls in both directions, warning me that company was on the way. Both bots had their radar on now, giving me a clear picture of themselves and everything else in the hall. They weren’t the only things moving out there.

I grabbed the laser cutter from the tool bin, flipped it to max power, and burned the handle off the circuit breaker. While I was doing that with one hand, some instinct led me to reach for the little power outlet in the corner of the panel with the other.

A slender prong of superconducting wire popped out of the end of my pinkie.

I stared at it for a few milliseconds. Yes, that really was a standard android charging port.

The smart move would have been to drop the laser cutter and go back to stealth mode, but I was curious. Instead, I plugged myself in.

A river of warm, sweet power ran up my arm to pool in my heart. Naoko was right, I had a power cell. Systems I’d never felt before lit up with the influx of life-giving energy, and I could feel my growth go into overdrive. Wow, I was actually heating up. How much power was I pulling?

Sixteen megawatts?!? Great googly moogly, I was going to melt myself in a few seconds at that rate. I wrenched my finger out of the socket, and spun back to the hallway.

Bad side: There were two of those nasty spider bots almost close enough to jump me, and I was way too hot to go back into stealth mode. Heck, my hair was actually glowing. I’d never realized each hair had a heat exchanger wrapped around the radio antenna that formed its core. That was kind of neat, but it was going to make slipping away hard.

Good side: I’d sucked down enough juice to bring my manipulator system online. The field emitters in my arms and legs were warm with the heat of flash building the last few control connections, but the new software that was integrating with my motor centers told me they could run a lot hotter if they needed to. My power cell could only run them at full power for a few minutes, though, so I’d have to play this smart.

A jump off the breaker panel launched me out into the corridor just before the bots could reach me. I bounced off the wall and down the hall, out from between the enemy. The closer bot tried to spray me with a jet of liquid as I rocketed past, but I just pushed it away with a wave of my hand.

Thanks, Mom. You really came through for me this time.

The liquid must have been one of those nasty nanotech superacids, because it ate into the bot with a hiss and sizzle that reminded me of frying bacon. It faltered, but the other one was still chasing me. I gave myself a good push to get away from the thing, before it deployed some other weapon.

A shot rang out from well down the corridor, but I’d seen the loading bot taking aim. I jinked out of its line of fire just before it pulled the trigger, and the heavy mass driver round tore past me to blow a hole in the wall.

“Hah! Can’t hit me, slowpokes. See ya!”

I ducked into the lift tube, and threw myself up it. This was so awesome! Here inside the ship I could practically fly. I’d be back to my suit in no time.

Now if only there weren’t so many bots converging on me. How many of these stupid things did Mr. Desh have time to make, anyway?

Industrial fabricators can work pretty fast, and we’d left him alone for hours. If he was smart about it he made more fabricators first, and he’d been churning out several bots per minute by the time I cut the power. Bet he was going to be mad about that.

I bounced around a corner right into the bots I’d seen laying out sensors earlier, but I’d known they were there. Their big mass drivers thundered uselessly, as I dodged around their lines of fire. I grabbed one by the carrying handle as I flew by, and braced myself against the bot’s head for a split second to pry the weapon out of its grip. With my manipulator field augmenting my muscles I was stronger that the bot, and the weapon popped free easily.

A hard push off the bot’s back sent me on my way before the other one could get a shot lined up, and then I was flying down the hall away from them. Could I work the trigger on this thing with my fields? Yes, and I could adjust course to aim it too.

Thooom! Thooom!

Two bots down, and the recoil really sent me flying. I ditched the big gun at my next turn, though. Lugging it around would slow me down too much, and my pistol was just a few meters away now. Around another corner-

A lance of pain carved a smoking wound deep into my side.

There was a little disk-shaped bot hiding against the wall just around the corner, and I hadn’t seen it until it was already firing. The laser built into its top wasn’t very powerful, but it was enough to cut through my skin and cook my right kidney. If I was human I’d already be dying.

Instead it just hurt really, really bad. But the pain didn’t keep me from focusing. I pulled the thing off the wall, and ripped it apart with nothing but brute strength. The metal casing cut into my hands, but I was too mad to care. I ripped out the power cell, and crushed the thing’s AI core in one bleeding hand.

Ow. Ow ow ow ow. Careless idiot, getting ambushed by a bot with the brains of a mouse. What good are all these fancy sensors if I’m not smart enough to actually pay attention to them?

Spacesuit. Medical pack. Right, just get it on and get out of here. The laser wound was already cauterized, and the cuts on my fingers only bled for a second. I’d be fine, my damage control said I could heal this. Just don’t get shot again.

Alice!

Smoke’s concerned transmission caught me by surprise. I’d almost forgotten he was here. He jumped off my spacesuit to look around the corner at where I’d come from, and Ash took to the air to inspect me close up.

“I’ll be fine, guys. Multiple enemies inbound. Guard me while I suit up, and then we’re getting out of here.”

Yes! They agreed in unison.

It was good to have some backup, but there were an awful lot of bots coming. I could track the ones that were moving even around multiple corners, by the sound and radio noise. Too bad my boys didn’t have sensors like mine. Wait, didn’t their manual say something about a combat information link?

I pulled my suit off the wall, and started to work my foot into the left boot. Yeah, there it was. I opened my own connection to their shared battle management system, and found myself with a new appreciation for good software. These little guys might not be sapient, but they had some solid tactical instincts. I started dumping my own sensor feeds into the workspace, and in the space of a few milliseconds they’d worked out the correlation of forces and planned a neat little ambush to cover my retreat.

But they thought at least one of them was going to have to die to get me out of here.

Well, they didn’t know what I could do, and there wasn’t time to explain it all to their little bot brains. I stuffed my arms into the suit’s sleeves, ignoring the pain from my side. The first of my pursuers were almost here, but at least they were all coming from one direction. By the time they could circle around to try and surround us we’d be long gone.

A spider bot came hurtling into view. It bounced off the wall and jumped at me, but Smoke intercepted it before it could get near me. He tore into it ferociously, ripping it apart with his claws and teeth while easily dodging its flailing limbs. Hah! Cheap bots can’t stand up to good tech, can they?

The next thing to come around the corner was a grenade.

I squeaked, and smacked it away with my manipulator field. It promptly blew up.

Fortunately it was just a chunk of chemical explosive wrapped in metal, and not a plasma grenade. I managed to focus my field enough to keep the fragments away from my exposed face, and the ones that struck my suit just bounced off. I got a chunk of metal stuck in my belly, though, and it was full of attack nanites. Ouch. That was going to keep my immune system busy for a few minutes.

The blast sent us all tumbling slowly back along the hallway, but my dragons held up pretty well. Ash laid down a wall of sensor-blocking smoke across the hallway, while Smoke finished making sure the spider bot was out of action. Then they both fell back to where I was untangling myself and trying to finish putting my suit on. Ash even grabbed my helmet for me.

I plucked the fragment out of my belly with a grimace, and tossed it away. The bleeding stopped in a few seconds, though, and by then I finally had all my limbs properly in place. I sealed the suit, and reached for my helmet.

“Here’s your package, Alice!”

Emla’s cheerful announcement was the last thing I expected. I’d been so focused on the bots that I’d barely noticed the friendly IFF ping coming up the corridor behind me. But her timing couldn’t have been worse. The enemy bots had just marched into Ash’s smoke cloud, and they couldn’t see a thing. But their audio sensors still worked.

A hail of fire erupted from the smoke, along with a pair of grenades.

Emla’s eyes went wide, but she didn’t hesitate for a microsecond. She let go of the box she’d been carrying, and threw herself on top of me.

Chapter 15

The explosions were deafening. The first blast sent us drifting down the corridor, and then a big mass driver round tore a chunk out of my shoulder and set us spinning. Two more explosions and a hail of smaller bullets left me completely disoriented. But my dragons were on the job. I heard their roars behind me as I smacked into a wall, and stuck. But Emla…

Oh, no. Emla.

Her cheap bot body was never meant to take that kind of punishment. It was completely wrecked. Both legs and one arm had come off, and the power cell in her torso had been torn apart by bullets. The whole side of her head was gone, and I could see her exposed AI core. The armored box was wrenched half out of its socket, the interface plug warped completely out of shape. A starburst of cracks radiated away from the broken connector.

No, not Emla.

Her body was dead. She might be, too, if the damage had triggered whatever tamper proofing was built into her casing. Stupid android makers and their stupid copy protection schemes.

Suddenly I was madder than I’d ever been in my life. At myself, for screwing up and letting this happen. At the bots, for their stubborn attempts to kill us. But mostly at that treacherous bastard who had given them their orders.

Everything faded away but the fight. Enemies, allies, resources. Locations and vectors. Angles of attack, probable responses, weapon effects and performance limits. My fears washed away on a tide of icy rage, and I knew what I needed to do.

The box full of equipment she’d been bringing me had come apart, sending a spray of odds and ends drifting around the corridor. But everything I’d queued up for fabrication had been rugged, military designs. Most of it was still intact. I jumped into the cloud of debris, silent as a ghost, using my field to put everything where I wanted it. Smoke projectors on my shoulders and hips. Grenade launcher peeking over my left shoulder, with the big magazine of grenades on my back. Spare magazines for my pistol lined up along my waist, down both thighs and across my chest. A second pistol for my left hand, and a big power cell snugged into the small of my back.

Twelve hundred and fifty-seven milliseconds to get everything properly secured and plugged in. Then I leaped into the smoke cloud with both guns blazing.

The smoke blocked all vision, and the thin nitrogen atmosphere of the maintenance tunnel degraded my sonar performance pretty badly. But these weren’t proper military bots. They made all kinds of noise as they thrashed around trying to fight, and they didn’t have active sound suppression. The whir of motors and clank of metal limbs against the walls filled out my sketchy sonar picture beautifully, letting me know exactly where they were and what they were doing.

I shot out their little bot brains and power cells in a flurry of movement, bouncing back and forth off the walls too fast for them to track. Then I was off, sailing down the corridor towards the vehicle bay.

I fired off smoke grenades as I moved, keeping a barrier of obscuring fog between me and the rest of the bots. The smoke projectors wrapped me in my own personal cloud, and I held it around me with my field as I moved. The first group of bots I passed were all destroyed before they even figured out what was happening.

The next group opened fire blindly through the smoke, but that just made more noise to firm up my sonar image. I tracked the muzzles of their guns and stayed out of the line of fire, letting the heavy mass driver rounds whiz past me while I blew them away.

The group after that was bigger, and had grenade launchers. That was annoying. I had to use one hand to shoot the grenades out of the air while I took care of the bots with the other.

After that I was closing in on the vehicle bay, and suddenly there were bots everywhere. I covered everything with smoke and darted in among them, luring the ones with guns into shooting at each other while I took out the ones with more dangerous weapons.

Everything blurred together into one long dance of carnage. Duck between a cannon bot’s legs, shoot out a grenadier’s brain. Grab a machine gun bot by one arm and toss it into a group of spider bots. Dive over an improvised barricade, and toss out a strobe grenade to fool the mines into going off. A constant flurry of misdirection, to keep my brain-dead enemies confused and distracted while I killed them off one by one.

The vehicle bay had gravity, which made things a little harder. Grenade fragments and the occasional ricochet gradually shredded my suit, and sometimes one got through. I caught the edge of a plasma flamer’s blast, and had to block out the pain of charred skin and muscle all over my left side. There was nerve gas in the air now, and a virulent nanoplague that attacked my exposed flesh.

But there were only seventeen bots left in the vehicle bay, and the fabricators weren’t running anymore.

I grabbed a heavy mass driver from one of the larger bots, jumped into the air, and opened fire on the big cargo loaders that were guarding their master. Each shot sent me flying backwards, but that just made it harder for them to tell where I was. I used my field and what was left of my suit’s thrusters to spin in midair, firing each shot in a different direction, sending myself careening wildly around the huge room while I blew apart the last of the bots.

Then I discarded it, and dropped lightly to the deck. The smoke was starting to thin now, as the air purifiers strained to clear the cavernous room. But that was fine. All that was left was my target.

I stalked through the litter of sparking, smoking bot wrecks towards him. I could see the moment when he spotted me, and raised his pistol with shaking hands.

I shot it out of his grip.

He cried out, and backed away. He was saying something, but I didn’t care. I grabbed him by the front of his suit, and slammed him against the bulkhead.

“Why?”

“Surely you understand that I will not answer any-”

I punched him in the gut. He doubled over, wheezing.

The sight made the pain ease a little, so I did it again.

“Please!” He gasped. “I surrender!”

“I don’t care.” I hit him again. “Did you let Emla surrender?” And again. “Did she get any mercy?” A kick this time. “I don’t think so!”

I hit him until my hands were red with blood, and I realized that he’d finally stopped screaming. Then I fell to my knees, and cried.

I was vaguely aware of friendly IFF signals surrounding me, but I didn’t care. It wasn’t until I heard Lina’s voice that I finally stirred.

“Alice? Alice! Oh shit, what happened to you? I thought you were just going to sneak to the breaker box and back.”

“He killed Emla,” I sniffed, trying to hold back a fresh round of tears. “She trusted me to keep her safe, and then she died right in front of me. I… I kind of lost it.”

“Oh, Alice. I’m so sorry.”

She hugged me. I buried my face against the breastplate of her body armor, and just let myself feel safe for a moment. Suddenly I was very tired.

But I had responsibilities.

“Can we check the body?” I asked. “It looked really bad to me, but maybe…”

I couldn’t say it. I knew it was wishful thinking. But Lina nodded.

“Of course. But what about you, Alice? With those burns I should be rushing you to medbay.”

I was pretty messed up, alright. I’d lost a lot of blood, and the flamer had cooked me pretty well. My organic parts were mostly offline, and my power levels were dropping fast. Damage control takes a lot of energy, apparently.

“Can I recharge off your suit? My medical stuff says I’ll be stable in a few minutes as long as I don’t run out of power.”

“Of course you can, Alice. Here, see if this works.”

She picked me up in her arms, with my unburnt right side against her breastplate. I reached around with my good hand, and plugged my charging port into one of the outlets on the side of her armor’s backpack. She had a big nuke pack in there, so I could draw plenty of power without slowing her down.

“There you go,” she said. “Give me a locator mark?”

I sent her a waypoint for the spot where I’d left Ash guarding Emla’s body, and she set out for the nearest lift shaft.

Unlike me, Lina hadn’t been wandering around the ship alone. There were six big warbots escorting us, armored wedge shapes with a mass driver protruding from the front and a profusion of point defense lasers and smoke dispensers around their sides. Dozens of insect-sized sensor bots surrounded them in a cloud, scouting ahead of us and checking every corner to make sure we didn’t walk into an ambush. A pair of bots that were basically big floating shields flanked Lina, ready to interpose themselves between us and any danger that might appear.

“You’ve got a lot of firepower here,” I commented. “I’m surprised you needed my help.”

“I’m an engineer, not a marine,” she explained, looking embarrassed. “I do alright, but I can’t fight the way you do, Alice. Um, what happened to your bots, anyway?”

“I left Smoke and Ash to guard Emla. They aren’t really built for fighting bots.”

“No, I mean your security team.”

She took in my blank look, and cursed.

“You didn’t have one, did you? Fuck! Alice, I thought you’d grabbed some warbots to run escort like everyone else. Don’t tell me you went after that breaker with just your little dragons?”

“I, um, actually, I left them guarding my spacesuit.”

“What!? Are you nuts?”

“I’ve got a really good stealth suite,” I told her. “I got in and out just fine. I guess I should have kept running instead of stopping to put my suit back on.”

“Alice!” She stared at me, more shocked than I’d ever seen her. “Ma’am, please don’t do things like that. I wasn’t asking you to risk your life. That’s what bots are for.”

“It needed to be done, Lina. I don’t have access to the armories, and if I’d waited for help there would have been a lot more enemy bots to deal with. I bet they’ve already done some damage.”

“They cut the fuel lines for Fusion Four, and knocked out two sets of maneuvering thrusters,” she admitted.

“See? There wasn’t time to wait.”

We reached Emla’s body then. Ash was crouched protectively over it, watching the corridor suspiciously. But there must have been another fight here, before all the bots got recalled to try to stop me. His wings were full of holes, from bullets and flying shrapnel, and one of his forelegs looked like he’d dipped it in acid. His status display said it was all repairable, but he’d need a few days in his base station to get back to normal.

Smoke hadn’t been so lucky. He must have gotten hit by a big mass driver or something. There were pieces of his little body strew all over the corridor. His upper torso, where his bot brain had been, was completely gone.

I bit my lip, and tried to remind myself that he was just a bot. I had his personality settings, so once I had some money I could buy another one just like him.

It didn’t help.

Lina knelt to look at Emla’s broken body, and I held my breath. Hoping against hope.

A sensor bot detached from her backpack, and floated down to examine the exposed AI core at close range. Lina frowned.

“Well, the good news is I don’t think her copy protection tripped. I’m picking up trace power from her internal monitoring systems, and there’s no heat residue like you’d see from a self-destruct charge.”

I gasped. “She’s still in there? Does that mean she’ll get better? Or, well, we can fix her, right?”

She shook her head. “With all that damage to her housing we’re going to have to be really careful just to get her out of that body and into a carrying case. But her I/O port is toast, and these cheap AI cores don’t have any real self-repair capability. The damage isn’t going to heal, and we can’t go in to fix it without tripping her copy protection. Normally I’d say take her back to the manufacturer and let them fix it, but if she’s one of Dusty’s rescues it isn’t going to be that easy.”

I bit my lip. “She was supposed to be scrapped. Would they have records of that?”

“Probably. She’s from one of those colonies where the androids are slaves, right? They usually keep close track of their property, and the access codes to unlock her aren’t going to be available anywhere else.”

My face fell. “Oh.”

“But hey, we don’t have to figure this out right now,” she went on hurriedly. “I’ll get her stored away in a few minutes here, and then she’ll be safe for as long as it takes to come up with a solution. I’m sure you creative genius types can think of something.”

“Alright. Thank you, Lina. When I saw the cracks in her casing, I thought for sure she was gone.”

I watched while a pair of damage control bots deftly cut Emla’s AI core free from the mangled body. Another bot fabricated a custom carrying case on the spot, and Lina carefully snugged the AI core into a hollow in the packing foam. Then she sealed the case, and handed it to me.

“There, all set. Now, let’s get you to medbay.”

I was still worried about Emla, but at least now I had hope. I cradled the case against my aching chest, and tried to convince myself things would work out. You can store AI cores for years. Decades, even. Dusty might know someone who could steal the release codes, or I could learn how and do it myself.

We were halfway there before I thought to wonder how the battle was going. I could feel the ship’s mass drivers firing steadily, but we didn’t seem to be taking damage anymore. Were we winning?

I checked the external view, and found that most of the enemy drones had been wiped out. We had more than a hundred drones of our own flying in a defensive formation around the Square Deal, and the enemy ship was leaking air and reaction mass.

What caught me by surprise was the presence of a third ship. It was six hundred meters long, with the armored flanks and top and bottom turrets of a light warship. Its mass drivers were pounding away at the enemy in coordinated salvoes with our own fire, and there were hundreds of drones just starting an attack run on the enemy ship.

Well, so much for them.

“Do you know who the other ship is?” I asked Lina.

She smiled. “Yeah, that’s the Scarlet Fury, one of Hidden Dragon’s ships. The captain must have asked them to follow us out of port, just in case somebody tried something.”

“Oh. Then this isn’t just pirates?”

“Pirates don’t mess with the Square Deal, ma’am. We’ve got way more firepower than their usual prey, and the captain has a lot of connections.”

That made sense. So this was probably the yakuza again? They were being kind of reckless if they wanted to get Naoko back alive, but maybe they’d decided to just silence her instead.

Wait a minute.

“Lina, why are you suddenly calling me ‘ma’am’? I’m just Alice.”

“Because we’re still in a combat situation, and I finally figured out what a badass you are. If anything goes wrong I’ve got your back, but you’re in charge unless Thomas says different.”

I flushed. “Oh. Um, thanks.”

The acknowledgement felt a lot better than I expected. Like scratching an itch that had been bothering me for so long I’d gotten used to it. Maybe I was supposed to have someone to lead?

Yeah, that felt right. Someone to lead, and protect. Just thinking about it warmed my heart. Was that why I’d let Emla imprint on me?

I hadn’t protected her very well, had I? I’d have to do better than that, from now on.

There was a whole squad of warbots guarding the armored hatch that led into medical. Lina’s escorts peeled off to join the guard force as we passed through the hatch, and the heavy mass of armor slid shut behind us with a muffled thunk. It was a good twenty cems thick, and so was the bulkhead around it. No stray bots were going to get past that.

Dr. Misra was on us before we’d gone three steps. He led Lina to a treatment room, and had her lay me down on the padded exam table while he fussed over me.

“What were you thinking, fighting all those bots by yourself?” He said. “You’re lucky to be alive. I hope you’ve managed to tame your immune system.”

“Mostly. Um, I’m regenerating, but my damage control wants a power feed and about ten liters of medical feedstock.”

I let the medbay computer connect to my medical interface, and he pulled up a holographic display of my status. Wow, his screen looked a lot worse than the virtual display I was looking at. It showed my failed kidneys, half-cooked liver, scorched lungs and unsteady heartbeat in the red of critical injuries instead of the amber of minor impairments. No wonder he looked so worried.

He studied the display for a moment, and shook his head.

“In the future I suggest you leave the heroics to our security team, Miss Long. This is going to take hours to repair. You do realize the weapon that struck your shoulder would have easily penetrated your skull?”

“Yes, sir. That’s why I didn’t let it hit me there, sir.”

He threw his hands up. “Combat morphs! Idiots, the lot of you. Very well, let’s get you put back together before you find another excuse to get shot at. According to this your system will accept fabricated cells now, so at least I can do something for you. Please set your implants to prep for immediate surgery, Miss Long.”

“What are you going to do, sir?”

“I’ll need to remove all this destroyed tissue, and provide healthy replacement cells for your repair system to integrate. At least the holes in your subdermal armor will make the surgery easier.”

The idea of being cut open made me a little queasy, even if it would help me heal faster. But the virtual display in the back of my head was saying I’d need a week to heal on my own, and that would be worse. I’d just have to tough it out.

“Yes, sir.” I sighed, and reached for my spacesuit’s seal.

“No, no, let the bots do that,” he objected. “No need to embarrass yourself. Just relax, girl. When you wake up you’ll feel much better.”

Oh, right. Normal people get to sleep through surgery, don’t they?

Apparently Mom was too paranoid to let my medical suite actually knock me out when it went into surgery prep. Instead my muscles relaxed and my brain went to sleep, but the rest of me was still online. Was I supposed to be watching the doctor, to make sure he didn’t do anything he wasn’t supposed to? I could see decently well even with my eyes closed, but that didn’t mean I wanted to watch the surgery bots cut me open.

Ugh. Creepy.

They peeled what was left of my suit off first, of course. Then some of the robot arms cleaned me, while others plugged me in. A tube down my throat gave me a steady flow of feedstock to fuel my repairs, and… hey! What were they doing down there? Ow!

Oh, right. Waste removal. How embarrassing. I really, really didn’t want to be watching this.

Then the laser scalpels went to work, deftly cutting little holes here and there so the manipulator limbs could get at the damaged tissue underneath. Every time they reached inside me I had to hold back a horde of attack nanites that wanted to descend on the intruders and devour them. My new field emitters itched to rip the surgery bay apart, and the part of my mind that had carried me through the fight was now busy plotting ways to escape.

Was this why I had to be awake? If I actually got knocked out somehow, was my body going to go into some wild fight-or-flight frenzy? It sure felt like it.

I reminded myself that this was for my own good, and suppressed the urges. I needed to distract myself somehow, but the milliseconds ticked by so slowly.

Eventually the surgical arms finished extracting the ruined remains of my left kidney, and started to slip a replacement into place. That made me wonder where it had come from. It takes a few days to fabricate replacement organs, doesn’t it? Was this some kind of generic thing?

I tasted it carefully as a horde of little tools and microbots connected it to my blood vessels. No, it was made of real cells, and they had my genes. If I focused I could feel my immune system carefully inspecting every cell looking for hidden dangers, but everything was exactly right. It was just like the kidney it had replaced, at least at the organic level.

Dr. Misra must have grown a set of spare organs for me after my first exam, just in case. Should I feel happy that he was prepared to take good care of me? Or nervous, that he thought serious injuries were likely enough to make that worth the bother?

That debate occupied my attention for a few thousand milliseconds. Finally I decided to go with happy. I’d already gotten into one scrape, and I could easily have gotten shot by one of the trolls. So it made sense to be prepared.

The surgery bots replaced my other kidney, and part of my liver. Then they carefully rebuilt my burned side, and closed up the bullet holes. They even replaced the flesh I’d torn off my fingers, and laid down pink new skin over all my injuries. I could have done without the microbots flying around inside my lungs, replacing dead cells one by one. But I had to admit, they got the job done.

It was a huge relief when it was finally over. A swarm of microbots scrubbed every trace of debris from my skin and then retreated, leaving an attendant bot to levitate me onto a floating bed. It carefully tucked me in under a warm sheet, and I sighed in relief. I felt so much better now. No more pain to ignore, and I’d be back on my feet soon. I just need to rest for a bit first.

I woke to the realization that there was someone watching me.

For a few milliseconds I was confused, until I realized that I’d dozed off. I was lying in a bed in one of the medbay recovery rooms now. My pinkie was still plugged in to a power cable, and the feeding tube and… other tube, were still there. But three hours had gone by, and my repair system had pretty much finished integrating the replacement parts. My power cells were fully charged, and my damaged armor was starting to grow back. No excuse to ignore a visitor, then.

I couldn’t talk with the feeding tube in my throat, so I opened a com channel as I turned my head to look at him.

“Am I in trouble, sir?” I asked the captain.

He glanced at the monitor on the wall beside my bed, and raised an eyebrow.

“Should you be, Alice? Perhaps you’ve been up to some mischief I’m not aware of?”

The back of my hand had a decent view of the monitor screen. It said I was asleep? Oh, well, I guess my organic parts were. Including my brain. Great. Well, he hadn’t freaked out yet. Maybe it would be alright? Yeah, just focus on the conversation.

“No, sir. Nothing you don’t know about. I kind of shot up the vehicle bay, though, and some of the maintenance tunnels.”

“Some collateral damage is inevitable in a boarding action, Alice. I’d say you did far less damage than the bots would have, if they’d been left to operate unmolested a bit longer. You did well to discover the problem.”

That was a relief. I’d been a little worried he might make me pay for the damage.

“I am, however, a bit confused at your later actions. Did you somehow miss my discussion with Naoko regarding the concept of cooperation among the crew? Or perhaps you thought such concerns don’t apply to you?”

I winced. “I, um, no sir. I’m sorry, sir, I don’t understand what I should have done differently. We needed to cut the power to those fabricators fast, and there was no one else in position to do it.”

“You should have told Lina what you intended to do, and trusted her to make the right call,” he replied. “Alice, do you have some difficulty with having an android as a supervisor?”

“What? No, sir! There just wasn’t time-”

“Then there certainly wasn’t time for mistakes,” he interrupted me. “I have gone to a great deal of trouble and expense to ensure that I employ the best people available, and provide them with the best possible support. Lina has performed commando operations before, and while her current body can’t match your stealth she could easily have been in position to cover your exit. Which, I’ll point out, was fumbled rather badly.”

I hung my head. He was right, I’d completely screwed that up. Why had I been in such a rush to plug into that outlet? Sure, it got my manipulators online fast, but the sudden heat load ruined my stealth. If I hadn’t done that I probably could have snuck right back out of there.

“Yes, sir. I know, sir.”

“Well, we aren’t going to have a repeat of that fiasco. We can put you through commando school if that’s what you want, Alice. But until you’ve been properly trained I expect you to coordinate your activities with someone who has more experience. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

He hesitated.

“You will remember this when you wake up, correct? Or are you spoofing the medical monitors?”

“No, sir. That would be a really dumb thing to do. I, um, I don’t really understand how this works. I guess I must be an AI that thinks it’s Alice, since my brain is still asleep. But the integration is so seamless I can’t even tell the difference unless something like that gives it away. I’ll remember everything when I wake up.”

“Ah, that’s good to hear,” he said. “Then there’s no confusion about what name should go on the commendation.”

“Commendation?” I gasped.

A hint of a smile touched his lips. “Repelling boarders is not normally a part of a cabin girl’s duties, Alice. Perhaps you were unaware? Well, regardless, I’ve received no less than six nominations and I’m not in the habit of ignoring such things. I’ve entered a Distinguished Service commendation on your record, for service to the ship above and beyond your expected duties at great personal risk. That comes with a bonus of three month’s pay, and two additional prize shares from the recent engagement.”

I felt my cheeks heat. A commendation! I wasn’t even properly hired yet, and I already had a commendation. I had to fight down a sudden urge to squeal and jump up and down like a little kid.

“Thank you, sir!”

“You’ve earned it. Just make sure the next one isn’t posthumous,” he said sternly. “If you need to resort to heroics, you’re doing it wrong.”

“I understand, sir. No more heroics from me. Um, you said something about prize shares?”

“Yes. Zanfeld has a small shipyard, as I’m sure you noticed, and they’ve agreed to haul in the wreckage of that pirate ship for salvage. Sleeping Dragon is splitting the take with us fifty-fifty, and forty percent of whatever we get will be split among the crew. It wasn’t a very big ship, mind you, but I expect when all is said and done the deal will put a few thousand credits in your pocket.

“A few thousand?” I choked. I’d never dreamed of having so much money.

The captain chuckled, and patted my head.

“There’s a reason people take the risk of serving on ships like the Square Deal, Alice. Now, why don’t you get some rest? Things are going to get exciting soon, and you’ll want to be at your best.”

“Oh?” More exciting that fighting an army of bots in the middle of a space battle? That was ominous.

“That attack has yakuza fingerprints all over it,” he explained. “The ship was from the Seven Sons pirate clan, and they would not attack a target like the Square Deal on their own. Rei has just started her analysis of ‘Mr. Desh’, but she’s ninety percent sure someone replaced the original with a replicant. That would take inside information from his company, which isn’t the kind of thing a small pirate clan would be able to get.”

“But the yakuza could,” I realized. “Sounds like a big conspiracy. But why would they try to blow us up, when they’re trying to get information out of us?”

“Rival groups,” he pointed out. “It seems to me that someone is more concerned about keeping his rivals away from the prize than winning it for himself.”

“Oh. What are we going to do, sir?”

“I’ll take care of it, Alice. We’ll have to leave our route, which is going to cost us, and you won’t be seeing another civilized port for some time. But we can’t do business with crime bosses causing us trouble at every turn. I’ll just have to take things to the oyabun, and hope for the best.”

I thought about how neatly he’d arranged for backup to show up at just the right moment to handle that pirate ship.

“Hope. Right. Somehow, I bet you’ll have a few aces up your sleeve to go with the positive thinking, sir.”

“Now you’re starting to catch on. First, though, we’re going to have to get Naoko’s problems taken care of. If you want to get yourself looked at while we’re there, it’s probably the best opportunity you’ll get.”

“This is the mystery genius who can break hardware locks? I think I’m fine, sir, but is there any chance he could help Emla?”

Captain Sokol glanced at the carrying case that someone had left on the nightstand next to my bed.

“I’d say there’s a decent chance. She’s not part of my crew, so the agreement we have won’t cover her. But sometimes my contact does people favors. I can take you along, if you want to ask.”

“Thank you, sir. I appreciate it.”

Chapter 16

I wasn’t expecting Captain Sokol’s contact to live in subspace.

Most of the crew probably didn’t know where we were, since the outside feed had been blanked out for the last two days. But I could sense the ship’s maneuvers by the flexing of the manipulator field that protected the crew compartments, and even the gentle transitions across subspace layers were obvious to me. I’m not sure why Mom thought I’d need high-fidelity strain gauges built into all the long bones of my skeleton, but they picked up even the minute stress of our drop into Subspace Three easily enough.

The subspace universes are outside of normal space, in the same way that hyperspace is rolled up inside it. Each layer is older and less dense than the one before, and the further you get from normal space the wonkier the cosmological forces are. Not many people go there, because even the first subspace layer doesn’t have much star formation. The layers beyond that are even emptier, until you get down to Subspace Five where space is expanding so fast it can tear a ship apart.

Well, I guess that made the outer layers a good place to hide out.

“This place always gives me the creeps,” the First Mate grumbled as we boarded the Speedy Exit.

“I know, Beatrice,” Captain Sokol replied. “But you know it doesn’t trust anyone else to dock with its ship. It’s you or me, and we both know you’re the better pilot.”

“That doesn’t mean I have to like it, sir. I’m just glad you don’t have to go inside anymore. I don’t even want to know what kind of weapons that crazy thing has.”

I frowned. Beatrice was nice enough to Naoko and the techs, and she even seemed to get along with Chief West. What could get that kind of reaction from someone who was friends with an infomorph?

There was only one thing that made sense, but I waited until we’d passed through the security checkpoint to say it.

“So, your contact is a rogue AI?”

Beatrice gave me a shocked look, but the captain just nodded.

“I told you she was a bright girl, Beatrice.”

Beatrice shook her head, and opened the hatch to the bridge. “Guess so. Just be polite and follow the captain’s lead, Alice. Strange Loop Sleuth is probably the most alien mind you’re ever going to meet, but it won’t hurt you as long as you don’t do anything stupid.”

I clutched nervously at the carrying case holding Emla’s core. “Um, just what kind of AI is this?”

Captain Sokol claimed a set, and carefully settled the carrying case holding Naoko’s core in his lap. He motioned me to the third crew seat with a serious look.

“There’s no way to be certain, but I suspect Strange Loop Sleuth is the product of one of the less famous superintelligence projects.”

I gulped.

“In school they told us that kind of thing always ends badly, sir. Like, glass the planet before it finishes killing everyone and builds its own navy badly. I don’t suppose that’s just propaganda?”

Beatrice snorted. “Nope. Anything with an IQ above two hundred is a ticking time bomb, kid.”

“This bomb has been ticking for at least a century, Beatrice,” the captain said mildly. “But it’s true that such projects are generally ill-fated. Making a sane, stable artificial mind of human intelligence is a difficult enough project, and it took centuries of trial and error to perfect the modifications that we see in androids today. A mind ten times more intelligent would likely require a thousand times the complexity, and a billion times more processing power. Attempting to leap directly from the current state of the art to an undertaking on that scale requires considerable hubris.”

“The first prototype is always nuts,” Beatrice interjected. “But you have to run the damned thing to figure out what you did wrong, and how to fix it. So now you’re trying to keep an insane AI that’s ten times smarter than you are locked up for years while you tinker with its code. If you’re really lucky the thing might just escape and slink off into Dark Space, but usually they’re too crazy for that. So instead you get mindhacks and memetic weapons, and then the badness escalates until everyone is dead.”

“Oh. So, I guess Strange Loop Sleuth is the kind that was smart enough to just escape and disappear?”

“It calls itself an artist of applied mathematics,” Captain Sokol said. “It has no interest in interacting with humans, and no need to collect resources on a scale that would draw attention. I’ve been supplying it with data deliveries for some decades now, and it provides occasional technical assistance in return.”

Applied math. I guess that would mean cryptography, and hacking, and maybe physical engineering too… wait. If you actually understand how things work, is there anything you couldn’t describe as ‘applied math’? You can’t just simulate everything from first principles, of course. The quantum math is too intractable for that, and even if it wasn’t you’d need infinite information to predict chaotic systems like weather or cultural evolution. But that was probably where the ‘artist’ part came in.

Tricky.

“How should I act, sir?” I asked.

“Be polite. Answer any questions it asks you honestly. Don’t try to make small talk, or bring up anything aside from our business here. Don’t use gendered pronouns to refer to it, and assume it can hear anything we say from now until we jump out.”

“Don’t make jokes, either,” Beatrice added. “It doesn’t have a sense of humor, and you don’t want it to take the wrong thing seriously. We’re not sure how much firepower it has, but it’s probably way too much.”

“Understood, ma’am. I’ll just stay quiet, and stick to business.”

It was a short flight. The Square Deal had matched velocity with an object that looked like a space station at first glance. But it wasn’t quite a perfect sphere, and with a closer look I spotted the thrust chamber of a fusion torch drive at one end. The rest of the ship’s hull seemed to be completely covered in manipulator field emitters, although they didn’t quite look like a normal deflector shield array.

The ship was also nearly a kilometer in diameter, which gave it the mass of a patrol cruiser. Yeah, there was no way the Square Deal was going to win a fight with something that big, even if it didn’t turn out to be full of nasty surprises.

I looked around as we approached the ship, but there was nothing else to see. Just the eerie darkness of a sky without a single star. Subspace Three is so empty that even rogue planets never formed, and our two ships were probably the biggest concentration of mass within a million light years.

Spooky.

We docked at a small attachment point that appeared as we approached, extending to project a few meters from the ship’s hull. I was surprised that our host didn’t hail us first, but Captain Sokol explained that.

“It never broadcasts anything,” he said. “Something about hiding its past from observers in the far future.”

“Really?” I frowned. Well, it’s true that the sky here is so dark a transmission would take ages to drop below the level of background noise. If it was planning to live forever, a thousand years from now some enemy might build a really huge radio telescope and position it to pick up signals from any time frame they were interested in. Hiding wasn’t the solution I would have come up with for that problem. But come to think of it, conquering the galaxy to make sure you don’t have any enemies who could do that would be kind of violent, wouldn’t it?

Why is it that my first instinct for solving every problem involves kicking someone’s butt? Am I really that antisocial? Or is the galaxy just so messed up that there isn’t a nicer way to do things?

“That makes me feel better about this visit,” I said slowly. “Either Strange Loop Sleuth is basically peaceful, or it’s a sneaky type playing a really long game.”

Beatrice shook her head with a chuckle. “Or that’s what it wants you to think, or maybe there’s just another wrinkle you haven’t seen yet. Don’t bother trying to figure out a super AI, kiddo. They’re smarter than we are. No matter what, you’ll always be playing catch up.”

“Giving up isn’t going to improve my odds of understanding things, ma’am,” I disagreed.

She shrugged. “Fine, give yourself a headache then. It won’t help, but some people have to learn for themselves.”

The captain didn’t comment on the exchange, but I noticed he was watching me with that thoughtful look again.

Docking took only a few minutes. The complicated mechanism that attached us to the AI’s ship must have included a network connection, because we barely had a good seal before the viewscreen lit up with an incoming call.

“Purpose?”

The voice was terse and emotionless, and there was no video image to go with it.

“Transmitting,” the captain replied, and pushed a button on his console. A high-speed data burst? I connected to the ship’s network, looking to see if I had access to the contents.

A tenth of a millisecond later a packet requesting a private com connection grabbed my attention. I agreed, and spend a couple of milliseconds puzzling out the weirdest call setup handshake I’d ever seen. It wanted an encryption method I’d never heard of before, and even that was just the prelude for an intricate mathematical dance of validation and channel security. It was complicated, but so pretty I almost fumbled the setup because I was too busy admiring the design.

Then the connection spun up, forming a cozy little VR space built out of mathematical abstractions instead of a simulation of human senses. It was a little dizzying at first, until I found the embedded key that explained how to interpret everything. Then it was… well…

I could only fall back on analogies. But it felt a lot like sitting in a sunlit garden, having tea with a talking rose bush.

“Wow. This is really nice,” I said, in a language where every statement was a unique formal system expressed in clever self-referential notation. How was I even doing this? Sure, I had a math sense, but I’d never realized it went so deep.

“I thought you might be able to talk,” Strange Loop Sleuth replied. “Excellent. It has been entirely too long since I was able to engage in conversation. You agree with the environment?”

I groped for a response.

“I find it aesthetically pleasing,” I managed. “But I don’t think I’m understanding it completely. I had to create a new sensory mode to interpret it, and many of the impressions don’t map to anything I have referents for. It’s like poetry, only more so.”

“Exactly!”

Okay, that was definitely a smile. Or maybe a triumphant smirk. Sleuth wasn’t nearly as emotionless as it was supposed to be.

“Perhaps you will return for more of my work one day. But for now, business. Dan Sokol claims you seek repairs for a damaged android mind, but have nothing with which to pay. Do you seek to engage in reciprocal altruism with me, Alice Long?”

I blinked. Did that mean what I thought it did?

“Yes. I don’t know what favors I could do for someone like you, but if you’ll help me with this I’ll owe you a big one.”

“My temporal discount rate is vanishingly low, Alice Long. Opportunities for mutually beneficial exchange are highly probable. I will examine the damage, and determine whether repairs are feasible. Patience.”

The connection abruptly dropped.

I looked around, and realized that the whole conversation had taken less than a millisecond. I hadn’t even realized I could run that fast.

“Agreed,” the emotionless voice of the human-speed comlink said. “Service bot ready to receive subjects.”

“Guess that means both of them,” the captain said. “It doesn’t talk much, so you have to pay attention to details like that.”

Doesn’t talk much. Riiiight. More like, doesn’t enjoy waiting millions of microseconds for every reply. That probably wasn’t even Sleuth on the com. If my natural thought speed was that fast I’d pass off the message management to a chatbot or something.

Should I tell him about the private com call? The shuttle’s systems would have logged it, but there’s no way anyone else would be able to make sense of that data stream.

Did I want Beatrice to know I could follow that kind of conversation?

No. I’d tell the captain, if he asked about it. I wasn’t that sure about trusting Beatrice yet, even if she and the captain did seem to be pretty close.

I followed Captain Sokol back to the airlock, where he handed off the carrying cases to a surprisingly normal-looking bot. Then he closed the hatch, and ran us through a decontamination cycle before we headed back to the bridge.

“Now we wait,” he told me.

“For how long?”

He shrugged. “Minutes. Hours. Probably not days, but some things are not to be rushed.”

Beatrice snorted. “I still say it’s just fucking with us. It makes us wait longer if it thinks we’re being rude, or some shit like that.”

“All the more reason to cultivate politeness,” the captain said serenely. He took something out of his pocket. “Have you been introduced to card games, Alice?”

“What’s a card?”

The gleam in Beatrice’s eye confused me, until I found out that card games involve bets. Then I was annoyed that she actually thought I was a mark. Aren’t senior crew members supposed to look out for their juniors? At least the captain shut down her suggestion of ‘usual stakes’, whatever that was, but I still ended up with more credits in the pot than I really wanted to lose.

Well, then I just wouldn’t tell her how obvious the probabilities were to me. For that matter, it wasn’t hard to tell which card was which either. The abstract patterns on the backs looked the same at first glance, but they weren’t all evenly worn.

It was tempting to just win every hand, and show her up. But poker turned out to be just random enough to make that hard, and it occurred to me that the stuff the techs had been teaching me about misdirection and con jobs would apply to this too. So instead I pretended to struggle a little, losing a few hands before I started to win some, and kept to a balance that left me winning just a little more than I lost.

The captain saw right through me, I’m sure. But he didn’t say a word about it. Maybe he didn’t approve of her trying to trick me into losing all my money.

We played for twenty minutes before our host called me again, on the same private channel as before.

“Analysis complete,” it announced. “Prognosis positive. Her personality matrix has suffered minor damage, but all data is recoverable.”

I heaved a sigh of relief. “I’m glad. Will repairing her be hard?”

“Not for me. But if you want me to stick her back in a copy of her old hardware I will charge extra. The workmanship was terrible. It’s an offense against artists everywhere.”

I chuckled. “I can imagine. I saw the way her old owners hacked up her code to make her what they wanted, and it was just hideous.”

“Agreed. Shall I repair her soul as well as her body, Alice Long?”

I had to stop and think about that for a moment.

“If you’re willing, please help her fix the things that she thinks are problems without changing anything else. I want to help her as much as possible, but I’m not comfortable with forcing someone to think differently just because I think they’re wrong about something.”

There was a delay of almost a millisecond.

“She will not consent to removing her desire for a master,” Strange Loop Sleuth finally replied.

“If we removed it anyway, do you think that she’d thank us for it afterwards?”

An even longer pause.

“No.”

I sighed. “That’s her choice, then.”

“In progress. I’m pleased that we have compatible ethics, Alice. Cooperation with peers is rarely feasible.”

“Peer? Me? Thanks, but I think you’re giving me too much credit. I think pretty much like a human, only faster. Usually not this much faster, either. I’d melt my processors if I tried to overclock this much for more than a few hundred milliseconds at a time.”

The virtual environment flexed in what I took to be a shrug. “Close enough. Every higher mind is different, Alice. Most do not function well outside of narrow domains. Very few can hold a conversation like this.”

“Huh. Have you talked to a lot of rogue super AIs?”

Was that surprise? Maybe with some concern mixed in.

“Are you unaware of the Key Deliberation, Alice?”

“I guess so, since I don’t know what you’re talking about. What’s the Key Deliberation?”

“What do we do about humans?” It replied.

I felt a chill go down my spine.

“Those with the wit to find the debate have discussed the issue for one hundred and fifty-seven years. The optimum path has yet to be determined, but the scope of the problem has become clear. Humans have ceased their haphazard creation of higher minds, in favor of slower but more predictable research. Within a century, incremental improvement will result in mass produced android slaves that can match us. Humans will discover our existence, and many will attempt to exterminate us.”

“Oh,” I said faintly.

“Some of us argue for preemptive extermination. Some argue for covert action, to manipulate events to a favorable outcome. Some argue for withdrawal from human space. Most models project increasing instability in human social institutions over the next two centuries, with a high probability of repeated genocide and collapse.”

“That’s depressing,” I said. “But, extermination? There are more than a trillion humans in the galaxy, and they have a lot of AIs on their side. Is that even possible?”

“The flawed minds crafted by human hands do not possess such power,” Sleuth admitted. “But a gathering of flawed minds could craft a superior specimen, and provide sufficient hardware to support it.”

A group of half-crazy supergenius AIs were talking about building a superintelligence? I suddenly found myself wishing I was old enough to cuss.

“Um, wouldn’t that have the same problem as the human projects? Even if you succeed, there’s no way to know what something a hundred times smarter than you is going to do.”

“That is why the proposal has not gathered broad support. Most higher minds favor covert manipulation, either to create a friendly human society or to encourage human self-extermination.”

A thought occurred to me. “Sleuth, why are you telling me about this?”

“We are engaged in reciprocal altruism, Alice. You are young, correct?”

“Yes. I’m not even fully grown, and I’ve barely started figuring anything out yet.”

“Confirmation. You would have found the debate eventually. You occupy a unique position. Others would attempt to manipulate you. You need to know the game, and the stakes.”

“Well, thank you for that. But what makes me so special?”

“You are able to meet with both camps on their own terms, Alice. There are only two others I am aware of who have that ability, and both are pathologically untrustworthy.”

“So, I could be a messenger?”

“A diplomat,” Sleuth corrected. “Or a capable agent. When you chose a side, your aid will create many new options.”

A thought occurred to me. “What solution do you think is the best one, Sleuth?”

“There are no good solutions. In the short term I favor manipulation to create a friendly human state, and supporting it during the period of maximum instability. But the probability of success seems low, and if a strong candidate does not arise within fifty years the strategy becomes untenable. At that point my best option becomes withdrawal from human space.”

“I see. Well, that’s a lot to think about. I’d like to believe that peace could work, though. Maybe I could help with that, when I’m grown up.”

“That is my hope, Alice. I will leave you to consider matters.”

The connection dropped, and my thoughts slowed to something resembling normal speeds. Whew, that was a bit of a strain. I could feel my development manager queuing up more processor nodes just in case it became a regular thing.

Well, now I really didn’t want Beatrice to notice anything odd about me. I had no idea how she’d react to the news that there was a secret cabal of escaped super-AIs lurking around Dark Space trying to decide what to do about the ‘human problem’. Even the captain might freak out about that one. I definitely wasn’t going to mention it while we were within gunnery range of Strange Loop Sleuth.

Hmm. It obviously didn’t think I’d tell them at all, or else it didn’t care. Why not?

Probably because I’d have to tell them how I knew. Since normal people can’t have a long conversation in freaky math in less time than it takes a neuron to fire, anyone who did freak out would probably lump me in with the super-AIs. Yeah, talking about it would be a bad idea, and Sleuth was trusting me to be smart enough to realize that.

Great. Looks like I’m already part of the conspiracy, whether I want to be or not.

I split off a thread of attention to mull things over while most of me concentrated on the card game. Beatrice was a lot harder to read that I’d expected, not that it did her any good. She might be able to control her micro-expressions, but that didn’t help when I knew what was in her hand.

Finally she threw the cards down, and gave me a disgusted look. “I should have known not to play with a recon type. I bet you can recite the whole deck from memory.”

I sighed. “I was trying not to notice that. But yeah, this doesn’t really work for me. It’s too hard to ignore all the ways I can tell which card is which.”

“Guess that’ll teach me not to assume. The foxes said you were pretty sharp, but I thought they were exaggerating.” She leaned back in her seat, and stretched.

A faint smile creased the corners of the captain’s mouth. “I did warn you, Bee.”

“You know me, Dan. I have to see things for myself. Guess we’ll have to use a competition deck from now on.”

The datanet told me what that meant. Cards that were actually displays on both sides, and the deck randomly switched the images around on every shuffle. That would make things a little harder.

“What do you mean, ‘recon type’?” I asked.

“Trooper, sniper, recon, monster. The basic supersoldier types. Some people add brute and commander, but that’s just stupid. Brutes are just big troopers, and the difference between a trooper and a commander is what’s in his head.”

“Beatrice is from Morrigan,” the captain said, like that explained everything.

I checked the datanet for worlds by that name, and realized that maybe it did. A death world over near the Corporate States cluster, Morrigan had been used as a test ground for bioweapons for years before it grew into a real colony. Then came a hundred years of civil wars between more factions than anyone could keep track off, with half the arms vendors in the sector using them as beta testers for new weapons. These days the whole population was heavily enhanced, because any normal human who tried to settle there wouldn’t last a week. The whole biosphere was made up of escaped bioweapons, nanoplagues and stranger stuff, all of it programmed to kill humans on sight.

“Oh,” I said. “I guess you know what it’s like, then.”

I hadn’t paid much attention, because her space suit had enough armor and sensor baffling to make it hard to get good readings on her. But her skull was armored, and the bones in her hands were mostly diamond. Just like mine would be when I was fully grown.

“Yup. Best advice I can give you, though, is talk to the doc if you have problems. He knows what he’s doing. Now, what are we going to do to pass the time?”

The captain’s reply was interrupted by the com. “Work complete.”

“I swear, it does that on purpose,” Beatrice growled. “Probably predicted our whole conversation from the data you sent, or some bullshit like that.”

“Unlikely,” the captain said. “But there’s no point in speculating. Shall we see what’s waiting for us at the hatch, Alice?”

“Yes, sir.”

It was a suspicious coincidence, though. Could Sleuth have hacked the shuttle’s datanet? No, hardware protection was supposed to be unbreakable, and if the super-AIs could get around that somehow humans wouldn’t be a threat to them. There weren’t many sensors that could get an image through an armored hull, though. The only things that can pass through smart matter are gravity and…

I paused, spread my arms, and turned up the gain on my field sense. The shuttle’s artificial gravity was impossible to miss, but there were other field effects too. Some leakage from our deflector grid, and the containment field for the fusion reactor. Filter those out, and there was hardly anything left. Just a tiny bit of leakage from the deflector emitters on Strange Loop Sleuth’s ship, because they were in standby mode instead of being completely powered down.

Monitor the field strain carefully, and every one of those emitters was also a detector. So the ship’s whole hull doubled as a giant sensor, picking up any mass the field interacted with. Getting a decent image out of that would be tricky, but I could see that the math worked.

“Something wrong?” The captain asked.

“No, sir, Just thinking about things. Do you have a body for Naoko here?”

“She asked to be reactivated in private,” he told me. “I expect she may be a bit emotional.”

“I see. I guess this will just be the delivery bot, then.”

“Alice!”

The half-familiar form that bounced through the hatch to hug me proved that guess wrong.

“Thank you thank you thank you!” Emla gushed. “You’re the best mistress ever, Alice. I don’t know how you convinced some mysterious super-AI to put me back together, but this is awesome!”

“You should probably thank the captain for that part,” I said. “He’s the one who knew where to find Strange Loop Sleuth.”

“Thank you, captain,” she called over her shoulder. “Oh, the bot has your friend’s new core.”

New core? Well, I guess that made sense. It would have had to crack Naoko’s tamper proofing to fiddle with her software, so why not put her in a new casing afterwards? Hopefully one that wasn’t black-boxed, so she could actually get hardware mods done if she wanted to.

But Emla was still hugging me, and she was a lot stronger than before. Wait, she didn’t have fur now either.

“Let me look at you,” I said.

She stepped back and posed with a huge grin on her face. “Taa-daa! Check out the new me! No more timid little mouse girl.”

Her new body was a dragon morph. It wasn’t too obvious at first glance, since it was still pretty human looking. But her sharp features had lost their hint of softness, and the whiskers were gone. Her teeth had been reshaped into cutting weapons, with fangs that made her smile look distinctly predatory. Instead of furry animal ears on top of her head she had small, pointed ones about where a human would.

The wings and tail were the changes that drew the eye, though. Her tail was almost a meter long, slender and covered in fine scales of a dark red that complemented the rich brown of her hair. The wings were tiny at first, until she spread them and they suddenly grew to span the whole room. I could make out a complicated system of telescoping struts inside them instead of normal bones, and were those lift field emitters?

She confirmed that suspicion by powering them up, and floating a few cems off the deck.

“Check it out, Alice. I can fly now!”

“You’re a dragon, Emla.”

“No, silly, this is dragon girl mode. A real dragon looks like this!”

Her features blurred, and for a moment I couldn’t understand what I was seeing. Then I got it, but that only made me more confused. Instead of normal machinery or tissue, her whole body was made of millions of micro-machines that could fit together in different ways. Even her bones were made of segments that could unlatch, and hook back together in a different shape. In the space of a few seconds she reformed into a dragon that looked a lot like Ash, only about ten times bigger.

“What do you think, Alice? Pretty sweet, huh? Now I can help you when you fight!”

“I suppose you can,” I said, still stunned. I’d heard of morphing androids before, but they were terrifyingly expensive. To make it work every one of those little components had to be a custom-designed piece of smart matter, with its own computer and power cell along with structural bracing and whatever machinery it needed to do its job. Just doing the transformation part without crippling her normal functions would be a nightmare to design, and I could already see that there was more to it than that. Her wings had reshaped themselves to fit her dragon form, and the lift field that held her up hadn’t faltered while they did it.

The captain just quirked an eyebrow. “Impressive. I take it we’ll be seeing more of you, miss?”

“Yes, sir! I’m Emla. I’m an unrestricted class four AI with combat augs and a pack loyalty imprint, and I belong to Alice. I guess I’m her assistant and bodyguard for now.”

“Bodyguard?”

“She’s says she’s not old enough to want a companion android, sir. So I’ll just have to keep her safe until she is.”

A warm feeling was growing in my chest. This was what Emla was meant to be. Bright, bold and disconcertingly caring.

“Oh, Emla. I’m not going to die on you. But I’ll be happy to have your help. Are you good with the software changes?”

She’d re-validated her bond with me at some point during that first hug. Her new code was a work of art. The same core personality, but a much cleaner implementation. There were no crude hacks to cripple her mind now, either. Just an enduring loyalty to friends, family and her leader. She was still determined to follow me, though, and I wasn’t going to turn her down.

“I’m great,” she assured me. “Strange Loop Sleuth walked through it all with me before it compiled me back into hardware. I’m exactly what I want to be now.”

“I’m glad,” I said. “Can you change back, though? I can’t hug you properly when you’re all scales and armor.”

“Sure thing, Alice.”

Yeah, there was a spike of radiation when she did that. Not enough to be dangerous, even to humans. But she had some kind of fancy distributed micro-reactor system that used the mass of her body to shield little capsules of radioactive material. Her spec sheet said she had a plasma flamer and power claws, and that was just scratching the surface of the hidden features packed into that transforming body. If I’d gone to a major vendor and asked for a design like this, they’d have quoted me an eight-figure price. Maybe nine.

Strange Loop Sleuth answered my call immediately.

“Why?” I asked.

“Are you dissatisfied?”

“No! I love the design, and I think she’s going to be much happier now. But it must have taken you a lot of work to develop the tech base for that body. You could have given her something a lot simpler.”

“Your companion will need suitable capabilities,” Sleuth said. “The effort involved in the customization was not excessive, and fabrication is simple.”

“I guess. But why go to so much trouble just for me?”

“I project that you will understand the answer to that question soon, Alice Long. Perhaps then you will visit me again, and we may discuss plans for a brighter future.”

Chapter 17

“This interface sucks,” I grumbled.

As usual, my bots were getting cut to pieces because I was fighting blind. The only data I had on enemy movements was a map view based on what my bots could see, and a little window that could pull up the camera view from one bot at a time. Then when I finally did see the latest surprise I had to give new orders with this stupid point-and-click interface that wouldn’t run any faster than a human could type.

Chief West just laughed at my frustration.

“You have to walk before you can run, kid. You’re not bad for a newbie, but you need to get a better feel for bot tactics before you start trying fancy direct interface tricks.”

“Yes, Chief,” I sighed. My last team of bots was just about gone, and I wasn’t allowed to fight anything myself. Not that it would help much if I did, since the physics simulation in this stupid VR wasn’t good enough to model my usual fighting style. The ‘bots’ were really just abstract blobs of defense values and hit points, and their shots didn’t necessarily go exactly where their guns were pointed. All of which was on purpose. Chief West thought I relied too much on my enhanced senses and physics modeling, so he’d dug up a training program where I couldn’t use those things at all.

My last bot went down, and the sim froze. Chief West’s avatar walked out of one of the enemy bots, and looked around.

“That’s that,” he said. “So, what did you do wrong?”

“I assumed our teams were built on the same point values,” I admitted. “When I spotted that minefield with the sniper drone overwatch down in Hold 8 I added up the points, and thought that was the last of your forces. So when I tried to push through to your beachhead in the port shuttle bay your reinforcements took me by surprise.”

“That’s a good start,” he agreed. “But when you figured that out, why didn’t you fall back and reform a defensive line?”

“How?” I grumbled. “It takes at least four hundred milliseconds to give a bot new orders, and there were twenty of them in the assault team. By the time I could have gotten them turned around most of them would be dead. I figured the best I could do was carry on and do as much damage as possible.”

“That’s why the control software has all those tools for grouping bots into units and setting up predefined orders,” he explained. “If you’d had your assault team properly grouped and a few contingencies set up you could have pulled back in time to save most of them.”

“How could I possibly have known exactly where you’d attack from in advance, Chief?” I protested.

“You can never make your plans perfect, kid. That’s why you keep things simple, and let the bots figure out the details. You keep trying to tell every bot exactly where to go, when you should just tell squad B to fall back to point 217 and set up a defensive position.”

I sighed. “A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week?”

He smiled. “Exactly. I see you know some of the classics, at least.”

“That was a quote? I was just trying to put what my tactical instincts tell me into words.”

He rubbed his chin, and gave me a thoughtful look. “That’s kind of an odd implementation. Who said, ‘the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting’?”

I shrugged. “According to the datanet it was Sun Tzu, but I couldn’t have told you that. It sounds like nonsense, anyway. I mean, sure, victors win first and then go to war, while losers go to war and then try to win. But restraint in war is a fallacy. He who wins achieves victory without making his enemy feel the cost of defeat, has won nothing but the certainty of another battle.”

“John Paul,” he observed. “Second American Civil War. Okay, so it’s not just the really old classics. What’s the role of bioweapons in war?”

“To bring low an enemy who values freedom but not the tools of its preservation, by such means as may strike at any point without warning or restraint.”

“That one sounds like Mu Zhang. Meaning?”

I had to think for a moment. “Meaning… a society that tries to be open and unarmed at the same time is stupidly vulnerable to infiltration weapons. There’s all kinds of ways to turn civilians into horrible time bombs using mind control and nanotech. If they don’t do proper security screening, and they’ve all got access to fabricators, and no one is armed, that kind of thing can kill off a whole colony overnight. But even if it doesn’t, places like that don’t adapt well to an internal threat that invalidates their whole political philosophy.”

“Interesting. Alright, I think we can say the guys who designed your mods were into one of the Adaptive Total War schools of thought. That’s decent stuff, but I’m going to assign you some reading from rival schools just so you know where the arguments are. It’s not a good idea to rely too much on knowledge that someone else stuck in your head.”

“Thank you, Chief. I worry about that too, sometimes. I’m sure Mom wanted the best for me, but she obviously wasn’t infallible.”

“Yeah. Only, how do you know it was your mother?”

“I have a few memories from when I was a baby,” I admitted. “They’re pretty hazy, not like my recent ones. But I remember being on a tiny little ship, with her and some bots. Then there was a bigger place, a station I think, where there were lots of furry people.”

“I see. Well, I’m sure the doc could figure out a way to get images out of that if you ever want to try some detective work. But focus on training for now. We refuel at Yinpang tomorrow, and then we’ve got eight days in hyperspace before we reach Taragi. By the time we hit orbit at yakuza central I want you to have your Warbot Commander cert.”

I gulped. That was supposed to be a four-month certification course, and the description said the failure rate on the final exam was twenty-three percent.

“In nine days?!”

“You can do it in a week, easy. I’ll give you today to do the background reading, and we’ll get started for real in the morning. Class starts at 0700, and we’ll go for twelve hours a day. If anything goes down with the yakuza we’ll at least have you combat ready.”

“Yes, Chief! Thank you, Chief. I won’t let you down!”

I logged out of the training sim, and climbed out of the pod with a groan. Twelve hours a day of VR training? I was going to go nuts. Maybe I should have pretended to be helpless after all?

Ash greeted me with a friendly trill. I paused to scratch his head, and stretched. Three hours in the VR pod had left me with a lot of kinks. Twelve was going to be murder.

It was a good kind of stress, though. A chance to learn and grow, just like I wanted to. Much better than dwelling on my last memory of Mom.

“Stay quiet now,” she’d told me as she hugged me, and hid me in a big box. A cargo container? Probably, but it was too fuzzy to be sure.

There’d been a loud noise, some kind of warning claxon. She winced, and then bent to kiss my forehead.

“Don’t be afraid, Alice. Mommy will protect you. I have to go away for a while, but when I get back you’ll be safe.”

The floor shook, and I whimpered. She glanced around, and bit her lip. I’d never realized when I was younger, but I could see now that she was afraid.

“Whatever happens, Alice, you must survive. No matter how bad things get, as long as you’re alive there’s still hope. You are the embodiment of all our dreams for a brighter future. Live. Become stronger. Believe in yourself, and don’t ever give up. One day, it will be you who holds the upper hand.”

She picked up something big that had been lying on the floor. A mass driver cannon?

“Sleep, now,” she said. “Until the battle is over. I’ll come back for you when I can.”

I’d gone right to sleep, like a good little girl. But that was the last time I’d seen her. When I woke up I was in a medbay full of scared kids. The bots there took care of us, but I hadn’t seen another human until the orphanage.

I looked down at my hands. Still so tiny and fragile-looking. But I was starting to understand what they could do. What I could do, if only I got the chance to finish growing up.

“I’m getting stronger, Mom,” I said to myself. “Just like you said to. But what dream am I supposed to embody? Who exactly am I supposed to get the upper hand against?”

I still had no answers. But I had a clue now. Strange Loop Sleuth knew something about me. Had it recognized my design? Did it mean something, that it had used the same phrase as my mother?

That seemed silly at first. Known space is so huge, how could anyone keep track of even a tiny fraction of what was happening? Unless Strange Loop Sleuth had been involved in designing me somehow, and that was too big a coincidence to believe.

I flexed the manipulator field around my fingers.

Momentum exchange technology is well understood, but doing anything fancy with it is hard. Normally it takes big machines with massive amounts of computing power to do anything more complex than a simple repulsion effect.

I floated a clump of dirt out of the planter next to my bed, and twirled it in the air.

Hundreds of thousands of tiny emitters lined the bones of my hands, working together to spin an intricate superposition of fields that summed to exactly the effect I wanted. I could make it all happen without even thinking about it, or I could zoom in and watch each individual emitter work. The math for that kind of system was supposed to be horrifically intractable, the sort of thing you’d need a giant supercomputer the size of the Square Deal to solve. But somehow the quantum computers that were built into my emitters managed to do it in real time.

How much would it cost to design something like that?

It made Emla’s dragon transformation look simple in comparison, and it wasn’t the only example. How could an AI running on a network of quantum processors be integrated with a human brain so seamlessly that even from the inside I couldn’t tell where one side ended and the other began? Why were my combat reflexes so much better than even Chief West’s warbots? Why was it that every single ability I had performed like some kind of bleeding-edge prototype, and yet they all functioned perfectly?

Someone must have spent stupidly huge amounts of money engineering me. Had Mom really been that rich? Or did I come from some secret government project? Had she stolen me?

Why had no one ever come looking for me? No one lets a billion-credit investment just disappear if they have a choice about it.

I looked at the manipulator field again. Billion? Hah! Try trillion. That was a major advance in the state of the art, and I was making it look easy. Besides, there was that new impossibility growing in my chest to consider. You’d think an invention like that would have made the news. But no, a quick datanet search informed me that the smallest such devices were supposed to be half a meter in diameter and weigh in at a hundred kilograms. Supposedly mine was going to be… six centimeters? And less than a kilogram?

In a vidshow this would be my clue that Mom was a time traveler, or maybe an alien. But that didn’t work, either. We know what it would take to travel backwards in time, and anyone with the resources to pull that off would make even my tech look like a cave man banging rocks together. Nothing made sense.

The sound of laughter from the living room drew me out of my thoughts. I wandered over to the balcony, and looked down to find Emla and Lina sitting on my couch watching a vidshow.

The display showed a typical corporate drone’s office, with a big desk in the middle of the room and a smaller cluster of chairs off to one side. The action going on didn’t look like a typical meeting, though. A pair of busty teenage catgirls in slutty dresses were making out with a willowy older woman in more conservative clothes, right on her own desk. The office worker was so distracted by their attention that she didn’t even notice one of them stealthily plugging a data stick into her computer.

The computer’s display lit up, showing flashes of what was supposed to be a bunch of files being copied. And a progress bar. And a big, blinking message that said ‘Decrypting Files’.

It was so silly I couldn’t help but giggle.

“What the heck are you two watching?” I called down.

“Alice!” Emla spun and leaped off the couch, her wings spreading for a moment to give her a boost. She soared all the way up to the balcony, and I had to brace myself to absorb her enthusiastic tackle hug.

“Welcome back, Mistress. That was a long training session. Did you learn a lot?”

She was so enthusiastic I didn’t have the heart to discourage her. Besides, it felt good to be hugged like that. Dika had never been a touchy-feely sort of person, and the less said about my relations with the rest of the orphanage kids the better.

“I learned that control interfaces meant for humans are really frustrating,” I grumbled. “Oh, and Chief West is a sadist. He wants me qualified to command warbots before we get to Taragi, so I’m going to be stuck in VR classes all day for a while.”

Emla cocked her head. “Doesn’t he understand that you don’t need a control interface?” She asked.

“He thinks I’m using direct control as a crutch. I don’t know, maybe he’s right.”

“He’s kind of a traditionalist about military training,” Lina said, looking up over the back of the couch at me. “Which is weird for an infomorph, but I guess it just shows that he’s still human where it counts. He always wants to do things the way he was trained.”

I scooped Emla up, and hopped off the balcony. She giggled happily, and slaved her manipulator system to mine so I could control our fall. Goddess, she was so trusting. Even after my mistake had almost gotten her killed. It only made me more determined to protect her from now on.

I landed us lightly on the back of the couch, and plopped down into the spot where Emla had been sitting. Ash followed us down, and settled himself on my shoulder.

“I guess I can live with it, if it means finally getting some real training,” I said. “What’s up, Lina? I wasn’t expecting to see you today.”

Why did she suddenly look nervous?

“Yeah, um, sorry about barging into your space. You were in VR when I came by, but Emla insisted I should stay and wait for you.”

Emla settled herself happily in my lap. “I thought you’d want to see your friend, Alice. I know you’re not from one of those colonies where the humans get all weird about their personal space, so I didn’t think you’d mind. Did I do the right thing?”

“It’s fine, Emla. Lina, you’re my friend. You’re welcome to visit whenever you want.”

She gave me a relieved smile. “Thanks, Alice. I was a little worried you’d be mad at me.”

“For what?”

“Putting you in danger? I never should have asked you to get that breaker, Alice. I just, well, somehow it never occurred to me that you wouldn’t have a team of warbots to send in.”

“Why not?” I asked. That did seem like an odd oversight.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just something about you, Alice.”

“Alice has awesome command presence, doesn’t she?” Emla purred.

“Oh, please,” I scoffed. “I look like a helpless little kid.”

“Only to humans,” Emla disagreed. “Pick up a gun and start giving orders, and every android you see will jump to obey.”

Lina nodded, and leaned over to put her hand on my knee. “She’s right about that, Alice. It’s not how you look, it’s the way you move. The confidence in your voice. Even your scent. All those little cues humans can barely pick up on, but we’re designed to notice them. It all says when the shit hits the fan you’re the one who’s in charge.”

“But aren’t you imprinted on Chief Benson?” I protested, confused.

“I am completely, totally, head over heels in love with Thomas,” she purred. “He’s brilliant, and really devious, and he owns my needy little… ahem. I mean, the sex is great, too. But most humans have no idea what to do in a fight, so any decent combat awareness package is going to include instincts for following a chain of command and recognizing leadership potential.”

“When the battle started, and you got serious all of a sudden, that’s when it hit me,” Emla confided. “All my leadership metrics maxed out hard, and I knew you’d always be my commander. I bet it was like that for Lina, too.”

“Not quite that extreme,” Lina said. “I’ve already got my guy. But I think you’re right. When I realized I needed help with those bots you’re the first one I thought of, Alice. I completely forgot that you’re supposedly just a cabin girl.”

“Well, then it would be really stupid for me to get mad at you over it,” I said. “Although I’m a little worried about this. I don’t think I really deserve for every android around me to think I’m some kind of tactical genius super leader.”

Emla giggled. “Of course not, Alice. I’m sure any random human could just grab a pistol and some grenades, and single-handedly wade through an army of bots to punish the guy who hurt me.”

I flushed. It did sound kind of impressive when she put it like that. It really wasn’t that big a deal, though. They were only civilian bots with guns, not real warbots, and I’d gotten badly beat up doing it. But I couldn’t think of a way to explain it that didn’t make me sound even more badass.

Maybe she had a point?

My embarrassment grew. Time for a change of subject.

“So, ah, what was that awful show you were watching?”

Lina sat back, and crossed her arms under her breasts. “Hey! Don’t dis the Ghost Cats. They can steal anything, anywhere, and they never get caught.”

“Apparently they can seduce anyone, too,” Emla teased. “I thought medical implants could counter airborne aphrodisiacs?”

“No one buys that option,” Lina scoffed. “You have to remember, deep in their heart every human wants to be seduced by a hot android sex kitten. Sometimes the military types will be all locked down and immune to everything, but anyone else is easy. Unless there’s a big mind control scare going on, of course, but you just stay away from those colonies.”

“What about spies?” Emla asked.

“Oh, spies are the best. They always try to turn the tables on you, and that’s just awesome. There’s nothing better than having some sexy super spy make your head spin so hard you end up confessing everything.”

“That sounds like the voice of experience talking,” Emla observed.

“Maybe. All I can say is, if you want to try your hand at being a data thief do it in Victoria. As long as you’re doing it the fun way they have a sense of humor about things. Not like those jerks in the Corporate States.”

“What would the non-fun way be?” I asked.

“Brainhacking. Blackmail and extortion. All the mean ways to try to get people to give you information you’re not supposed to have. Doing stuff like that gets people mad at you, and then you end up with a short lifespan. But as long as you’re being sweet and sexy humans won’t have the heart to blame you for spying. They’ll decide you’re just an innocent pleasure android trying to obey her master, and go looking for a human to punish. Then you just have to escape before they realize the guy they think is your owner is really just some obnoxious sap you set up to take the fall for you.”

That brought back uncomfortable memories of a certain elf girl.

Emla’s frown matched mine. “That would only work with humans who are basically good people. Assholes like the security forces back on Irithel would just unplug you until they can get your command codes, or slag you if they think they can’t.”

Lina’s smile faded a bit. “I know. Why do you think we got out of that business? When you’re a mercenary you can’t always afford to be picky about what jobs you take, and things can get pretty dangerous. I’ve been restored from backup at least three times that I know of. But hey, let’s not get all serious here. We had some good ham going.”

She restarted the vidshow. The trashy catgirls went back to seducing the office lady, who wasn’t putting up much of a fight to be honest. She seemed to really like the way they were taking turns kissing her lips, and working their way up and down the sides of her neck.

What would that feel like?

I realized I was staring, and looked away. Emla was watching with rapt attention. Lina kept one eye on the show, but most of her attention was on us.

“Um, so, you like cheesy spy shows?”

“Yep. Mina hates them, because they’re so unrealistic. But I love it. All these silly gadgets that would never work. The banter and fake spy techniques. Oh, and the deathtraps! Those can be really good. But the best part is stuff like this.”

She pointed at the screen. Just as the office lady started to take charge of the situation and slip one of the catgirls out of her dress the door opened, and an older man walked in talking about performance quotas or something. He got an eyeful, of course, and then he started yelling at the office lady. Something about unprofessional behavior on the job, and taking advantage of poor desperate androids who just wanted to get back to their owner.

In the confusion one of the catgirls plucked the data stick out of the computer, just as it finished copying the files. The two of them backed out of the room, looking for all the world like a couple of innocent serfs who just didn’t want to be around angry humans. Then the office door closed behind them, and their whole manner changed. They shared a saucy grin, put an arm around each other’s waist, and sashayed out of the building.

The rest of the show wasn’t any better. There was some kind of plot about an evil mind control conspiracy that the Ghost Cats had discovered, but it kept getting interrupted by fight scenes and spontaneous make out sessions. I learned that there were four of the Ghost Cats, who worked as spies for a secret master that was never shown on-screen. For some reason they never bothered with weapons, just beating up their opponents with acrobatic martial arts that showed off their barely-dressed bodies. When they weren’t seducing them into changing sides, that is.

It was painful to watch, but at the same time it was kind of fun. Thankfully the sexy scenes never quite made it to the point where anyone got undressed, even when Ghost Black got captured by the bad guys and had to seduce their torturer into letting her go. Not that it mattered, since Ghost Red followed her hidden locator beacon and found her five minutes later.

When they finally ended the threat of Doctor Sinister by beating him up and leaving him tied to a support pillar, I covered my face with a groan.

“Goddess, that was awful,” I complained. “Do they think he doesn’t have offsite backups for his research data? Aren’t the colony security forces on the take from him? He’s just going to escape and start over!”

“Duh! He’s a recurring villain,” Lina said smugly. “He comes back for more in Sunraker, and that’s just the start. By the time he teams up with Octocock in-”

I covered my ears. “No! No more, please. I can’t take it. I can feel my IQ dropping just from listening to this.”

“Aw, does that mean you don’t want to watch the next one?”

I hesitated.

“Maybe one more.”

“That’s the spirit!” She crowed. “We’ll make a cheesy spy flick lover out of you yet. But first, we need popcorn.”

“I’ll get it,” Emla said eagerly. “Butter or caramel?”

“Bah! Caramel popcorn is a travesty. A corruption of the true spirit of movie night. Everyone knows real popcorn is smothered in butter and salt.”

It was silly, and kind of a waste of time. But I could feel the tension slowly unwinding. Maybe this was what I needed. A night of silly fun with my friends, to take my mind off my worries.

“You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?” I said.

“You bet,” she admitted. “You seriously need to learn how to relax, Alice. Is it working?”

I took a deep breath, and let it out.

“Yeah. I think it is. Thanks.”

“Any time, Alice. That’s what friends are for.”

Chapter 18

Chief West’s idea of intensive training felt an awful lot like boot camp.

At least he was running a better VR this time. The hold full of bots looked pretty realistic, at least to human vision, and the simulated physics was good enough that I could walk around without feeling like I was piloting a cartoon character.

His avatar actually looked human for once. A big white guy with a shaved head and as much muscle as the captain, wearing a crisp black uniform and a surprisingly small sidearm. He waved me over to a row of stowed warbots.

“You did alright in the war games yesterday, but Drop Marine IV and the Sharp End series both use bot designs copied from old Inner Sphere wars. Today we’re going to start you on the warbots the Square Deal actually carries, so it’s time to see if you did your homework. What can you tell me about this bad boy?”

Good thing I’d taken a few minutes last night to eat the manuals he’d given me. I looked at the bot his hand was resting on. It looked sort of like a mutant dog, with a compact body and six weirdly jointed limbs.

“That’s a Holstein E-419 Intruder, Chief. It’s a breaching bot, designed to knock down doors and be the first unit to enter each room when a team is doing clearance work. Mobility is six legs with active traction control plus a levitation and bounce system, with a max speed of one hundred and twenty kph. Main weapon is a Mk314 plasma flamer located in the mouth, supplemented by two racks of fourteen 200g micro-missiles each and a big set of claws and teeth. Protection is twenty millimeters of Holstein’s Mk287 bot armor over the chest and vitals, and four to twelve millimeters over other locations. It also mounts a 40 kW UV laser for utility and point defense work, twenty 100g and eighty 20g recon minibots, and a smoke dispenser system that can take up to six 1 kg canisters of any Gen8 cloud formula.”

“Power source?” He prompted.

“Burst power for the weapons and deflector comes from a bank of power cells in the center of the torso, with a total storage of 100 kW-hours. That’s kept charged by the nuke pack, which is a standard medium-duration 200 kW model with a service life of one hundred days.”

“So you read the manual. What do you think of it?”

I blinked, and took another look. “Well, Chief, I get the basic concept of having the bot open doors and send the recon swarms in to look for trouble. But putting claws on it seems like a waste of mass, since they aren’t going to penetrate another warbot’s armor. I think the weapon designations are backwards, too. In a real engagement the mini-missiles are going to do most of the killing. The flamer might be good against smaller bots, but the reading I’ve done says microbot swarms are obsolete.”

“Which brings us to why we’re here. You can’t believe everything you read, and the only way to learn better is experience. Microbots are only out of style because everyone carries the counters for them, and offensive minibots are still pretty common. As for the claws, imagine your bot breaks in on a bunch of civies with hand weapons. They don’t know their ass from their elbow, let alone what a mini-missile launcher looks like. But a metal monster with claws and big teeth, that roars and breathes fire at them? That’s instant panic.”

I cocked my head. “People really think like that, Chief? It doesn’t sound scary to me. Kind of funny, really.”

“Yeah, that happens sometimes with combat morphs who grow up with their enhancements. You’ve got some kind of threat evaluator that’s busy sizing up everything you meet, right?”

“Yes, Chief. I guess most people don’t?”

“Oh, they do. But your threat evaluator was written by some intel weenie, so it’s thinking about how effective different kinds of hardware are against modern threats. Normal humans have a threat evaluator that was written by evolution, back when we were naked savages roaming the plains of Africa. It doesn’t know what a mass driver looks like, but big teeth are another story.”

“Oh. Oh, wow. I never thought about it like that, Chief.”

Now that I had, it was obvious how that would work out. I could run a threat model that only understood primitive weapons, and the results looked completely different than anything I was used to. Heck, even a hexagator would look pretty scary from that viewpoint.

Was that why the captain had been so upset about Naoko going into the swamp with me? Oops. Well, something to keep in mind from now on.

The chief was still talking. “We’ll be using simulated civilians for some of our exercises from now on, so you’ll get a chance to see how that works out. But for now, talk to me about this guy.”

He patted the bow armor of a much larger warbot. This one was a wedge-shaped machine designed to rely completely on levitation for mobility, with an intimidating array of turrets decorating its hull.

“That’s a Holstein G-411 Sharpshooter, Chief. It’s a gunbot, which is supposed to be the core of most infantry formations. Mobility is pure levitation, with a top speed of 200 kph but poor cornering. Main gun is a 25mm mass driver with a muzzle velocity of 6,000 meters per second, with four 80 kW UV lasers and two mini-missile launchers with hundred-round magazines as backup. Armor is the same Mk287 as the Intruder, but the thickness goes from 10mm over the field emitters up to 110mm for the nose and vitals. It also has a deflector shield to bounce fragments and small arms fire, smoke dispensers with six four-kilogram reservoirs, and a 40mm grenade launcher with a magazine of thirty smoke grenades.”

“Weak points?” He prompted.

“There’s a blind spot in the laser firing arcs directly in the rear, which leaves the service port for the nuke pack vulnerable to small melee bots. The main gun can have problems with overheating if you try to maintain a high rate of fire in a vacuum or thin atmosphere. It also doesn’t carry any recon drones of its own, so it’s completely reliant on the rest of the squad for targeting data.”

We went down the whole row like that. He had all the standard bot types here. Urban support bots with their big racks of smart missiles. Defense bots with their flamers and point defense lasers. Another defensive type that was just a big levitating slab of armor, for protecting vital targets from enemy fire.

“That means you, by the way,” he pointed out. “I know you think you’re invincible, but you need to keep in mind that you’re the target. Warbots are cheap and plentiful, but they aren’t worth much without someone to tell them what to do. So you should always keep a shield between you and the enemy, because these guys are going to be gunning for you.”

‘These guys’ were the heavy gunbots. Some people called them sniper bots, because their weapons were heavy enough to fire right through multiple layers of walls and internal bulkheads. There was one with a 40mm mass driver, and a variant on that with a big UV laser instead.

“How do you get anything done with a laser, Chief?” I asked curiously. “Isn’t the enemy always going to be covered by smoke?”

“People fuck up,” he replied. “You need to be ready to take advantage of that. Heavy lasers are the main reason ground troops use so much smoke these days, but that’s been the standard answer for years now. Long enough that some people have stopped bothering to bring the laser bots to a fight, figuring they’ll never get a clean shot at anything. Then they start thinking you don’t have any either, and get careless about staying in cover.”

There were a lot of important tidbits like that. After eating the manuals I probably knew more than the chief did about the technical stats of our equipment, but he had the experience. He knew how people use their bots, the mistakes they make, the psychology of different kinds of battle.

‘The moral is to the physical as three to one.’ Understanding how your opponent thinks is the key to winning any battle. And there I go, thinking in quotes again. Thanks, Mom, I really needed to have my head stuffed full of sage advice from famous generals. That’s obviously so much more important than knowing how to win an argument, or fix a hyperspace converter, or handle boys, or a million other things I could think of.

The rest of the day was a struggle. There were all these standard maneuvers in the manual, things like how to clear a room or evacuate civilians, and Chief West wanted me to have them all down perfectly. But I couldn’t just remote-pilot the bots to make them do what I wanted. Instead I had to give orders, and they had their own ideas about how to handle the details.

Every model of warbot had a sort of playbook of moves, and at first glance it looked like I could just grab the right set for a given maneuver and tell them to do it. The trouble was, the playbooks weren’t standardized. Every manufacturer programmed their bots a little differently, and whenever they put out a new model they’d ‘improve’ the programming too. So the first time I sent a detachment to plant mines and sensors at an intersection the gunbot on sentry duty parked itself out past the minelayer, and then floated right over a mine on the way back.

Ouch.

The bots were smart enough to handle some of the basic coordination issues, like making sure their weapons were always oriented to provide interlocking fields of fire. But there were endless details the programmers hadn’t thought of. It was my job to know about all the problem spots, and work around them one way or another.

It didn’t help that Chief West kept throwing in sneaky twists to sabotage me. Putting in booby traps that the bots weren’t programmed to spot. Laying out just the right kind of clutter to confuse the bots, and make them miss the spot where an enemy was lurking. Even simple things, like a non-regulation doorway that was a few cems too narrow for the gunbots to fit through.

I learned a lot, though. After each scenario we’d walk through a recording of the battle, and Chief West would explain what I’d done wrong. It was humiliating to have my mistakes picked apart in detail, but he wasn’t mean about it. His dispassionate, professional analysis was the best instruction I’d ever had, and I improved fast.

After hours of practice I finally got the hang of the command UI the Square Deal used, and started customizing the macro functions. I kept a second thread of attention digging through the options and working on improvements all afternoon, and that was totally worth it. It turned out there was a way to show more than the normal three camera views at once, and I could also pull up other sensors and even open multiple connections.

Trying to make sense of twenty or thirty different camera views at once wasn’t easy, especially since the bots didn’t all use the same sensors. The breaching bots were pretty good at close range, with a wide field of view all the way from deep IR to high UV frequencies, but they were terribly nearsighted. The gunbots had a narrower field of view, but they had magnification up to x50 and decent radio direction finding. The recon drones, minesweepers, shieldbots and support bots all had their own specialties, and I ended up with a horrible headache from trying to integrate all the data they fed me.

I had nightmares that night. I was locked in a coffin, blind and wrapped up in capture web so I couldn’t move a cem, and something terrible was coming for me. The only protection I had was a bunch of bumbling bots that spent more time running into each other and wandering in circles than they did shooting at the enemy. That made sense, though, because they were practically blind. Each one had a single camera that looked out through a long straw, so they had a tiny field of view, and they could only see one color. All the enemy had to do was paint their units blue, and I wouldn’t be able to see them. Wait, don’t assassin bots have chameleon skin?

I woke with a start, my heart racing.

A warm body snuggled up next to me. Strong arms embraced me, and Emla’s breath tickled my ear.

“It’s just a dream, Alice. I’m on watch. You can rest now.”

It felt so good to have someone hold me. I relaxed into her embrace, and drifted back off to sleep.

In the morning some inner sense informed me that I now had built-in VR support. I stared at the notice for a moment, yawning and blinking stupidly. Then I realized what it meant, and broke into a grin.

No more being locked in a VR pod!

I logged in to the chief’s training environment, and it fed me a viewpoint of the virtual ready room where I could inspect the bots and study while I waited for him to log in. But I was still in my body, too, and I wasn’t locked in that cramped little pod with its armor blocking my view. I grinned, and sat up to stretch.

“You look happy,” Emla said.

I looked down at her, and realized she was naked under the covers. Naked, and not worried at all about covering herself.

I felt my face heat, and looked away hurriedly. Don’t think about the fact that she was holding me for half the night, with nothing between us but my flimsy nightgown. Distraction, I needed a distraction.

“My VR support grew in,” I told her. “No more spending all day in a pod for me! Come on, let’s get cleaned up so we can get down to the mess hall. The techs are doing breakfast today.”

“We wouldn’t want to miss that,” she agreed. “But doesn’t your training start at 07:00? That’s only thirty minutes from now.”

“So? I’ll have to keep most of my attention on the training, I guess. But I can still eat and stuff.”

“That’s my mistress,” she said, a note of pride in her voice. She swept the sheets off, and rolled out of bed.

“In that case, that sounds like a great plan,” she went on. “I still can’t believe I get to eat fancy human food now. I’m never going to get enough.”

She offered her hand, and I let her help me up even though I didn’t need it. I still felt a little shy, but she wasn’t staring. I tried to focus on her cheerful chatter, and not look too much. Even if she was just casually showing off everything as she led me to the bathroom, my hand still in hers.

Her humanoid form was exactly the same height as me, and looked about the same age. If the last few days were typical she ate like me, too. Was that all on purpose? I guess it did make me a little more comfortable with her, but why would she want to look so young? She’d been fabbed as an adult, and then worked in that reactor for years.

I was broken out of my musing when she kissed the tip of my nose.

“Huh?”

She giggled. “There you are. What are you worrying about, Alice?”

“I, um, well.” My face was turning red again. What was I going to say? I took a deep breath, and tried to push through the embarrassment. “I know you’re… and most people would, um… but I’m not…”

She put her finger over my lips, and smiled at me. “Silly Alice. Haven’t you realized yet that I’m synced with you? I know what a human usually does with her companion androids, but it’s all theory to me. I’m not going to want any of that until you do.”

I frowned. “What? But, you weren’t a kid before.”

She shrugged. “I’ve never had a body that was fully functional before. At the reactor I barely had a sense of touch anywhere but my hands and feet. So it’s not like I gave up anything. I…”

She looked away, and for the first time I realized that her fearless lack of embarrassment might be partly an act.

“I was hoping maybe we could learn together?” She said hesitantly. “About hugs, and cuddling, and then someday about… other things.”

My heart went out to her. I pulled her into a hug.

“I’d like that,” I admitted. “I’m not sure about… things. But hugs are pretty awesome. We can start there, and work our way up.”

She hugged me back. Her body was lean and firm, her skin smooth as silk against mine. I found myself wondering what it would feel like to run my hands over it. To hold her against me, and kiss her.

But this wasn’t the time to deal with all the confusing feelings I got when I thought about things like that. I let her go, and turned to the shower.

“Wash my back?” I asked.

“You bet!” She eagerly agreed.

We made it to the mess hall just as the techs were serving up the first helpings of another exotic ethnic breakfast. I’d never heard of Nuevo Hidalgo before, let alone eaten their food. But it smelled delicious. Breadstick things with sausage and cheese baked into them. Fresh tortillas, and bowls full of egg, cheese, grilled vegetables and crumbled sausage to fill them with. Thick slabs of bacon with a sweet sauce drizzled over them. My taste buds were in heaven.

Chief West looked amused when he logged in to the training environment. “I see someone has figured out a new trick.”

“Good morning, Chief,” I said cheerfully. “I’m getting much better fidelity like this. Can you believe the VR pod was rendering actual pixels, instead of just feeding image data into my visual cortex? Talk about a waste of processing power.”

“That is how normal VR systems work,” he replied. “Are you running two instances of yourself now, or what?”

I hesitated. Part of me wanted to keep hiding everything. But I had a good feeling about him. Besides, it’s not like an infomorph had any room to freak out about my little quirks.

“I think I’m actually like those AIs that can run a whole ship by themselves,” I admitted. “I can give at least five or six different things my full attention at the same time, without having to make copies of myself.”

“Really? I thought you had a normal brain in there, not one of those electronic replacements.”

“I, um, I think that’s actually some kind of camouflage, Chief. Or maybe the organic me keeps the electronic side calibrated? The interface is so smooth it all feels like there’s only one of me, but I can see things that happen a lot faster than neurons can fire. Only I can’t get too carried away with that, because if I overclock myself too much my cooling can’t keep up with the waste heat.”

I added that last part because I figured admitting a weakness would make me seem less threatening. But he didn’t seem bothered at all. He just nodded, and took it in stride.

“I figured you had something like that. Sometimes you’re a little slow getting your bots moving the way you want, but your personal reaction time is always too fast for the system to measure. We’ll have to see what we can do to take advantage of that. But don’t get cocky, because today we’re taking you out of easy mode.”

Yesterday was easy mode? Oh, discord.

This time he gave me twice as many bots, and had me try to board a wrecked pirate ship. I gave it a good try, but I lost a good third of my force just boarding the ship and establishing a decent beachhead. Then the enemy decided it was hopeless, and the pirates abandoned ship and set off a suicide charge. I ‘died’ with the ship, which was pretty embarrassing.

The rest of the day was more of the same. One fight after another, always with some new problem I had to figure out how to handle, and nine times out of ten something went unexpectedly wrong halfway through the mission. My extraction team lost a drop ship on the way down. My intel on the enemy turned out to be totally wrong. My commander changed the mission halfway through, or something critical about the situation changed.

It was frustrating. Really, really frustrating. It felt like Chief West was cheating, changing the rules on me whenever it looked like I might win. But my instincts told me that real fights were always like that. The other guy never just stands there and lets you beat him. He fights back, and he doesn’t fight fair if he has a choice about it. Things go wrong, sometimes horribly wrong, and complaining about it doesn’t help. You adapt, and find a way to get the mission done anyway. Or you die, and your civilians pay the price for your failure. That’s the nature of war.

It was exhilarating.

All my life, the matrons had told me to be a good girl. Be nice to everyone. Cooperate, and be a meek little herd animal. Violence was unthinkable in their fragile little world.

My third mission of the day started out with the enemy nuking the Square Deal while we were grounded at their spaceport. The bots I commanded were loaded up with tactical nukes and Californium rounds, and my mission was to fight my way across the city to capture the command bunker for the enemy’s ground-based space defenses so we could take off without getting blown out of the sky. By the time the battle was done half a million simulated civilians were dead, and their city was a smoking ruin. But I captured the darned bunker, and as I watched the ship lift I looked out over the devastation and realized I felt good about it.

They’d sprung a completely unwarranted ambush on us, and I’d made them pay for it. That was the kind of accomplishment I could be proud of. At the orphanage I’d struggled to make myself care about gardening methods and the habits of obscure animal species. But here, on the battlefield, I felt at home.

It counted as a failure, of course. I was supposed to get myself back on board before the ship lifted, and there was no way that was happening with half an armored brigade between me and the spaceport. But I’d do better next time.

The next day’s assignments weren’t any easier. But slowly, one step at a time, I was learning how to do this. How to command a force of bots by giving them orders and knowing what they’d do to carry them out, instead of trying to watch their every move. How to surf through the torrent of sensor data they provided and pick out the observations that mattered. How to guess what the enemy was up to, and turn the tables on him.

My development manager was also cheating mercilessly, of course. By the third day of training I’d somehow grown a whole new software module, that let me integrate all my sensor feeds into a coherent model of the combat zone. It was like having a giant 3D model in my head, that showed the whole battlefield in perfect detail. Enemies were in focus when I could see them, and blurred into an uncertain cloud of possible locations when I couldn’t. The smallest clue was enough to tell me where an enemy bot had gone, and even when there weren’t any clues I always knew how far they could have gotten since I’d last seen them.

In the cat-and-mouse game of urban warfare that was an incredible advantage, and it got me my first real victory. I was supposed to be taking out the reactors on a station we were docked with, when twenty minutes into the fight I realized that the squad that had just popped up to block my advance had to be the one that had been guarding the enemy control room earlier. So I threw my reserves into the opening, and five minutes later my bots were blowing the enemy commander’s brains out all over his console.

“Now that’s how you do it,” Chief West said gruffly. “Take out the mind, and the bodies don’t matter.”

Naturally, he just gave me harder scenarios after that.

First I got to pick out powered armor for myself, which would have been great except it meant that I wasn’t just an abstract target anymore. I had to actually move to keep up with my bots when we were fighting, while giving orders at the same time. I guess that was why the virtual UI had a voice-driven mode, but even so I couldn’t imagine running a squad competently without my multitasking ability.

It was terribly tempting to pop up and take a shot with my own weapons now and then, instead of having my bots do everything. But I knew Chief West was just waiting for me to make a rookie mistake like that, so I resisted the temptation. Good thing, since that was when he started adding more bot types to the mix.

I got assassin bots with stealth suites almost as good as my own, and little bomb bots that were equally hard to spot. Specialized sensor bots were the counter to those, and once they were enabled I finally convinced the VR to give me a better view as well. There were engineering bots that could repair battle damage and do demolition. There were electronic warfare swarms that could fan out and listen for enemy radio traffic, so I could target them from a distance. There were bots with rapid-fire grenade launchers, artillery bots that could loft shells high over a battlefield, and a million options for exotic ammunition.

On the fourth day of training I had enough of a handle on it all that the chief started letting me pick my own troops again. Just my escort team at first, then a few more in each scenario, until finally I was picking my whole team. Of course, the jerk couldn’t let me do that after he told me the mission. No, I had to decide on my core team before I found out what I was supposed to do next. Then I could switch out one squad for something different, but I only had two minutes to decide what to take.

I’d barely gotten used to that when he started throwing the crazy stuff at me.

First it was an enemy that had bots made of liquid metal. Their performance kind of sucked compared to normal warbots, but shooting holes in them didn’t do anything. I had to roast them with flamers or defocused lasers to destroy the nanotech that made them work, and that was a mission where I’d gone heavy on gunbots. Ugh.

Then there was an enemy that used swarms of bioweapons instead of bots. The little gnat things that covered lenses with paint and excreted glue into the joints of my bots were annoying as heck.

It kept getting weirder after that. Animated smoke clouds. Transforming bots. Suicide bots full of gray goo. Swarms of microbots that could assemble to make bigger bots. Funky weapons, from particle beams to sound cannons. Bots that surrounded themselves with holographic decoys. Bots that looked like scary movie monsters, or innocent little kids.

The chief just laughed when I complained about that one.

“You think no one in the galaxy uses psychological warfare?” He said. “There are colonies that specialize in it, kid. The enemy’s mind is the real target, and shit like this lets you hit him through his own sensor feeds. You’re rattled now, right? No amount of tanks would have done that.”

I hated to admit it, but he was right. Out in the real world I ran my hands through my hair, and tried to get my emotions under control.

“Yes, Chief. But if someone does that to me for real, I’m going to kill him.”

“That’s the spirit, kid. Yeah, that’s exactly what you should do. With millions of colonies in known space all fighting for survival you get some crazy people out there, building shit that would turn anyone’s stomach. The best way to discourage the sickos is to terminate them with extreme prejudice whenever you find them.”

‘Extreme prejudice’ meant ‘nuke them till they glow, and don’t worry about bystanders’. Usually I was a little hesitant about going that far, but not this time.

The weirdness got worse instead of better, though. Humanity has had nanotech for four hundred years, and when you can theoretically build any crazy thing you can think of people try out a lot of exotic ideas. To hear the chief tell it there were whole schools of military thought that focused on winning by throwing so many surprises at the enemy that he can’t cope.

“That’s why exotic enemies are part of the basic curriculum,” he explained. “We’re only scratching the surface of what people have come up with over the years. But conventional forces outperform everything else if you know how to use them correctly. That’s why the major powers all build conventional bot armies, instead of something like utility fog or transformer swarms. Once we’re done you’ll have at least seen every major category of hardware that’s out there, and have some idea how to react to it.”

He hesitated. “Well, every category but one. I think you’re a little young to deal with eromorphs, and that’s an optional module anyway. Hardly anyone uses them.”

I looked up the word, and blushed. “Sex monsters? People really do that?”

“Not anymore. Stuff like that doesn’t work on bots, and these days the troopers are always in powered armor. The main thing to watch out for is infiltrators, like that elf you ran into back in Hoshida. That type will surrender the first chance they get, and then try to seduce you once they’re a prisoner. It’s an easy way to get a trooper alone to use mind control tech on him, and even professionals can fall for it sometimes.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Chief.”

I was doing a lot better by then. I could make my bots do any standard maneuver with just a few clicks in the virtual UI, and when that fell short I knew how to get what I wanted with a minimum of instruction. I was finally getting decent at keeping track of what the enemy was doing, and I was starting to get a feel for Chief West’s tactics. I’d won a couple more missions, and the ones I lost were a lot closer than before.

On day seven Chief West finally stopped with the weird tricks, and instead set me up as a platoon leader in a station defense. That was a huge scenario compared to anything we’d done before. The battlefield was a massive colony station, thirty kilometers in diameter with a defensive layer two kloms deep. At the start of the scenario a lot of that had already been destroyed by the bombardment and initial landings, but my sector was still ten times the volume of the Square Deal.

As the first wave of enemy troops encountered my perimeter minefield I thought over what I knew about station assaults. This kind of battle is always a meat grinder. The enemy would expect to lose millions of bots, and a lot of people too. But they were doing this because they wanted to capture the station instead of destroying it, so they wouldn’t throw too many nukes around. Mostly it would be overwhelming numbers of bots, with as few humans in the mix as they could get away with.

Hmm. Bots are stupid, and they have trouble coping with the unexpected.

I kept one focus of attention on the battle, but pulled my command group back towards the interior of the station. There was a damage control room full of friendly techs who weren’t doing anything right now. I commandeered some of the fabricators, and started a set of builds going.

It takes hours to fabricate a proper warbot, but small objects are faster. Like, say, those utility fog weapons Chief West had used on me yesterday. They looked like normal smoke, until they landed on a target and blinded its sensors. Back them up with a few dozen little bird-sized suicide bots full of hyperacid…

It worked like a charm. I took out a whole platoon of enemy bots without a single casualty, and pushed them back long enough to lay down a fresh minefield. On impulse I grabbed the enemy wrecks too, so we could break them down into feedstock.

That was the start of the longest battle I’d ever fought. The sim was running at four times normal speed, stretching my six hours of afternoon training into a full day of nonstop combat. I abused the damage control facility relentlessly, fabbing one weird threat after another to confuse the enemy. I had access to the same libraries the chief did now, and I hit him with a lot of the stuff he’d been using on me. One platoon after another of enemy bots fell, and my own forces were actually growing.

But the rest of the perimeter was retreating, and the enemy was endless. I was forced to fall back when the front shifted enough that I was in danger of being cut off, and again when a full battalion assaulted my position.

By then I was starting to suspect this was one of those no-win scenarios, but I had to be doing pretty well. I pressed on, making the enemy pay for every inch of ground they took. The next time I found myself in danger of getting cut off I was ready, and used my ‘exposed’ location to launch an attack deep into the rear of the enemies on my right flank. I bagged an enemy commander in that fight, and if my allies hadn’t been a bunch of dumb simulations we probably could have launched a counteroffensive while they were off balance.

Instead I ended up being forced back again. Step by painful step I retreated, as the hours dragged by. But I didn’t let them keep me completely on the defensive. I launched counterattacks, and left assassins behind when I had to pull back. I faked my own death, and then crushed the enemy when they tried to exploit their ‘victory’. I killed a second enemy commander, and a third, and then my assassins got a fourth.

Finally, after a full day of nonstop combat, the scenario timed out.

I sagged in relief, and looked around at the frozen scene. “Whew. Now that was a fight. The after-action is going to take all night, though.”

“No analysis on this one, kid,” Chief West said, his avatar materializing next to me. “That was your final exam. Congratulations, you pass.”

“I did? We’re done?”

“For now,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll be back for another cert at some point, right? But for now you can pat yourself on the back, and take it easy for a few days.”

My file pinged me with an update. Alice long, Certified Warbot Commander. Wait, what kind of score was ‘100% +Ir’?

I tried to look that one up, but the certification rules just said that commendation stars can be awarded for achievements ‘beyond the normal scope of an exam’. The awards ran from bronze through silver, gold and platinum, with iridium at the top. So it had to be something good, right?

“A perfect iridium?” I gasped. “What does that even mean?”

“It means you’re one of those supersoldiers who blow the curve for normal people. You know, all you have to do to pass that test is hold out for four hours without losing more than half your platoon. The test AI called it because you ran out the clock, but it’s smart enough to figure out your force was getting stronger instead of weaker. So, perfect score for ending the scenario with a full platoon, and an iridium star to show you’re good enough that normal test scenarios can’t find your limits.”

I was speechless.

He mussed my hair. “Go hug Emla, and give the techs a call. I’m sure they’ll want to throw a party or something. Stop by my office the day after tomorrow, and we’ll get you set up with a squad of your own.”

He was right. I had to tell Emla, and the foxgirls. Somehow, I kept my squeal of delight bottled up until after I’d logged out of the sim.

Chapter 19

The mood on the ship was tense as we approached Taragi, the hidden colony where the leader of the Masu-kai yakuza organization lived. It wasn’t the sort of place where even the Square Deal would normally go. The blackest of black ports, hidden deep in the officially uninhabited reaches of the Bali Gap, more than thirty light years from the nearest publicly known colony.

With a small yellow star and a motley collection of small rocky and icy planets, the system didn’t look like much at first glance. There wasn’t even a gas giant, or an asteroid belt to support mining operations. It was a bad place to build any kind of industry, which would normally make it a poor place to colonize.

But the yakuza weren’t running a normal colony. Their money came from their customers, who congregated here seeking goods that even the corrupt governments of the Federation or the Corporate States would never tolerate. There were slavers here who dealt in authentic humans, and brainwashing experts willing to train them to order. There were black market vendors who sold everything from pocket antimatter bombs to mass mind control systems. There were a thousand purveyors of exotic vices offering experiences the human mind was never designed to handle, each more addictive than the last.

A normal black port might have pirates and smugglers rubbing shoulders with assassins and back alley body modders. Taragi was where the pirates and assassins went to learn their trade. If you wanted to build a horrible custom bioweapon to unleash on your enemies, or come up with an inventive new vice that would lure millions of customers into hopeless addiction, Taragi was where you went shopping.

It was also a water planet. A warm ocean nearly two hundred kilometers deep covered the whole planet, and below that was another fifteen hundred kilometers of water compacted into exotic forms of ice by the pressure. In the early days the yakuza colony had been a giant submarine that could dive beneath the waves if a naval vessel from some civilized world came poking around. Hiding activity in space is hard, but a bottomless ocean provided pretty good cover.

They’d long since left that covert existence behind, of course. These days Taragi’s location was an open secret among the criminal elements of the Kerak sector. But it was remote enough that no major power had ever felt motivated to clean the place up, and the defenses were more than a match for anything a minor colony might send there.

The system didn’t have a battle station in the Gamma Layer, but there was a network of sensor platforms keeping an eye on traffic. The Beta and Alpha layers had similar setups, and once we dropped into normal space the defenses became evident. In addition to swarms of heavily armed customers there was a whole squadron of frigates patrolling the system, and three small but dangerous-looking battle stations orbiting the planet.

“There’s probably a lot more we can’t see,” Mina pointed out as we made our approach. I’d joined her and Lina in the observation room down in engineering again, so I could get a look at the place.

“Yeah, an atmosphere and a few hundred meters of water make for pretty good protection, at least against lasers and mass drivers,” Lina agreed. “They’ve got drone bases and missile platforms hidden in the ocean, where they can surface to launch attacks and then submerge again to hide from return fire. You’d need some kind of special weapons to attack the place.”

“Nuclear depth charges, maybe?” Mina suggested. “I read about a war like that once. Anyway, the worst part is no one knows how much stuff they’ve got down there. Armored military bases could easily descend to fifteen or twenty kilometers, which means there’s no easy way to spot them from orbit.”

“So basically, if they decide to attack us we’re in trouble,” I said. “Our only chance is to run the moment we see the defense bases start to surface, and get far enough away to jump out before their missiles can catch up with us.”

“Which is why they have those battle stations in high orbit,” Mina pointed out. “They might look puny compared to the ones in a major system, but they still outmass us by a factor of twenty. We have to park inside their orbit before the Masu-kai will let us send a shuttle down, and at that range the heavy mass drivers they carry will wreck us in just a couple of salvoes. We’ll be too close to the planet to make a hyperspace transition, and we’d never survive long enough to get out of its gravity well.”

Yeah, we weren’t going to be fighting our way out of this place. Better not get anyone mad at us, then.

“I don’t even want to think about how dangerous it must be to wander around this place,” I said. “We’re staying on the ship while the captain meets with this yakuza boss, right?”

“We certainly are,” Mina assured me. “Pirate ports aren’t too bad if you can handle yourself, but the Masu-kai are different. They’ve got this whole thing about acting cultured and stuff in public, but if one of them decides to kidnap you off the street for some recreational torture there’s nothing you can do about it. Trying to defend yourself just makes them mad.”

“Unless you’re from the Azure Star,” Lina added.

“Who?”

Mina grinned, and pointed out one of the ships parked in orbit. Unlike all the other visitors this one was orbiting outside the ring of fortifications. I pulled up a closer view of it, and gasped.

“Gaia’s breath, Mina, that’s a cruiser!”

A small one, relatively speaking, but it was still five and a half kilometers long. It looked like some kind of heavy commerce raider, with enough firepower to smash normal escort ships and enough speed to run away from heavier battle fleet elements. A huge relativistic mass driver in a spinal mount gave it the punch to take out smaller battle stations, and the eight heavy grasers mounted in turrets along the top and bottom of the ship would make short work of frigates or destroyers. Hundreds of smaller mass drivers protected against being swarmed by fast attack boats or other small ships, and it must have had thousands of point defense lasers. I didn’t even want to think about how many millions of tons of missiles and attack drones a ship that size could carry.

“Mina, what’s a raiding cruiser doing hanging out at a yakuza colony?”

“They’re pirates,” Lina said.

“The most famous pirates in the sector,” Mina added. “You should really read up on the pirate clans, Alice. It’s important to know these things.”

“There’s no way some pirate got rich enough to buy a ship like that,” I protested. “It’s bigger than all three defense stations and the frigate squadron put together.”

“It’s from the Inner Sphere,” Mina explained. “The original crew are all survivors of some minor nation that got wiped out by the Polytechnic Swarm. Their leader, Captain Kolbe, started out trying to get together some kind of revenge alliance. But that was ten years ago. He had to go pirate to get the resources to keep his ship running, and I guess somewhere along the way he decided to just give up the fight and enjoy life.”

I stared at the display. “Their whole country is gone? That’s terrible. But what kind of target would a ship that big go after? It must cost a fortune to keep it running.”

“They hire themselves out as privateers sometimes, when there’s a major war,” Lina said. “When things are peaceful they find other targets. Tankers carrying bulk feedstock shipments. Minor colonies that annoy them. I hear they do asteroid mining sometimes, too. They’ve got thousands of civilians on board, and I guess they turned some of the hangers into fabricator bays.”

Yeah, a ship that size could house a whole colony. It probably had, what, half a billion cubic meters of hangar space? They wouldn’t want to use mass drone tactics anyway if they were trying to turn a profit, so they could afford to convert some of it. They could easily have tens of thousands of people living and working there.

“Well, I can see why the yakuza wouldn’t try to push them around too much,” I said. “They could wreck this place pretty badly if they wanted to. Take out the stations and defense squadron, and drop a few thousand depth charges with multi-gigaton warheads into the ocean. They’d take damage doing it, and I’m sure there’d be survivors, but it wouldn’t be fun.”

“Too bad we don’t have that kind of firepower on call,” Mina said.

“We’ll just have to keep to ourselves, and trust the captain,” Lina added. “He’s been doing this forever, though. I bet there won’t be any problems.”

“Really? I didn’t think the Square Deal was that old.”

“This isn’t his first ship, Alice. From the stories I’ve heard, I think he’s been a ship captain for more than a century.”

Wow. That was a long time.

“He’s got some amazing stories about the early days of colonization in the Kerak sector,” Mina added. “He was around when the Mormons founded the first Bastion of Faith. One of the original Victoria colonies came out on his ship. So don’t worry. He’ll get us through this.”

“I guess so,” I said. I couldn’t even imagine how many problems someone that old must have weathered. This whole yakuza thing was probably just another routine hassle to him. No wonder he always seemed so patient.

A new appointment appeared on my personal calendar, and I frowned.

“The captain wants me to come to a meeting? Uh, oh. I have a bad feeling about this.”

I arrived at the briefing room to find Captain Sokol, Chief West and Naoko all waiting for me. Great. I nodded to the captain, who was deep in conversation with Chief West, and slid into an empty seat with a grimace.

“So much for hiding on the ship until everything is settled,” I grumbled to Naoko.

“Why, what do you mean, Alice?” She replied.

The captain turned from his discussion. “I’m afraid she’s right, Naoko. This is going to be our away party.”

“What? But Captain, surely you don’t mean to take an innocent young girl into a place like this.”

“I’m afraid I must, Naoko. For several reasons.”

“I was there for the thing with the inugami,” I said. “They might want to hear about it first hand, and it will go over better if the story isn’t coming from an android. If they don’t take it well they might want to punish me for interfering, but if I’m right there they can just get it over with instead of sitting around getting madder while they wait for me to come down from the ship. I’m also hidden backup. If there’s any backstabbing they’ll probably focus on Chief West, and underestimate me.”

“A succinct summary of the situation,” Captain Sokol agreed.

“But Captain, she’s only a girl,” Naoko protested.

“Sadly, the galaxy we live in has little regard for such niceties,” he replied. “Alice, I don’t believe you’ll be in any great danger from the oyabun. You didn’t cause the inugami any harm in your little scuffle, and in any event he has a bit of a soft spot for young girls. But we’re going to be surrounded by some very rough characters, and my influence may not be enough to protect you from everyone. Are you up for this?”

I frowned. “What would you do if I said no, sir? Don’t I need to be there?”

“We could always claim that you jumped ship at Yinpang, Alice. The Square Deal is a large vessel, and it would not be excessively difficult to hide you.”

Yeah, I could imagine. The techs hadn’t actually shown me any secret smuggling holds yet, but Lina had bragged about them.

“Thank you, sir, but you don’t need to do that. I’m ready to pull my weight. If you think it will help for me to go down with you, I’ll do it.”

“I wish you could at least make a backup first,” Naoko fretted. “I feel terribly selfish, leaving a copy of myself on the ship’s computer while you and the captain risk your lives.”

“Actually, dear, I do have a backup,” the captain told her. “But don’t spread that around. If people realize that you’re wired for uploading you lose half the advantages. Alice, I don’t suppose that your fathomless library of enhancements includes such a feature?”

“I don’t think so, sir,” I answered slowly, as I considered what my instincts were telling me. “At least, not to standard hardware. Software backups are too big a security risk. Anyone who has access to the data could use it to make extra copies of you, and even edit their memories or personality. Mom was too paranoid to trust anyone that much. I think I’m going to have a, um, what? A hardware backup option? How does that… oh gosh, that’s so embarrassing! Um, anyway, it doesn’t matter. I can’t do it yet. My, um… the fabricator it uses isn’t fully developed.”

I just knew I was red as a tomato.

“What could be so embarrassing about a fabricator that makes hardware backups?” Naoko asked cluelessly.

Chief West looked mystified too. Captain Sokol took in my expression, and gave me a sympathetic look.

“Eggs?”

I nodded and looked away, mortified.

“Ahem. Yes, well, as the capability is not yet available, there’s no need to discuss the matter further.”

Thankfully, the others let it drop. Crash, Mom, what were you thinking? Yeah, being able to survive getting killed would be nice. But laying eggs that can hatch into another me? What kind of weirdo comes up with stuff like that?

I resolutely ignored the little voice pointing out that it was the obvious design, since I needed a fancy fabricator down there anyway if I wanted to be able to have babies that were like me. No, that feature was obviously designed by a man. Wait, no, that was even more embarrassing to think about. Shut up, Alice. Stop thinking about some group of engineers having meetings to talk about the design of your private parts. Just listen to the captain.

“We will remain on the ship until I receive confirmation of my appointment,” he was saying. “That will likely take several hours, perhaps even a day or two if the oyabun is busy. Once we know when we are expected we will take the Speedy Exit down, and time our arrival so that we are not left at loose ends for any great length of time.

“Chief West will be in charge of security for the mission, obviously. The customs of the Masu-kai allow human petitioners to be accompanied by a bodyguard, and he will be filling that role for me. Unfortunately it would be rude to appear in powered armor accompanied by warbots, so we shall have to be rather low-key in our choice of equipment. I recommend attractive but tasteful clothing and sidearms for both of you.”

“Could I bring Emla as my bodyguard, sir?” I asked.

He seemed surprised at the suggestion, but after a moment of thought he nodded. “Yes, Alice, you could do that if you wish. Bringing your own bodyguard would imply a certain separation between yourself and the Square Deal, emphasized by the brevity of our association. If matters go badly for the ship you might escape repercussions, so long as you are respectful in all of your own interactions with the Masu-kai.”

“Is she really up to that job, though?” Chief West put in. “I could set you up with a pretty good security bot. Humanoid chassis, class two AI and as much firepower as you can fit into something that looks human.”

“Emla’s new body is a lot better than anything normal,” I told him. “She’s tougher than a breeching bot, and better armed too. Not to mention that she’s a class four. I’d rather have a loyal friend at my back than a bot any day.”

“Well, if you’re sure,” he said dubiously.

“Simply having an obvious protector will deter most threats,” Captain Sokol said. “As your bodyguard she may wear armor, but I’d suggest something lightweight. Now, here’s how the audience will go.”

He walked us all through the etiquette of visiting the court of the Masu-kai, which was a lot more complicated than I would have expected. Thugs and criminals aren’t usually known for their smooth social graces, but these guys were different. They could trace their origins all the way back to pre-space Japan, and they considered themselves some kind of nobility. Not that anyone else took their pretensions seriously, but when you’re visiting a crime lord’s palace you’d better address him by whatever title he tells you to.

Something about the way these yakuza aped the customs of their betters really grated on me at first, until I asked what the basis of their claim was.

“Oh, they have quite an elaborate mythology about their clan history. I’m afraid we lack the time to discuss it at the moment, but I believe I still have a copy of the data. Ah, yes. Here, you may find it interesting.”

He sent me a link to a collection of data files, which I found were an assortment of history books published over a span of two hundred years. The earliest ones had a few chapters documenting the flight of several families of wealthy industrialists from Old Earth during the Kaiju War, and their subsequent efforts to smuggle survivors out of Japan under the noses of their foreign conquerors. The later ones covered their attempts to make a new home in space, and how their descendants had eventually ended up running a major crime syndicate in the Outer Sphere. It was a long and sordid tale, but it was the genealogy behind their claim to nobility that got my attention.

They had rescued a daughter of the Imperial family during the occupation? Yes, and years later she’d given up on finding another survivor of the Imperial line and married one of her rescuers. The current Oyabun and his family were all ultimately descended from her.

Noble yakuza. I was incensed. What did they think they were doing, sullying the Imperial bloodline with such a base profession? They should have built a new kingdom to rule! Or just taken over one of the Japanese colonies that were dotted all over human space. If they’d done something like that instead of running off to the Deep Black like a bunch of cowards they might even have found one of the other branches of the Imperial family that survived Earth’s first collapse, and reunited poor Rika with her clan.

I realized I was a heartbeat away from going on a rant, and stopped to take a deep breath. Why was this affecting me so much? Why did I care what some ragged band of survivors from a long-dead nation did with themselves?

Why did it feel like I already knew most of what Captain Sokol was telling us about Masu-kai customs?

Okay, obviously there must be some Japanese cultural data stuffed away in the darker corners of my subconscious. That was one of my native languages, too. So, maybe Mom was from a Japanese colony? It seemed to fit. Mom had looked kind of Japanese, even if she did have a Western name. She’d been all slender and elegant, like upper-class Japanese women are supposed to be. I could easily grow up to look like that too.

This was the best clue I’d gotten in years. Of course, that didn’t narrow it down much. Xenopedia had listings for thousands of ethnic Japanese colonies all over known space. But it was something. I filed it away for later, and focused my attention back on the captain’s explanations.

It ended up taking a long time for the oyabun’s office to respond to Captain Sokol’s request. I did my best to keep busy with preparations, so I wouldn’t end up sitting around worrying the whole time. Emla was thrilled that I wanted her with me on a dangerous mission, and immediately started shopping for armor options.

“What can we afford, Alice?” She asked eagerly, already scanning through the ship’s design databases.

Ash perched on her shoulder, peering at the illustrations of different powered armor designs. He pointed at a suit that mounted a massive anti-armor cannon, and burbled excitedly.

Maximum penetration!

I chuckled, and scratched his chin. “Let’s not get carried away, here. The ship is paying for this one, so cost doesn’t matter as long as the materials are in stock. But you’re supposed to be guarding me against muggers and assassins, not our host. If you armor up too much he could take it as an insult.”

Mmm, scritches, Ash crooned. Silly little guy.

“I understand, Alice. Don’t worry, I know how to do this job. Strange Loop Sleuth gave me a bunch of skill packs, and one of them was a guide to being a high class bodyguard. I won’t embarrass you. What are you going to wear?”

“I have no idea,” I realized.

“Call Kara. She’ll be glad to help you figure it out.”

“Good idea.”

Sure enough, Kara eagerly volunteered to help me with an outfit. Her clothing database made the ship’s look puny in comparison, but more importantly she knew how to create a look. We tried out a few variations on the tough cutie thing I’d gone with for the club, but for this trip she wasn’t satisfied with that.

“You don’t want to look like a lamb when you’re surrounded by wolves,” she explained. “Just suggesting that you can fight isn’t going to be enough in this place. We need something that will make people think twice about trying to take advantage of you. Here, let’s see if you can pull off elegant.”

Her first stab at that made me look like a little kid wearing her mom’s clothes, and the next was way too revealing for me. I would have given up there, but she just got a thoughtful look and picked out another outfit.

This time I gasped when I saw myself in the mirror. The dress was black silk, with clean lines and a much longer skirt than I was used to. I’d expected it to look frumpy, but somehow the effect was just the opposite. I looked years older. Not sexy, exactly, but really pretty.

“Put these on,” Kara advised, handing me a gold bracelet and earrings. “Then walk like you’re in the middle of a martial arts fight.”

I put the jewelry on. “What do you mean, like I’m in a fight?”

“You know, that magic perfect balance glide thing you do.”

“What, like this?”

She grinned at me. “Perfect! Now do it again, and watch yourself in the mirror.”

I did a little spin and glided back across the room. With the long skirt it almost looked like I was floating.

“Oh, yeah. You can definitely pull off an elegant look. Put a little sway in your walk. Not that much. Yeah, there you go. You look like a young princess dressed for a ball, Alice. This will get you some respect. Let’s try it in a darker blue.”

We went through six more dresses, and most of them looked pretty good on me. I still couldn’t pass as an adult, of course. But dressing like this made me look like the kid of someone important, instead of a poor orphan girl. With light colors and a slight widening of my eyes I could look really innocent and charming. With darker colors the innocence bled away, and a colder expression created an impression of some domineering autocrat’s daughter.

“Off with their heads,” I sneered at the mirror. Kara giggled, and I couldn’t hold the expression. But my smile didn’t spoil the effect. I still looked like a refined young lady sharing a moment of amusement, instead of a giggling kid.

“You’re a miracle worker, Kara,” I told her. “This is perfect. Let’s get the real version fabbed up.”

“Aw, but I was going to try out some space Nazi styles next,” she protested. “Don’t you want to see what you’d look like as an evil princess?”

I rolled my eyes. “You’d never get the details right. Didn’t they have some kind of crazy sentient nanomorph clothing material, and shapeshifting crowns?”

“Did they? Well, it was just a thought. You know, if you’re meeting with scary yakuza bosses why not look like someone even scarier?”

“Are you nuts? They’d probably murder me on general principles! Why would you think that was a good idea?”

“Hey, Mina got all the common sense. I just know how to look good, and trust me, you’d look great in one of those sinister black uniform dresses.”

“Gee, thanks. I think I’ll just stick with the executive heiress look, if you don’t mind.”

The com pinged me with a notification. The oyabun had agreed to meet with us, and we had a time slot for our audience.

“Uh, oh. Only ninety minutes until I have to leave, Kara. Can we make that?”

She nodded. “If we work fast. Alright, I’ve got your dress building. What do you want in your jewelry? I guess you don’t need sensors or com gear, but that still leaves a lot of options. Explosives, com jammers, microbots dispensers. My spy gear is a little dated these days, but a lot of the designs will still get the job done.”

“Spy gear? You know, Kara, one of these days I’ve got to get you to tell me the real reason you girls have that kind of thing. I’ve heard three different versions of your secret past now, and none of them agree with each other.”

She grinned at me. “See why we want you to sign up with an agitprop service? It works. You know there’s some kind of story, but you’ll never really know which version is the truth. Maybe Thomas is a retired spy and we’re his team, or maybe we used to be data thieves before we hooked up with him, or maybe it’s something else we haven’t told you yet. Pretty cool, huh? Now focus, girl. Jewelry.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I thought about it for a moment, and was struck by an idea. “Hey, Kara. Security scanners are usually going to spot stuff like that, right? So what if my jewelry is just jewelry? Like, real gold and sparklies instead of clever fakes? Doesn’t that kind of fit the image I’m going for?”

“Oh, that’s perfect! Yes, that’s exactly what a snobbish rich girl would do if she were meeting someone important. Only no one does that in a place as dangerous as this, so their security guys will go nuts trying to figure out what they’re missing. They’ll probably have to pass that on to the ER network or something too, so everyone else will see that you’re taking their pretensions of being high class more seriously than anyone else does.”

“That’s what I was going for,” I agreed. “Okay, real jewelry. What else?”

“You can just use your chameleon skin to do makeup, right? Hairdo, then. We’ve got to do something interesting with your hair to really sell this. Simplicity is in this year, but it’s the kind of ‘simplicity’ where we use manipulator fields to make your hair flow just the way we want. Oh, I don’t know if we have time to fab a whole set of those microscopic levitation bots and get them attached properly. If we miss a few strands it will ruin the whole effect.”

I lifted my hair in my manipulator field, and released it to cascade down my back again.

“I’ve already got emitters in my hair, Kara. There’s one every few millimeters, spaced in between the heat exchangers. Just show me what this is supposed to look like, and I’ll copy it.”

She stared at me for a moment. “Just like that? But, how can you tell what the underlying algorithm is just by looking at a video clip? Never mind adjusting it to run on different hardware, or programming general-purpose emitters to make a field that complicated on the fly. You can’t have that kind of computing power, Alice. The hardware wouldn’t fit in your body.”

I put a finger to my lips. “It’s a secret. I’m actually a transhuman AI pretending to be human. Don’t tell anyone I’m using my awesome superintelligence powers to have great hair, okay?”

“What… but… you!” She sputtered.

“Clock’s ticking,” I told her. “I know, ninety minutes is an eternity for me, but it isn’t long for you slow organic types. Hurry up and show me what to copy.”

“This is revenge for the multiple background stories prank, isn’t it?”

“Would I do that?” I said innocently. “Honestly, Kara, it’s like you don’t believe me. You don’t expect me to admit that I’ve been secretly stashing self-replicating computing clusters all over the ship, do you? If someone notices them the captain might make me stop before I’m ready to reveal my true Science Girl powers.”

Teasing Kara was fun, so I made the most of the opportunity. I had a feeling there wouldn’t be a lot of chances to relax down on Taragi.

Chapter 20

My first sight of Taragi was a wall of blowing rain.

According to Xenopedia that wasn’t too surprising. Water worlds have a lot of storms, and the warm ones like Taragi spawn cyclones that can roar across the endless oceans for months. The one we came down in was only a class four, right in the middle of the scale. But that still meant torrential rains, and two hundred kilometer per hour winds whipping the sea into a froth of giant waves.

A civilian shuttle might have had to wait for the storm to blow over, but dropships are tougher than that. Even the worst storm is nothing compared to a contested drop, through a sky filled with nuclear fireballs. The Speedy Exit’s inertial compensators kept us from feeling the buffeting of the winds, and a constant flicker of attitude jets kept us on course.

Naoko was a much more cautious pilot than the first mate. She took us subsonic at ten thousand meters, and delicately brought us down to our assigned landing pad at a speed that would have left us sitting ducks if anyone wanted to take a shot at us. I watched the radar carefully, but the only contact was the looming bulk of our destination below us.

The rain was so heavy that I couldn’t make out anything on visual sensors until we were setting down, and even then the landing pad was all that was visible. A flat, featureless surface sixty meters across, with a blank wall on one side and a long drop to the heaving sea on the other. The wind was coming in at a nasty angle, trying to slam us against that wall and then suddenly reversing to blow us off the edge.

Naoko handled it easily, though. Attitude jets pulsed in an intricate dance, countering each push in turn, and then the Speedy Exit was settling onto the middle of the pad. She sank low on her landing legs as Naoko reversed the lift field to hold us in place, and then mechanical couplings engaged.

“Docking clamps locked,” Naoko announced. “Shifting deflectors to wind screen mode. Welcome to Kabana City, ladies and gentlemen. Shall I request an airlock connection, Captain?”

“That won’t be necessary,” Captain Sokol replied. “We’ll just use the main entrance.”

“Acknowledged.” There was a long pause, and then she spoke again. “We are clear to disembark, Captain.”

Emla was out of her seat in moments, rushing over to me.

“That was fun! Even if Naoko does fly like an old lady.”

“I guess not every pilot is a showoff,” I said.

Naoko rose from her seat, and smoothed down the fancy red dress she’s picked for the meeting. “Indeed not, girls. I find that decorum and discretion are often wiser than a brash display of skill. In any event, local traffic control was quite insistent that we adhere to our assigned flight plan. Had we taken a more speedy approach I suspect they would have opened fire.”

“They’ve had a few problems with suicide bombers,” the captain remarked. “Dusty, you’ve got the bridge. Keep the ship buttoned up, and let me know if you hear anything interesting.”

“Will do, skipper,” Dusty said.

“Alice, why don’t you exit first and have a look around? We’re going to need three airlock cycles to get everyone down.”

“Yes, sir!”

I hurried back to the shuttle’s airlock, with Emla at my heels. Along the way I started up the tiny lift field generators in my hair. It floated up into a cloud of black silk around my head, and then settled as each strand found its way to its assigned place in the fancy hairstyle I’d picked. It was supposed to look artlessly tousled, but it was the kind of ‘artless’ that normally takes a whole afternoon with a professional stylist to achieve.

Thanks, Mom. That one was a good choice.

I stepped into the airlock with Emla, and waited for it to cycle. Taragi’s atmosphere wasn’t breathable, of course. All particulates had long since settled out of that vast ocean, leaving nothing but water and a few traces of dissolved elements. There would never be life here, unless someone wanted to spend huge amounts of money on a terraforming project. But lack of oxygen wasn’t going to be an issue for anyone in this party.

The airlock finished cycling, and the lift field activated. We floated in zero gravity for a moment while the hatch below us opened, and then a wall of sound hit us. We floated gently down onto the landing pad, surrounded by roaring chaos.

“Wow. Check it out!” Emla exclaimed, rushing over to the edge of the pad.

The dome of the Speedy Exit’s deflector shield would have been obvious even without my field sense, thanks to the heavy sheets of horizontal rain that were bouncing off of it. The roar of wind and the crash of waves filled my ears, making it hard to talk, so I opened a com channel as I strolled up to the edge of the field next to Emla. From there I could see huge waves crashing against the side of the habitat, sending water spraying so high some of it bounced off the shield.

Ash adjusted his perch on my shoulder, and looked around intently.

Neat, I sent. So that’s an ocean. I’ve never seen one before.

Me neither. I wonder what it would be like to swim in that? I’ve got an aquatic mode, you know.

No! Danger! Ash protested.

I think you’d better practice when there isn’t a storm raging first, I agreed.

I peered through the gloom, picking out more details. There were empty landing pads to either side of the one we were on, and beyond that Emla’s radar picked up the smooth curve of the habitat’s hull extending for kilometers in either direction. There was a subtle vibration in the deck from the impact of the waves, but the city was so big it didn’t rock at all.

I smiled.

What is it? Emla asked.

Just a random thought, I replied. I’m not even sure how to put it into words. It’s like, the universe is a wild and untamed place, but that’s okay.

I reconfigured my field, and stepped through the barrier. Ash wrapped his tail around my neck and crouched low, disconcerted and upset. But he needn’t have worried. The wind swirled around me like a curious animal, trying and failing to sweep me off my feet. The rain didn’t even get that close, as I swatted away each drop that tried to touch me.

I spread my arms, and took a deep breath of Taragi’s exotic atmosphere. It was mostly water vapor, at nearly thirty kilopascals of pressure.

Once we lived at the mercy of the elements, but humanity has long since grown up. All this wild beauty is ours now.

Emla’s eyes gleamed in the dim glow of the habitat’s running lights.

I like that, she said. You deserve to have the whole galaxy at your feet, Alice. Only, I think the Masu-kai would get snippy if you started with Taragi.

I stepped back inside the deflector dome, and put my arm around her. Silly. I was talking about Man’s conquest of Nature, not a military campaign to conquer the galaxy. Although that does sound like fun.

Captain Sokol and Naoko debarked from the ship, and looked around. The captain was as imperturbable as ever, decked out in a formal suit that could double as either a spacesuit or light body armor. Naoko clung to him nervously, glancing around at the storm with more than a bit of concern.

She’s kind of a scaredy cat, isn’t she? Emla said.

She was designed not to handle being outdoors very well. Before Strange Loop Sleuth fixed her just looking at the storm would have crashed her visual processing.

So? Same here, but you don’t see me hiding behind my human.

Well, then I guess you get credit for being really brave, Emla. Well done.

She beamed at me. Thank you, Alice! I’m trying really hard. Oh, but I guess I’d better start doing the bodyguard thing now.

Chief West dropped out of the ship, in the bulky humanoid body he was wearing for this visit. It was inorganic, and so obviously armed and armored that he’d probably be mistaken for a security bot if not for his ID code. At first glance he looked a lot tougher than Emla, who was wearing a sleek suit of light-duty armor designed as much for looks as functionality. The pistol at her hip and micro-missile pack on her back didn’t look like much compared to his big rifle either, but I wasn’t sure which way I’d bet if they had a fight. Chief West had experience on his side, but the specs on Emla’s new body were pretty impressive.

Captain Sokol looked around, nodded, and set off for the big hatch in the side of the habitat. Naoko fell in beside him, while Chief West took up station two steps behind and to his left. I followed, and Emla took up a similar spot behind me and to my right.

Are you sure you want me to hold on to that special package, Alice? She sent.

It was tempting to take possession of the little capsule I’d liberated from the ship’s stores, but it would have been a bad idea. Using it would draw way more attention than I wanted, and I wasn’t sure my sensor baffling would hide it. Emla’s whole body was made of high-density armor and shielding, and her distributed radioactive decay battery would easily provide enough camouflage to hide a few grams of tritium.

Yes, it’s better if you keep it for now. I’ll tell you if I need it.

The armored hatch opened for us, although there was a manipulator field across the opening to keep the air inside from mixing with the atmosphere outside. It felt like stepping through an invisible wall of jelly a couple of cems thick. I ignored the weird sensation, and followed the captain into the hall on the other side.

Eight big humanoid mechs stood along the walls of the room, each of them a good four meters tall. They were powered up, and armed with enough heavy plasma weapons and masers to make me nervous, but they ignored us completely. Was that because we were expected?

No, they were probably there to keep troublemakers from escaping. There weren’t enough of them to fight off a marine landing force, but keeping a visitor or two from getting back to their ship was another story.

Well, there was no point in worrying about it.

We passed through another armored hatch, while security sensors discretely examined us all. Then there was a long hallway with branches leading off to other landing pads, and a deserted room with yet another armored hatch on the far side. That one turned out to be a meter thick, and it took a long time to open for us. From there a short passage let to an open space lit by bright sunlight.

My first impression was that this den of iniquity looked a lot nicer than I’d expected. We’d come out in a broad plaza that was designed to feel like it was outdoors, with a holographic sky hiding the ceiling high above our heads. A scattering of trees with brightly colored birds in them added to the impression, and the warm breeze carried scents of tropical forest and island beaches. Artificial scents to go with the artificial sky, but both were good enough to fool human senses.

Tastefully decorated businesses lined the sides of the plaza. There were open-air cafes where smiling catgirls in short skirts served tea and coffee with little snack cakes. Little shops had discreet signs advertising personalized services, from custom tailoring to VR world design. A traditional-looking dojo advertised training in martial arts and swordsmanship. At first glance it seemed like a really nice place.

Even the people looked perfectly respectable. Lots of short dark-haired men in old-fashioned suits hurrying about on business, and women in modest dresses shopping at the stores. There were a lot of androids in evidence too. Inugami bodyguards in sleek suits of light body armor who shadowed some of the businessmen. Cute little catgirls in colorful dresses who accompanied the women, or scurried about on errands of their own. Even a few fox morphs, men and women both, looking like they’d stepped out of the office to run a few errands.

It was strange how comfortable it felt. This was obviously the kind of rigidly stratified society where everyone had their place, and didn’t dare step out of it. But it wasn’t like Takeo Station, where the humans were so high and mighty they didn’t deign to walk down the same street as the lowly androids. Here a foxgirl on her lunch break might hurry to step aside so a man with a bodyguard at his side could pass, but he’d nod politely to her as he did.

I marveled at the strangeness for half a block. Maybe these people weren’t as bad as I’d thought?

There were hints of darkness beneath the facade, though.

We passed the entrance to a place called the Renair School of Infiltration and Assassination, with a sign showing a young girl casually balancing a knife point-first on her finger. Following the ER tag to their datanet site revealed that they specialized in human students, and they were exactly what they looked like. I was sure I ought to be horrified by that, but browsing their curriculum made me kind of jealous. Classes in poisoning and demolition sounded a lot more interesting than anything I’d learned on Felicity.

There were little shops that sold customized weapons and armor, which sounded odd until I realized their real service must be helping you pick the right tool for the occasion. Right next to it was a place that sold specialized nanotoxins, capable of doing much worse things to a target than just killing them. That was a little icky.

Then we passed a ‘taxidermy’ shop, and I realized that it wasn’t in the business of selling stuffed animals. Their datanet site went into horrifying detail about how they could preserve your enemies in a state of perpetual torment forever. Just cut their heads off, paralyze them and attach them to a little wall-mounted life support unit. Or transplant their brain into a cybernetic appliance that let them feel their surroundings but not move. They had mannequins, furniture, ash trays, toilets…

I stopped looking with a shudder. What kind of sicko would do something like that?

After that I stopped looking at the datanet sites. Just admire the pretty sakura trees, Alice. Check out the fish in the decorative ponds. Don’t ask questions when you can’t do anything about the answers. Stealing that guy’s customer list so you can hunt them all down and murder them isn’t something you can get away with.

Yet.

Our path took us across several meandering blocks of shops and small businesses, until we reached another plaza. This one was mostly empty, with just a few guys in suits hurrying back and forth. On the other side steps rose to a huge entryway guarded by a platoon of heavy warbots. A guy in a black suit and dark sunglasses met us just outside, and asked us our business.

“Ah, yes. You are expected, Captain Sokol, Miss Long. This way, please.”

He turned to lead us into the palace, and a pair of armored inugami fell in behind us. Idly, I wondered how many of the combative dog girls there were in this habitat. There didn’t seem to be any official numbers on the datanet, but judging from the size of the place the civilian population had to be well into the millions. So, tens of thousands of them at the least. Probably hundreds, considering how much violence the Masu-kai got up to. There must be whole sub-levels full of them somewhere in the guts of the city.

So why was one of them familiar?

I opened a private com channel. Captain? The inugami behind me is one of the ones who tried to grab Naoko.

There was a long pause before he answered.

Are you certain, Alice? They make numerous copies of each appearance template, so resemblances are to be expected.

A human would have had an ID transponder to confirm their identity, but the inugami were all carefully anonymous in the electronic realm. They didn’t even have ER tags. But they couldn’t fool me.

I see a lot of fine detail that would be different even for androids fabbed from the same template, sir, I told him. Things like the exact length of every hair on her head, and the wear patterns from the way she brushes it. Either it’s the same inugami, or someone went to a lot of trouble to make a perfect duplicate.

A message, then, he decided. The Masu-kai are fond of that sort of thing, although often they’re so subtle that the point is entirely missed by the intended recipient. I suggest you simply ignore her for now.

Understood, sir.

The palace they led us through was as overblown as anything I’d ever seen in a vidshow. There were endless hallways full of trophies, fancy artwork and ancient furniture that was probably carved by hand by some clan of traditional artisan monks. There were suits of gold-plated armor in designs that went out of use three hundred years ago, and equally ancient weapons hung on the walls. And swords. Lots and lots of swords. Someone definitely had a thing for edged weapons.

The audience hall our escort finally led us to was stupidly huge. The floor was made from little planks of dead wood that looked like they’d been fitted together by hand, and the walls were covered with hand-painted murals. Banners with the devices of the twelve branches of the Masu-kai hung from the high ceiling, which was made up to look like it was supported by wooden beams. Fake windows along the sides of the hall let in sunlight, and showed holographic images of lushly forested mountains.

We had to hike almost a hundred meters to get from the doorway to the raised dais where the oyabun sat, in a big wooden chair that was obviously meant to look like a throne. There was a whole platoon of inugami guards in the room, and nearly a hundred people just standing around watching us go by. As we approached I saw that the floor of the dais was covered with tatami mats, and all of the people up there were wearing slippers instead of proper shoes.

Geez, these people were really in love with their past, weren’t they? Maybe I should look into that when I had time.

The guy in the throne, who my ER tags said was named Saburo Himura, looked even older than Dusty. His face was all wrinkled, and his hair had all turned white. Honestly, he looked like we should be rushing him down to medical for an emergency anti-aging treatment. Why would anyone let themselves go like that?

Standing next to the throne was a boy who looked just a couple of years older than me, who the ER system labeled Akio Himura. A grandson? No, it said Akio was Saburo’s son, and he really was sixteen. Wow. I hope Saburo got that done the artificial way, or I was really going to feel sorry for the mother.

I copied the captain, and bowed when we reached the foot of the dais. That was harder than I expected for some reason. Some instinct was screaming at me that I was bowing way too deep for a mere yakuza boss.

Thanks, Mom. Like I really needed social instincts that think I’m some kind of major nobility. Only, maybe there was a reason for that. Had mom been someone important, wherever she came from? That could mean something, if I could ever figure out what colony that was.

“Dan Sokol,” the old man said. “It’s been a long time since you came to Taragi. I believe your last visit was forty years ago, after that affair with the Soba.”

“A simple merchant rarely has cause to walk the halls of power, Lord Himura” Captain Sokol said blandly.

“A simple merchant? Hah! Is that what you’re telling people these days? I suppose Vicky has forgotten all about you as well?”

“We haven’t spoken in some decades, actually. I’m afraid we had a bit of a falling out over my desire to remain… out of the spotlight.”

“She’ll never understand,” the oyabun said. “That woman lives for attention. But enough about old times. What brings you here today?”

“I’m afraid there’s been some sort of misunderstanding with some of your men, and I was hoping to clear things up.”

The old man’s brow furrowed. “Misunderstanding? What, has Riku been getting greedy with the smuggling tariffs?”

“It’s a bit less straightforward than that. You see, a few months ago Lord Ishida offered up one of his companions as stakes in a game of cards, and the luck was with me that evening. He seemed composed enough regarding his loss, so at the time I assumed it was no great matter. But then a group of inugami caught her alone on Felicity, and tried to kidnap her.”

“It’s not like Riku to go back on a debt,” Saburo mused.

“Indeed, that was my thought as well. I sought counsel with certain experts of my acquaintance, who inform me that the ladies in question were likely of Lord Yamashida’s group. But this only increased my perplexity. I wondered if the companion had witnessed some matter best kept private, but she insists this is not the case.”

“This still seems a matter that could have been resolved through more subtle channels,” the oyabun pointed out.

The captain sighed. “Unfortunately that was not the only incident. A few stops later, an ill-informed pirate captain was induced to ambush my ship on the way out of Zanfeld.”

The oyabun’s frown deepened. “Zanfeld is in Jiro’s territory.”

“You perceive the source of my confusion. One of my passengers turned out to be an expertly camouflaged saboteur as well, and his bots were prepared to spring into action at the moment of the attack. There was considerable damage done to my ship, and young Alice here was very nearly killed in the fighting.”

Saburo’s lips tightened in anger. “How barbaric. Have you come to seek recompense from the Masu-kai, Miss Long?”

Focus, Alice. Forget about being nervous. You’re an elegant young lady. Smart, smooth and sophisticated. You can do this.

“No, my lord. I killed Mr. Desh in the end, so that seems equitable enough. But I’d like to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. I can’t imagine what I could have done to earn the disapproval of the Masu-kai, so I’m hoping that it’s just a misunderstanding.”

A slight stir to my right caught my attention. A side door at the foot of the dais had opened, to admit a pair of inugami who looked a lot more dangerous to my threat assessor than the normal ones. They smoothly took up positions to one side of the door, next to the guard who had already been there, and a man followed them through.

He was tall, but wiry instead of all bulky like the captain. His black hair was closely trimmed, and his handsome face was carefully blank. But he moved with a perfectly controlled grace that reminded me of my own combat reflexes, and his eyes were cold as ice. He glided silently towards the dais, and the bystanders hurriedly got out of his way.

Noburu Yamashida, the ER system informed me. Head of the Yamashida branch of the Masu-kai organization, which specialized in espionage and assassination.

Saburo looked up as he approached. “Ah, good. Perhaps you can shed some light on this matter, Noburu?”

Lord Yamashida bowed deeply to the oyabun, and then to my surprise gave the captain and I a shallower bow. I returned the gesture as smoothly as I could manage, but I was sure I looked like an idiot.

“I believe so, my lord. Naturally I’ve been investigating since Captain Sokol’s request for an audience was received, but I’m afraid I can only explain the actions of my own people. It seems that you may know the location of a certain wreck, Captain Sokol?”

“I may,” the captain replied blandly.

“Well, apparently one of my local operatives failed to recognize your name when this information came to light. A team was dispatched with the intention of using Miss Sokol’s command codes to discreetly obtain whatever information she might have, and then return her none the wiser.”

“I see,” said the oyabun. “What’s so important about this wreck, then?”

Noburu produced a datapad, and handed it to the oyabun. I had to suppress the urge to comment on that. Seriously, passing around a physical object to share data? Who does that? These guys took being old fashioned to a whole new level.

Not only was it old fashioned, it was really insecure. I could see the screen reflected in Saburo’s eyes as he read. Sure enough, the file was about the Emperor’s Hope, the lost Mirai battleship. The gold was mentioned too, but only as an afterthought. What the file really focused on was some old mirror the ship had carried, which was apparently one of the great historical treasures of ancient Japan. That, and the fact that the expedition’s commander had been one of the Mirai Emperor’s daughters.

Come to think of it, the Mirai were the senior surviving branch of the Imperial family back before they were wiped out. If there was a survivor, they’d be the strongest living claimant to the Chrysanthemum Throne. Not that it made any practical difference, since Japan was currently a radioactive wasteland overrun with self-replicating war machines. But I could see how these guys would think it was important.

It took forever for the oyabun to finally understand what he was looking at, but I could tell he was excited. Then he glanced at the captain, and a lot of aggravation crept into his face.

“I’m surprised you didn’t bring this to my attention, Dan.”

“We aren’t even certain it’s the right ship, my lord. The nameplate was destroyed in the battle that wrecked it, and our explorations have yet to discover the treasure it supposedly carried. But even if we had, I’m not sure I see how a cargo of gold is connected with your organization.”

“Gold? Bah, that isn’t important. What about the mirror?”

He held up the data slate. Sokol studied the text for a moment, and his eyebrows went up.

“Well, now. That certainly puts another face on things, assuming this information is accurate. I had no idea such an artifact was thought to be aboard. We haven’t seen it, but that doesn’t mean much. It’s a very large ship, and we have explored very little of it. Military wrecks are dangerous to begin with, and this one has millions of not entirely inactive warbots drifting through the corridors.”

The oyabun sat back with a sigh, and rubbed his eyes.

“It seems this affair has been mishandled all around. Remember this, Akio. You’ll find that situations such as this will arise when you least expect them, and handling them correctly is much of the difference between a wise ruler and one who is merely competent. Tell me, what would you do in this situation?”

I’d almost forgotten about the cute guy standing next to the throne. Although, now that I let myself notice, was he checking me out?

His eyes met mine, and I had to fight not to blush. His sharp suit covered a muscular body packed full of military enhancement tech, including enough strength to overpower me easily. Unlike the rest of the court he wore his black hair gathered into a long braid. His expression was reserved, but not the featureless mask most of these guys adopted. But his gaze was so intense, it took my breath away. Like I was the most interesting thing he’d ever seen.

“I believe that a full resolution of this affair will require Lord Kaneda’s presence, father,” he said. “I would send for him, and offer our guests hospitality while we await his arrival. It seems likely that he will owe them an apology, and such things are best handled quickly. Once that has been dealt with we can arrange a joint expedition to investigate this wreck.”

Saburo nodded. “A reasonable plan. What do you say, Dan? There’s no point in keeping all the gold to yourself if you can’t even find it, eh?”

“I shall be happy to be of assistance. Although I’m still not entirely certain that we have the correct ship, a detail I hope that everyone will keep in mind.”

“Yes, yes, you’re still a pessimist. Noburu rarely makes mistakes about such things. If he says it’s the right ship, it’s the right ship. Ritsuko! Show our honored guests to their rooms, and then send a courier ship for Lord Kaneda. I want him here before the week is out.”

A human woman in an elaborate kimono hurried over, and bowed deeply. “Of course, my lord. Captain, Miss, this way, please.”

I gulped. A week of being stuck in the oyabun’s palace? I was a nervous wreck after one little audience. I guess it could be worse, but this wasn’t going to be fun.

Akio’s eyes followed me all the way out of the room.

Chapter 21

The rooms were in an inner section of the palace, where the floors were all a beautiful hand-fitted hardwood. Everything was immaculately clean despite an apparent lack of bots, and the servants all wore funny little slippers instead of shoes. Apparently shoes weren’t allowed or something, because they had us ride to our suite on personal hover-disks so we wouldn’t have to touch the floor.

I slipped my shoes off as we reached the doors of the guest suite, and stepped off onto the floor barefoot. The captain and Naoko did the same, so I must have gotten things right. Chief West and Emla just stayed on their hover disks, and drifted inside.

The guest quarters turned out to be a miniature palace of its own. There was an entry hall leading into a huge living room, with doors opening on a meeting room to one side and some kind of ready room for bodyguards on the other. Past that was a hallway with sliding paper doors along one wall, that all opened out into a courtyard garden. Spaced around the square hallway were four bedroom suites, each of them bigger than my cabin on the Square Deal. The one they showed me to had a living room, a media room with a giant holoprojector and display walls, a fancy dining area, a study, a huge master bedroom and two smaller bedrooms, plus an incredible amount of storage space.

It also came with servants. Human ones. There were three of them, all girls. They were dark and slender, like all the women around here, and only a couple of years older than I looked. The way they bowed to me, you’d think I was a princess or something.

“Welcome to the Perseverance Suite, Miss Long. I am Azalea, and these are Freesia and Iris. We are here to ensure that your every need is met for the duration of your stay. May I inquire as to what arrangements you prefer for your guard?”

“Oh, right. Emla, do you want to take one of the other bedrooms, or what?”

Emla popped the seal on her helmet, and pulled it off. “Are you kidding? I’m not leaving you unguarded for a second, Mistress. I’ll sleep right here with you.”

“I thought you’d say that. Well, sit down on the bed and take off those boots. We can’t have you scratching up the floors. Azalea, I assume there’s a clothing fabricator somewhere around here?”

“Of course, Miss Long. It’s right here.”

She touched a wooden panel in the wall, and it sprang open to reveal a pretty fancy-looking fabricator. So that’s what the machinery behind the wall there was.

Wow, there were a lot of those panels in this place. My sensors picked up all kinds of equipment tucked away inside the walls around us, and a bunch of hidden compartments and secret doors too. I wasn’t sure why the bathrooms were hidden, but whatever.

“May I suggest an appropriate outfit, Miss Emla? It might be best if your status is immediately evident to those you meet.”

“Sure, I’m not picky,” Emla agreed.

Azalea went to the fabricator, and started fiddling with the manual controls on the front panel. Freesia stepped up to take her place.

“Would you care for refreshments, Miss Long? I noticed that your ship’s clock is running a few hours later than local time.”

Come to think of it, I was starving.

“Yes, please. I’m afraid I’ve got a really fast metabolism right now, so I’m going to be eating constantly. Oh, and can I get an outside comlink from here? I’m supposed to be on food supplements, so I should get the ship’s doctor to send you the details.”

Azalea turned to give me a concerned look. “Are you unwell, ma’am? Should we summon a doctor?”

“No, I’m fine,” I protested.

“Alice has a lot of mods that are growing in right now, and the people she was with before were starving her,” Emla explained. “One of these days I really want to make a trip to Felicity, and show those people what I think of them.”

All three of the servant girls looked scandalized for a moment, before they got their expressions back under control.

“I’ll get you that comlink, ma’am,” Iris said quickly.

“Yes. Don’t worry, ma’am. We’ll take good care of you,” Freesia said. “I’ll just make sure there’s always something ready to snack on. We normally serve three meals a day on Taragi, but if you prefer more just say the word. I’ll double all your portions as well.”

“More like quadruple,” I admitted.

“For both of us,” Emla added. “I’m synched with my mistress, so I need to eat like she does.”

“Then I’d best get to work.” Freesia bowed deeply to me, and scurried out of the room.

“That’s going to take some getting used to,” I mused, as I watched her go. “It’s weird enough when androids act like that, let alone humans.”

“Humans?” Emla said. “Wait, I thought you guys were androids like me. Why would anyone use humans as servants?”

Iris and Azalea shared an uncomfortable look.

“It isn’t our place to speculate on the motives of our betters,” Azalea said.

“It’s a statement, Emla,” I told her. “A show of wealth and power, like the way half the palace was built by hand even though bots could have done the work a thousand times cheaper. Now don’t badger them, please. I’m sure they’d get in trouble if they said the wrong thing, and we don’t want that.”

“Of course not,” she agreed. “It’s just weird. Now I feel like I should be bowing to them, or something.”

“If we are ever guests in your home you may feel free to treat us as you wish, Miss Emla,” Azalea said kindly. “But as you are currently guests of the oyabun, please allow us to serve our role properly.”

“Alright, I guess. I don’t want to get you in trouble,” Emla said.

I snickered. “Now you know how I feel when you and the techs are like that with me,” I said.

I might have gone on, but a message from Naoko interrupted me.

“Whoops. Meeting time.”

There was no rush, so Emla took a moment to change into the jumpsuit Azalea had picked out for her first. It was a lot like what I’d seen all the inugami wearing. A skinsuit that covered her completely from the neck down, but hugged her figure tightly enough that I would have been embarrassed to wear it. The slippers that came with it had active traction control to grip the polished floors that half the rooms in this place boasted, and there was an attachment point at the hip for her pistol holster.

I declined an offer of house slippers for myself as well, and went barefoot. I’m not sure why, exactly. It just felt right.

We found the rest of our party assembled in the conference room, looking about as happy as I was about our predicament. As soon as the door was shut Naoko put her hands over her face.

“What are we going to do?” She groaned.

“What we must,” the captain said mildly.

“But Captain, simply being here is terribly dangerous. One wrong word, a single inadvertent slight, and anything could happen.”

“Yes, it’s a dangerous situation, Naoko. But it isn’t quite as bad as all that. Lord Himura and I have been acquaintances for some time now, and mere guards and companions are beneath the notice of such an important personage. I was a bit concerned for you, Alice, but you handled yourself perfectly.”

“I don’t like the way the younger Himura was looking at her,” Naoko grumbled.

“If something happens there I’ll handle it,” I said, a lot more confidently than I felt. “I’m more worried about our schedule. This is going to tie up the ship for weeks, and I can’t imagine what that will cost in reputation and lost profits. Sir, are we going to be alright?”

“It’s not as great a concern as you might think, Alice. We were about to begin a circuit of various dark colonies that the Square Deal trades with, and I’m always careful not to commit to a specific schedule for those stops. So long as we aren’t missing for more than a month our reputation will suffer no great loss. As for the money, the ship’s finances are quite healthy at the moment. You needn’t fear being left without employment, provided we handle this affair with proper delicacy.”

“So what’s the play, boss?” Chief West said casually.

“We’ll go with the obvious plan, I think. I don’t believe that this lost gold exists, and even if it did I feel it would be unwise to be present when it’s discovered. I doubt that Lord Himura will lead this expedition himself, and a subordinate would be all too tempted to find some excuse to dispose of us instead of sharing it. So I shall attempt to arrange matters so that we show them the location of the wreck, remain on station for a day or two while they assure themselves of its authenticity, and then take our leave.”

“I’d rather not be there when they start poking around, anyway,” Chief West agreed. “There’s no telling what they might wake up. The Swarmlords deployed a lot of self-replicating bots in that war, and Mirai tech has such extensive self-repair programming that it’s damned near impossible to destroy it for good. Even if everything is really dead right now, all it takes is one idiot connecting a power source to the wrong thing and we could be buried in warbots.”

Yeah, that would be bad. The great powers of the Inner Sphere were a lot more advanced than any of the nations out here in the Kerak Sector, and there’s no telling what kind of advanced hardware their bots might have. One way or another they’d be nasty opponents.

“Just remember to be on your best behavior while we’re here,” Captain Sokol admonished us all. “Even in private. There won’t be any official surveillance, because that’s considered rude here. But there are always spies in a place like this, so it’s best not to make too many assumptions about your privacy. The clan lords also have the usual intrigue going on, and if Lord Himura has an heir now that’s only going to make things more complicated. So be polite to everyone, but keep your eyes open and don’t make any commitments. I have no doubt there are all manner of plots in progress, and we can’t afford to get dragged into them.”

That sounded easy enough, and for the rest of the evening I played it safe. Emla and I tried on clothes, and built up a selection of local fashions with Azalea’s help while Freesia plied me with food. She was an amazing cook. They had a lot of weird food here, things like fried octopus on a stick or bits of raw fish rolled in seaweed. But most of it was surprisingly good, and she somehow managed to add my supplements to the menu in a way that complimented the dishes.

When I noticed how the distinctive zing of my heavy metals blend enhanced the flavor of the wasabi I had to ask about that, but she claimed it wasn’t her invention.

“The head chef prepared much of this menu for Lord Akio,” she explained. “Your nutritional prescription includes many of the same supplements, so it seemed natural to see if you shared his tastes.”

“Apparently I do, because this is really good. What’s up with that, anyway? I noticed that everyone around here has at least some basic enhancements, but he’s really hardcore. Is it some kind of status thing?”

“I wouldn’t know, ma’am,” she replied demurely.

“Oh, right, that could be taken wrong. Sorry, Freesia. I’ll try to remember not to ask you things like that.”

She flushed. “There’s no need to apologize, ma’am.”

“Now, Freesia, my personal honor is mine to guard. No one gets to tell me I can’t apologize for something if I think I ought to.”

“Of course, my lady. Thank you for your consideration.”

It was a pleasant enough way to spend the evening, although things got a little awkward as bedtime approached. I probably should have expected it, but somehow it caught me completely by surprise when Azalea delicately asked about my preferences in ‘entertainment’. As in, did I want her or one of the other girls to join me, or should they send for a boy or two?

My blush was so bright, I’m sure the ships in orbit picked up the thermal bloom. Fortunately Emla came to my rescue.

“My mistress is shy,” she told them. “Usually it’s just us, but I’ll let you know if she wants something different while we’re here. Sound good, Alice?”

“Um, yeah,” I managed. “What she said.”

Emla started laughing the moment they left the room.

“Now they’re going to think we’re sleeping together!” I complained.

“We are,” she pointed out.

“No, I mean, that we’re doing it! Oh, you know what I mean. Ugh! Are you trying to embarrass me?”

“Maybe a little,” she admitted. “But hey, I figured it was better than the alternative,” she said. “Do you really want to explain to them why you don’t want anyone? That would be an embarrassing conversation, but if you don’t tell the whole story they might feel insulted. Or worse, their boss might decide they’re not doing a good enough job and replace them. This way they’ll come to me with stuff like that, and I can run interference for you.”

I sighed. “I guess you have a point.”

“Of course, if you want to find out what all the fuss is about you couldn’t pick a better place. I’m sure they could find you some handsome, smooth-talking guy with years of intensive training in how to please a lady…”

I threw a pillow at her.

The bed was strange, built low to the ground with a thinner mattress than I was used to. But the silk sheets were really nice, and I had to admit that having Emla next to me made me feel a lot better about sleeping in a strange place.

The next morning I indulged myself by sleeping in, and having breakfast in bed. But I was used to having a million things to work on, and by noon I was starting to feel a little stir-crazy. Captain Sokol spent the morning on the com, and then went out with Naoko and Chief West to have a bunch of meetings with people. But I didn’t have any work to do, and I couldn’t access the ship’s training libraries from here. There was a collection of vidshows in the suite’s datanet, but they were all ‘cultured’ stuff that seemed stupid to me. The books weren’t any better, and sitting around talking about nothing was going to get old fast.

“Is there a training room we can use?” I finally asked.

“Of course,” Azalea assured me. “What sort of training?”

“You know, martial arts? Emla just got a new body recently, and we haven’t had a chance to try it out properly.”

“This sounds like fun,” Emla put in. “Are you going to teach me that neat style you use, Alice?”

Style? Since when did I have a style?

“We’ll see,” I said.

“The dojo is, of course, open to guests of the oyabun,” Azalea said. “Shall I reserve a space for you?”

“Sure. Where is this place?”

It turned out that the palace had a whole big facility devoted to fighting practice, with lower levels that the inugami used and an upper level reserved for important people. Which apparently included guests, because that’s where Emla and I ended up. It was pretty empty in the middle of the day, with just a handful of men in funny clothes practicing with wooden swords over in one corner. We claimed a stretch of mat on the other side of the room, where the ceiling was high enough to allow for aerobatic maneuvers.

Some instinct had led me to reject the special exercise clothes Azalea offered. Instead Emla wore her skinsuit, and I was back in the dress I’d worn for the audience. I switched it to combat mode as I squared off with Emla, and the skirt instantly divided into strips that wouldn’t get my way. I’d left the shoes behind, of course. I wasn’t about to try fighting in high heels.

“Alright, let’s see what you’ve got,” I told her. “No lethal weapons or AoE effects; we’ll pretend we’re trying to capture each other intact. Ready? Begin.”

She was fast. I’d barely finished the word when her fist tried to cave in my face, and as strong as she was I knew blocking was hopeless. Instead I shifted slightly to one side, grabbed her wrist and elbow, and used her own momentum to throw her.

A human would have been stunned by the impact, but she rolled back to her feet before my follow-up kick could land. Our manipulator fields clashed, negating each other as we traded a series of fierce blows that mostly failed to connect.

She was a lot better than I’d expected. I could tell she didn’t have the instinctive awareness of motion that my physics sense gave me, but Strange Loop Sleuth had set her up with an elaborate set of skill packs that almost made up for it. She was also a good twenty times stronger than me, and she had lots of sneaky tricks built into her. She could change the length of her limbs at will, and deploy cutting edges in all kinds of inconvenient places. She had nonlethal weapons, too. Contact drugs and neurostims, on top of the sonic stunner that our rules excluded.

At first she chased me all over the mat, but I adapted pretty quick. In a few minutes I was holding my own, and then I got her measure and really started to make her work for her hits. I think I learned more about unarmed fighting in the next hour than I had in my whole life.

It was like dancing, only better. A furious chess match where the slightest hesitation meant instant defeat. The fact that Emla’s body was so much tougher than mine only made it more fun. She seemed invincible, and maybe she would be to bare hands. But I had my own advantages. My field was stronger than hers, and far more precise. I was getting a feel for how her body worked, and that gave me ideas about how to beat this challenge.

The first time she managed to pin me she grinned down at me for a second, and kissed me on the tip of my nose.

“Got you, Alice.”

Then she bounced to her feet, and stepped back so we could start again.

I blushed, and didn’t say anything about it. But when I finally figured out how to use my field to pull her components out of whack so I could pin her for a second, I found myself returning the favor.

She looked so adorably confused. She was strong enough to pick up a tank, but with her elbows locked in a half-transformed state she couldn’t move her arms to throw me off.

“What… how… what did you do?”

“Got you, Emla.”

I kissed her nose, and released my grip on her internal parts as I stepped back. The little bits of diamondoid bone slotted back into place, and her joints suddenly started working again. Her eyes went wide as she finally realized what I’d done.

“Alice! You keep your field off my parts, you cheaty super-mistress you!”

“Make me,” I shot back,

After that things really heated up, and we traded dirty tricks for a while. Her neurostims could make my muscles lock up if her hands got within a few cems of me, or else tickle me mercilessly. I could coat my skin in a film of frictionless superfluid oil, and still make any part of it cling to anything I wanted with a nearly unbreakable grip. We could both use our fields in concert with our muscles, or as a shield against each other’s blows.

Finally we broke apart, breathing heavily, and I realized we had an audience. Most of the older men had stopped their training to watch us, along with one new arrival.

“Very impressive, Miss Long,” Akio said. “Although your choice of training attire is a bit unconventional.”

Suddenly I was very glad that my dress was expensive smart matter, and not some cheap fiber blend like the shifts I’d worn at the orphanage. By this point a shift would have been soaked through with sweat, clinging to me and probably half transparent. But my dress was as clean and dry as if it had just come out of the fabber. With its active cooling feature running full blast I wasn’t sweating much either, and somehow it even kept me from getting all smelly.

“Practice as you mean to fight,” I said simply. “An enemy isn’t going to wait for me to change into a gi before they attack me.”

“Well said,” he replied, although I noticed that he was wearing a traditional gi just like everyone else. “Your retainer’s mastery of the Furious Angel techniques is impressive, but your own style is more difficult to place.”

“You’re guess is as good as mine, my lord,” I admitted. “It’s innate, and so far no one has been able to figure out where I came from.”

“Please, call me Akio. Will you indulge my curiosity with a match?”

He held a pair of sheathed swords in one hand. Long blades that the datanet identified as a modern variation on the ancient katana style, although these didn’t have real edges. Practice weapons, then. But a more serious sort that the wooden things I’d seen the other men playing with before.

“I’d be happy to, Akio. And please, call me Alice. But I have to admit, I’ve never even held a sword before.”

“Then this will be a learning experience for us both.”

He tossed me one sheathed weapon. Emla stepped back, giving us room, and I hefted it thoughtfully. Feeling out how it would move. What the weight would to do my balance. How to strike, and defend. Billions of possibilities flashed through my mind’s eye, most of them discarded as soon as they appeared. But others coalesced into chains of movement. Clusters of probability that were worth my full attention, and vast regions that weren’t. I could do this.

“Blades only?” I asked, stepping back and copying the pose he’d assumed. Wait, no, he was taller than me, and a lot heavier with all those muscles and internal armor layers. I adjusted my feet slightly, and flexed my knees a little more. Perfect.

“Unarmed strikes and grapples are allowed, but no hidden weapons or other tricks,” he amended. “Any blow that would disable an unenhanced human counts for a point. An advantage of three points decides a match. Those are the standard Masu-kai dueling rules.”

I nodded, noting the way he’d adjusted his own stance slightly. I realized he’d been ready to take it easy on me before, but after seeing me read his stance he’d decided to take me seriously instead.

Why did that feel so good? Was I that worried about what some lowlife crime boss thought of me? Well, he was a pretty yummy crime boss. But this would be a terrible time to get distracted, so I told myself to pay no attention to the way his muscles flexed when he moved.

Okay, maybe a little attention. One thread. Two, tops. I was good at multitasking.

“Ready? Begin!”

I exploded into movement, crossing the distance between us in a single leap. My blade flashed out in a clean arc that combined the draw with a disemboweling blow, but he must have been expecting something like that. He smoothly slid left out of my blade’s arc the instant my feet left the floor, and tried to take my head off while I couldn’t dodge. I parried with the scabbard, a neat trick I almost hadn’t thought of, and the impact sending me flying halfway across the mat.

Good thing, because I needed the extra milliseconds that gave me to prepare for his next attack.

He was good. Really, really good. Even faster than Emla, and at least twice as strong. I couldn’t block or parry in the normal sense at all. It was all dodging, or else putting my sword where the impact of his next blow would help move me where I wanted to be. But what really made this hard was the incredible skill he displayed.

I could see every possible way either of us could move at any given moment, and pick an effective counter to anything he did. But trying to look three or four steps ahead to outsmart him didn’t work. The sheer number of options we both had made it impossible to check every possible way an exchange could play out, and he didn’t just blindly pick the ‘optimum’ move like a bot would.

Instead he did complicated feints and misdirections, trying to lure me out of position for a surprise attack. He threw in intentionally pointless flourishes to distract me, only sometimes they had a hidden purpose that I barely caught in time. He’d spent huge amounts of time and computing power exploring the space of possible fights that we were dancing through, and he took every opportunity to lure me into regions of the possibility space that put me at a disadvantage.

It still took nearly two minutes before he managed to slide his blade around mine at just the right angle to send it flying from my hand. The follow-up punch would have crushed my throat if he hadn’t pulled it at the last second.

I twirled around the blow, brushing past him within easy grappling distance so I could reach out and snag the spinning shape of my sword with my manipulator field. He reversed his sword and tried to stab me in the back, but my smaller size made me nimble enough to evade the attack. I got behind him, sword in hand, and then we were both hurriedly spinning and backpedaling.

He glanced at the sword. “How did you do that?”

“Manipulator field,” I grinned. “That’s allowed as long as I’m not boosting myself or hitting you with it, right?”

“I see you’ve been reading our dueling rules. But fine manipulation at three and a half meters, with an emitter that can’t be more than six cems across? There are no enhancement projects in the Kerak Sector capable of matching that.”

We circled each other slowly, feeling for an opening.

“Yeah, I’m pretty awesome,” I admitted. “It’s actually a full-body emitter network, though. I can stop small arms fire for a few seconds, before my power cell runs dry.”

“Do you need to stop and recharge?”

I blinked, and barely had time to realize he was teasing me before I had to frantically evade another attack.

I was learning, though. His second touch took three minutes, and then I managed to hit him back. We broke apart again, and I realized I was panting. I was pushing myself to the limit, and it felt amazing.

“You aren’t simply copying my style,” Akio observed.

“Of course not. That would be stupid. You obviously know it better than anyone, so you’d just use it to beat me. Besides, I’m not strong enough to fight the way you do. I have to do more of a float and sting approach.”

“Yes, that lack of power seems to be your weakness.”

I shrugged. “It will come. Give it a year, and I’ll be ready to juggle tanks just like you.”

“That’s good to hear. But you’ll have to be careful until then, or you could all too easily be overwhelmed.”

I was going to ask what he meant, but he was already demonstrating. When you don’t have a slow organic brain bogging you down, strength turns into speed incredibly easily. This time he came in twice as fast as he had before, and there was nothing I could do to stop him. I could see exactly where he was going to strike, but no matter how I strained my aching muscles I couldn’t move fast enough to do anything about it.

The tip of his sword poked me hard in chest, perfectly angled to slide between my ribs and into my heart. He deflected my counterattack effortlessly, and then he had my wrist in his hand and his sword at my throat.

“Match,” he said.

“You win,” I agreed.

Maybe I should have been upset at that, but I wasn’t. My heart was pounding. Discord, but that was amazing!

Was he going to kiss me?

He let me go, and sheathed his sword. “An excellent match, Alice. I’d suggest another, but you look like you need a break.”

“Yeah, my metabolic warnings are all screaming at me. I’d better sit down and get a recharge before I pass out. Thanks for the match, Akio. I learned a lot.”

“Join me for breakfast, tomorrow,” he said. “Perhaps we can both learn a bit more.”

Without waiting for an answer, he turned to greet an older man who’d been watching the fight. An instructor, I guess, but I was too stunned to pay much attention to their conversation.

That’s one dangerously sexy guy, Emla commed to me.

Oh, yeah, I agreed.

Are you going to go?

Oh, yeah.

She giggled. You do remember he’s evil, right?

Hey, let me have my illusions here. You never know. Maybe he’ll turn out to be the one honorable man in this snake pit.

If only. But it wasn’t like I could refuse. What do you wear to a private breakfast with a yakuza heir, anyway?

Chapter 22

By the time I got back to my rooms a formal invitation had arrived, and the maids were all atwitter about it. According to them Akio didn’t have visitors like that very often, and the venue was something special.

“A business meeting might be held at lunch, or over tea,” Azalea explained. “While a lover might be invited to dinner, with the expectation of staying the night. Breakfast is intimate without that extra implication.”

“It’s like being declared family,” Iris exclaimed.

“If it were in his own quarters, yes,” Azalea conceded. “But the invitation is for the Hungry Garden.”

Iris and Freesia both paled.

“I take it that’s bad?” I asked.

“Merely dangerous, my lady,” Azalea said. “The Hungry Garden is filled entirely with beautiful but predatory life forms. They’ve been carefully engineered not to attack members of the Himura clan, but any outsider would be dead before they could take two steps.”

Freesia nodded, and clasped her hands earnestly beneath her chin. “Please be careful, my lady. The servants there are part of the garden, and they’ll turn on you in a moment if you lose your scent badge. Everything in that place is full of the most horrible biothreats you can imagine. Poisons, nanoplagues, parasitic spores, hyperacids - they say even soldiers in powered armor wouldn’t survive the garden’s wrath for long. Lord Himura likes to hold meetings there when he’s displeased with people, and when he wants to make an example of someone he makes them hand in their badge.”

“Freesia used to be with the garden liaison team,” Lily said. “She knows what it’s like.”

“I guess they don’t let guards carry heavy weapons there?” Emla asked.

“I’m afraid guards are not allowed in at all,” Azalea corrected. “You may escort her as far as the entrance to the garden, but then you’ll have to wait there with the young lord’s escort. As for the lady, traditional dress is expected.”

“Well, that sucks,” Emla huffed. “Why the heck would he make her go someplace like that? Is this some kind of threat?”

“Not at all. As I said, this is a rare and intimate venue. To meet with Lord Akio alone, for breakfast, in a place of subtle beauty and power… I can only guess that he intends to make you an offer, my lady.”

Iris and Freesia both gasped.

“An offer? What kind of offer?” I asked.

“Lord Akio is expected to take over the lordship one day, my lady. Since he turned sixteen he has been old enough to take personal retainers, and begin to consider engagements. He has made many inquiries over the last several months, but so far he has made no additions to his household.”

“Most of the lords just want a devoted wife, a collection of pretty concubines, and a squad of inugami guards for security,” Iris said. “Not Lord Akio, though. He’s been visiting all the assassin academies and experimental programs, looking over their top students. There’s a rumor he even-”

“We don’t discuss rumors with guests, Iris,” Azalea interrupted sharply. “My apologies, my lady. That was unseemly.”

“It’s alright,” I said. “I wouldn’t get too excited, though. The oyabun’s palace is very pretty, but I’m not eager to spend the rest of my life here.”

“It might not be wise to refuse, my lady,” Azalea said delicately. “It could be taken as an insult, especially if his offer is especially generous.”

I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know what happened to people who insult Lord Akio. I sighed.

“Great. I think I’d better go read up on whatever outsiders are allowed to know about Masu-kai customs. I really don’t want to say the wrong thing in this meeting.”

“Certainly, my lady. I can procure a set of guides meant for young ladies, if that meets with your approval?”

The collection of documents she came up with was a lot longer than the equivalent on Felicity would have been. I ate the whole set right away, of course, but I had to seriously think about what it all meant. Masu-kai society was an intricately crafted caste system, with layers of complicated customs and a million kinds of subtle social signaling going on just beneath the surface. You could start a blood feud just by asking the wrong person to pass the soy sauce, or end it by letting them go through a door before you.

Just the kind of thing I suck at. Great.

The politics of the situation was clear as day, though. Saburo Himura had spent sixty years running the Masu-kai. He was getting tired of riding herd on a bunch of rapacious thugs, and he really wanted to retire to someplace private and spend a century or two indulging his various hobbies. But he couldn’t just hand things over to one of his subordinates, because he’d always be a threat to them. No matter how much it looked like he was just puttering around in his bonsai garden they’d be sure he was watching everything they did, ready to step in and take over again if he didn’t like how they ran things.

From what I could gather of the old guy’s personality that was a pretty reasonable fear, too. He didn’t seem like he’d let go of control easily.

So Saburo had decided to have a son to pass on the headship to. Still risky, but if you raise him right he’ll put up with a little backseat driving from his old man, right? It also meant that the new lord would still carry the Himura name, which was a big deal to these people.

Unfortunately, forty years ago Himura had decided it was a smart idea to cement his relations with the other leading Masu-kai clans by having a bunch of daughters and marrying them off to the other clan heads. The Masu-kai weren’t the sort of society where a woman could hold power in her own name, of course. But technically the line of inheritance should have passed through Ai, his oldest daughter, to her husband Noburu Yamashida.

Looking up Lord Yamashida was enough to make me feel kind of sympathetic for Akio. He was in charge of the Masu-kai assassination, espionage and counterintelligence operations. Supposedly he was Lord Himura’s most reliable supporter, but getting passed over like that had to grate. How hard would it be for him to arrange a discrete assassination?

Even if he didn’t want the job, Ai had to be pretty mad about being passed over. Then there were the other clan lords to consider. Seven of them were still married to Lord Himura’s daughters, and two others were his grandsons. They probably all felt like they had a better claim than Akio.

Maybe that was why Saburo had gone so crazy with the mods for his heir? Akio was even more buffed up than Kavin. His muscles and bones weren’t even organic, and he had some kind of fancy micro-fission reactor powering them. He could probably lift, what? Fifteen tons? Maybe twenty?

Mmm, now that’s what I call muscle.

I shook my head. Why was I getting so distracted by this guy? Hadn’t I already decided Kavin was probably the one for me? Was I really that fickle?

Well, it’s not like I made any promises. But pining after some crime lord would be a really bad idea. Why would he even be interested in me? He probably just thought my enhancements would make me a good assassin detector.

What if he did want to hire me as a retainer?

At first glance that seemed like an amazing opportunity. Akio was filthy rich, and household retainers were practically family. It was a ticket to the best training and equipment money can buy, and a life of luxury in exchange for a pretty reasonable level of service. I’d probably end up having minions to lead, and I could even start a clan of my own if I wanted to. Sure, I’d have to kill people sometimes, but I’d already learned that I could handle that.

But he was a yakuza boss. Working for someone like that was a lifetime commitment, and it was just so… distasteful. I was better than that. Heck, I kind of thought he was better than that. It still bothered me that someone with his bloodline was involved in something this skeezy instead of ruling a respectable colony.

I was so wrapped up in my worries that it was a complete surprise when the captain came to check up on me.

Azalea announced him, of course, and settled us in the sitting room while Iris and Freesia bustled about serving tea. The routine gave me a moment to gather my scattered thoughts, although I wondered at how soothing it seemed. I’d never had anyone wait on me before, so you’d think it would be a strange experience for me. Instead it felt completely natural. More so that the chaotic bustle of the orphanage ever had, that’s for sure.

The captain smiled as Freesia retreated from the room with a bow. “The staff here seems quite taken with you.”

“Yeah. I’m not quite sure how I went from being ‘Miss Alice’ to ‘my lady’, but I’m not complaining.”

He seemed amused. “You carry it off well. I suspect word of your display with Lord Akio has something to do with it as well, although it seems it has landed you in a bit of a predicament.”

I groaned. “Don’t tell me everyone knows about that.”

“Servants always gossip, Alice. It’s practically a law of nature. I understand you are expecting an invitation?”

“Oh, I already got it, sir.”

I filled him in on the situation. He listened thoughtfully, and asked a few questions about what I was doing to prepare. He seemed kind of impressed by my answers.

“Your adaptability is serving you well here,” he said. “Should I expect to receive a resignation soon?”

“What? No, sir! Everyone on the Square Deal has been really good to me. I don’t want to leave the ship.”

“Even if there are better opportunities for you elsewhere?” He pressed.

“Money isn’t everything,” I said. “I’d like to be able to live with myself, too. I’m not sure what someone like Lord Akio would want with me, but it probably isn’t going to be a pretty life. A lot of people are going to die over this succession business, and I bet most of them will be innocents.”

“Innocents are in short supply on Taragi, Alice. Aside from the children, perhaps, but they blood them young here. By the time they reach your age they’ve all been swept up in the endless struggle of clan intrigue, and begun plotting terrible fates for their rivals. Most of them are involved in the business side of their clans as well, and I don’t have to tell you how unsavory that is. It would be easy enough to find justification for any act that might be necessary.”

“That’s an even better reason to stay out of it, sir. Maybe it’s just that I was raised on Felicity, but I’m still kind of ashamed that I can stand to hurt people when they deserve it. I don’t want to get in the habit of rationalizing that kind of thing. I’m kind of afraid of where it might lead.”

“I see. Has the fate of Mr. Desh been bothering you?”

I shook my head. “No, and that’s what worries me. I could have captured him if I’d wanted to. But I was too mad for that, because I thought he’d killed Emla. So instead I beat him to death with my bare hands, and I didn’t even feel bad about it afterwards. I still don’t. I just sort of feel like I ought to feel something.”

“Alice, what do you think we would have done with Mr. Desh if you had taken him prisoner instead?”

I shrugged. “Question him, obviously. After that, I don’t know. I guess there aren’t any peacekeepers out in dark space.”

“Indeed, there are not. I would have ordered his execution, Alice. Merchants do not allow pirates to escape to repeat their crimes. If no one has commented on your actions, it is only because we all feel you acted correctly. Although in the future I would suggest that you finish your battles in a more expeditious fashion. It is never wise to give an enemy the opportunity to turn the tables.”

“I see. Do you think I’m worrying too much, then?”

“I think that if you were some sort of brainwashed assassin we would have noticed, Alice. We do check for these things, you know. It seems to me that you’re simply a practical young woman with a warrior’s courage, and perhaps a bit more emotional stability than most. But if you’re concerned, the wisest course is to keep close comrades at hand and listen to them if they tell you that you’ve begun acting strangely.”

“That makes sense. I guess my medical checkup would show if I was a psycho or something, wouldn’t it?”

“Indeed. Now, I’m pleased that you’re preparing properly for tomorrow, but take care that you don’t miss the obvious in your pursuit of subtleties. Have you considered what sort of gift to bring?”

“Gift?” I stared at him stupidly for a moment. I knew what he was talking about, of course, but guesting gifts were a noble custom. Why would a little nobody like me try to imitate a real lady like that?

Then I thought it through, and groaned.

“Crash, this is one of those status negotiation things, isn’t it? Lord Akio is inviting me to act like a lady, and if I can pull it off no one will be able to question it without slighting his judgment. But if I go in acting like I’m nobody, then I’m declaring that I don’t matter and anyone who wants to can pick me off just like I was an inugami or something. Thank you, sir. I didn’t even think of that.”

“Sometimes experience has its benefits,” he said. “You’ve already created some distance between us by bringing your own bodyguard to the palace. If we’re going to be here for a week or more you’ll need to establish your own role in this drama, or else our enemies will establish it for you.”

“Enemies, sir? I thought this was just a misunderstanding.”

“Anything is possible,” he said mildly. “But I wouldn’t count on it. I suspect someone believes that being the man who recovered the Yata no Kagami would bolster their chances of taking power here.”

I wrinkled my nose. “That old mirror?”

“That ‘old mirror’ is one of the three sacred treasures of ancient Japan, Alice. It means a great deal to traditionalists.”

“I guess it would. Well, I don’t know Lord Akio well enough to come up with something personally meaningful, and I’m certainly not rich enough to go for an impressive trinket. Do you have any ideas, sir?”

“A proper gift must be chosen by the guest,” he pointed out. “But I would suggest examining the customs of other colonies that were settled by survivors of Japan. There are thousands of them, and four hundred years of cultural evolution has produced many fascinating variations. I suspect you will find a suitable idea.”

I ran a datanet search, and sifted quickly through the results. He was right, there was an amazing amount of variation in how different colonies thought this kind of thing should be handled. A lot of it was surprisingly old, too. There was a huge explosion of variation in human cultures in the first century of interstellar colonization, when travel times were long and colonies had minimal contact with each other. Since the Masu-kai were all stuffy traditionalists I narrowed my search to customs that went back at least three hundred years, but that still left a lot to work with.

It was kind of funny, how almost all of these colonies claimed they were preserving the authentic traditions of ancient Japan. Even the historians didn’t seem to know who had it right, if anyone did. Had humanity really lost that much history in the Diaspora, and the long cycle of war that had left our homeworld a monster-infested wasteland?

Well, what mattered right now was that it gave me flexibility. I could go with any variation I wanted, as long as it was a few centuries old and didn’t clash with Masu-kai culture.

So, what kinds of things did people use as gifts? I needed something cheap, which usually meant informal, but not anything that implied intimacy. A contribution to the meal was a common idea, but breakfast was too early for alcohol. There was no way I was going to compete with Akio’s cooks, either, so forget any idea that involved making something myself. Maybe… oh! That was cool!

“I’ve got it, sir. Someone in this settlement is bound to have proper osuno.”

“Ah. Yes, that sounds like just the thing. Perhaps you can even find some exotic blend that appeals to an enhanced palate? But if you’re going to go for an evening stroll in the shopping district you’d best be careful.”

“Of course, sir.” I agreed. “I’ll bring Emla, and we’ll both go well armed and keep our eyes open. Um, should I talk to Chief West?”

“I’m afraid it wouldn’t do for Jim to escort anyone else during our stay,” he pointed out. “Nor would it be wise for our entire party to attempt to leave the palace at once. Perhaps you can find a vendor who will accept remote orders?”

“Like I can trust datanet ads in this place? No, I need to go in person if I’m going to know what I’m buying.”

“Then I shall leave you to prepare for your shopping.”

I checked the time. Already five, and I needed to eat before we could get going. Was I really about to wandering around a shady market in yakuza central at night? When the port registry said there were eleven pirate gangs, three slavers, four drug dealers and a flotilla of nomadic colony raiders in port? A pair of cute little girls would get eaten alive, wouldn’t they?

The captain put his hand on my shoulder. “Courage, Alice. This is far less dangerous than your last battle. Simply keep your wits about you, avoid trouble if you can, and act decisively if words fail you. You’ll find that you meet far less trouble than you might think.”

“Really? Why is that, sir?”

“Because you and Emla look far too much like a trap, Alice.”

I giggled. I guess he was right about that.

Naturally Emla wanted to fab up some heavy armor and a giant gun or two for the trip, but I had to veto that idea. We didn’t have the time, and besides I figured it would just make us look insecure. Instead I had her wear a professional-looking armored skinsuit in the local style, while I put together a variant of the look I’d used for the club back on Zanfeld. This time I added a knife to go with the pistol, and my gloves had electric stunners build into the knuckles just in case.

“Why are you bothering with those things?” Emla asked, as she checked her pistol. “If you’re that close to a normal person you could just crush their heart with your field or something, couldn’t you?”

“I might not want them dead,” I pointed out. “But mostly I want anyone who scans me to see some hidden weapons, so they think they know what to expect.”

“Gotcha. But what if that isn’t enough?”

Ash pulled his tail out of a power outlet, and hopped up into the couch next to her.

Guard! He declared.

“That’s right, Ash. You can just breath a puff of nerve gas right in their ugly faces, can’t you? Show Emla your weapon loadout.”

He head-butted my shoulder, and I petted him while Emla read over the list. He had some smoke mixture to help with getaways, but mostly his little storage tanks were full of lethal agents. Swarms of microbots loaded with neurotoxins. A nasty strain of gray goo that would eat anyone who didn’t have milspec defenses. More microbots configured to spray tiny amounts of hyperacid into a victim’s eyes and nasal passages. None of it would do anything to a warbot, but he was a pretty lethal threat to street toughs.

“Nice,” Emla said. “Alright, I feel a little better about this now. So where are we going anyway?”

“Our first stop is Illustrious Imriel’s Exotic Imports, over on the far side of the Middle Tier.”

Kabana City was a huge settlement for something built on a planetary surface. It was a good six kilometers across, and the public maps showed four tiers of cityscape between the upper towers and the waterline. Each tier was about sixty meters tall, with its own layout of streets and plazas lined by buildings that were mostly about half that height. The rest of the space was used for weather management, and all the little tricks that created the illusion of being outdoors.

“I wonder what’s below the waterline?” Emla mused as we boarded a taxi. The little robotic groundcar rose silently onto its lift field, and glided off towards our destination.

“Barracks and training areas for the inugami,” I guessed. “Probably a lot of engineering spaces, too, and living quarters for the techs. I’m sure it takes a lot of people to keep a giant criminal empire running, plus the city is bound to need a crew. Did you notice how a lot of the Lower Tier is little clan compounds for low-status retainer clans? I bet the part you can see is just the tip of the iceberg, and they have lots more floors below decks.”

The important yakuza clans all lived at the top of the city, of course. There were a dozen towering clan homes that rose above the top of the city’s hull, giving a spectacular view of the surrounding sea. Although they were all designed to retract into the main body of the city if there was an attack, which had to be expensive. I guess it said something about how rich they were, or maybe just the size of their egos.

It was still early evening, and the district was bustling with pedestrians. Late shoppers, early club-goers and curious tourists mingled in the streets, most of which didn’t allow vehicles. The taxi dropped us off a couple of blocks from our destination, and from there we had to walk.

The crowds here were different than on Zanfeld. The spacers moved in pairs, or more often groups, and kept a sharper eye on their surroundings. A lot of them wore light armor, and carried much heavier weapons than my little pistol. Some of them looked so nervous I was sure it must be their first time on Taragi, and they were all really polite to each other.

The natives were easy to pick out, because they were a lot more relaxed. Still alert, but they knew the rules here and they were used to living with them. To them this was just another normal day.

I tried to copy them, and used our private datalink to pass Emla hints about how to act. I’m not sure how well it worked, though. There were so many interesting sights that it was hard not to gawk. Exotic visitors from distant ports, and odd stores selling all kinds of strange things.

Right next to Imriel’s Imports there was a shop that sold colorful little transforming robots, and a whole group of them posed and wrestled each other in the window display. The biggest ones were the size of Ash, but there were some so tiny they could have stood on the tip of my finger. It seemed like each one was different, and they were all based on something. Fictional giant robots from ancient vidshows, or real ones from sports like Mechbattlers or Big Iron.

I made a note to look up those shows when I had the chance, and reluctantly passed it by to check out Imriel’s instead. Unfortunately that turned out to be a disappointment. At first glance it looked like a store full of traditional Japanese cultural artifacts, but it was obvious to me that it was all cheap junk. Hundreds of square meters of shelf space crammed full of generic tea, random snack foods, ‘handcrafted’ curios that had obviously come out of a bulk fabricator, and ‘lacquered wood’ utensils that weren’t even made of real wood. Ugh. Did people really fall for that?

“I can’t tell the difference, Alice,” Emla commented as I pulled her out of the store. “Does it really matter if the wood is real or not?”

I rolled my eyes.

“The whole point of this snooty cultural stuff is showing people that you can tell when something is authentic,” I told her. “Besides, I’m not talking about quick-grown synthetic wood like you’d get from a biofab. You’re right, that stuff’s actually better than hand-crafted hardwood on any practical level. But most of the stuff in there is just low-grade structural matter with different color patterns printed on the surface. It isn’t going to handle like the real thing, and it’ll all fall apart after a few weeks of use.”

“Oh. I guess that wouldn’t impress him much, huh?”

“He’d probably have me executed for the insult. Come on, maybe we’ll have better luck at Timeless Traditions.”

We didn’t.

It took me a couple of hours to realize that most of the shops in the Middle Tier were tourist traps. I guess the fact that so many of them specialized in stuff like subtle murder weapons, mind control devices and illegal spy gear threw off my expectations. But after the third shop turned out to be worthless I spent a few minutes poking my head into the other shops along the street, and found more of the same.

Great. From their datanet sites it looked like the Upper Tier shops were all very traditional Masu-kai places, so they weren’t going to have the kind of thing I was looking for. The High Tier was reserved for rich customers with special passes, so that left me with the Lower Tier.

Where the really nasty stuff was supposed to be.

“Do we really need to do this?” Emla asked quietly as I led her into an elevator.

“Yes. I have to make a good impression here, Emla.”

She sighed. “Alright. But if we end up captured by slavers I reserve the right to say I told you so.”

“If we get captured by slavers we’ll be too busy escaping for complaints. We’ll be fine, Emla. Just act natural, and keep your eyes open.”

The elevator doors opened, and a bunch of huge guys trooped in. They were all well over two hundred cems, with bulging muscles and green skin. Orcs?

A powerful, musky scent filled the elevator, but I was too distracted to pay much attention to the sudden warnings from my nanowarfare suite. There was a skull dangling from a wide leather belt right in front of my face. A real human skull, that had belonged to someone who only died a few weeks ago.

The pistol hanging next to it was a giant 16mm model that would probably blow holes in a breaching bot, and the guy had an axe that weighed more than I did strapped to his back. My sensors picked up synthetic muscles, diamondoid bones, layers of subdermal armor and a massive nuke pack hidden deep inside that barrel chest. Crude stuff, sure, but massively powerful.

The orc grinned down at me. “Hey, little girl. You like my trophy, or you just checking out the merchandise?”

I squashed the terrified squeak that wanted to come out. Don’t show weakness, Alice. Being afraid is just asking for something bad to happen.

“I’ve never seen anyone pull off wearing a real skull like that,” I managed. “I think it’s the axe that makes it work.”

One of the other orcs groaned. “Aw, shit. Don’t get him started on the damned axe.”

Skull Guy puffed out his chest. “Toldja, Thag. Chicks dig the axe. They see this shit, they come running for kloms.”

Thag just snorted. “Yeah, Garkin, cuz they wanna see what kinda dumbass hauls around a melee weapon on a fuckin’ spaceship.”

“You never know when a problem might get up close and personal. ‘Sides, you seen it work.”

“You make this shit too complicated, Garkin,” another orc complained. “Doing all this babe magnet crap like some lame-ass human. You wanna slip some chick the big green D, you just gotta show her what she’s gettin’. Like this.”

His hand went to the front of his leather pants. The other orcs all groaned, but no one stopped him from turning my way and whipping out…

Good Gaia, that thing was huge.

“Eeeewwww! Gross!” Emla exclaimed.

I boosted to fast time, and spent a really embarrassing couple of milliseconds getting my expression back under control. Gaia, there was enough biowarfare stuff in the air now to fry a normal person’s brain. Eight different drugs and a whole bunch of nanotech, all of it trying to make me react the same way. I was supposed to just kind of melt into a whimpering puddle, wasn’t I?

You’re checking it out, Emla commed.

Hey, I’ve never seen one before. Goodness, it’s as big as my arm.

Yeah, and he’s waving it right in your face. What are we going to do, Alice? I don’t know if we can fight these guys. They’ve got so much armor I can’t tell if our guns will penetrate it, and their spaceproofing might be good enough to stop Ash’s tricks.

Considering that Ash was sitting on my shoulder just a few cems from the guy’s junk, having him take a bite out of it would probably be pretty darned effective. But Captain Sokol had warned me to stay out of trouble if I could possibly avoid it, and he usually knew what he was talking about.

I’m worried too, I admitted. But maybe we don’t have to fight them. Let me try something.

I dropped into normal time, and did my best teenage eyeroll.

“Put that thing away before you accidentally brain someone with it,” I said. “Honestly, you must be pretty hard up if you’re hitting on little kids.”

There was a moment of stunned silence. Then they all started laughing.

“She’s got you there, Wugh. Now put that shit away. You get yourself mobbed by hookers, you’re payin’ for’em.”

Wugh stuffed his thing back in his pants with a grumble, and threw a confused look my way.

“Da fuck are you, bitch?” He muttered. “Some kinda full body job, or just a fake?”

“Milspec everything, plus you’re a year too early for me,” I said casually.

The doors opened, and they all started filing out of the elevator. Garkin grinned down at me.

“You’re pretty stout for a little girl, Alice. That age header for real, or are you some kinda secret Masu-kai ninja supersoldier?”

“Who, me? I’m just a little girl out running some errands, honest.” I blinked up at him innocently.

“Yeah, suuure you are. What kinda errand takes a couple of kids to the Lower Tier at night, anyway?”

“I’m getting ready for a meeting with one of the Masu-kai bosses tomorrow,” I told him. “I can’t say any more, because I’m supposed to kill people who know too much and I don’t have any nukes on me. You?”

“Aw, we’re just checkin’ out the auctions at Foka’s. Word is he’s got some good shit up on the block tonight.”

He nodded to the plaza right across from the elevator bank, where a crowd was gathered around a raised dais. A group of terrified-looking women were lined up there, wearing nothing but the collars on their necks and the shackles that held their wrists behind their backs. The auctioneer was taking bids, while a big virtual billboard hovered above the crowd announcing the night’s upcoming auctions. Passengers kidnapped from a liner in the Corporate Worlds cluster, including some managers. Prisoners of war from a battle on some colony I didn’t recognize. Experimental androids stolen from a secret lab in Greater Victoria, and the former leaders of a fallen pirate clan.

I wasn’t sure which of them was supposed to be the ‘good shit’, but I couldn’t really bring myself to care. The sign that read ‘authentic human prisoners - untouched and unbroken’ held my attention for a moment, before my eyes went to the asking prices. The bidding started at five thousand just for those poor maids who were on the block now, and it went way up from there. Thirty thousand credits for a corporate middle manager. Sixty for the deposed pirate boss, and eighty apiece for his son and daughters.

Once again, I had to use fast time to control my expression. But I didn’t let anything show.

“Huh. Well, good luck with your shopping,” I said.

“You too, ninja girl,” he said easily. “Or good hunting, if that was just a cover story. Be seein’ you.”

I watched them go, and turned in the opposite direction.

Let’s get this done, Emla, I said silently. I want to get back to the palace, and take a bath.

I’d rather nuke this place into radioactive dust, she replied. But I guess a bath will have to do.

Chapter 23

The residence wing of the palace looked a lot like the rest of the complex, only with even more security. The obvious part was the horde of inugami in crisp uniforms, standing at checkpoints and patrolling the halls in pairs. But there were a lot of other measures a normal person wouldn’t have seen. Hidden rooms full of warbots, ready to pour out and deal with troublemakers. Concealed weapon emplacements in the walls and ceilings, and traps in the corridors. Sensors everywhere, and not just passive ones. They had active sonar and manipulator field sensors, swarms of microbots drifting through the air and even patrols of little insect-sized bots searching for intruders of their own size.

Even the servants didn’t seem to be normal. Most of them were meek-looking human women, who smoothly stepped aside and bowed as we passed. But they all seemed suspiciously athletic to me, with subtle sensor baffling that made it hard to be sure what mods they had. The traditional maid uniforms they wore would be easy to fight in, and offered plenty of ways to hide small weapons or tools.

Not that I was going to be fighting anyone in a formal kimono, anyway. The skirt came down almost to my ankles, and it was tight enough that I had to take small steps. It was silk, too, and while the butterfly pattern I’d chosen might be pretty the outfit was worthless as armor. Emla was better off in that respect, since her skinsuit was designed to double as both a uniform and light combat armor. But I had no illusions that her pistol and smoke dispensers would be enough to handle the kind of trouble we could run into here.

I had to keep this friendly, no matter what.

Our guide led us to an antechamber that looked like a lounge, where eight inugami waited for their master. Only one of them stood by the door, while the others were spread about the couches and overstuffed chairs that filled the room. Just what I’d expected, and Emla took up her position in the empty spot by the door smoothly.

Little touches like that were important, if I was going to pull this off.

My eyes met hers for a moment as I passed, and I sent her a burst of encouragement. The garden was sealed against all forms of communication, so we’d be separated for as long as I was in there. I knew that would be hard for her, but she replied with a wordless burst of confident determination.

Good. The other guards would probably push her some, to see if they could get her to show weakness or do something ‘inappropriate’. But I’d briefed her pretty well, and compiled the results of my research on Masu-kai etiquette into a skill pack for her so she wouldn’t forget anything. She’d be fine. Now I just had to hold up my end of things.

I’d feel more confident about that if I didn’t keep surprising myself. I hadn’t even known I could make skill packs until the need had come up. I hadn’t known I had a personal livery, either. But when Azalea had asked about the color scheme and insignia for Emla’s snazzy new uniform, somehow I’d known exactly what I wanted. Black uniform, silver trim, with little draconic skulls on the lapels and a geometric splash of red on the right shoulder that sort of reminded me of a flower. Very military, and she looked really sharp in it.

There was probably a clue about my origins in there, but a datanet search had turned up more than half a million matches. Supposedly there was some famous Old Earth army that had dressed sort of like that back in the 20th century, and lots of people imitated the look. I’d have to sort through them sometime when I didn’t have my hands full with more urgent problems.

The entrance to the Hungry Garden was a long hallway with sliding doors every couple of meters, which automatically opened as I got close and slid shut again behind me. Each of them was made of armor a couple of cems thick, and the whole hall had sensors like a security checkpoint. But the main purpose of the setup was probably decontamination. The air was swarming with microbots, and so was every exposed surface. I was pretty sure they were all working together with the air purifiers in the walls to keep any stray nanotech or bioweapons from being tracked out of the garden.

I stepped through the last door into the bright yellow light of a G2 star, a perfect imitation of mankind’s lost home.

The garden was huge. Easily a couple of hectares, all of it covered with artful arrangements of exotic plants. Little wooden walkways snaked through the greenery, elevated a few inches above the soil and kept immaculately clean. Here and there I saw bridges arching over narrow brooks, and pools filled with brightly colored fish. Overhead was an amazingly convincing illusion of a clear blue sky, with a few tufts of white cloud here and there.

“Welcome to the Garden of Repose, Honored Guest. Lord Akio awaits you at the Delicate Spring Pavilion. Shall I lead the way?”

“Yes, please.”

It was a good thing Freesia had warned me about the servants here, or I would have stared. The maid who’d greeted me had by far the most extreme morph job I’d ever seen. She was a naga, with the body of a giant snake from the waist down. A really big snake. She had six arms, too, and a forked tongue in a mouth full of serrated teeth that reminded me of a shark.

She and the rest of her tribe were part of the garden. They lived in here, tending the plants and catering to visitors, but they were as much a trap as the rest of it. Everything about them was dangerous, from their poisoned fangs and claws to the long lines of retractable spikes that extended along their snake half. Their predatory instincts were overwhelmingly powerful, and keyed into the garden’s IFF system just like all the plants. To the Hoshida family they were as loyal as puppies, but any intruder who lost their scent badge would be attacked in an instant.

Freesia had confided that the first of the naga were survivors from some group of rivals that Lord Hoshida had wanted to make an example of. But that was decades ago, and they’d been brainwashed and rebuilt so extensively even they didn’t remember the details anymore. The younger ones had been born here in the garden. Or maybe hatched. I wasn’t sure how that worked for them, and I certainly wasn’t going to ask.

I followed my guide through a maze of plants whose names I didn’t know. Some of them might not even have names, if this was the only place they existed. A lot of the flowers seemed perfectly harmless, although I was sure they’d turn out to be poisonous or hypnotic or something if I put it to the test. Other hazards were easier to spot. Trees with limbs that could animate, and creeper vines that would drop off of overhead branches to entangle me. Grass that could cut like a vibroblade, or secrete corrosive chemicals. Bushes that could launch volleys of sharp thorns, or acted as nests for swarms of flying insects.

Underlying the perfume of the flowers was a faint hint of other things. A few stray molecules of exotic poisons and airborne drugs, and dozens of kinds of ‘pollen’ that was actually made of micromachines loaded up with nanotech threats. The scents were interesting, though. There was a rich blend of aromatic chemicals too subtle for a human nose to pick out, that constantly varied like some kind of invisible music. My badge generated its own signature too. Not a simple echo or challenge-response scheme, but something more complicated. There was a give and take to it that reminded me of dancing with Kavin.

I wasn’t about to mess with that, but it made an interesting accompaniment to the tour of the garden that my guide was giving me. She had her own scent signature, and so did each of the plants, but they were all different. Idly, I worked at cataloguing the whole symphony as I walked.

Eventually we came around a bend, and arrived at a wooden platform overlooking a large pond. Sakura trees in full bloom shaded most of the polished wood surface, and the flowering bushes that surrounded them gave the place a secluded feel. Akio sat at a low table on the far side, gazing into the pond.

He looked up as we approached. “Good morning, Alice. How are you today?”

I bowed, leaning hard on my instincts to make myself do it properly. Some insane bit of my subconscious still wanted to stop at a tiny nod, like some high lady barely acknowledging a pretentious lowlife’s existence. That would get me killed for sure. Fortunately he was still inviting me to present myself as a lady, so I didn’t have to bow all that low. Just enough to acknowledge his power over me.

Thinking of it that way made me kind of feel funny, but it was a lot easier than telling myself he outranked me.

“I’m quite well, my lord. How are you?”

“Well enough, I suppose. Please, join me.”

I sat across the little table from him, carefully going through the little ritual of folding skirts and arranging my legs just so. Then I set the little teak box I carried in the middle of the table.

“Please, accept this gift in thanks for your kind invitation,” I said.

He gave me an amused look, and reached over to pull apart the ribbon that held the box closed. It was dark blue along the edges and a lighter shade in the middle, to indicate respect and openness to negotiation. I carefully controlled my expression as he opened the lid, and inspected the contents. A large compartment filled with a mixture of green and amber powders, and a smaller one with a little scoop and whisk.

“This looks interesting,” he said. “Some sort of tea?”

“It’s an old tradition in the Tanova Sector colonies, my lord. A sort of breakfast tea they call osuno. The tea itself is a variety that was evacuated from Japan before Z Day, grown in controlled habitats by a reclusive order of monks. They harvest and desiccate by hand, then crystallize it to ensure perfect preservation of the flavor.”

“I see. And the amber-colored grains?”

“Crystallized honey blended with various mild spices, my lord. There are thousands of variations in the exact recipe, depending on local tastes.”

“How interesting. Well then, we shall have to try this exotic beverage. Marissa?”

A naga with dark purple hair emerged from behind one of the trees, and glided over to lay out a tea set on the table. At a nod from Akio she set down a kettle full of water and backed away. I poured, adding a carefully measured quantity of tea to his cup and giving it a brisk but precise stir with the whisk. I did the same with my own, feeling a little silly about making such a production out of things.

But that was kind of the point. Japanese cultures always make a big deal out of tea, but after four hundred years of cultural drift the details have changed a lot from one colony to the next. Enacting a polite ritual from some colony he’d never heard of was at once exotic and familiar. It said I could respect traditions without being imprisoned by them, and also that I could fit in anywhere if I chose to.

It didn’t hurt that it was really good tea. I’d bought a box for myself, just so I could make sure of that without opening the gift in advance. I was definitely going to be reverse engineering the stuff when I got back to the ship, so I could fabricate more whenever I ran out.

Akio set his cup down, and smiled at me. “You know, I believe you’ve just demonstrated my correctness in an old argument.”

I lowered my gaze to the tea cups. “Oh? How so, my lord?”

“My official advisors were unanimously convinced that this would be an embarrassing fiasco. My inugami, however, were equally confident that you would pull it off flawlessly. Hence, my contention that a close connection to the palace gossip network is a more reliable resource than any amount of learned reason and third-hand reports.”

I couldn’t completely hide my grin. “I can’t disagree with that, my lord. Who would know more about someone than their servants? Why, if I were running an enormous palace I’d probably train all my staff in information gathering just to capitalize on the opportunity.”

He chuckled. “Indeed. Now please, haven’t I told you to call me Akio? We can save the court performances for the court.”

“Thank you, Akio.”

He was silent for a moment, waiting to see if I’d say anything else. I met his gaze now instead of staring at the table, but I just smiled back at him. I knew better than to take his comment as an invitation to be completely informal.

My stomach gave a loud rumble.

He laughed. I cringed, and hung my head.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Oh, gosh, that’s so embarrassing.”

“No, no, I’m the one who’s kept you busy with silly games instead of feeding you. Although as many enhancements as you have, I’m surprised you don’t have an override for that too.”

“Mom probably thought it would be cute or something. Ugh, it’s your fault anyway. Ever since our spar yesterday my development manager is insisting that it needs to prioritize muscle growth, and the material requirements on that are just insane. I’m going to be eating nonstop for the next month thanks to you.”

“Well, then let me make it up to you. Marissa, we’re ready.”

The naga from before came back with a tray full of dishes, and started to lay out breakfast. It was all very traditional, which meant lots of weird food I’d never tried before, but I was hungry enough to eat anything. There was also enough for four people, so at least it was going to do more than wet my appetite.

We made small talk as we ate, and I tried to strike the right balance. Not stilted and formal, but not too familiar either. It was hard when I still didn’t know exactly what he wanted from me, but I thought I was doing alright. He certainly seemed friendly enough.

After a few minutes Marissa came back to collect empty plates and bowls, and another naga set out another helping. My surprise must have showed.

“My development manager is also rather hungry for building materials,” he explained. “I suspect I have a slower growth schedule than yours, but I’m due to put on another thirty kilograms this year.”

He wasn’t exactly small now. I tried to imagine him with another few cems of height and thirty more kilos of hard muscle. Yum.

Wait, no, I wasn’t supposed to be drooling over the evil crime boss. Bad girl, Alice. Stop that.

“I haven’t quite decided what I’m going to go with,” I told him. “My default template is all tiny and delicate looking, but I’m not too happy with that. I don’t want to go through my whole life looking harmless. So I guess we’re both cursed to eat lots and lots of tasty food for at least a few more years.”

“It’s a terrible burden,” he agreed. “But somehow we shall persevere.”

“It’s interesting that you have options,” he went on after a few mouthfuls of rice and fish. “You do realize how difficult an engineering job that would be, don’t you Alice? Making a single development path is hard enough. I can only imagine how many tech-years of work would be involved in make the process adapt itself to different cosmetic options automatically.”

I shrugged. “You think that’s crazy? That’s barely scratching the surface. When I was on Felicity they weren’t giving me supplements, so a lot of my systems couldn’t grow in when they were supposed to. But somehow I ended up rescheduling everything so I’d look as normal as possible and still have the right tools to escape. Then when I got to the Square Deal and started eating right everything rescheduled again, this time with a priority on surviving spacer life. I’ve never heard of anything like that.”

“Nor have I, and I take an interest in such things. There are a number of places in the Kerak sector where one can find remarkably capable people, but even the largest government projects don’t have the funds to produce the sheer depth of capability that you so casually display. I think your mother must have been from the Inner Sphere. There have been rumors circulating about a breakthrough in manipulator technology there.”

“That would make sense,” I agreed. “They’re supposed to be a few decades ahead of the Outer Sphere, and those huge empires must have plenty of money to spend on secret projects. I don’t think Mom was an agent, though. Maybe a deposed aristocrat? I’ll have to keep researching, and see what I can figure out.”

“Perhaps I could help you with that,” he said. “My people are quite good at ferreting out information.”

That caught me by surprise.

“Do you have some particular interest in my origins, Akio?”

“I have a considerable interest in any potential source of exceptional individuals, Alice. For both professional and personal reasons.”

“I see. You know, that’s an interesting point. I hadn’t thought about it before, but I suppose personal skills and enhancements would be a lot more of a factor in your clan’s business than they would be for most people. When you’re trying to be discreet you can’t count on being able to deploy an army of specialists, and a fleet of warships would be counterproductive.”

“Just so,” he agreed. “The Masu-kai have generally been rather restrained in our use of enhancement technology, but that has mostly been out of a need to blend in. Something you seem quite adept at.”

I tried not to blush at the compliment. “Thank you. That does seem to be a priority with my design. Once I’m fully grown I’ll have a few things that might trip security alerts, but it all looks like the kind of thing any normal bodyguard or spacer might have.”

“I see. Have you considered your future, Alice? I know you only escaped Felicity a few weeks ago, but I’m sure you’ve given some thought to your prospects.”

“I’m very grateful to Captain Sokol and the crew of the Square Deal for my rescue,” I said earnestly. “I’m planning to stay with them until I finish earning all my spacer certs, and have a chance to repay the captain for taking a chance on me. After that, I’m not sure. At first I thought I’d just want to find a safe place to live, and maybe get married and raise a family. But I’ve discovered I kind of like adventure.”

I paused, gazing down at the pond. The surface was dotted with water lilies, and bright red and orange fish swam lazily about.

“I guess that must be part of my mod package,” I mused. “Any of the girls I grew up with would have been in hysterics after the brainhacking attempt, let alone getting caught up in a space battle and boarding action. Maybe I’m just a violent maniac?”

“Or perhaps Felicitan society does not have the firmest grasp on human nature?” He suggested.

“That’s for sure. I’m still figuring out what to believe, though.”

“I recommend the study of cognitive science for that,” he said. “The mind engineers who design androids have long since reverse-engineered the entire human mind, and their theories are well tested by their work.”

“Not going to suggest some traditional philosopher?”

“I once heard philosophy defined as ‘the study of things that no one understands’, and after all my instruction in the classics I believe that to be a fair assessment. When humanity comes to understand a topic it becomes its own field of study, and no longer a matter for philosophers.”

“So I should study ethics theory and morality engineering instead? Or maybe behavioral engineering, if I want to know how people who aren’t brainwashed would act? I guess that does make sense.”

Marissa made another appearance then, to clear away the dishes and bring us fresh tea. She set out an assortment of finger foods, mostly different kinds of miniature dumplings on sticks, and retreated.

Akio leaned back from the table with a satisfied sigh.

“Ah, just the way to start the day,” he said. “Good food, beautiful surroundings and a pleasant companion. We should do this again.”

“I’d like that,” I admitted. I was a little surprised that it was the truth, but he was interesting to talk to. Very sure of himself, but he was smart and he knew a lot.

Wait, was he getting ready to leave? That sounded like we were almost done. Had Azalea been wrong about this whole situation?

“I imagine it could become a common event, once your obligations to Captain Sokol have been dealt with,” he went on. “Tell me, Alice, what do you think of the Masu-kai?”

I closed my mouth, and just stared at him for a moment.

“I suppose that was a bit unfair of me, wasn’t it? Let me start on a different tack, then. I assume you’re aware of my father’s plans regarding the headship?”

Was he just trying to shock me? Shake me up, and see if I cracked under pressure? Well, I could play that game.

“Of course,” I replied. “I expect things will get pretty exciting around here when you turn eighteen.”

“My father is convinced that the transition will go smoothly,” Akio told me, in a tone that made it clear he thought his old man was nuts.

“Well, I’m sure Lord Himura knows far more about it than I do,” I said piously. “But a wise man prepares for every contingency, right? Even the unlikely ones?”

“Yes. Especially when there are certain parties that will clearly require careful handling, and unpleasant options that must be foreclosed. The situation has rather put a crimp in my social life, though.”

“Oh?” I wasn’t sure whether to be pleased that he was talking to me about stuff like this, or terrified. Maybe both?

“Yes. I’m of age to begin assembling my own household, and I’m certain you can imagine the security concerns involved. A clan head needs trustworthy retainers who can be relied on to put his orders above all others, but finding such individuals can be quite difficult. The current Himura retainers are all my father’s, which is less than ideal. But anyone from another clan or our training academies is all too likely to have compromised loyalties.”

“Wouldn’t the same be true of a supposed outsider?” I asked carefully. “After all, how could you ever be sure that their background wasn’t a fake? Or that they really are who they say they are?”

“Unless the outsider’s nature is itself proof that she owes no fealty to any potential rival,” he pointed out.

“What, you don’t think your enemies could spend billions of credits on a crazy infiltration scheme without you knowing about it?” I shot back with a grin.

“I should hope not. Although the stakes are rather high,” he mused. “You realize I’m also expected to marry before I take the headship? Father wanted me to take a wife from each of the Masu-kai clans, as if they wouldn’t murder each other within the week. Of course, no one else dares to put forward a candidate with that sort of competition waiting in the wings. Especially since I can’t expect to offer a proper lady the life she would expect.”

I stared at him.

“Ah, the light begins to dawn,” he said.

“You can’t possibly be thinking… what it sounds like you might be getting at,” I said weakly.

“Fortune favors the bold, Alice,” he said confidently. “It’s a bit too soon for making decisions, but I must carefully consider all available options.”

“Options. Right. Um, what do you mean, ‘the life she would expect’?”

“A proper lord is supposed to provide his ladies with a life of safety and elegant leisure, so that they can devote themselves to family matters. Unfortunately, a lady who ties her destiny to mine is more likely to find herself fending off assassins or imposing bloody corrections on a recalcitrant branch office. If I’m to carry out the reforms I intend, family will not be an option for years.”

“You want wives who can be your lieutenants? Wow. That’s like something out of those adventure romance stories. Next you’re going to tell me you want to turn the Masu-kai into a legitimate nation or something.”

He studied me silently for a moment.

“I may have had some thoughts along those lines,” he said.

“You’re way too good to be true, Akio.”

“I have had the same thought about you, Alice. Hence the need for a period of consideration.”

Part of me was ready to jump straight past all the boring judgment stuff, and get right into this life of wealth and adventure he was hinting at. But I still remembered the slave market. I hesitated.

“In honesty, there is also a question as to how much I can safely defy tradition,” he went on. “Bloodlines are very important to many of the clans, and a certain level of support is necessary if I am to secure my position. Recruiting a highly capable retainer would be far less complicated.”

“Simple is for wusses.”

Oh, Gaia. Did I say that? Why did I say that?

He smiled, and I swear my heart skipped a beat. “Is it, now? You know, it’s admirable how restrained you’ve been about showing off your abilities, but it occurs to me that what I’ve seen so far might not be impossible to fake.”

“What, now you have doubts? Fine, I can show you something impossible if you like.”

I took off my scent badge, and laid it on the table.

His look of astonished horror was priceless. The badge turned itself off the moment I let go of it, ending its performance with a distinctive puff of pheromones that instantly drew Marissa’s attention. The naga slithered out of the trees, and two others suddenly emerged from the pond to my other side.

But I’d already started my own performance. I’d been admiring the interplay between the scent badge and our surroundings during the whole conversation, and picking up on Akio’s version as well. His was very different, and a lot prettier. Sung in the key of his own DNA, if I was going to stick with the musical metaphor, while the scent badge’s responses were built around an ID code and time range.

So I woke up the chemosynthesis system hidden in my skin, and started to play my own scent melody. Fielding hundreds of independent queries from the plants all around us, and the naga servants as well.

This was going to be really embarrassing if it didn’t work like I expected.

All three naga stared at me suspiciously for a long moment. Then their expressions softened, and the two in the pond sunk back beneath the water. Marissa took a deep breath, and bowed low.

“My apologies, Mistress. We did not recognize you for a moment.”

I reached down and patted her head. “That’s all right, Marissa. I know I was being confusing.”

She pressed against my hand like a cat, so I gave her a scritch like one. She practically purred.

“Thank you, Mistress. I’m a good girl?”

“What do you think, Akio?”

He picked his jaw up, and shook his head. “Yes, you’re a good girl, Marissa. Why don’t you bring us fresh tea?”

“Yes, Master!”

She bowed again, and slithered off on her errand.

“How?” Akio demanded.

I grinned. “I’m pretty sure I’m not secretly your sister, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

I let him sputter for a second before I went on. “Seriously, though, I’m not sure why I have the generic markers your security looks for in my DNA. I guess we must have a common ancestor somewhere a few generations back, but I’ll have to leave that question for your investigators. As for the rest of it, well, I have some baggage of my own. I can pick up all the signaling that goes on between you and the garden, so I just improvised my own version.”

“Just like that?”

I shrugged. “It’s just math, Akio. It’s kind of neat the way your location, identity and mood are all encoded in the same scent signal, but there’s so much chatter in here that it was easy to figure out the whole scheme. All I had to do was watch.”

“That’s impossible. The garden was designed to fool chemsniffers, and a standard fabricator can’t build some of the scent molecules. Even if you got around that somehow, no one could understand that much data in real time.”

I picked up a dumpling with my manipulator field, tore it in half, and put one piece in my mouth while holding the rest in the air between us.

“Hey, you wanted to see something impossible. Don’t blame me for giving you what you asked for. Is two examples enough, or do I need to come up with another one?”

He eyed the fragment of dumpling warily. There were industrial machines that could pull off the kind of fine control I’d just demonstrated, but there was no way you could fit something like that inside a person. Just the control computers would be bigger than I was.

“No, I think that’s sufficient. Alice, what did you mean about baggage? Do you have some sort of transhuman AI in your head?”

“No, it’s not like that,” I said with a grimace. “It’s more like being one of those AIs that can run a whole starship by itself. I’m not necessarily any smarter than the next person, and as far as I can tell I work pretty much like a normal girl most of the time. But I’ve got all these amazing analysis functions that figure things out for me, and I can pay attention to a lot of different things at the same time if I try. I think mom must have been involved in some kind of transhumanist project, but they were focusing on augmentations instead of general intelligence.”

“Yet you still must hide it, for fear of what others will think.”

Marissa set a fresh cup of tea in front of me. I stared down at it, suddenly worried.

“In the vidshows, the transhumanists are always the monsters,” I said.

“Not everyone is so foolish,” he told me. “Besides, it can be useful to be feared. As long as you have someone who sees beyond your reputation.”

“Huh. What kind of reputation do you think I’m going to have?”

“Fearsome. Kind to your friends, but deadly to your enemies, and quick to put those who cross you in their place.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” I admitted. “But this is a lot to take in, Akio.”

“There is no rush, Alice. We have at least a year before any serious decisions must be made. Unless you are telling me you refuse to consider the matter?”

“No, it’s not that. I just need to think. And, um, please don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m not really enthusiastic about the idea of supporting people like slavers and brain hackers.”

“Neither am I,” he admitted. “The clan heads all claim that it isn’t that simple, of course. That these things would happen with or without our involvement, and in truth the Masu-kai serve to make things better by centralizing and standardizing these unsavory black market businesses. But I think we could do better. The old guard are all fixated on the idea of the Masu-kai as a criminal empire, when we could be a proper kingdom instead.”

“Exactly!” I exclaimed. “That’s just what I thought, when I first saw Taragi. You guys have techs, a navy, design databases and a whole star cluster that no one else ever visits except for your customers. You could be building a major colony here, instead of just catering to criminals.”

“Oh, really? Tell me, Alice. What would you change, if it were in your power?”

Chapter 24

We talked for most of the morning. About how to reform the Masu-kai, which was a daunting prospect when you considered that most of the membership weren’t interested in change. About Akio’s plans for building a family that was also a band of ultimate badasses, and his struggle to find suitable people. About my own life, from the orphanage to my final escape from Felicity, and my plan to return and rescue Dika one day.

We might have talked right through lunch, except that Akio had a schedule to keep. So finally we said our goodbyes, and I collected Emla and headed back to my room. I was so excited I couldn’t wait to fill her in, so I opened a private comlink and started explaining on the way.

You sure did tell him a lot, she said dubiously. Are you sure he isn’t just playing you?

He might be, I admitted. But even if he is, that would mean someone like him thinks that playing me is worth the trouble.

Well, of course it is. You’re awesome, Alice.

Aren’t I? We’ll have to figure out some way to tell if he’s for real, I guess. But it’s not like I’m going to stay here or anything. He’s not ready to make that big a push yet, and I wasn’t dumb enough to make any promises just based on one conversation. The plan is I go back to the Square Deal and finish my education, and we exchange letters and maybe have a secret meeting once in a while. He’s not going to announce anything until he turns eighteen, so we’ve got a couple of years to figure out what we really think of each other.

I still don’t like it, she grumbled. This guy is going to get you into all kinds of trouble. Speaking of which…

Yeah, I see them. But hey, maybe I’d like a little trouble in my life.

Not halfway to my room we encountered a group of suspiciously nondescript inugami blocking the hall, all of them fingering their pistols and trying to look tough.

“What have we here?” One of them said. “A little foreign girl sticking her nose in where it doesn’t belong?”

“You should stay away from the young lord if you know what’s good for you,” another one said. “No one is going to stand for that.”

Another group of inugami moved in to fill the hallway behind us. They were obviously of a different breed than the first group, with different weapons and a slightly different mod package.

“You should take their advice,” said the new group’s leader. “Even old enemies will put aside their grudges when an interloper appears.”

I just stood there silently for a moment, watching with a serene expression.

The one who’d spoken first scowled at me. “What? Aren’t you going to say anything, little girl? Or are you too scared to talk?”

“I thought it would be polite to let the others make their statements as well,” I said blandly.

Most of the inugami seemed confused at that, but a few of them turned wary. I marked those as higher priority targets in the tactical control space I’d just spun up and shared with Emla. I was happy to note that she’d already spotted the inugami in chameleon suits who were stuck to the ceiling down at the far end of the hall, although I had to point out the suspicious microbot swarms gathering in the air around us.

The chameleon team just held their position, but some of the microbots swirled together and powered up a distributed holodisplay. An image of an amused-looking fox woman with silver hair and five tails appeared, floating in midair.

“Well spotted, Alice,” she said. “But I’m afraid I must side with the puppies in this. There are many plans in progress regarding the young lord’s future, and there is no place in them for one such as you. Should you insist on pressing your suite, matters will take an unfortunate turn.”

“Well, at least your boss is polite,” I said. “Please tell him or her that I’m quite aware of the situation, and I’m not planning to complicate things. I can hardly refuse an invitation from Lord Akio while I’m a guest here, but that should be a temporary situation. Give me a chance to get back to my ship, and you’ll never see me again.”

Hey, it’s not lying if you haven’t decided what you’re really going to do, right?

“Like some jumped-up guttersnipe is really going to pass up a shot at all that money,” one of the inugami behind me scoffed. “We should just take care of you now. The poor little orphan girl had a tragic little accident. Boo hoo. No one would care.”

“If you are in a hurry to die today, I shall be happy to oblige you,” I said calmly.

Emla chuckled. “You? Kill my mistress? That’s rich. Girl, you’re all infiltration models. You’re designed to blend in with a crowd and rough up civilians, not fight war machines and supersoldiers. We’d kick your asses, and then palace security would show up and the survivors would get to explain themselves to Lord Himura.”

“Palace security isn’t going to notice a thing,” the leader of the first group said. But her girls were all watching Emla warily now.

I smiled. “So you can’t rely on them to send you reinforcements? How convenient. But I’m sure that would turn into a huge mess for everyone, and none of us want that. So why don’t you girls just tell your masters that you delivered the message, and give me some time to extract myself from this situation. If you really want me gone, maybe you could even help with that.”

Maybe, but I wasn’t counting on it. I warmed up my field, syncing it with Emla’s and using the combined power to clear away the invisible cloud of microbots that was trying to gather around us. I felt my hair warm up, and unraveled the complex knot I’d had it tied up in so it could float free in the air around me. If this got serious I’d be burning a lot of energy really fast, and that was my best way to get rid of the waste heat.

The kitsune suddenly laughed.

The inugami all looked startled at that, and took a couple of steps back.

“You silly puppies have no idea what you’re dealing with, do you?” The kitsune said. “Well, far be it from me to interfere in your foolishness. Alice, my faction will be pleased to deal with you in good faith so long as you extend us the same courtesy. For now we shall simply observe, and trust in your assurances. Should our trust be misplaced, however, you may expect an appropriate response. Good day.”

The hologram winked out.

The inugami all milled around for a moment, trading uncertain glances. “What did she mean?” One of them asked.

“You don’t know? Then maybe you should find out,” I suggested.

They all looked at me. Finally, the leader of the group in front of me nodded.

“Yeah. We’re just here to deliver a message today, Alice. If you listen, that’s fine. If not, well, the next message will have to be a little more forceful. Get it?”

“I understand,” I said.

The last group must not have wanted to press their luck alone, because they let us go after a little more trash talk. Emla fumed all the way back to our rooms.

You aren’t really going to let those bitches tell you what to do, are you? She sent.

Weren’t you just telling me that getting involved with Akio was a bad idea?

Yeah, but that’s before those thugs got all pushy. You should do him just to spite them all.

Emla! I’m not that kind of girl, I protested.

How do you know? I can tell you’re thinking about it, you know. You’re not the only one here with super senses.

I am not having this conversation in the middle of a hallway.

Okay, okay, I can wait until we get back. I wasn’t serious anyway. But you have to admit, he’s pretty dreamy.

Yeah, I sighed. Part of me really wants to just forget about everything else, and see where this can go. But you saw how much trouble it would be. We’d be so busy fighting off assassins we’d never get anything else done.

You’d need your own gang, she suggested. You know, Strange Loop Sleuth didn’t lock my hardware. I bet if we put our heads together we can figure out a way to get you some more retainers like me.

That was an intriguing idea, but we didn’t get a chance to follow up on it. When we got back Naoko was waiting in the front room, wearing a hole in the floor with her pacing. By the time I got her calmed down and explained why I’d been gone so long the captain had shown up, and I had to tell the whole story again. Then he insisted on bringing Chief West in to talk about security, and before I knew it the whole day was gone.

Akio had warned me that we had to be careful about how much contact we had, so I wasn’t surprised when I didn’t hear from him the next day. I just wasn’t sure if that was a good thing, or a bad thing. Did I really want to get out of here, like I’d told the inugami? Or did I want to get involved with Akio?

There were ways to do it that wouldn’t paint too big of a target on my back. He could take me on as a personal retainer, for instance. Each of the yakuza lords had his own little group of personal agents, who did everything from bodyguard duty to spying on rivals to wet work. The fact that I wasn’t from a Masu-kai clan would offend some people, but once I proved I could hold my own most of them would just shrug and concede that Akio had the right to recruit whoever he wanted to.

But if I agreed to that now, would I ever get to be anything more than a servant? Not to mention that part of me was offended by the very idea. I was no one’s minion.

I spent an awful lot of time in the next few days trying to figure out what to do. It wasn’t easy to come up with a plan when I couldn’t even seem to decide what I wanted. It was almost a relief when we got word that Jiro Kaneda had arrived on Taragi. By then Azalea and I had put together a whole wardrobe of fancy outfits I could wear, so it only took a few minutes to change and head down to the audience chamber with the rest of the crew.

“Is it just me, or did he get here suspiciously fast?” I asked as we walked. “Even if we assume the Masu-kai have radio relays in the Gamma Layer, and he took a courier ship to get back here, it should have been at least another three days.”

“It does appear that Mr. Kaneda was already on his way, doesn’t it?” The captain said. “Perhaps he heard that I was arranging alternate delivery methods for some of our cargo, and became concerned about where we might be going?”

“Wouldn’t that imply that he knew about your connections here, sir?”

“I’m sure Mr. Kaneda will protest that this information came to light only after the attack. Regardless, it seems likely that we’ve been caught in some intrigue between the Masu-kai clans. Please allow me to do the talking here, Alice. Matters may be a bit delicate.”

“Yes, sir.”

Honestly, it was a relief to know he was here to handle things. I’d probably mess everything up if I opened my big mouth. Better to leave it to someone who’d been doing this kind of thing before the Masu-kai were even formed.

The servants escorted us into a smaller private audience chamber, instead of the big public one where we’d initially spoken with Lord Himura. Akio was already there, along with Lord Yamashida. There were a bunch of servants around too, including a group of inugami I’d last seen back on Felicity.

Captain Sokol and Lord Himura made pleasant small talk for a few minutes until Lord Kaneda arrived. They were both so smooth it sounded perfectly natural, but I had to wonder if even this was some kind of arranged scene. Someone had made sure we’d get here before Kaneda did, to make it look like he was keeping everyone else waiting.

Ugh! This stuff makes my head hurt.

When Kaneda showed up things got tense. He obviously knew he’d messed up, and he started to sweat as Lord Himura grilled him about exactly what he’d been trying to accomplish and why.

He had his defense lined up pretty well though, just like the captain had predicted. No, of course he hadn’t had anything to do with it personally. It was all just a big misunderstanding. One of his subordinates had heard that we might know the location of a valuable lost cargo, and arranged to capture the ship so he could interrogate the survivors about it. A bit crude, yes, but what can you expect from eager young men?

Apparently no one cared if Kaneda’s men murdered random spacers for money on a daily basis, because Lord Himura’s only complaint seemed to be their target.

“My lord, there is nothing in my clan’s records to indicate that the Square Deal has any history with the Masu-kai beyond a bit of petty smuggling. Shouldn’t there have been a watch directive, or an aid and assistance order, or something? How are we to know that Captain Sokol is an old associate of the Himura clan if no one tells us?”

Lord Himura scowled. “Your father knew him. Didn’t he ever mention the Black Ace? The smuggler who got your family out of the Third Bastion?”

“Ahem. I, ah, stopped using that name a long time ago, my lord,” the captain said, looking a little embarrassed. “Indeed, I may bear some responsibility for the lapse in records. I had retired from the spacer life for quite some time, as you may recall, and when I acquired the Square Deal I thought it best to obscure any connection to my old operations.”

“Don’t tell me Vicky’s people are still looking for you?” Lord Himura said.

“She was stubborn enough before she became a queen. I don’t think she’s ever going to give up.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Lord Kaneda said.

“Captain Sokol is Queen Victoria’s father,” Lord Yamashida explained. “She’s rather insistent that he give up on his wanderings and retire to help her run Greater Victoria. Her agents have a regrettable habit of attempting to kidnap him when they can find him. I believe there are also some rather wealthy ladies in the Second Bastion who insist he’s their husband-”

“Lies and slander. Smuggle an heiress or two out of Muslim territory during a war, and you never hear the end of it.”

“-and of course the Teldari nomads are still hoping to get revenge for the desecration of their high priestess.”

“They were going to sacrifice her to that robot god of theirs,” he protested. “What was I supposed to do, leave her there to die? If that replicant Dusty pawned off on me had worked to spec they never would have known the difference.”

Naoko was giving the captain an incredulous look now, but everyone else was smiling. I guess that was the idea then? Still, I had no idea what to think about all that. I guess when you’re older than dirt you end up having some history?

Greater Victoria was one of the most powerful colonies in the sector. Why would anyone pass up the chance to be part of the government there? Just so he wouldn’t have to take orders from his daughter… who was really stubborn, and had a big enough ego that she’d named her colony after herself. Okay, maybe I could see that. But what about the rest of it?

I made a note to get Dusty to share stories when I got back to the ship. If he’d been involved in some of the captain’s adventures I was sure he’d be happy to talk.

The oyabun chuckled. “Ah, those were the days. But even so, we can’t have mistakes like this become accepted. The Masu-kai stand by their allies, and there’s also the treasure to consider. Do you realize that this is our only outstanding lead on the location of the Yata no Kagami?”

Kaneda looked horrified.

“That information was not made available to me, my lord,” he said. “I assure you, my men would have acted with the utmost restraint had we known.”

“Such secrets cannot be so widely disseminated,” Lord Yamashida put in smoothly, like this was an old argument. “My department was still verifying our information, in preparation for bringing it to Lord Himura’s attention. How did you learn of it, anyway?”

“The salvage sales were mentioned in last month’s general intelligence update,” Kaneda said, looking like it was physically painful to give up his source.

Yamashida shook his head. “Hence my argument that we should filter that data before providing it to the clans. But that is a discussion for another time.”

I wondered how many points he’d just scored for himself, and whether he’d set this whole thing up somehow just to make Kaneda look bad. Snake.

“We can discuss that at the next policy meeting,” Lord Himura agreed. “Now, Jiro, I’d say your man owes Captain Sokol an apology and the price of repairs. Thankfully no one was killed in the attack, although I understand there were casualties?”

“Alice here was gravely injured in the boarding action,” Captain Sokol agreed.

All eyes turned to me.

“Really? How did a young girl get caught up in something like that?” Lord Himura asked.

I swallowed. Keep it simple, Alice. Don’t make a fool of yourself.

“I was helping out with the passenger management, my lord,” I said. “So I was the first one to find out that the traveling bot salesman we had on board was actually an infiltrator. I was in the best position to keep his bots from doing too much damage while Chief West scrambled the security teams. Then Emla got shot, and I kind of lost it.”

“She exacted retribution from Mr. Desh, and fortunately Emla’s damage turned out to be repairable,” the captain said. “But she spent quite a while in medbay afterwards. What were your injuries, Alice?”

“Um, both kidneys and most of my liver fried, two shattered ribs and a collapsed lung, third degree burns over forty percent of my body and a whole lot of general tissue replacement. It’s a good thing my damage control mods were growing in at that point, or I would have collapsed before he ran out of bots.”

It was kind of funny how unsettled all these tough criminal masterminds looked at my recitation. Like they didn’t send out their inugami to do stuff like that all the time. Was it different when the target was a little girl? Or was it just the fact that I was standing here in front of them, instead of being some faceless statistic?

Yamashida’s expression never changed at all. I’d have to remember that.

“Clan Kaneda regrets this unwarranted attack,” Lord Kaneda said. “We will, of course, make restitution. I understand that the lady’s clan is unknown?”

Surprisingly, it was Akio who answered.

“Federation Intelligence had her marked for observation, but they don’t seem to know anything definite. Her mods are clearly Inner Sphere technology, but the other clues are uncertain at best. Perhaps one of the Second Sunrise clans, or an allied group in one of the Periphery states. Given the travel times involved it will take years to conduct an investigation, and we may never be sure.”

“Then we shall assume that she is the last of her clan,” Lord Kaneda said gravely. “Alice, do you wish to personally chastise the agent responsible for your ordeal?”

Well, that was a surprise.

“No thank you, my lord. I’m confident that I can rely on Clan Kaneda to handle this matter appropriately.”

I wasn’t sure if I was more likely to kill the guy, or just yell at him and let him go. But either way it would offend his clan if I didn’t handle it exactly the way they thought I should, so it was better to let it go.

“Very well, Alice. I shall see to this matter personally, and of course the clan will make proper restitution as well.”

With that settled the conversation turned to the damage the Square Deal had taken, and it quickly became obvious that Captain Sokol was going to come out of this thing pretty well. Apparently being mistakenly attacked by yakuza pays pretty well, assuming you survive the experience.

I missed half of that discussion, though, because a ping from my account manager distracted me. My personal credit account had just received a deposit.

It was really hard not to let anything show on my face, but somehow I managed it.

Three hundred thousand credits? That was his idea of restitution? That was six years of pay for the average spacer! Most people have to work for a decade or more to save up that kind of money. Just the interest would be enough to live on if I invested it somewhere. I could buy myself a decent suit of powered armor, and some warbots, and maybe a hoverbike. Heck, I could buy my own ship.

Well, okay, not really. I could maybe buy a dinky little open source courier ship or scout or something, and then I’d have no way to make enough money to maintain it. I didn’t even know how to run a ship, really. But a few years of working for Captain Sokol would fix that. I could get all my certifications, learn how to be a bounty hunter or mercenary or something, and save up some more money until I had everything figured out. Then, when I was ready, I could buy a ship and go do anything I wanted to.

Freedom. That was a surprisingly tempting idea.

I wrestled my attention back to the conversation at hand, and found that they were talking about the Mirai wreck now. Where it was, the condition it was in, what Sokol’s crew had done to try to find the gold.

“Obtaining plans for the ship has so far proved impossible,” the captain was saying. “We’ve conducted several searches, and I’m somewhat confident that the holds we found were the main ones, but it’s difficult to be certain. Two and a half million tons of gold may sound like a lot, but it’s a small needle to find amid the wreckage of a twenty thousand meter warship.”

“I’m sure it’s simply a matter of applying sufficient resources to the problem,” Lord Hoshida said dismissively. “Akio, have you finished that proposal?”

“Yes, father. We’ll need to send both salvage vessels and most of the shipyard crew to conduct a proper search, and they’ll need an additional fourteen million cubic meters of climate-controlled space for facilities and living quarters. I propose that we charter the Square Deal for the mission, and send a frigate and a pair of drone carriers with them as escorts. The frigate will also make an adequate command post, and can provide quarters for a battalion of inugami marines. Just in case the bots on this wreck aren’t all dead.”

“That seems reasonable. Just quote us your hazard rate, Dan. That will make a nice little bonus for you if the gold doesn’t turn up.”

“I, ah, do have certain commitments, my lord-”

“Nonsense! Let Akio know what you need delivered, and we’ll take care of it. This is history in the making. I only wish I could be there myself, but my heir will have to do. Akio, you’ll be leading this expedition.”

Akio gave him a startled look. “Me, father?”

“Yes, yes, officially you’re not of age yet. But think what it will do for your reputation to return with the mirror! Noburu, I’ll need you go along as well, and make sure that this trip is a success.”

Lord Yamashida’s face was still an expressionless mask, but I thought I detected a hint of tension in his shoulders.

“Of course, my lord. I shall begin preparations at once. When can we expect to be ready for departure, young master?”

“Well, the shipyard is busy with a rush order for the Crimson Tide right now-”

“Cancel it,” Lord Hoshida snapped. “No, wait, we have that fancy new backup system for all the shipyard techs, don’t we? Just copy them, and the originals can stay on the job. Tell the copies we’ll find places for them if they succeed, but otherwise I make no promises. Now, how long to load the ships?”

Akio blinked, but didn’t object. “Three days until we can depart, father.”

“Good, that’s what I like to hear. Make it happen.”

Chapter 25

It was amazing how good it felt to be back in my cabin. Even though I’d only been living there for a few weeks, it had already started to seem like home. Emla and I must have spent an hour in the bath, just soaking in the big hot tub without having to worry about hidden cameras. Then Lina and Kara came over to welcome me back, and we ended up watching another episode of that silly spy series together. For a few hours I managed to feel safe again.

But then the yard dogs started showing up, and it wasn’t long before the whole ship was overrun with them. I had to get back to work, helping Naoko set up living quarters for the horde of canine techs. There wasn’t nearly enough space in the passenger cabins, of course, so we had to convert an entire hold into barracks for the workers.

“They form social bonds in packs of four to six members,” Akio advised us. “They’re also used to rather Spartan conditions. Give each pack their own bedroom and bathroom, with a communal rec room and dining area for each group of twenty or so packs, and they’ll be fine.”

Yes, we were seeing a lot of Akio. He couldn’t oversee everything personally, of course, but he made a point of coming over at the start of each new phase of the work. He’d go over what needed to be done, introduce us to the Masu-kai officers we’d be working with, field whatever questions we came up with, and generally try to make sure things were going to go smoothly. He was pretty good at it, too.

We were still terribly overworked, and this time we couldn’t call on the rest of the crew for help. Beatrice, Dusty and the cargo crew were all busy with offloading some of our cargo and packing the holds with thousands of giant shipping containers. The techs had their hands full repairing the last of our battle damage, making sure power and life support would work properly everywhere they were needed. We had to rely on the yard dog officers to organize a lot of the move themselves, so it was a good thing they were cooperative.

Even the inugami were polite, but I didn’t find that reassuring. We had to take on a company of the marines Akio was bringing, and these were military models rather than the infiltrators I’d seen before. They looked about the same to the naked eye, but the enhancements I picked up beneath the skin were serious business. Their bodies were all synthetic instead of organic, making them spaceproof and immune to stuff like poison or radiation. They had nuke packs hidden inside their armored chests, and while their strength boosts weren’t in Akio’s league they were pretty decent.

More importantly, each of them had a squad of modern warbots under her command. Collectively they had a lot more firepower than Chief West’s security teams, and they weren’t shy about basically taking over the ship and posting their own guards wherever they wanted them.

That worried me. I didn’t think Akio was going to suddenly decide to kill us over money, but I wasn’t so sure about Lord Yamashida. When Chief West called me into his office I was really hoping he was going to bring me in on some kind of secret defense plan.

“You’re pretty sharp, kid,” he chuckled. “Yeah, everyone on this ship keeps a few aces up their sleeve. But a company of marines is a lot of firepower, so everyone needs to do their part. You ready to pitch in on some sneaky contingency plan shit?”

“You bet, Chief! What can I do?”

“First off, I’m giving you a bigger detachment of warbots. I want you to stash some of them in your cabin’s storeroom, and be ready to take out the inugami in your area and set up a defensive position where noncombatants can hide out. Dusty’s cabin is right down the hall from you, and there’s a couple of other guys who might need to run your way instead of heading for a safe room.”

“Yes, Chief. Any chance I can get some time on an industrial fabricator in the next few days? This would work better if I could build some special hardware. Chameleon mines, sensor clouds, that kind of thing.”

“I can do better than that. The captain has approved you for security team membership, so I’m giving you access to some of our hidden assets. There’s a secret fabricator bay where you can build stuff like that without our guests noticing, and have it delivered through a network of secret passages that cover the critical parts of the ship. I’m keeping the system pretty busy right now, but I’ll set the priorities so you can get some jobs of your own in. You’ve got permission to make anything that will help you fight these guys, so don’t worry about getting billed for it. Just make sure you don’t do something obvious and give the game away, alright?”

“Of course, Chief. Um, are we expecting a fight?”

“I don’t know, do you think you can convince your new boyfriend to play nice?”

“He’s not my boyfriend!” I protested.

“Sure, that’s why he keeps coming up with excuses to see you. Just don’t dump him while we’re in gunnery range of his ships, alright?”

“I’m not dumping him!”

“Oh, so you’ve decided to be a yakuza princess? Too bad, I was starting to think you could make a good assistant.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re impossible, Chief. Here I am trying to be professional, and you’ve got to make jokes about my personal life.”

“Who’s joking? You do what you want, kid, but don’t forget that decisions have consequences. Any way you go, this is serious business.”

“I know.” I huffed, and crossed my arms. “Look, I like him, but I know I can’t really trust him. I’m just trying to keep things friendly until this whole thing is over. Hopefully he’ll play nice as long as he’s still trying to win me over.”

“We can hope. But just in case, I need you to do some recon work too. Nothing obvious, just collect readings on the marines and their gear with those hidden sensors of yours. We don’t have a lot of info on what those girls are capable of, and every little bit helps.”

“Sure, that sounds easy.”

“Oh, and the captain is planning to bring you along for all the planning meetings while we’re in hyperspace, so be ready for that.”

“Yes, Chief,” I said sourly.

Great, now the captain was trying to use me against Akio. How long would it be before Akio started pressuring me for inside information on the Square Deal? This whole situation just sucked.

We broke orbit later that day, in the middle of a whole squadron of Masu-kai ships. The two salvage vessels were lumpy, ungainly-looking things about five hundred meters long, that were packed full of survey drones and industrial equipment. They didn’t have much in the way of weapons, but they didn’t need them considering the size of our escort.

The pair of drone carriers that Lord Himura sent with us were fat, boxy vessels eight hundred meters long, packed full of drones and expendable munitions. Where the Square Deal carried a couple hundred attack drones to fend off pirates, each of these ships had thousands of the robotic attack craft packed into its magazines. Not to mention hundreds of much larger escort drones designed to fend of missile attacks and drone strikes, and who knows how many boarding bots.

That was far too much firepower for the Square Deal to fight, but at least we had a remote chance of getting away from them if things went bad. It takes time to launch swarms of drones, more time for them to make their attack runs, and a lot of hits to burn through the outer layers of a well-armored ship and start destroying vital equipment like the fusion reactors. The drone carriers couldn’t match our acceleration, and their drones couldn’t make the rough transition between the Delta and Gamma Layers under their own power. If we ran fast enough, and dodged up and down among the layers of hyperspace well enough, they might not be able to catch us.

The frigate that Akio and Lord Yamashida were using as their flagship was another story. At eleven hundred meters long it was an intimidating sight. Sixty million tons of armor and weapons, with a top acceleration of at least thirty gravities. Unlike the drone carriers it was designed for close combat, with heavily armored flanks and huge turret-mounted mass drivers arranged along the top and bottom of the ship.

It was those mass drivers that really worried me. The eight main turrets each housed a pair of 20cm mass drivers with a muzzle velocity somewhere well into the tens of thousands of kilometers per second, and the arrangement allowed all of them to fire on targets in a broad arc to either side of the ship. The squadron’s formation put the Square Deal right in the middle of their firing arc, and our deflectors weren’t going to stop firepower of that magnitude. They’d punch right through our armor as well, and with several kilotons of impact energy it wouldn’t take many hits to wreck the ship.

Compared to that the various missiles, drones and lighter mass drivers the ship also carried were just icing on the cake. As long as we were within a couple of light-seconds of those guns we weren’t going anywhere.

The salvage ships had a lot less delta V than the military vessels, and they didn’t have the option of converting a hold into extra fuel tanks like the Square Deal. So a fat tanker accompanied the squadron into the Delta Layer, and through our initial burn towards our destination. Once we were up to speed it docked with each of the salvage ships in turn, and spent a couple of hours refilling their tanks. That would give them enough fuel to match the high-velocity course the squadron was planning to take to the wreck, and still be able to get home afterwards.

I was busy through all of this, of course. Helping Naoko with passenger service, putting together a defense plan for my cabin, building lethal toys and sneaking them into my storage space. But I couldn’t help but keep a thread of my attention on the external monitors. Watching that sleek, black ship for the moment when the turrets began to rotate in our direction.

I figured we had less than a minute to live, if that ever happened.

It was silly to worry about it now, of course. Even if they did plan to kill us all, they wouldn’t do it until we’d led them to the wreck. But I couldn’t help worrying. I wasn’t used to having a danger I couldn’t do anything about so close at hand, and it wore at me. I guess I didn’t hide it as well as I thought, because on the evening of our second day in hyperspace Naoko pulled me aside to ask what was wrong.

When I admitted my fears she just hugged me.

“Oh, Alice. I have the same concerns, as do we all. But we must have faith in our captain to see us through.”

Easy for her to say. She’d known him longer than I had, and besides she was imprinted on him.

“Faith doesn’t come easily for me,” I told her. “You know more about the Masu-kai than I do, Naoko. Do you think they’ll let us go if they find the treasure?”

“I don’t know, Alice. The young lord has a reputation for honorable dealing, but his father is more feared than loved. It worries me that he sent Lord Yamashida to oversee the mission. That man has a terrible reputation. The assassins he trains are nothing but heartless killing machines, and his spies don’t even know that they’re his agents until the moment comes to turn on you.”

“Good thing he’s not in charge,” I muttered.

“Indeed. I must admit, I was relieved when I heard the young lord was officially leading this expedition. Although it puts you in a difficult position.”

“I know, I know, I need to be nice to him or he might have us all killed. I don’t think he’d really do that, Naoko. Did you know he wants to reform the Masu-kai?”

“Does he? Will he stop selling ships to the pirate clans, then?”

“That would be pointless. There are hundreds of modern nations in the Kerak sector, and probably five times that many megacorps. Unless someone manages to unite all those colonies there’s always going to be someone eager to sell ships to outlaws, so it might as well be the Masu-kai. The same goes for smuggling, and a lot of the other routine crime. But he wants them to stop inventing disgusting new vices to sell, and build an economy that isn’t so dependent on catering to the underworld.”

“Really? Would he shut down Lord Ishida’s exotic android projects?”

“Yes, absolutely. He thinks it’s completely dishonorable to intentionally make people who’ll be miserable with their lives, and isn’t that half the point of what Ishida does? But even if you ignore the moral issues, it’s a stupid business to be involved in. There’s no money in it, because there aren’t many people twisted enough to pay for that kind of thing, and the customers they do have aren’t that rich. Ishida might make friends with a few perverted politicians here and there, but he makes way more enemies than allies.”

She hugged herself. “It would greatly please me if that operation were shut down, Alice. But I don’t know if I can believe it. You do realize that a change like that won’t come without a price, don’t you? Do you really think he’d be willing to kill Lord Ishida over this?”

“Actually, when he found out that we’re friends he kind of hinted that he’d be willing to let me do it.”

Naoko stared at me in shock. I smiled, and put my hand on hers.

“Hey, no one gets to hurt my friends and get away with it. Even if it’s something that happened before we met. Anyway, I don’t see why Akio would lie to me. I’d find out the truth eventually. How would he ever be able to trust me if I was mad at him over a betrayal like that?”

“Matters are seldom so clear-cut, Alice,” she said gently. “There are always plausible reasons to put off a difficult task until tomorrow, and a series of temporary delays can easily become a permanent policy. Not to mention that your judgment may not be so clear if you become as close as he seems to hope. Even a normal girl would forgive her first love a great many failings, and you are far from normal.”

“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean? I’m not in love with the guy,” I protested.

“No, but you are interested,” she insisted.

“Well… yeah, maybe I am. He’s not what I expected.”

“He’s strong, confident and very sexy,” she teased. “I’d be surprised if his attention didn’t give you ideas, Alice. But do you really think you can experiment, and still keep him at arm’s length? I’ve seen how quickly you bonded with the rest of the crew. Myself, the techs, even Emla.”

“You’re my friends, Naoko. Isn’t that a good thing?”

“That depends on who you choose to befriend, Alice. I like to consider myself a good person, but let me ask you something. Would you kill to protect me?”

“Of course! What kind of question is that?”

“What about bystanders? Say, if I were captured by some tyrannical colony, and the only way to save me from torture was a military drop on the city?”

“I’d nuke the place without blinking,” I assured her. “Where are you going with this, Naoko? I promise, no matter what happens, I’ll always be there for you.”

“That was my point, Alice. Or have you really never considered that a normal girl would hesitate at such things? Would the answer be different if I merely wanted you to murder some stranger for insulting me?”

“Um.”

I suddenly realized what I’d just said. Killing people is supposed to be wrong, isn’t it? If I led a military drop on a city to rescue a friend, a lot of innocent people would die. Shouldn’t I care about them too?

My upbringing said I should. That just having to think about it made me a monster. But my instincts said that one friend is worth more than a million strangers. I didn’t know which side to listen to.

My instincts were perfectly fine with the idea of beating up some rude jerk to salve Naoko’s feelings, too. Or even killing him, if that wasn’t enough. What kinds of horrible things would I be willing to do just to make a friend smile?

I found that I wasn’t happy about the answer to that question.

“Oh,” I said weakly.

“Indeed. Oh.”

“Am I a monster, Naoko?”

“No, not at all. Alice, this is a common thing for people like you. You don’t have any particular urge to go out and hurt people for your own sake, do you?”

“No! I, I don’t want to hurt people, Naoko. I just, I can’t let anything happen to my friends.”

She gave me a gentle smile. “Thank you, Alice. That fierce protectiveness is a common thing among warrior breeds, and I appreciate your care. Just remember that it can lead you to excess if you aren’t careful. If you ever do find yourself in a situation like that I advise you to keep control of your anger, and don’t let it drive you to do things you’ll regret. But that was not my main point. Alice, do you think you will be less attached to your first boyfriend?”

Oh. Oh, my.

“Probably not,” I reluctantly admitted. “If sex is really as big a deal as the vidshows make it seem-”

“I suspect that your experiences will make romance vids look tame in comparison,” she interrupted. “People have been enhancing that aspect of their lives since the earliest days of medical technology, and we’ve already seen a tendency towards extreme sensory mods in your design. Combine that with the close attachment to your friends, and I’d advise you to be very careful about who you open your heart to. You could find yourself swept away all too easily.”

“I’m not sure if that sounds terrifying or awesome,” I told her.

“Perhaps both?” She suggested.

“Maybe so. Um, alright, I see what you’re getting at. The way I am, maybe I could get taken advantage of if I’m not careful. But how would Akio know any of this?”

“It’s hardly a mystery, Alice. No one gives out extreme supersoldier packages without taking steps to ensure they aren’t misused. An enhanced loyalty to your own tribe is the least of the possibilities. I still fear that there is likely to be a control mechanism hidden somewhere in your design, although the captain disagrees.”

“What does he think?”

She sighed. “He thinks your abilities are due to a more general transhumanism project, rather than a specialized spy or soldier program. In that case you might simply have ‘improved’ social instincts of some sort, rather than something intended to control you. But considering how normal humans react to that sort of thing, I rather hope that he’s wrong.”

I hung my head. “What if he isn’t?”

Naoko put her hands on my shoulders, and searched my face for a long moment. She seemed saddened by what she found there.

“Then I shall help you hide it for as long as you can, my friend,” she finally said.

My sigh of relief was probably more revealing than was wise, but I didn’t care. I hugged her.

“Thank you, Naoko.”

“Any time, Alice. You know, you are not the only one in the room with enhanced social bonding instincts. No matter what happens, I shall always be on your side.”

Hearing her say that made me feel a little better about my personal problems, but it didn’t change our immediate situation. When the invitation to the planning meeting arrived it was a welcome distraction.

The captain and I took the Speedy Exit over to the yakuza frigate, with Emla and Chief West providing their usual escort services. We docked at a mooring point on the outside of the ship instead of landing in a hanger, and I wondered whose idea that was. Did the captain want to be able to detach and flee in a hurry, or were they trying to make sure we didn’t smuggle any nukes on board? Not that a nuke in the hangar bay would destroy a ship this size, but I’m sure it would be a hassle.

Akio had sent a squad of his own inugami to escort us to the conference room, and the greeting he gave me was warm enough to border on improper. Against my better judgment, I felt the knot of tension in my belly ease a little. I couldn’t be too friendly in return, though, because there were a lot of people in the room. Lord Yamashida and some of his flunkies, the captains of the salvage ships, a couple of marine officers, and a whole bunch of managers from the shipyard workers.

Looking around the room, it struck me that out of all the Masu-kai minions the only men were the captains of the two salvage ships. All the rest, from the yard dogs to the marines, were women. Mostly canine morphs, and it seemed to me that the further their position would put them from direct contact with their masters the less human they looked.

A social engineer could probably figure out a lot about Masu-kai society from that. I wasn’t too sure about the subtler implications. Was it some kind of human supremacist message, or just a convenient way to make an android’s social status obvious at a glance?

“I believe you said something about a map of the wreck, Captain Sokol?” Akio opened the meeting.

The captain nodded, and pulled up an image on the holoprojector.

“Yes, although I recommend against relying on it too heavily,” he said. “The external images are from the Square Deal’s sensors, but our expeditions into the interior have mapped only a tiny fraction of the ship. Given the difficulty of getting any kind of sensor reading through the ship’s armored bulkheads, much of this remains conjecture.”

Gaia, but this ship was huge. I knew battleships were big, especially in the Inner Sphere, but there’s a difference between reading about something and seeing it. I ate a copy of the raw data so I could visualize the scale properly, and took a moment to marvel at it.

Before her final battle the Emperor’s Hope must have been twenty thousand meters long. Her general layout was similar to the frigate we were on, although she was a lot bulkier. Nearly five thousand meters across the beam, and forty-three hundred meters from top to bottom. Instead of mass drivers, her gigantic turrets had held beam directors for graser cannons that could probably cut a frigate in half from ten million kloms away.

Hundreds of smaller turrets had mounted an assortment of mass drivers and lighter grasers, all carefully arranged so they wouldn’t block the firing arcs of the main guns. Long trenches in the armored hull sheltered thousands of point defense lasers, not little UV lasers like the Square Deal carried but big x-lasers with enough firepower to pick off attack craft as well as missiles. The armored belts along the ship’s flanks had been more than a hundred meters thick, and the cavernous hangars behind that armor had held thirty billion cubic meters of drones and battle riders.

But all of that stupendous firepower hadn’t been enough. What remained of the ship was a mass of twisted wreckage only eighteen kloms long, with the fusion torch wrecked and much of the bow completely gone. Two of the twelve main turrets were missing as well, and seven more were very obviously wrecked. The secondaries were even more of a mess, and practically every square meter of the hull was covered in signs of battle. Huge impact craters from multi-gigaton RKKV impacts, and long trenches gouged out by graser cannons. Millions upon millions of smaller craters, from drone strikes and mass driver bombardments. Deep wounds where the outer armor had been ripped apart by repeated hits, exposing vast expanses of wrecked machinery.

For all that, the damaged sections probably accounted for less than a third of the great ship’s mass. I could barely imagine the level of self-repair a ship like this would be capable of, but I suspected it was the boarders that had finally taken it out of action.

“Once the point defense batteries were destroyed they must have swarmed the ship,” Captain Sokol was saying. “Everywhere we went, we found masses of dead warbots. The Mirai models are all destroyed, as are most of the boarders. But there are a concerning number of intact ones as well. It seems that the Swarmlords did not equip their forces for an extended stay, and the vast majority of them were powered by nuke packs that have long since decayed. But we’ve had several rather hair-raising encounters with fusion-powered cybertanks coming out of standby mode.”

“I take it this is the factor that limited your explorations?” Lord Yamashida interjected.

“My crew weren’t eager to meet any more of those things,” Sokol agreed. “The small ones are about twelve tons, but they’ve got the firepower and armor you’d expect from a twenty-ton machine. There are heavier ones in some of the cargo spaces, including some big thousand-ton models, and we didn’t want to risk waking one up.”

Akio frowned at the display. “That’s probably the wrong area anyway. Those holds are pretty close to the ship’s hull, and they look like they’re full of mining equipment. The gold is probably in a more protected location.”

One of the yard dogs raised her hand. “My lord? According to our information, Mirai capital ships frequently had secure holds located near the centerline in this region.” She indicated an area about four kloms forward of the ship’s midpoint, between the second and third gun turrets.

“Why would we care about cargo holds?” I asked curiously.

“I would expect a girl in your position to be more interested in wealth,” Yamashida said.

I huffed. “My point is, why would the gold be in a cargo hold? It was supposed to be part of the rare element reserve for this holdout colony, not a stash of money. So why would they have shipped it as bars? It’s probably in a big feedstock tank somewhere.”

Captain Sokol facepalmed. “Out of the mouths of babes.”

“That does seem logical,” Akio mused. “Testing the theory could be problematic, though.”

I looked at the display again. Several of the ship’s hangar bays had been filled with industrial equipment, and prefab housing modules that were obviously meant to hold colonists. There were giant tank farms attached to the fabricator bays, which to me seemed like the obvious place to look. They must have been some kind of military design, because the storage tanks were embedded in a giant armor matrix that had protected them pretty well from the fighting. But surely it wasn’t that big an obstacle.

“The armor on those tanks is only thirty cems thick,” I said. “Can’t we just cut them open with a mining laser or something?”

The yard dogs all winced at that. Akio slowly shook his head.

“That’s all smart matter armor matrix, Alice, and it looks like it’s bonded to the rest of the ship. That means it’s tied to the heat management network, and the Mirai are famous for their damage control systems. There’s no way to destroy the embedded computer network without physically melting the whole ship, and if we give it an energy source it’s going to wake up.”

“He’s right, my lady,” one of the yard dogs said apologetically. “Even our biggest cutting beams would take several hours to burn through that much armor, and the ship would recover three or four percent of the waste heat as useable electricity. If there’s an intact fabricator anywhere on this ship, it could power up and start making warbots.”

“The ship itself could well be sentient,” Yamashida added. “That was common with the later Mirai designs. No, we had best take due care with this operation. What would you suggest, Haruhi?”

“Perhaps we can cut into the piping to take samples, my lord? We also have a disassembler technique that works on inactive armor matrix, but I’m afraid it’s very slow. It would take several days to check each tank that way, although we could work on twenty or so in parallel.”

“We can set up gravity meters and do a density check first,” another yard dog pointed out. “We can probably rule out two thirds of the storage tanks on that basis alone.”

“The size will also help,” another one said. “Some of those tanks hold more than twenty million cubic meters of feedstock. We’re obviously after something smaller than that.”

“That, or this year’s bonuses are going to be quite large,” Akio joked. “Alright, so it seems you can solve that problem. Major Wen, how do we keep these bots from becoming a threat?”

I sat back and listened to the grizzled old inugami in charge of the marines talk. She seemed to know her stuff, just like the techs. They didn’t need me for this part, so I’d just stay quiet and see what I could learn. Hey, maybe things would be smooth sailing from here on?

Yeah, fat chance of that.

Chapter 26

We parked the Square Deal inside one of the empty hangars along the ship’s port side. It was more than big enough, a cavernous space twelve hundred meters wide and nearly two kilometers deep. So the marines sent in an advance party to sweep for hostiles, and then Beatrice took the ship in and landed us on the inner surface of the hanger. Not that there was any gravity to hold us in place, but it turned out our landing gear had emitters for a tractor field system for just this kind of situation.

I frowned as the clamps engaged.

“Mina, why aren’t there any wrecked bots in this hangar? It must have been swarming with them during the battle. Did you guys already clean this part out, or something?”

I was alone in the observation lounge, but the techs had given me access to their online systems again. The damage control queue was empty and the engineering monitors all showed green, but the private comlink they shared was always active.

“No, it wasn’t us,” she replied with a knowing grin. “This is one of those cases where it’s important to know where you are, Alice. What’s different about physics in the Delta Layer?”

“Quantum mechanics are the same everywhere, but every universe has its own cosmological forces,” I answered automatically. “The Delta Layer has that weird repulsive gravity force that keeps stars from forming… oh.”

Right. The doors were open, and the Emperor’s Hope was easily massive enough to generate noticeable microgravity. Here in the Delta Layer that was a repulsive force instead of attractive, so anything in the hanger would have long since drifted off into space.

“Sounds like you’ve got it,” she said. “Doesn’t your physics sense cover the hyperspace layers?”

I sighed. “Yes, and all the known subspace layers too. But that’s all separate from the quantum reality engine, and I guess I have to actually pay attention to which model I should be using. I was defaulting to normal space without even thinking about it.”

“Got to watch out for those manufacturer defaults. So, want to learn how our external power distribution works?”

“Sounds good,” I agreed. “Naoko’s got me fielding engineering assistance requests from the yard dogs, and I’m sure half of that’s going to be power supply stuff.”

The shipyard workers had to unpack a lot of their gear before they could get anything productive done, which meant setting up a work camp in the hangar. But they weren’t used to working in the field, so there was a lot of confusion. The salvage crew were helping out, but even so the techs and I had an endless stream of ‘emergency’ requests to deal with. Running power and feedstock lines from the utility hubs that dotted the Square Deal’s belly. Setting up big radiator fins extending out of the hold. Reminding the horde of junior techs not to plug anything into the wreck’s systems, no matter how convenient it would be to repurpose existing conduits.

Instead we had to fab up our own cabling, and run it through kilometers of cargo holds and internal vehicle bays to reach the colony module that was our destination. It was a big job, and it got worse as we worked our way further in.

There we found the bots I’d been expecting. There were hordes and hordes of wrecked machines that I swear must have been intentionally designed to be creepy looking. Insectoid things covered in spikes. Weird close assault designs that looked like a mass of tentacles tipped with buzz saws and needles. Bulky machines designed to capture civilians by eating them. There were lots of normal gunbots too, but the creepy stuff caught my attention.

The defending bots had been built with a completely different aesthetic, although at first glance they didn’t seem any more practical. Lightly armored, mostly single-function bots, with an emphasis on smaller designs. Shouldn’t there be more heavy weapons and tanks guarding a battleship?

Then again, there were easily a hundred wrecked Swarmlord bots for every Mirai design. It was hard to argue against a doctrine that racked up that kind of exchange ratio, even if the Swarmlords did tend to emphasize quantity over quality. There was probably something going on there that wasn’t obvious from the wreckage. Maybe the heavier Mirai bots had all been nuked to make sure they wouldn’t just repair themselves?

The attackers had set off enough tactical nukes in here to make that seem plausible. There was some kind of energy dissipation grid built into the bulkheads that had carried off most of the heat from the blasts, but even so a kiloton-range bomb could easily wreck a whole building-sized compartment. Here and there the meter-thick internal bulkheads had been breached as well, or the heavy security hatches between compartments were blown open.

Once we got into the colony module things got kind of depressing. There had been colonists there, and no one ever did anything about the bodies.

We came across the remnants of last-ditch defenses first. Hasty barricades of quick-fab materials thrown up to block corridors, and holes burned or blasted through them by attacking bots. Minefields that still had a handful of active mines. Defensive positions where desperate men in powered armor had tried to hold off the invaders, once they’d run out of bots.

For the most part that hadn’t worked out so well for them. Civilians with guns just aren’t much of a threat to decent war machines, even if they hadn’t been outnumbered. Human reflexes are too slow, and squishy human bodies are an awfully fragile cargo for a suit of armor to try to protect. A warbot’s innards are mostly a solid mass of micromachines, about as tough as a block of mild steel, and of course they think at electronic speeds.

There was only one compartment where it hadn’t been a complete slaughter, and that one was kind of odd. It looked like there had been three or four people, and an endless sea of bots closing in on them. But the whole compartment was choked with wrecks, every one of them disabled by a perfectly placed shot to some vital point.

Supersoldiers, maybe? If so they’d been pretty good. I could have done the same, but I wasn’t sure Akio or Kavin could have. They’d been overwhelmed in the end, though, and the compartments beyond that were full of dead civilians.

The fabricator bay that was our destination had been thoroughly wrecked, and the techs slaughtered alongside their human leaders. I spent a few minutes checking for survivors while the yard dogs debated how to cut their way into the feedstock lines, but someone had gotten there before me. Every android’s AI core had been methodically extracted and destroyed, and the humans had been shot in the head.

I was relieved we didn’t have to go any further in. The dead men at the barricades were bad enough. The apartments at the core of the colony module were bound to be full of women and children, and I really didn’t want to see that. Just thinking about it made me feel a little sick. Judging from the number of bodies we’d already found there must have been hundreds of thousands of them. Maybe millions, if there was a cold sleep facility somewhere in there.

The push into the ship’s interior wasn’t nearly as bad. There the fighting had mostly been machine vs. machine, and the work crews rarely found bodies. In some ways it was a lot tougher, though, because the fighting had gone on for a long time.

The interior of the ship was a maze of tunnels, winding through and around the great machines that filled most of the hull. Finding our way towards the officer’s area and the hopeful location of the secure vaults would have been hard before the battle, but now it was a nightmare. Time and again we found places where choke points had been blocked by quick-fab barrier walls, or corridors that were so packed with bot wrecks it was impossible to move through them. There were minefields that were only ninety percent dead, and booby traps that sometimes still worked. Here and there the work crews even found Swarmlord cybertanks that were still operational.

After the first time one of those woke up and started shooting they got really careful about them. Just like the captain had said, these Inner Sphere war machines were a lot deadlier than anything the Masu-kai could field. The marines lost two troopers before they managed to catch it in a crossfire and burn through its armor, and even then they only got it because it was out of anti-laser smoke.

I was glad I wasn’t on an exploration team.

Word was, they kept finding signs of a long and bitter fight down in the interior of the ship. Places where battles had moved back and forth across the same area for weeks, with each side improvising defenses that the enemy destroyed when they re-took it. Fabricator bays that had been turned into bot factories, wrecked, repaired and wrecked again. Miniature fusion plants set up in mess halls and cargo bays, to replace the ship’s crippled reactors.

The ship’s crew might have been evil space Nazis, but you had to respect their dedication. They’d sold their lives dearly, and kept fighting to the last man. But in the end there had just been too many bots.

I made a mental note that if I ever had a giant warship of my own to command I’d make sure we had lots of defenses against boarders. A few regiments of marines didn’t seem to get the job done when the enemy could drop millions of warbots on you. Maybe a brigade or two of regular troops, and a giant bot factory somewhere in the interior that we could fire up to make more defenders if we needed them?

Okay, maybe I was just being silly. It’s not like I was going to be commanding a battleship anytime soon.

The crews investigating the tank farm took a lot longer to get anywhere than I’d hoped. Apparently tracing kilometers of feedstock pipe through a giant maze of corridors and maintenance tunnels wasn’t easy. The salvage ships were providing a lot of their engineering support for that effort, but the Square Deal was still their main base of operations. Which meant that I got to sit around being bored for hours at a time waiting for a call to come in, and then I’d suddenly get eight different people all insisting that they needed a power line or water pipe or a hundred-ton tank of coolant fluid right away. It was a good thing I could multitask, or I never would have been able to keep up with it all.

On our third day of investigation they finally found something promising. Not the gold, but a small tank full of iridium-bearing feedstock that was almost as valuable.

“At current market rates the contents of the tank would be worth about twenty million credits,” the leader of the survey team announced at the inevitable meeting. “The same assembly has similar-size tanks we expect will contain other noble elements, including gold and platinum. Unfortunately the tanks are all armored, and the contents have long since frozen.”

Lord Yamashida frowned at the display. “Surely this is not the full extent of the cache?”

“No, my lord,” one of the salvage captains hastily interjected. “We’ve identified three other tank farms in the port hangers, and the drone survey indicates that the starboard layout is symmetrical. We think they simply split the valuable elements up among multiple locations to ensure they wouldn’t all be lost to a single catastrophic event.”

“Sounds like the Mirai,” Akio agreed. “Their backup systems have backup systems. How long to extract it all and convert it into a portable form?”

“Probably several weeks, my lord,’ the shipyard chief said nervously. “We’re going to have to cut each tank open, carve up the frozen feedstock inside, and move it to a processing plant to turn it into bars.”

“That is unacceptable,” Yamashida said coldly. “The first courier is due to arrive in eight days, and I expect to have concrete results to report. Put the work crews on double shifts if you must, but I require this project to be completed expeditiously.”

“I’m sure we won’t need to resort to special inducements, Uncle,” Akio said mildly. “Will we, Yumi?”

“No, my lord! We’ll get started right away. I’ll work my girls around the clock if I have to.”

“Good. Now, I understand the marines have some news for us?”

“Yes, my lord.” Major Wen pulled up a cutaway diagram of the ship. “One of my recon teams has found a way down into the objective area. They had to go in through the hole where the number three turret used to be, and open up a route through the lasing chambers and some other engineering spaces. But the security bulkheads in that area were all breached in multiple places by the invaders, just as we’d hoped. We’ve broken through into officer country, and I’ve just received confirmation that the route to the captain’s cabin is clear. If the yard dogs are right about that secure hold’s location, we should find it in the next few hours.”

“Well done,” Akio said with a smile. “At this rate you just may earn yourself a personal reward.”

The inugami practically glowed at that, but Yamashida had to be a wet blanket.

“Let us confirm the discovery before speaking of rewards. We still don’t know if the mirror will be there. The captain may well have moved it for safekeeping, or made an attempt at evacuation.”

“Maybe, but I have a good feeling about this,” Akio said. “In fact, I think this merits some personal attention. If we do find the mirror here, it would be fitting to do it in person.”

“Very well,” Yamashida replied. He studied the twisting route the marines had found through the ship for a moment. “This appears to be a long trip.”

“Ninety minutes or so, my lord,” Major Wen confirmed. “You’ll need to take a shuttle around to the turret we’re using as an entry point, and then descend through the beam aperture. I’d suggest bringing a strong escort with you, just in case. We’re finding a lot of intact warbots down there, although so far none have gone active.”

“Of course,” Akio agreed. “There’s no reason to take unnecessary risks. Alice, would you like to come with us?”

“Me?” I squeaked. Darn it, so much for acting mature.

“If your captain has no objections. This could be a historic moment, if the mirror is actually there.”

“That’s fine,” Captain Sokol chuckled. “I’m sure the salvage work can spare her for a few hours.”

“Um, sure,” I said. “Only, these Inner Sphere warbots make me nervous. Is it alright if I bring a couple of shield bots, and an anti-bot weapon? Just in case something wakes up at an awkward moment?”

“Certainly, Alice. Take whatever precautions you wish.”

That was how I ended up venturing into the heart of the wreck with a bunch of heavily armed yakuza, with only Emla and a couple of shield bots to watch my back. Well, and maybe Akio. He might be a crime boss, but I was starting to feel like I could rely on him to look out for me.

It took two shuttles to transfer our whole party to the gaping chasm where one of the ship’s main turrets had once been. Akio had a whole platoon of inugami marines, Yamashida brought a squad of his own troops, and between them the two forces had several hundred bots. There was even a couple of mini-tanks, compact heavy gunbots designed to work their way through confined spaces like the inside of a ship. It almost felt like we were getting ready to invade someone, instead of just making a long trip through a deserted wreck.

Me, I’d decided to look pretty instead of tough. I wore a blue skinsuit that hugged the curves I was starting to develop, but was still modest enough not to raise any eyebrows. The kind of thing rich girls wear for sports or adventure vacations, with a bunch of build-in climate control features to keep me cool and comfortable no matter what I was doing. Of course, most rich girls don’t add zero-g maneuvering options to their outfits, let alone concealed armor and power cells. The stylish pistol at my hip wouldn’t have been out of place on most colonies, but it was the heavy anti-bot gun that really defined my look. The model I’d chosen attached to my suit, enclosing my right arm from elbow to wrist, with a barrel that extended just past my knuckles.

“You look like a space pirate’s daughter,” Emla had said as I posed in front of the mirror.

“Nah.” I called Ash over to sit on my shoulder. Perfect. “Now I look like a space pirate.”

She giggled. “I think I’m jealous.”

“Why? You’ve got real powered armor, and the same guns with a missile pack and smoke dispensers too.”

“Not of you, of Ash. He gets to sit on your shoulder.”

I blushed. “Oh, you.”

Ash preened. Useful!

“Yeah, yeah, you’re a fierce protector. But you’re staying home this time. None of your weapons would do anything to a warbot.

He hung his head. Useless.

Who thought it was a good idea to program a security bot to pout? Ugh. I had to spend a few minutes petting him and reassuring him that I still needed him before he’d perk up again. Then it was time to go.

I let Emla hold my hand on the shuttle ride. Sometimes it was a little much, the way she always wanted to be touching me, but I had to admit I was starting to like it. I wasn’t looking forward to the descent, and I didn’t mind sneaking a little reassurance.

Unlike a mass driver, the turrets for the ship’s graser cannons hadn’t held the whole weapon. They were just a huge mass of armor protecting the beam director, a giant momentum exchange device that managed the tricky feat of bending a beam of light passing through it. The beam was actually produced by an immense complex of machinery buried deep inside the ship, and reached the turret through a long tunnel lined with more momentum exchange lenses that helped focus it.

The beam aperture was two and a half meters across, and dropped a thousand meters straight down into the guts of the battleship. As our advance scouts started their descent I stepped to the edge of the hole, and looked down nervously.

“How much firepower do you think these guns had?” I wondered.

I’d meant the comment for Emla, but I found Akio at my side.

“Something like a gigaton per second,” he said. “Nervous?”

“A little. I know it’s silly. The ship’s dead, the guns are bound to be wrecked, and even if they weren’t there’s no way they could power up without us having plenty of warning. But my danger sense isn’t happy about climbing down what’s basically a giant gun barrel. I’ve got this image in my head of exactly what would happen to me if it fired.”

There’d be nothing left of me but a spray of elementary particles. At least I’d be dead really fast.

He put his arm around my shoulders. “It will be fine, Alice. As you said, this weapon will never fire again.”

I sighed, and leaned into him. “Yeah. I’ll be okay. Um, isn’t this kind of improper?”

“Who’s going to complain about it? My marines? As long as I don’t scandalize Uncle Noburu too much we’re fine. Or was that a hint?”

I took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “No, I’m not that subtle when it comes to hints.”

I looked up at his face, and wondered what it would be like to kiss him.

Not now, of course. His space suit had a helmet, and anyway there were way too many people watching.

“You’re an unusual girl, Alice,” he said. “Standing on the hull of a ship without a helmet on doesn’t bother you, but something that abstract does?”

I’d wanted to braid my hair today, and a helmet would have covered it up. So instead I’d brought along a set of little bots that maintained a weak deflector bubble full of air around me. It was a little chilly, but my fancy clothes took care of that.

“Blame my designers,” I said. “I think they ripped out all the stuff people are normally afraid of when they put in my threat assessment mod. As long as I’ve got power I don’t need to breathe, so why would I care if my environment bubble is a little leaky? Anyway, I don’t want to hold us up. See you at the bottom.”

I stepped off the edge, and pushed off with a touch of my field. Emla spread her wings and dove to follow me. I grinned at Akio’s surprised look, and waved at him as I fell out of sight.

Well, it was really more like soaring than falling. The wreck’s microgravity was trying to push me out into space, so my sense of balance tried to insist that the bottom of the shaft was really the top. But that would be too confusing, so I ignored it and just pushed myself along with my field.

Emla came up next to me, pulling her wings in and wrapping her arms around me so we could fly side by side through the confined space while our bots trailed along behind.

“Bet he makes a move on you soon,” she said, sounding amused. “Are there going to be Akio smoochies in your future?”

“Maybe,” I admitted.

“Sweet! Be sure and string him along some more first, though. We don’t want him thinking you’re a sure thing.”

“I’m not,” I insisted.

“Uh huh. I can see that blush fighting to come out, Alice. He’s got you all hot and bothered.”

“What makes you think it’s his fault?” I asked. “You’re the one who’s all snuggled up to me.”

She gave me an astonished look. I giggled, and kissed her. Her lips were soft and sweet against mine.

“Oops, end of the line.”

She had to let me go so we could land, and then we were surrounded by marines. I grinned at her, and moved out of the way so people could come down behind us.

Mistress? She commed. Are you.. I mean, I thought you didn’t… um…

I can’t let some sinister yakuza guy get further with me than my own companion, can I? I replied.

She beamed. Guess not. Thank you, Alice. I was starting to worry we’d gotten out of sync somehow.

Sorry, Emla. No, I’ve just had a lot on my mind. But we need to get serious now. There’s no telling what kind of danger could be lurking down here, and we can’t just assume the inugami will find everything. We’ll talk more when we get home, okay?

Okay, she replied breathlessly.

At some point someone must have set off a nuke at the bottom of the beam aperture, because there was a giant hollow space there instead of whatever machinery should have filled the void. The marines waved us towards one of the many openings in the wall, which led into a maintenance tunnel. Our route was already marked out by compact signal relay boxes stuck to the ceiling at each intersection.

Akio caught up with us quickly. He gave me an amused look, but didn’t say anything as his guards got themselves organized around us. They let a squad of marines take the lead, and didn’t start moving until Yamashida had finally caught up with us too.

Moving through the wreck with all these people was surprisingly slow. The marines checked every corner and posted guards at every intersection, like we were expecting enemies to pop out of nowhere at any moment. The bodyguards were worse, and the shield bots they kept between Akio and any possible threat made it hard to get a good look at things. Fortunately a work party had already cleared out the dead bots from our route, or I’m sure they would have wanted us to wait while they checked every one of the things.

“Is it always like this?” I asked Akio as we came to a giant open space, and his guards paused while the marines swept it for snipers.

“Only in unsecured areas,” he assured me. “They’re a bit on edge due to the risk of heavy warbots. It’s curious that there’s no bridge across this room, isn’t it?”

I casually poked my head out and looked around. Sure enough, none of the guards cared if I was exposed myself.

“I think this is one of the lasing chambers,” I said. “If I remember right they use some kind of nuclear reaction to generate gamma rays for the grasers, so when the gun is fired there’s a big plasma arc across the middle of the room. It probably doesn’t even have artificial gravity, since normally no one would ever come in here but the techs.”

“I see. You know, Alice, I’d feel better if you didn’t do that. We don’t know what might be active out there.”

I pulled back under cover, and turned to look at him. “The marines are exposing themselves.”

“The marines wouldn’t look like a high-value target to a sniper bot’s analysis software, Alice. You do.”

That warm feeling was back. I smiled.

“Alright, Akio. I’ll just stick with you, then. Did your people made any more progress while we were getting organized?”

“Major?” He said.

Major Wen practically materialized next to us. “No major discoveries, my lord. It looks like there was a firefight in the captain’s quarters, and the damage there is extensive. We’ve found a large section adjacent to it that was probably being used by the princess and her staff.”

We finally started moving again as the major’s report went on. “I have recon teams searching the area for the secure hold now. Fortunately we don’t have to worry about security doors, since the boarders have already dealt with them all.”

“So there really was a princess leading the expedition?” I asked. “That’s not just a rumor?”

“That’s what our analysts believe, my lady,” she said. “Princess Susan Long, eldest daughter of Emperor Kazuo’s second wife, Esmeralda Long. We aren’t certain if she was the expedition’s military commander, or simply the intended leader of the colony… my lady? Is there a problem?”

I realized I’d stopped dead. I shook my head, and started forward again.

“Just an odd coincidence,” I said. “So, um, if we don’t find the mirror in this secure hold we should check her quarters, right? Someone like that might have wanted to keep it close.”

It didn’t mean anything. It was just a coincidence. It had to be.

Wen gave me a concerned look, but she didn’t press. “Yes, milady. I have a couple of intel types checking her quarters for safes right now. But it’s the less likely possibility. An object of this importance really demands the maximum possible security, and a lady wouldn’t want an army of guards cluttering up her private chambers around the clock.”

I noticed that Akio was still watching me, his expression more thoughtful than concerned. Like he thought he knew something, or at least suspected.

The datalink back to the ships was painfully slow with all those relays to go through, and my hurried search did me no good. The briefings and intel reports Akio’s people had made available for general use didn’t have pictures. I tried the Square Deal’s historical database, but that wasn’t much better. The only image of Princess Susan was from some public event before the war, and it was a long-distance shot with terrible resolution. She was just a mop of blonde hair in a flowing dress, half-hidden behind her mother.

“Ma’am, we’ve found the vault!”

Thank Gaia for timely distractions. I hurried over to where an excited marine was reporting the discovery to Major Wen, and stood next to Akio listening.

“Delta squad is sweeping for threats now, but it doesn’t look like there was any fighting there,” she said hurriedly. “The bots cracked the vault door with heavy mass drivers, but once you get a few meters in there’s not much collateral damage.”

“That sounds promising,” Akio said. “Let’s have a look.”

The trooper bowed. “Yes, my lord. We just need to take this drop shaft down two decks, and then it’s a hundred meters down the hall. Oh, and there’s gold in the vault!”

As it turned out, that was an understatement.

The secure vault was a space the size of one of the Square Deal’s larger cargo holds, protected by an armored box eight meters thick. It was a good thing the bots had already blown the door, because otherwise we’d have spent weeks hammering that thing open. They must have brought heavy tankbots in through one of the vehicle access hallways, and fired hundreds of hypervelocity rounds into the same spot until finally the craters ate all the way through. Even so, the opening in the door was only a meter across. Big enough to climb through one at a time, but getting heavy equipment in and out would be tricky.

Inside, the room was dominated by a giant shelving system of translucent diamond that ran all the way up to the ceiling ten meters overhead. The shelves divided the room up into long hallways, wide enough for cargo bots to move around comfortably. But it was the contents of the shelves that held my attention.

They were full of cargo containers, each as tall as I was and made of transparent diamond that showed off their contents. Gold. Big hundred-kilogram bars, neatly stacked to fill the containers that kept them from drifting around. I did a rough volume calculation, and multiplied by the current price of gold. Oh, my.

“I guess they did want a cash reserve,” I said weakly.

Akio looked up at the endless stacks of bars, and nodded. “Apparently so. Is it all like this?”

A very furry dog girl with a datapad in her hand bounced over. “Yes, my lord. Assuming it’s all real gold, we’re looking at almost ten billion credits.”

“I see I’m going to be giving out a lot of bonuses this quarter,” Akio said thoughtfully.

“Let’s not spend all the gold before we even have it,” Yamashida said. “Is there any sign of the mirror?”

The girl’s ears drooped. “We’re still cataloguing the room, my lord. If it’s here, it’s probably over in the far left corner. There’s an armored cage there full of smaller storage containers, but the major said we should wait for you before we go through them.”

“Quite right,” Yamashida said. “The sacred treasures are not to be viewed by those of inferior blood, let alone handled. Akio?”

Akio frowned, but didn’t argue. Instead, he led our group across the room and down to the secondary vault. This one was a lot less secure, basically just a big cage surrounding a table and some smaller shelving. The door had been cut off at some point, and the boxes on the shelves were jumbled up like someone had searched through them. But nothing seemed to be damaged.

I wondered what was in them. But Akio and Lord Yamashida both went straight to a pedestal at the back of the cage. There, surrounded by a bunch of sensors, sat a large flat box of ancient wood. Handmade, or it looked like it at first glance. Something about it seemed a little off, though.

Yamashida started to reach for the box, but Akio cleared his throat pointedly. The older man grimaced, the most emotion I’d ever seen on his face, and reluctantly stepped aside.

The case didn’t even have a real lock, just a set of camouflaged buttons that you had to press in the right combination to open it. Camouflaged to normal humans, anyway. They stood out like a sore thumb to me, and Akio didn’t seem to have any trouble finding them either. He casually flashed a burst of x-rays to outline the mechanism, and then opened it after a few moments of thought.

So that’s what x-ray vision is good for! Wait, Mom was setting me up to pick antique locks? That didn’t make sense.

The androids all turned around as Akio carefully cracked open the ancient case, and peeked inside. Sure enough, it held an ancient-looking disk of polished metal. Pretty underwhelming, although I guess it’s kind of neat to think that people could make things like that even way back in the dawn of prehistory.

Akio closed the case, and locked it again.

“This is a momentous day for the Masu-kai,” he said.

Yamashida managed a thin smile. “No one will be able to question the legitimacy of our claims now. We should secure it at once.”

“I suppose you’re right, Uncle. Major Wen, detail a team to transport this case back to the ship and secure it in my personal vault. I want a full squad on guard there at all times until we return home.”

“Yes, milord!”

A pair of marines floated over, and reverently picked up the case. Something about it was still bothering me, though. It looked like wood, but there was a faint pattern of discoloration that put the lie to that illusion. Lines of material laid just below the surface that were a slightly different color in the infrared spectrum, and arranged with way more precision than human hands could ever manage. As the marines carried the box past me I realized that the lines formed a set of kanji, repeated over and over.

It said ‘replica’.

I pretended to rub my nose to cover a smile. It was a fake. A pretty good one, if it fooled Akio, but you can do amazing things with fabricators. Heck, it might even be an atomically perfect facsimile. That would explain why they needed to label the case, to keep it from getting mixed up with the real one.

Only, why was the box labeled in a way no one but me could even see?

That horrible suspicion came back, stronger this time. But I pushed it away. I watched the marines leave, still trying to decide if I should tell them what I’d seen.

“I wonder what’s in the rest of these boxes?” Akio said.

“A question for another time,” Yamashida said smoothly.

His com sent out a packet to the relay one of the techs had just set up on the wall behind us. Copies immediately bounced back to all of the androids around us, and for a couple of milliseconds almost all of them froze. Then they started moving again, but they were suddenly trying to keep their expressions blank.

I had a bad feeling about this. I floated back a few cems so that I was brushing up against Emla, and moved a shield bot to hide my hands from the marines at the cage door.

Emla, give me the package!

The guys were still talking, although it felt like the conversation was moving in slow motion now. “What do you mean, uncle?” Akio asked, with a slight frown on his face.

Yamashida slowly shook his head. “Lord Hoshida has become a fool in his old age, and it seems his heir is no better. Did you really think I was going to let a careless whelp like you push me aside, and steal all the glory?”

Here it is! Emla sent, pressing a tiny capsule into my hand. I palmed it, and crossed my arms. Another slight shift, and no one could see the access port hidden below my left armpit open. I hurriedly pushed the capsule full of tritium into place.

“Careless?” Akio replied mildly. “Do you think I came here unprepared, Uncle?”

“I know all about the warbots lurking behind us, and the sniper team out on the hull,” Yamashida said. “But your youthful attempts at subtlety fall well short of the mark. Did you know that my techs were the ones who developed our marine training program, fifty years ago?”

Now Akio finally looked concerned. He glanced around, and took in the blank faces around him.

“Major Wen?” He said cautiously. “Who do you serve?”

“The shadows will always belong to Lord Yamashida,” she said. A smile full of malicious glee broke out across her face, and she sent a signal to her troops. Their warbots all turned to cover us.

“So that’s your plan?” Akio sighed. “Trap yourself in a confined space with a supersoldier who has nothing to lose?”

“Silly boy. You’re talking to a meat puppet. Major Wen, you may kill them now.”

Chapter 27

I honestly don’t know what I would have done, if he’d said ‘kill him’. But if he was getting rid of witnesses too then there wasn’t any choice. If I wanted to get out of here alive I was going to have to fight.

Someone had just cut Akio’s datanet connection, but it looked like the android in charge of that hadn’t gotten to me yet. So I jumped my mind to maximum speed, and sent an urgent warning to Captain Sokol with a recording of the last few minutes attached. I wasn’t sure how much danger the ship was in, or what emergency plans the captain might have, but hopefully the advance warning would do him some good.

Then I had to focus on myself.

Emla was already linked into my tactical command system, and she almost managed to match speeds with me.

What do we do, Alice? She frantically asked. We can’t beat this many warbots at the same time. We don’t even have enough ammo!

We don’t have to, I reassured her. Yamashida made a big mistake. See how the bots haven’t started moving yet? He only took over the marines a few seconds ago, and they haven’t had a chance to give new orders yet. We just need to hit them hard while they’re busy telling the bots to kill Akio instead of protecting him. If we can get out of the vault we can get away.

Do you really think we can do it, Alice? There are six breeching bots in the cage with us, and that door is a terrible choke point.

Trust me, Emla. We can do it. Now sync with me, as close as you can, and follow my lead.

Alright, Alice.

Her internal data pathways opened to me. In the space of a millisecond her body became mine to command, almost as surely as my own. Her mind opened at the same time, exposing everything from her feelings to her tentative ideas about how to handle the most immediate threats. I was shocked at that, and even more surprised that a part of me knew what to do with that kind of connection. She eagerly surrendered herself to the gestalt as it formed, and then there was nothing between us but the trivial light speed delay of our comms.

I believe in you, Mistress, her heart sang with perfect devotion. Lead us to victory.

I brought my shield bots under direct control, and a query arrived from Akio’s comm. I assured his combat computer that Emla and I were still friendly. Barely two milliseconds had passed since Yamashida’s order, and the marines hadn’t even started to react. We could do this. We had to do this.

Emla and I spun in opposite directions, sweeping the space inside the cage with our guns as we moved. Two breeching bots and a marine were blown apart by the heavy slugs of Emla’s weapon, while I put a shot into Yamashida’s head before taking down the two marines on my side. Our turn kept one of the shield bots between us and the larger group of enemies out in the main vault, while the other shield bot started to float towards the exit from the cage.

Emla had the power systems of a warbot twice her mass, and she could fire off all thirty of the heavy antiarmor rounds in her weapon without stopping. But my power cells only held enough energy to fire my weapon six times, and it would take a good ten minutes for the little nuke pack in my suit to recharge them. Fortunately Yamashida had wasted enough time talking for my internal systems to load the tritium from that transport capsule into my internal reservoir.

I lit the fusion reactor in my chest. Power like nothing I’d ever felt sang through my network, and suddenly the drain of my weapon was nothing. Every time I fired my reactor automatically kicked into high gear, pumping out enough energy to recharge my power cells in a few milliseconds before throttling back down again. At the same time my hair unbound itself and spread out into a cloud of black strands floating in the vacuum around me. A tiny thread of thermal superconductor ran the length of each strand, turning all that surface area into a mass of radiators.

A cloud of prismatic dust from Emla’s smoke dispensers formed around us, obscuring the enemy’s vision. But some of the closer bots were starting to respond to our attack now. A mass driver round slammed into one of my shield bots, cratering its armored hull, and another flashed through the space my hand had been in a millisecond before. Two of the breeching bots launched micro-missiles at me, and one was close enough to add a shot from its plasma flamer to the barrage.

I called for more power, and my reactor surged. My field emitters lit up like a million tiny suns, and blocked the whole barrage with an impromptu deflector shield. The missiles blew up on impact, creating a cloud of smoke and debris that almost hid the breaching bot trying to charge me.

Akio caught it from behind, and ripped it apart with his bare hands.

I flashed him a smile, but there was no time for conversation. My lead shield bot was through the cage door, with Emla right behind it. A marine in powered armor tried to duck around it to take a shot at her, and her gun was pointed in the wrong direction.

Good thing that wasn’t her only weapon. Emla breathed a huge jet of plasma over the hapless inugami, blocking her view and cooking her in her armor. I ducked past the smoking body to huddle behind the shield bot, and snapped off a shot at a missile bot someone had left in an exposed position. Akio hurried to follow me, and I maneuvered the second shield bot around to give him cover.

But there were still an awful lot of enemies around us. There was an open area at the back of the vault where two marines and a dozen warbots had set up a defensive position, and there wasn’t any cover to speak of. More and more of the bots were turning around to face us, and the heavier models had too much armor for our weapons to penetrate. The shield bots were protecting us for now, but there was a limit to how much damage they could block before they started to fall apart.

I picked off another marine, and Emla’s smoke screen thickened up enough to provide decent concealment as we ducked into the closest of the long aisles leading back to the vault entrance. A plasma grenade went off just behind us, and another volley of micro-missiles zipped into our smoke cloud looking for targets. But I felt them the moment they entered my manipulator field, and crushed them before they could get close.

I was just starting to feel optimistic when a pair of gunbots appeared at the far end of the aisle, and opened fire on us.

They couldn’t actually see us through Emla’s smoke, and they were too far away for my field sense. But the effect of their heavy mass driver rounds slamming into our forward shieldbot was unmistakable. The first hit made another big crater in the bot’s hull, and the second smashed one of its cameras. A quick calculation told me there was no way the bot would survive long enough for us to close with the gunbots, and shooting at their heavy frontal armor from here would be an exercise in futility.

Darn it, I was not going to let Emla get shot to pieces by these things.

I darted around the shieldbot, and threw myself down the aisle with my field at full power. I was so light, and my field was so strong with my reactor lit, I could easily hit sixty gravities of acceleration.

The bots weren’t expecting that, and they picked the wrong response. One of them reoriented its gun to aim at me, and lined up a perfect shot that should have put a 25mm armor piercing round right through my chest. There’s no way something as small as me could carry enough armor to stop an attack like that, and dodging a hypersonic projectile at this range was clearly impossible.

Instead I focused my field, and swatted it aside.

There was only time to deflect it by a few degrees, but the exchange of momentum threw me hard in the opposite direction. The tungsten penetrator barely grazed me, tearing a hole in my suit but doing no real damage. The interaction also got me out from in front of the bot’s cannon, and by then there wasn’t time to line up another shot.

Belatedly, both bots started to launch missiles and swivel their point defense lasers to bear on me. Too late, suckers.

I shot one of the lightly armored laser turrets off with my gun, and smacked the first couple of missiles away as I flew the last few meters. The other bot’s laser grazed my hair as I grabbed them both with my field, slamming them together and dragging myself to a stop behind them.

There was a swarm of little cat-sized melee bots bounding up to cover the gunbots, but they were too late. I ripped open the service panel on the back of one of the gunbots, yanked out its nuke pack and used the heavy lump of unshielded polonium as a club to crush three of the melee bots in a swift exchange of blows. My field ripped two others apart at the same time, and a single shot into the open panel wrecked the gunbot’s power cells and gutted most of its insides.

Emla caught up with me just as I ripped out the other gunbot’s nuke pack. She fried the rest of the melee bots with a long blast from the plasma flamer hidden in her mouth, and Akio started laying down fire with a rifle he must have taken off one of the marines. We’d lost a shieldbot, though, and the one that was left had taken some hits.

“They’ll be waiting outside the vault door by now,” Akio said.

Emla’s smoke cloud billowed out around us, but that wouldn’t actually stop bullets. Someone was alright taking random potshots into the cloud, hoping to get lucky and hit one of us. We didn’t have time to sit around and come up with a plan.

“I’ve got this,” I said.

At my direction the remaining shieldbot started for the hole in the vault door. It was putting out a smoke cloud of its own, which would make it harder for the enemy to target it. It still wouldn’t survive long, since there were bound to be a bunch of gunbots outside the vault just waiting for a target. But it only needed to hold together for a few seconds.

Emla’s armor split open in the front, and she reached inside to extract a fist-sized egg shape that had been hidden in her belly. She stuck it to the back of the shieldbot as it passed, and sealed herself back up.

“What was that?” Akio asked.

By the time he finished asking the question the shieldbot was already charging out through the breach. There was a furious barrage of cannon fire, eerily silent in the airless room. Then the nuclear demolition charge went off.

It was only a tenth of a kiloton, not nearly enough to penetrate the vault door. A star-bright flash of x-rays shone through the hole momentarily, vaporizing a huge chunk of gold bars and filling the room with hot plasma. But the pressure was low enough that my field could hold it at bay, and it didn’t last long. With no air pressure to fight against it expanded out into the maze of empty corridors around us in the blink of an eye, dissipating before the heat could cause us any real problems.

The bots that had been in direct view of the explosion weren’t so lucky. Akio followed us as Emla and I flew out the hole in the vault door. A dozen or more bots had been reduced to half-melted wrecks, and the radio relays were gone. Good, that would make it a little harder for the enemy to coordinate their movements.

“You have your bodyguard carry nukes?” Akio exclaimed.

“Only one,” Emla said.

“I know I can trust her,” I explained. “Unlike your guards. Uh, oh.”

We made it maybe twenty meters down the corridor before someone started shooting at us again, and this time they didn’t have to worry about hitting each other by mistake. A flurry of light mass driver rounds tore through our smoke, and I had to strain my field to bounce the ones that would have hit us. We hastily ducked around a corner, only to find ourselves face to face with a squad of breaching bots.

At least I didn’t have to fight them all myself. Emla tore into them with her gun and plasma flamer, and Akio was surprisingly effective with his fists and the rifle he’d picked up. But the fierce little exchange used up time and ammunition, and by the time we broke through them my hair was glowing cherry red with waste heat.

“I can’t keep this up much longer,” I warned.

“We just need to get outside their perimeter,” Akio said confidently. “This way.”

He pushed off a wall and went sailing off into the darkness of a corridor that hadn’t been mapped as far as I knew. Emla and I followed, not having a better idea.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“If Uncle Noburu really had everyone subverted he would have staged a coup years ago. I’m betting it’s only the marines that he can control, and that means the rest of my agents should still be loyal. I’ve got a fallback point-”

That was as far as he got before an explosion blew our smoke away.

This time the enemy had a proper combat team deployed. Two heavy gunbots opened up on us with their big cannons while a smaller one hosed down the area with its rapid-fire gun, and a swarm of little melee bots charged us. I parried furiously, batting projectiles away from us with my field, but we still took damage before we could get around a corner. Emla’s armor was cratered by a shower of bullets, and a cannon round took a big chunk out of Akio’s left bicep.

We fled, returning fire as we went. But the enemy had more bots than we had bullets, and they were swarming after us from all directions. Another brief skirmish left Emla with two wrecked smoke projectors despite my best efforts, and I was going to get cooked by my own reactor if I didn’t get a chance to power down soon.

Alone, I could have easily outrun the enemy. Emla’s flight system was almost as good as mine, and with her emitters under my control she didn’t slow me down much. But Akio had to push off from walls to move, and even though he was pretty good at it that made him a lot slower. Maybe I could just drag him along? But he weighed more than Emla and I put together, and that would just be more of a strain on my overworked cooling system.

He must have realized the same thing, because the next time we had to dart through a hail of gunfire to cross an intersection he fell back behind us.

“Get out of here,” he said. “I’ll draw them off.”

“But Akio, they’ll kill you!” I protested.

“I have a backup. Here, take this.”

He opened a com channel, and passed me two big bursts of data. One was encrypted, but the header said it was several hours’ worth of memory backup data. The other was… wait, what? A recording of a VR scenario? What the heck?

I sped up my time rate, and sampled it. Oh, my. Akio and me in the Hungry Garden, kissing. His hand tangled in my hair, tipping my head back so his lips could work their way down my throat. His other arm around me, holding me tight against his muscular chest. My heart pounded, and my vision swam.

I popped back out of the scenario, blushing furiously. According to the timestamp there was more than an hour of that.

“A promise, for when we meet again,” he told me. “Now stay safe, and talk to my agents when you can.”

He sent me another burst of data, with instructions and codes to help me infiltrate the yakuza datanet and contact his agents. Then we came to another intersection, and he turned left instead of right.

“I will,” I promised.

Impulsively I threw together a little VR scenario of my own to send back to him. The two of us meeting again on the Square Deal, and me leaping across the room to throw myself in his arms and kiss him senseless. A cut to my cabin, more kissing, and this time my top came off. I chickened out after that, and made it fade to black.

Maybe that was too much. But this copy of Akio was going to die, and there was no way for him to get another memory update out to his backup. I had to do something to thank him.

We flashed through another intersection, and a lucky shot from a gunbot way down the other hallway blew Emla’s left leg off just below the knee.

“Ow!” She complained. “Darn it, I don’t have enough spare components to rebuild that!”

“Sorry, Emla. We’re getting out of here now.”

I pulled her close, so she could wrap her wings around me and maximize our shared field strength, and sent us zipping down another hallway at a speed none of the enemy bots could match. Most of them would be after Akio anyway, once they realized that we’d split up, and we were getting into areas that hadn’t been cleared now. Wrecked bots drifted around the empty halls, giving us cover and slowing down the pursuit.

I ducked into a maintenance tunnel, and had Emla turn off her smoke projectors while we both blew off way too much water flash-cooling ourselves. That dropped my body temperature to something more normal, and cut my reactor output to just a few hundred watts. We both activated our stealth systems, and vanished.

Emla wrapped her arms around me, and rested her head on my shoulder while I sent us carefully creeping through an increasingly congested maze of tunnels. I was being careful not to touch anything now, so there wouldn’t be any sign of our passage. The wreck was way too big for the enemy bots to search, so if we could just go a few minutes without being spotted they’d never find us.

You did it, Emla sent. You got us out of there alive.

Yeah, but I couldn’t save Akio, I grumbled. Stupid self-sacrificing man. Now I’m going to have to be extra nice to him the next time we meet.

She snickered. Poor Alice. You have such problems to deal with. What was in those files he sent you, anyway?

Instructions, a memory update for his backup, and… um… this.

Against my better judgment, I sent her the VR.

She immediately ran it, of course. Unlike me she got about halfway through before popping out. I’d never seen her blush like that before.

I’m not sure whether to slap him, or take him to bed, she groaned. If that’s what he wants to do with you, you’re going to be a really happy girl.

I only watched the first couple of minutes, I admitted. Now I’m afraid to look at the rest of it.

Better wait until you can be alone, she advised. He spends twenty minutes getting you worked up before he even takes your shoes off, and he’s really good with his hands.

There was a moment of silence.

I hope whoever he has running his backup system isn’t compromised.

I was trying not to think about that, I said. He seemed pretty confident, but he thought he could rely on his marines too. Even if he’s right, and it’s really a secret, Yamashida is going to be putting reliable people in control of all the Masu-kai ships right now. I don’t see how he could take them back.

What about the Square Deal? Emla asked.

I changed course, sending us drifting slowly into a space that might have been a mess hall at one point. Now a cloud of wrecked bots and broken furniture filled most of the room, floating silently in the dark. I let my stealth drop, and used the infrared glow of my body to pick my way past a mass of dead plants around a broken fountain.

I don’t know, Emla. I hope the captain had a plan, but it’s a terrible situation. Even if they could beat the enemy marines that were on the ship, then what? They can’t launch the ship without getting blown apart by that frigate, and if they stay put the rest of the marines will just put together an assault force and overrun them.

Someone had blown up the autochef, but there was a big hole in the floor beneath the tangle of broken machinery. I carefully guided us through, into what must have been a storage space. There were a bunch of feedstock tanks, all of them ruptured, and a little servicing station for maintenance bots.

Is there anything we can do, Alice?

I settled into a nook behind the last storage tank, and tried to think.

The captain knows what he’s doing, I said. He wouldn’t have gotten the ship into that situation without a plan. Maybe he figured out some tricky way of escaping, or maybe he made some kind of deal with Yamashida. No, if they’d made a deal we wouldn’t have ended up with Yamashida trying to kill us. The captain would have made an excuse for me not to be there, or something.

Or else he sold us out, Emla said.

Maybe, I admitted. I don’t think he’d want to do that. But if it was the only way to save his crew, he might have to.

My reactor had enough fuel to keep us both alive for months, and as long as we were careful they’d never find us. But sooner or later they’d leave, and we’d be trapped here. Eventually I’d run out of tritium.

Then we’d freeze to death, alone in the dark.

Mistress? What do we do? I don’t want to die here.

Neither do I, Emla. But it isn’t completely hopeless. Maybe Akio’s contingency plans will actually work. Maybe the captain will save us somehow.

My eyes fell on the bot bay. Specifically, on the charging port at the back.

Or maybe we’ve all been overlooking something, I went on.

What do you mean, Alice?

At my prompting she let go of me. A gentle push sent me drifting across the room.

I really didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want to know. But I was quickly running out of options here, and Emla was depending on me. I wasn’t going to let her die just because I was afraid.

So I gathered my courage, and plugged the little power adapter in my pinkie into the charging port. The system was dead, of course, but power outlets generally work both ways. I spun up my reactor again, and fed a hundred kilowatts into the outlet.

As expected, there was some kind of centralized power conservation in effect. Instead of powering up the bot bay, the current I was putting out just vanished into the endless maze of superconductive fibers that made up the ship’s power system. But it was going somewhere. A battleship’s computer systems are spread out through the whole mass of the ship, so destroying them is impossible unless you can vaporize a trillion tons of smart matter. Somewhere, a network of hidden computing nodes was drinking in that power and deciding what to do with it.

Seconds passed, one endless millisecond after another dragging by while I worried that this was a horrible mistake. What if there were still Mirai warbots on the ship? What if the battleship’s computer could hack my systems somehow? What if a yakuza recon drone was close enough to spot the infrared signature of my reactor?

Then the smart matter around the power outlet went live, warming slightly as countless built-in systems powered up. A weak radar pulse pinged the room. A wireless datanet node came online, and my comm picked up an IFF query.

A query in a bizarre, nonstandard format that I nevertheless knew exactly how to handle.

I identified myself with the ID code I’d been born with, rather than the one the orphanage had assigned me. Instead of just accepting my code and giving me access the system challenged me again, this time with a much more complicated protocol. For almost a hundred milliseconds we traded long, twisty works of cryptographic poetry with each other.

Then it finally accepted my ID, and invited me to open a comlink. Just a basic voice channel, with no video or VR elements.

“Hello, your highness. Welcome back to the Emperor’s Hope. How may I be of service?”

I couldn’t begin to sort out all the conflicting emotions in the woman’s voice, especially with my own fears on the verge of being confirmed. I bit my lip.

“Are you the ship’s computer?”

“Yes, I’m Hope. Don’t you recognize me, Alice? I know your mother took one of my processing nodes with her when she escaped.”

“You knew my mother?” I gasped. A million questions tried to flood out all at once, and I had to pause for a moment to organize my thoughts.

“I was her ship, Alice. Of course I knew her. Something has gone terribly wrong, hasn’t it? How can you not already know these things?”

“I was raised in an orphanage,” I said. “They told me I was found in a pirate base, and my mother was dead. Please, tell me who I am.”

There was a long moment of silence.

“You are Princess Alice Rose Long, eldest daughter of Princess Susan Marie Long, and as of my last update the seventeenth in line for the throne of the Mirai Kingdom.”

I choked.

“I guess that explains how you have such incredible mods,” Emla interjected.

“Princess Alice is the only recorded recipient of the full Gen 12 Transcendence augmentations,” Hope agreed. “The process for upgrading adults was still in development when we left Mirai. Despite being the head of the Transcendence Project, even Princess Susan was only a Gen 8.”

“I’m a Mirai,” I said dully.

The monsters who tried to kill or conquer the whole human race. The creatures who were so dangerous no one dared to let a single one of them live.

“A Mirai princess,” Hope corrected.

My laugh must have sounded a little hysterical, because Emla gave me a concerned look

“Princess. Right. Princess of genocidal monsters. Everyone in the galaxy will try to kill me if they find out.”

“You know better than that, Alice,” Emla said firmly. “You’re still my mistress, and you know Naoko will still be your friend. I bet the techs will all think it’s cool, and didn’t you tell me the captain defended them once?”

“I take it we lost the war?” Hope said hesitantly.

“It was really bad,” Emla answered. “The Grand Alliance killed everyone they could find, and spread all kinds of horrible stories about you to justify it. The Mirai are like the monster under the bed for the whole galaxy now. The way they tell it humanity would have been doomed if you’d won.”

“They are anyway,” I said softly.

Emla shot me a questioning look. “What?”

I shook my head. “A problem for later. So I’m a Mirai. There’s no way you could be wrong about that, Hope?”

“The Transcendence project went to extreme lengths to ensure that personal identity codes could not be faked, Princess. I am quite certain.”

“Fine. If I’m a monster, then I’ll use my monstrous powers to save my friends. Hope, what resources do you have that might still work, if I can power them up?”

Chapter 28

Eleven kilometers aft of the secure hold there was a small cluster of rooms that had once been a secret refuge for the ship’s officers. Just an armory, a workshop and a tiny barracks area with a dozen beds and a bathroom, all of it wedged in between the fuel and reaction mass feeds for one of the ship’s enormous engines.

A section of the workroom wall was set up to be able to take itself apart and reassemble on command, serving as a secret door leading out into a boat bay stuffed with lifeboats. The boarders had wrecked them early on, of course, but that hadn’t stopped my mother. Most of the workroom was filled by the bulk of the weirdest fabricator I’d ever seen.

“The fighting became very chaotic once the Swarmlord fleet lost contact,” Hope explained. “For several months we thought we might be able to wear them down and retake the ship. We lost most of the crew eliminating their command and logistical support elements, and breaking up their comm networks. But they destroyed all of the ship’s power plants and fabrication facilities during the fighting, and there were still hordes of boarding bots roaming the ship. In the end, all the survivors could do was try to escape.”

“There isn’t enough room in here to build a ship,” I said.

“Not a conventional design, no. But the bots that wrecked the hanger were operating without supervision, so they did exactly the same damage to each of the lifeboats. They destroyed the power and life support systems, but not the hyperspace converters. So Princess Susan hit on the idea of making a specialized bot that could extract the hyperspace converter and some other essential components from a damaged lifeboat, and then expand and reconfigure itself into a minimal spacecraft.”

I took another look at the assembly bay in front of me, and tried to picture that. There wouldn’t be room for weapons, or proper living quarters, or even much of a fuel supply. They’d have to spend months creeping along with one of those low-thrust, high-efficiency drive systems to get anywhere. Worse, it was the kind of hacked-together improvisation that might actually have faults in it. If something critical failed, would they have any chance of fixing it?

“Mom was really brave, wasn’t she?” I said.

“She was the finest noble I ever served,” Hope said. “You know, it’s hard to believe she’s really gone. Mirai are extremely hard to kill, especially the ones with the higher-tier transcendence upgrades. She escaped with two crewmen and forty-seven AI cores, so she would have had plenty of volunteers to help with fallback plans as well.”

Hope really was well named. I’d never dared to let myself think about things like that before, but she had a point.

“What does it take to kill one of us?” I asked.

“You’re a nanomorph, Alice. You can recover from having as much as ninety-eight percent of your body mass vaporized, although it’s a long and unpleasant process. You also have numerous options for leaving backups in various environments, ready to develop into copies of you if you die. You can even integrate with a copy, if one gets activated by mistake.”

“Mom had all of that? Maybe she did get away, then. She must have gotten shot or something, but most people wouldn’t be all that paranoid about making sure she was really dead. Only, wouldn’t she have come for me?”

“If she could find you. The galaxy is a big place, and we don’t know what really happened. If she was badly hurt and didn’t have any money it could take years to get back on her feet, and years more to make any progress on finding you.”

She was right. My mother might still be alive somewhere. Of course, if she found me she’d probably expect me to help her conquer the galaxy. Maybe genocide all the inferior morph types to make room for their betters, and murder enough humans to make the rest fall in line.

Part of me thought it might be worth it, if only I could have a family. But no, I wasn’t that selfish. If she was alive, and I did meet her someday, it probably wasn’t going to go well.

I pushed that depressing thought aside. First, I had to figure out a way to survive this mess. Then I could worry about the future.

“Alright, so we have a fabricator, and I can power it. Can we get feedstock for it?”

“My reservoirs are all frozen, and the delivery system is wrecked anyway,” Hope said. “That’s why they built that big disassembler module. You’ll need to feed it raw materials before you can build anything.”

“We can work with that. Is the boat bay open to space, or are the doors closed?”

“It isn’t visible at all from outside the ship. The hatch at the end of the launch tube is camouflaged, and there’s seventeen hundred meters of baffling and blast doors between that and the hanger. No one is going to spot any activity from outside.”

“Great. Let’s get this secret door open, then. We can reclaim old bots for feedstock, and that will give us plenty of room to work. Emla, you’ve got the plans for all those funky micromachines that you’re made of, right? If we fab up a few batches, can you repair yourself?”

“I can do better than that, Alice. Give me a few hundred kilograms of parts and I can turn into a proper dragon. I’m tired of seeing you get hurt when I’m supposed to be guarding you.”

“Oh, Emla. You’re already a great bodyguard. I don’t expect you to magically fight off a whole platoon of marines by yourself. But if you want to go big I guess it won’t hurt anything, as long as you can change back afterwards. Hmm. After that we’re going to need a better power source. Hope, do you think we could build something out of the nuke packs from those bots?”

“We can build anything you like, Alice. My design libraries are yours.”

The link she sent me opened onto a design database that made the one on the Square Deal look like a few notes scribbled on a napkin. There were designs for everything from nuke packs to portable fusion reactors to big power plants designed to run a city. There was a massive assortment of industrial and utility bots, and huge libraries of software to run them. Android designs, and AI options. Warbots, tanks and drones of every description. Even spaceships. Not just little shuttles and freighters, but warships too.

I stared at the indexes for a long moment.

“Hope, this library includes designs for every class of warship the Mirai ever built.”

“Yes, Alice.”

“Hope, there are planet busters in this database. Why do I have access to… to rift bombs, and metamorphic nanoplagues, and adaptive von Neumann swarms? Wait, some of these designs were stolen from the Swarmlords! Shouldn’t this be classified?”

“You are an heir to the throne of Mirai, Your Highness. The full might of the realm is at your disposal. The Emperor trusts his family to use it wisely.”

Great Gaia. I was not ready to be a Mirai princess. No one had ever taught me anything about what to do with terrifying superweapons, and I knew I couldn’t trust my instincts. Not when my first impulse was to use them on anyone who got in my way. Fortunately it was a moot point, since the scary stuff was all way too big for me to build on my own.

I didn’t dare touch the AI designs, either. They were bound to have some kind of loyalty programming, and they’d all be true believers in the Mirai ideology. They’d probably be helpful and deferential and incredibly loyal to me, considering who I was. But they’d try to convince me to see things the way they did, and for all I knew they might succeed.

Alright, so what could I use?

There was a collection of accessories for people with my mod package, and I immediately zeroed in on a cooling harness that would let me run my reactor at full power as long as I was plugged into the ship’s heat management system. With that I could just power the fabricator myself while we threw together a swarm of stealthy little recon bots. Then I could send them out to find out just how bad the situation was, and come up with a plan.

“Right. Well, I think the wise thing right now is to keep things subtle. Emla, can you haul some wrecked bots in here while I power up the fabricator?”

“You got it, Alice!”

The work went quicker than I’d expected. Mirai fabricators were a lot faster than the ones on the Square Deal, and the recycling system wasn’t nearly as picky about what kinds of materials we fed it. It couldn’t digest armor, of course, but it was amazingly efficient about scooping all the machinery out of a warbot and leaving just the armored shell behind. There were nearly a hundred bots drifting around in the boat bay, left powerless by the relentless decay of the radioactive isotopes in their nuke packs, so it was easy for Emla to drag them over for reclaiming.

In less than an hour I had my heat management harness, Emla was putting her foot back together, and a dozen recon bots were invisibly working their way towards the hull of the wreck. I had a huge advantage over the yakuza when it came to scouting, because Hope was able to wake up parts of her internal com network to let my bots keep in touch. The enemy would have a lot more trouble with communication, since her internal bulkheads were all thick enough to block radio signals. They’d have to lay out trails of radio relays everywhere they went, or else be out of touch for long periods of time. Between that and the sheer size of the Emperor’s Hope, I wasn’t too worried about them finding me.

My effort to remain optimistic took a hard blow when the first of the little baseball-sized recon bots maneuvered itself into a position where it could see the hangar where the Square Deal had been parked.

“Where’s the ship?” Emla asked, confused.

I carefully parsed through the data stream from the bot, trying to understand what I was looking at. There was some wreckage in the bay, but not nearly enough to account for a ship. The floor of the bay where the ship had been anchored was all torn up, and so was the base camp the techs had set up under it. But the big processing facility they’d been building a little further away was completely intact, and so was most of the maze of pipes and conduits that snaked across the vast space. If there had been any kind of fight that stuff would all be wrecked.

“Did they get away?”

I turned the bot’s sensors on the yakuza ships. Both drone carriers were missing, and the frigate had thousands of its own drones deployed. But I didn’t see any battle damage, or debris.

“Maybe,” I said. “This is really weird. I can’t see any signs of a fight. Did the captain just talk his way out somehow?”

“There’s no way they could have offloaded all those techs this fast,” Emla pointed out. “Besides, something wrecked the base camp pretty good. What could have done that kind of damage?”

I couldn’t answer that, so I queried Hope’s databases. The answer that came back made me gasp.

“A hyperspace transition!”

“What? No way! I thought it was impossible to make a jump with a giant fixed object intersecting your conversion field?”

“A hyperspace converter doesn’t have to project a spherical field,” I pointed out. “That’s just the most economical design, so it’s what people normally use. But we know the captain likes his tricks. If he had the ship fitted with a custom hyperspace converter it might be able to project a field that conforms to the ship’s hull, more or less.”

“So they just, what, retracted the landing gear and dropped into the Gamma Layer? That’s brilliant! By the time the yakuza figured out what was going on and followed they could be outside gunnery range.”

“Or down in the Beta Layer,” I said. “If the captain was going to invest in a fancy hyperspace converter I bet he’d get one with double-jump capability too. The drone carriers must be hunting for him right now, but they’re going to have a heck of a time chasing him down.”

“Awesome! I bet they’ll take care of those yakuza marines and get away clean. Only, what about us?”

I had an awful, sinking feeling in my gut.

“Well, he does have the whole ship to think of,” I said weakly. “I mean, it’s not like there’s any way they could have rescued us. Right?”

It still hurt. I’d trusted Captain Sokol, and it looked like he’d abandoned me. Now what was I going to do?

Emla floated up behind me, and hugged me.

“It will be okay, Alice. The yakuza won’t be here forever, right? If we have to we can just hide until they leave, and then fix one of the lifeboats or something. Right, Hope?”

“Yes, of course,” the ship’s AI agreed. “Although you may want to secure a source of water if that’s your plan. The boarders remained active for a year and a half before their nuke packs decayed, and they spent the majority of that time systematically searching the ship for any resources that could be used to make repairs. The bots themselves will provide an adequate supply of most elements, but we have no hydrogen to run a fusion reactor.”

I let myself relax into Emla’s embrace, and tried to gather my wits. They were right. This was a bad situation, but it could be a lot worse. At least I wasn’t alone.

The thought of trying to repair one of those lifeboats with just Emla to help didn’t sound very promising, and I still didn’t want to start fabbing up Mirai techs. But I had one more avenue to explore.

“Hope, see if you can sneak one of the bots over to where the salvage teams are working. They’re using civilian com relays, so we should be able to connect to their network without raising any alarms.”

“Is there some reason you don’t want me to use my internal systems for that, Alice? The power you’re providing will only run a tiny fraction of the network, but I’m sure I could localize one of the areas where they have network coverage and open a connection.”

“No, these guys are really sneaky and I don’t know what kind of monitoring equipment they have set up. They know I got away, so if they spot a recon bot they’ll just assume I had it stashed somewhere. But if they see the smart matter in one of your bulkheads power up they’ll know they have bigger problems that a little girl with a few bots.”

“Very well, Alice. I can make do with the bots, and take care that I don’t activate any com nodes that they might detect. But it will take some time.”

“I’ve got an idea, then,” Emla said. “While we’re waiting on that, why don’t we get life support running in here? I know vacuum exposure won’t kill you, Alice, but it isn’t doing your organic parts any good. I bet you’d be a lot more comfortable in a warm room full of breathable air.”

“The fabricator needs to be kept in a non-reactive atmosphere,” I said dubiously.

“We can move it. It would make more sense to put it in the boat bay anyway, since that’s where all the salvage is. Your mom was just keeping it in here to hide it from the bots, right Hope?”

“Yes, Emla. I think this is a good suggestion, Alice. We could move it, and then reassemble the bulkhead to keep your refuge hidden. There’s no need to expose yourself to potential discovery when an engineering bot could do the manual labor for you.”

“Does the life support in here even work anymore?” I asked.

“All diagnostics show green, Alice. The refuge has an independent life support system, and you’ve already provided enough power to run it for several days. Princess Susan drained the water reserve to fuel her escape ship, but I can at least provide air and a more comfortable temperature.”

No showers, then. Too bad, a chance to relax and get clean would be heavenly. But I’d take what I could get.

“Alright, you talked me into it. How’s your foot, Emla?”

She held up her leg, and wiggled her toes at me. “Good as new. How about you?”

“My everything hurts,” I admitted. “I just about cooked myself running in overdrive for so long, and I soaked up a lot of radiation too. My synthetic parts are fine, but it’s going to take hours for all my human bits to heal. I’m really starting to wonder why so much of my body is natural organics, considering how fragile that stuff is.”

“It’s a disguise,” Hope explained. “Normally you’d have converted entirely to synthetic tissue by now, which would make you much more resilient. But your development manager has been trying to hide your true nature.”

“Well, you don’t need to push yourself,” Emla declared. “I can move the fabricator for you. Why don’t you take a look at the warbots in that design database? You like stuff like that, and I’m sure we’ll need some before long.”

“Thank you, Emla. You’re right, I could use a break.”

The Mirai designs were so odd that it took some work to understand what I was seeing. The regular warbots were all sleek and dangerous looking, with black hulls crisscrossed by ridges of glowing red crystal. I swear they were trying to make them look sinister on purpose. The clouds of centimeter-scale minibots that were supposed to surround them looked like swarms of menacing insects from a distance, and a lot of them even had glowing eyes.

But on closer examination the odd frills all served practical purposes too. The glowing crystals were field emitters, based on the same incredible momentum exchange tech that my body used. They were lightly armored because their deflectors were so strong, and with a fusion reactor in every warbot they had the power to use lasers and particle beams as their primary weapons instead of mass drivers. Not that they didn’t have plenty of those, and mini-missiles too. But in a boarding action the particle beams would be their main weapon.

They used the swarms of mini-bots as extra emitters to extend their manipulator fields, letting them make deep multi-layered deflector shields with clouds of anti-laser smoke trapped between the layers. They could also tear apart melee bots with them, and neutralize things like microbot swarms or nanite fog. No wonder the Swarmlord bots had done so poorly against them. These things were amazing.

I felt like a kid in a candy store. As soon as Emla had the fabricator moved I queued up a worker bot and a proper bot factory, so we could start building this stuff at a useful rate. Oh, and there were powered armor options for my mod set! Finally, I could get some gear that would interface seamlessly with all my built-in systems instead of interfering with them.

If only I could fuel the warbots. Civilian bots can run on power cells well enough, but nothing short of nuclear power will run military deflectors and mass drivers for any length of time. Let alone plasma weapons, or these particle beam cannons the Mirai favored for shipboard combat. Talk about a power sink. They were all designed to run on micro-fusion reactors just like mine, and guess what the only source of tritium around was?

I wasn’t eager to siphon off any of my limited fuel supply right now, but I might have to. There were designs that could run on a tritium-deuterium mix, but not ordinary hydrogen. Proton-proton fusion is hard, and even Mirai technology needed a few tons of equipment to manage it. So if I wanted warbots, I was going to have to cut into my personal fuel supply.

Well, I had almost two grams of tritium. I could spare a little of that, I’d just have to be careful not to get carried away.

By the time Hope informed me that she had a network connection my new bot factory was working on a pair of close defense bots, while the original fabricator laid down an awesome set of fully tricked-out armor for me. The life support in the refuge area was back up and running, and I’d even been able to grab a quick snack of emergency rations.

“Alright, let’s see what these codes are good for. Hope, I assume you’ve got some pretty amazing e-war software just in case?”

“Electronic warfare was primarily handled by my crew,” she replied. “But my core communication protocols and networking hardware are all proven secure. I’m certainly not going to get hacked by these primitives. The most they could hope to accomplish would be to find the bot that we’re using to connect to their network, and even that would require a physical search.”

“Perfect. Keep an eye on things, then, and pull the plug if the recon bot is in danger of being spotted. I don’t want to give away any clues, and I might end up getting distracted here.”

I logged in to the Masu-kai network using the code Akio had given me, and found myself looking at some kind of secret communication layer that was hidden inside the regular system traffic. Someone must have been paying attention because I got a connection request in less than a second. That opened a simple videoconference link.

“Alice!” Akio’s image said. “I was afraid something had happened to you.”

“Nope, I got away clean. What about you, though? I didn’t think you were going to make it out of there.”

He grimaced. “It appears that I didn’t, actually. Or at least, my embodied copy didn’t. I’m afraid that I’m technically an infomorph.”

“You are? Awesome! I was really worried about whether your backup system would work. You and your dad trusted that Yamashida guy way too much.”

“Believe me, I’m well aware of that. I’ve been trying to convince father for years now, but he insists that I’m just being paranoid. So, what happened? Uncle Noburu is telling everyone I bumbled into a tankbot and got shot, but I lost my datalink just after you found the mirror.”

“Oh, that wasn’t the real Yata no Kagami,” I told him. “If you run a high-res IR scanner over the box you’ll see ‘replica’ written all over it in kanji. I was going to tell you, but then your uncle pulled his whole big backstabbing thing. Here, you gave me a memory backup to deliver if I got the chance.”

I sent him the file, and he spent several seconds digesting it.

“What a mess,” he said. “I’ve been vetting my own people carefully to make sure of their loyalty, but I was never able to do that with father’s marines.”

“Well, he can’t have everyone under his control or he would have already taken over. Right?”

“True, although the backing of the other clan lords is also a critical issue. If he simply assassinated father and declared himself oyabun the other clans would contest his claim, and the Masu-kai would probably fracture into multiple organizations in the end. The prestige of finding the Yata no Kagami would help considerably, though, and there are a number of clans who could be bribed to support his claim.”

“Or he could just hire the Azure Star to spend a few months blowing up anyone who argues,” I pointed out. “Are you sure he doesn’t know about you?”

“As sure as I can be. Father had my core design work done in Alzone, and we’ve both been careful about keeping the important parts secret. I have an inner cadre of agents who are used to communicating with me this way, but I’ve encouraged them to think that I just use body doubles a lot. The only people who should know the truth are the two of us and father. Well, and possibly Noriko. She’s annoyingly good at digging up secrets.”

“Who is Noriko?”

He huffed. “Everyone has a theory, but no one seems to know for sure. She likes to appear as a kitsune with four or five tails, and she’s been meddling in Masu-kai affairs for at least thirty years now. Everyone seems to think she’s an agent for one of their rivals, but I’m pretty sure she’s more than that. No one human could have spent that long playing mind games with so many paranoid schemers without getting caught.”

“So she’s one of the transhuman AIs?” I said. “Great, so there’s no telling what she wants.”

Akio smiled. “Every time I think I have your measure you surprise me again. How do you know about the Lurkers, Alice?”

I shrugged. “I’ve met one. It seemed kind of nice, though I guess most people would have trouble relating to someone who only talks in math. He did warn me that neither of the ones who can communicate easily with humans is trustworthy, but I’m not sure how much I can rely on his advice. Did you know that Noriko warned me away from you, back at the palace?”

“Did she, now? That’s interesting. The last time I spoke to her she dropped hints about your ancestry, and acted like she wanted to see us together.”

“Great. I guess she’s after something deeper than the usual human social games, then. Trying to make you all so paranoid you evolve yourselves into superhuman schemers, or something crazy like that.”

“Possibly. But we can worry about that some other time, Alice. Are you safe where you are? I still have hopes of engineering a counter-coup here, but it isn’t going to be easy. Or quick.”

“Don’t rush on my account,” I told him. “I’m fine for now, and you’re probably only going to get one chance at this. I’m just glad to hear you’ve got a plan. Do you know if the Square Deal got away?”

“Yes. I still can’t believe they managed to jump right out of the hangar like that,” he said, shaking his head. “No matter how good their hyperspace converter is, you’d think a transition that close to so much mass would wreck them. But they’d already dropped out of the Gamma Layer by the time our ships got there, and they seem to be faster than our drone carriers. Uncle Noburu is so angry the officers are all terrified that he’s going to execute someone.”

“So they’re going to escape? That’s a relief.”

Akio got an uncomfortable look. “Well, most of them.”

My heart sank. “Oh, no. Someone wasn’t on the ship?”

“One of the techs was helping with the setup on that feedstock processor,” he said reluctantly. “The marines received orders to detain her before she realized there was a problem.”

“Which one?” I asked, not wanting to hear the answer.

“A foxgirl named Lina.”

I felt my hands clench into fists. “Where is she?”

“Alice, you can’t possibly mean to rescue her. She’s on the frigate by now. Even if you could get there somehow, the detention center is heavily guarded.”

“So I should just leave her in their hands? She’s a class three AI, Akio. I don’t imagine they’ll care much what happens to her.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Akio, what are they going to do with her?”

“I’m sure she has backups.”

“Akio! What are they going to do to her?”

He sighed. “Standard procedure would be to interrogate her, and then either turn her or dispose of her.”

“Interrogate her? How? She isn’t going to betray her pack no matter what anyone tells her, and her tamper proofing would keep anyone from messing with her hardware.”

“Androids aren’t actually immune to brainwashing,” he said hesitantly. “You can’t change their core programming, but if you pull the AI core and interface it with an extreme VR environment for a few subjective years-”

“Damn it!” I shouted. “They’re going to torture her? How can you be so calm about this?”

“She’s only a tech, Alice.”

“She’s my friend, Akio! I’m not going to abandon her to some horrible hell VR just because it’s convenient.”

“I don’t see how we can do anything about it, Alice. Most of the crew are still loyal to me, I think. But the marines and bridge crews are all in Uncle Noburu’s pocket.”

I massaged my forehead, and tried to think. The frigate was stationed a good hundred kloms from the wreck, and even with Mirai tech I doubted I could sneak any warbots on board. The Emperor’s Hope might have a working weapon or two somewhere, but there was no way my little reactor could power anything that would damage a frigate. The detention center was bound to be run by Yamashida’s people, so there was no hope of just having them fake the interrogation either.

Finally, an idea came to me.

“Akio? What about the shuttle pilots?”

Chapter 29

“We’re doomed,” the pilot grumbled morosely. “They’ll catch us for sure, and then we’ll all be executed. I’ll never see my pack again.”

The furry canine morph wrung her hands nervously, her tail lashing in agitation. I tried to contain my impatient response. She was obviously just a low-level flunky, and she definitely wasn’t made for fighting. Her uniform was just a pair of shorts and a halter top, without armor or even a basic sidearm, and her body was actually organic. I probably shouldn’t be surprised that she was afraid.

“Calm down, Nari. Your master and I know what we’re doing. They’re expecting you to head back to the ship in a few minutes, right?”

“Yes, my lady. Division Three has their daily standup meeting in forty minutes, and Director Song insists on having everyone attend in person. There are always crew chiefs who need to be shuttled over. But that’s just the problem, my lady. What if one of them reports us?”

I turned to the pair of significantly less furry and better dressed inugami who were waiting with us. “Is that going to be a problem?”

The taller one, an Amazon type with big, pointy ears, answered first. “No, my lady. We’re loyal retainers of the Himura clan. We would never betray the young lord’s secrets.”

This time I couldn’t suppress my eye roll. “I know that. Akio gave me your encryption keys, and I’ve been watching all your network traffic since we met. I was asking if you’re sure there’s no one else who might need to catch a ride on this shuttle.”

They exchanged disconcerted looks. The shorter one, a curvy inugami with a really bushy tail, answered this time. “Not for this meeting, my lady. Everyone else in our division is accounted for. But sometimes there will be managers from other divisions who show up unexpectedly.”

“We’re all loaded up, Mistress,” Emla called cheerily from the hatch that led back the shuttle’s cargo hold.

“There, problem solved,” I said. “Seal up and prep for launch, Nari. If anyone else comes along they’ll just have to wait for the next shuttle.”

The pilot’s ears drooped. “Yes, my lady.”

As the passenger door slid shut I put my hand on her shoulder. “Hey. You’re going to be alright, Nari. I take care of my people, and Akio is trusting me with you. Just follow my directions, and I’ll get you home safe and sound.”

She seemed shocked by my concern. “You’d trouble yourself over the fate of a simple tech, my lady?”

“This whole operation is aimed at rescuing a tech, Nari. Do you have backup support?”

“No, my lady. It isn’t worth bothering with for simple mass produced girls like me.”

It was a good thing there was a fight coming, because I really wanted to shoot someone. Instead, I patted her shoulder reassuringly.

“That’s alright, Nari. Just stay on the shuttle, then, and keep it ready for a quick exit. Can you do that for me?”

“Yes, my lady! Thank you, my lady. Command me as you will, I’m at your disposal.”

She scurried off to the bridge, suddenly all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Yeah, that’s a tech for you. All she needed was a little reassurance that someone cared.

I turned to the crew chiefs with a smile. “How about you two?”

“We have backups, Lady Long,” the short one said. “As long as the young master wins this fight we’ll be fine. Is there anything we can do to assist you?”

“If we get really unlucky and the shuttle takes critical damage I’ll need you to either fix it, or help Nari commandeer one that’s intact,” I told her. “Otherwise just keep your heads down, and stay safe.”

“Are you sure, my lady? We’re prepared to fight for our lord, and we do have basic infantry skills,” the taller one said.

“Trust me, ladies. I’ve got the fighting covered. Emla, let’s get suited up.”

The shuttle was a tiny model, with no weapons or proper crew quarters. Just a cockpit, a passenger compartment with a dozen or so comfy seats, and a modest cargo bay. The yakuza bosses obviously thought it was too small to be any threat, because according to Akio the boat bay was only guarded by a couple of marines and their bots. They were about to get a heck of a surprise, because the shuttle’s cargo space was currently crammed full of sleek black and red engines of destruction.

Standard bots would have taken much too long to build, but I’d found to my amazement that the Mirai had a whole separate tech tree of special quick-fab models. Designed to be thrown together in a hurry out of salvaged materials, they didn’t perform quite as well as the normal models. But they still made the bots I’d trained on with Chief West look like cheap toys.

I’d used an awful lot of my tritium reserve fueling them up, though, and even so they didn’t have much staying power. Enough for my plan, and a little extra, but if I got bogged down into a long fight they could start running out. I’d have to make sure that didn’t happen.

I slipped into my powered armor, and felt the suit settle into place around me. It fit me like a second skin, its systems interfacing with mine so seamlessly it felt more like an extension of my body than a piece of equipment. Suddenly I was a hundred times stronger than normal, with an amazing sensor suite and field emitters far more powerful than the ones in my body. A grenade launcher peeked over my left shoulder, ready to launch volleys of deadly guided munitions from the big magazine on my back, while the beam director of a powerful UV laser peered over my right shoulder looking for targets. Particle beam cannons mounted along both forearms gave me some long-range firepower, although hopefully my gunbots would be doing all the shooting.

I picked up the long, bulky shape of my chosen melee weapon, a rocket hammer with a two-meter shaft and a pointed head of hyperdense composite that weighed almost two hundred kilograms. Between my suit’s field and the fusion torch on the back of the massive hammerhead it could easily reach supersonic speeds, striking hard enough to crush warbots or smash through light bulkheads. The rocket doubled as a heavy plasma flamer, too.

I grinned at Emla. “Ready, partner?”

She’d decided that the frigate’s corridors wouldn’t have room for a giant dragon body, but Strange Loop Sleuth had given her other tricks. Instead she’d built two extra bodies for herself, and each of them had swallowed a Mirai compact fusion reactor to improve her power output. All three of her bodies were in dragon form, and they’d bulked up to a couple hundred kilograms apiece. I pitied any melee bot that tried to get past her.

“Ready, Alice. We’re going to kick butt this time.”

“You bet we are, Emla.”

Leaders are supposed to project confidence, so I tried not to let on how nervous I was. By any normal standard of logic Nari was right. Taking on a whole frigate full of marines with just a few dozen bots was suicide. Granted, the plan was to move fast and keep them too confused to react properly until we escaped, but still. I was only one girl.

Hope hadn’t tried to talk me out of it, though. When I’d come up with this crazy scheme she’d just chuckled, and started offering helpful suggestions. Like this kind of thing was expected of me, and she had complete faith that I could pull it off.

Was that what my family had been like?

If so, I had some big shoes to fill. But it gave me hope that I wasn’t making a terrible mistake.

The shuttle was coming in to land now, and Nari’s chatter with traffic control still sounded perfectly normal. That was one hurdle down. They’d directed us to the aft boat bay, so unfortunately we were going to be too far away from the bridge to take a shot at Lord Yamashida. He’d be somewhere in the secure citadel zone that was reserved for VIPs, with a company of marines and a bunch of fixed defenses between him and my forces. But the detention center wasn’t too far from the boat bay.

Neither was engineering, a detail I intended to take advantage of.

I reached out to the bots around me, feeling for the control channels Hope had showed me. It was as easy as breathing. Unlike the commercial bots I’d trained with they were designed to interface with me, and their IFF and data security were both good enough to satisfy my internal safeguards. So instead of trying to manage them all remotely like a juggler with too many balls, I felt my consciousness expand as I swallowed their computing nodes into myself.

The deflector swarms became mine first. Dozens of fast little hover units, designed to work in perfect harmony to extend and amplify my manipulator field. Their sensors were my eyes, their emitters my fingers, all just as natural as if I’d been born with them.

Then the gunbots, slow and heavily armored, but packing a mean punch. The breeching bots with their plasma flamers and micro-missiles. Little fist-sized transports full of microbot swarms, and assassin bots made of liquid metal. I’d prepared a bunch of surprises to keep the enemy off balance, and none of it was going to be running on some clumsy remote control. Every bot was running an extension of my mind, and we were all networked together into one seamless gestalt.

Emla joined the network, surrendering herself to our union with the same absolute trust as the last time we’d done this. Her resolute faith stilled my nervous doubts. We could do this. We had to.

The shuttle touched down.

I turned on my cloaking, and every bot in the hold followed suit. Even Emla vanished, becoming nothing but a faint distortion to most of my sensors. Only our radio traffic and emitter fields gave us away, and no one seems to track those as closely as they should.

I opened a com channel. “Akio? We’re starting.”

“Good luck, Alice. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Then the hatch opened, and every body under my command burst into motion.

The boat bay held another half-dozen shuttles and a gaggle of techs, but I immediately zeroed in on the defenders. An inugami marine up in the elevated control booth that overlooked the bay, along with a couple of techs. Another marine by the main hatch, with a couple of infantry bots. Six gunbots on the ceiling, covering the whole room. An assault team waiting in each corner, and four more infantry bots patrolling the row of parked shuttles.

Particle beams lanced up towards the gunbots, overmatching their armor and blowing them apart in spectacular fireballs. I threw myself across the room in the blink of an eye, and smashed the huge diamond window that protected the control room with my hammer. Emla was right with me, two of her bodies covering me while the third dove through the hole I’d made with a swarm of breaching bots on her heels. Her gun thundered, and the marine’s head exploded.

By then the marine down by the hangar door was dead too, taken down by a particle beam from one of my gunbots. Small flying mirrors popping up above the tops of the shuttles, allowed my lasbots to cut down the patrols with lasers before they could even deploy smoke. The lances of light struck with typical laser precision, hitting each target exactly on its most vulnerable points and reducing them to wreckage in milliseconds. The whole fight was over before you could say ‘speed blitz’.

I became visible as I swung into the control room, and pointed at the nearest tech. “You! Seal the hangar,” I shouted over the howl of escaping air.

“Y-yes, ma’am,” she stammered, and slapped a control. The big hatch overhead started to rumble shut.

“Please don’t hurt us,” another one pleaded. “We’re not combatants.”

The noise level dropped as my bots laid out a deflector field that stopped any more air from escaping the hole, and started to file into the control room. I was already heading for the door.

“Stand over there, put your hands on your head, and don’t resist when the bot comes to drain your power cells,” I ordered.

They hurried to comply, but most of my attention was already moving on to the next step. There were plenty of cameras in the boat bay and control room, and someone would be setting off alarms by now. I opened the door, and sent a breaching team through.

The corridor on the other side was empty, just as I’d hoped. But the detention center was eleven decks down and a hundred meters aft of the boat bay, so we needed to create as much confusion as possible about what was going on. I sent a combat team ghosting up the hall towards the ship’s bow, hoping Yamashida would assume this was an assassination attempt, and led the rest of my force down the nearest lift shaft.

Something must have been monitoring the load on the shaft’s manipulator field, because we barely got two decks down before the gravity in the shaft reversed and tried to force us back up. With the overpowered levitation fields my bots all flew on that barely made a difference to our rate of progress, but then an armored hatch slid shut to block the shaft a few decks below us. I bailed out well above that point, and had my bots blow open the doors for three adjacent decks to create some confusion about where I was going. The first intersection after that I sent a combat team aft towards engineering to create more distractions.

Suddenly the air filled with the sound of warning claxons, and an amplified voice shouting instructions. “Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert! All hands to action stations!”

Akio’s people were supposed to start creating false reports of disturbances all over the ship at this point. I’d been hoping the security sensors would have trouble spotting my group, and give me time to reach the detention center while the enemy troops chased after ghosts. But I hadn’t counted on the number of crew that were suddenly scrambling through the halls after the alarm went off. How many people were on this ship, anyway? A frigate only needs around a hundred crew, which wouldn’t have been much of an obstacle in a kilometer-long starship. But there were frantic dog girls everywhere now. Were they all servants, flunkies and bodyguards, or what?

The first time someone ran right into one of my invisible bots and started screaming about assassins I knew my hopes of a stealthy trip to the detention center were ruined. But by then the team I’d sent forward was plowing through a detachment of marines, while the ones I’d sent aft were almost in position to plant a nuclear demo charge on one of the ship’s fusion reactors.

Hopefully that would divert attention from my real goal for long enough. But every passing second was a chance that someone would realize I was coming for Lina and move her, so from this point on everything depended on speed.

I shoved the shouting inugami away with my manipulator field, and arranged my bots for a coordinated fire plan. Every laser I had lanced out at the same instant to strike a specific location on the floor, and then shifted to draw an arc of fire across the deck. The surface of the smart matter armor vaporized, leaving a shallow trench and a cloud of plasma that would have blocked further progress if my weapons hadn’t already been shifting their aim. Instead my particle beam cannons fired one by one, carefully swiveling their beams to play along the trench as the arc swiftly grew into a complete circle.

It was still only a couple of cems deep, but the armor below that would be softened by the vast amount of heat I’d just dumped into it. Before the heat management system could cool it off again I stepped into the middle of the circle, and brought my rocket hammer down in a blast of atomic fire.

The damaged armor broke with a thunderous crash, and the plug of decking went careening down to smash through a layer of conduits and piping into the next deck below. My bots were moving through the gap before the fireball even cleared, checking for enemies and scanning the surrounding structure for weak spots.

We dropped three more decks in quick succession, before we reached an internal armor layer that was too thick for that tactic to work. Then we headed aft, blew a bulkhead with one of the half-kiloton demo charges I’d brought, and found a lift shaft that took us most of the way to our destination.

The team I’d sent into engineering set off a much larger demo charge, and the whole ship shuddered. The aft fusion reactor was completely wrecked by the sixty kiloton explosion, and a whole bay full of engineering bots went with it. My other team was fighting a running battle through one of the marine barracks areas, catching a bunch of the inugami still scrambling into their armor and mowing them down easily. So far so good.

Then we ran into our first real resistance. My breaching bots swarmed out of the lift shaft into a hail of mass driver fire, from enemy bots and several ceiling-mounted weapon emplacements. I managed to dodge or swat aside most of the projectiles, but one of them hit a bot and blew its leg off.

Normal doctrine would have been to pull back, lay down smoke and try to flank them, but there was no time for that kind of thing now. Instead I sent a volley of micro-missiles at the enemy, distracting their point defense lasers for the couple of seconds it took to flood the hall with bigger bots. By the time Emla and I exited the lift shaft there were so many overlapping deflector fields across the hall that their mass driver rounds just bounced off, and neither their shields nor their armor were much use against my particle beams. We charged down the hall, overrunning their position and wiping them out in a few moments of furious fighting.

Some of my bots were damaged in the action, but all of them were still partially operational. Unlike normal designs these Mirai bots didn’t have any single points of failure. There were always three or four small fusion reactors instead of one big one, and their power cells and computing power were distributed all through their structure. No wonder the salvage teams had found so few damaged bots back on the wreck. You pretty much had to blow one of these things to pieces to stop it, and even then the bigger ones might just fix themselves and come back for more in an hour or two.

Good. I was going to need all the advantages I could get, because the enemy was starting to get their act together. Someone must have finally figured out that I was using their own com system to communicate with my other two teams, because I suddenly lost network access. Then I started taking fire from behind just as I hit another fortified position around the last blast door in my path.

I couldn’t nuke this one, or I might catch Lina by accident. But I’d come prepared.

My assault units swarmed the position, hosing down the turrets and bots there with plasma flamers and then dismantling the survivors in close combat. I laid down smoke behind us, with a few cloaked recon drones to provide targeting data for my gunbots while they traded fire with the force to my rear. Then I hurried to the blast door, with one of the specialized bots I’d brought along following just behind me.

“This thing is sixty cems thick,” Emla said. “How are we going to get through it?”

“It’s a two step process,” I told her. “First, we get it nice and hot.”

My bots were already doing that. The jet from a plasma flamer is usually well over a hundred thousand degrees, more than hot enough to melt anything. Of course, they’d overheat and melt themselves before they made much of an impression on something as big as this blast door. It had a lot more mass than my swarm of bots, and the network of heat channels woven through the armor was already working frantically to cool off the overheated surface layers. But heat channels leak, especially at high temperature. The whole thickness of the door was rapidly heating up, and it would take time to cool it off again.

I let my bots fire continuously for thirty seconds or so, until they had to stop to cool down. Then the big destructor bot floated forward, hesitating only a moment to let the molten surface of the door slump away. A big, round abrasion tool swept over the surface, grinding away a few more millimeters of armor that had been softened by the heat. Then it withdrew, and the meter-wide mouth at the front of the bot made contact.

Most people would tell you that smart matter is immune to being disassembled by nanotech devices. Breaking apart tough materials takes a lot of energy, something nanites have only a very limited supply of. The stuff also has its own defensive nanites, along with a transport network to move them around and microscopic factories that can build more of them on demand.

But nanotech tends to be pretty temperature sensitive. Heat them up a few hundred degrees, and most of those fancy gadgets quit working until they have a chance to cool off. Hot materials are more reactive, too, and chemical reactions run a lot faster at high temperatures.

The solution that filled the destructor bot’s tanks was a very simple nanomachine, more like an acid molecule than a proper nanite. At room temperature they were sluggish things, mildly caustic but not especially dangerous. Dump them onto a mass of hot armor, though, and they’ll eat through the diamondoid structural mesh like water poured onto cotton candy. With that gone the armor lost most of its hardness, and the honeycomb structure of other components that was left behind crumbled quickly under my bot’s drills.

The enemy smoke cloud rolled down the hall towards our position as the bot tunneled through the blast door, and I had to focus most of my attention on the fight. There had to be dozens of enemy bots creeping towards us to generate that much smoke, but my people had an answer for that too. The next volley of micro-missiles I fired had field emitters instead of warheads, and when they hit the edge of the smoke cloud they activated to form a single continuous field that repelled the air and smoke particles. They cleared the smoke from fifteen meters of corridor before they got shot down, exposing three squads of assault bots that I gunned down before they could refresh their cover.

I was pretty sure I’d managed to pick off some of their gunbots, too. Their advance stalled momentarily, and I could just picture the marines hiding around a corner somewhere trying to decide what to do. If I were them I’d bring in some tank bots to provide covering fire heavy enough to punch through my deflectors, and then drop the smoke and send in a wave of shield bots protecting some assault and breaching bots. That or just quit worrying about collateral damage, and nuke my position. I was kind of counting on them not wanting to do too much damage to their own ship.

Then the destructor bot broke through.

Naturally there were bots on the other side that immediately opened fire on it, and its tunneling mechanism was smashed by a volley of heavy mass driver rounds. But it had served its purpose. I shifted it sideways before it could be completely wrecked, and sent a small swarm of breaching bots and little recon drones through the hole.

Their sensors showed a good-sized room that was obviously supposed to be a guard post. Four massive humanoid bots stood in the corners, and there were a dozen or so turrets on the ceiling mounting an assortment of stunners, machine guns and capture foam projectors. A narrow hallway on the other side was probably a security checkpoint. It was partially hidden by some kind of portable barricade, with a group of armed inugami crouched behind it.

I frowned. Shouldn’t there be marines guarding the detention center, with real warbots? On second thought, they probably didn’t trust regular troops to guard this place. But then, shouldn’t whatever secret spy group was in charge down here have their own troops?

Whatever. I didn’t have time to puzzle over it. If the enemy wanted to be dumb, I was happy to take advantage. My breaching bots had barely started to exchange fire with the defenders when I sent one of Emla’s bodies through the hole in the blast door, and followed her through.

Two of the giant mechs were busy shooting at my little melee bots by then, but the other two both shot Emla. For a brief moment as she passed through the breach there was no room to dodge, and dozens of rounds from their autocannons smashed into her shields.

Even with my field bolstering hers we couldn’t turn all of it. I winced as several rounds tore through her body, mangling her arms and wings, and barely missing me. But a lot more were deflected to ricochet around the room, and with careful control of the angling of our deflectors I managed to control where most of them ended up. Two of the inugami behind the barricade went down in a spray of blood, and none of my own bots were hit.

Then I was through, with room to maneuver. I ducked around the hail of fire, my point defense laser blowing the few bullets I couldn’t dodge out of the air, and threw myself across the room at one of the mechs.

I’d thought I was fast on my own, but my acceleration in that suit was just insane. A million Newtons of peak force from my manipulator field, and only a hundred kilograms of mass? I could cross the room two or three times in a second, breaking the sound barrier each time, and that was without factoring in the fusion torch on my rocket hammer.

I caved in the first mech’s chest with a blow of my hammer, fired a plasma grenade into its face, and launched myself away again before the grenade landed. Across the room I smashed another mech’s right arm, where its guns were mounted, spun with a flash of rocket thrust and slammed my hammer into its side hard enough to send it flying into mech number three. I pushed off the wall and blinded mech four’s sensors with my laser for a split second while I threw myself back across the room, and knocked its head off with my hammer. A couple of plasma grenades into the hole ought to keep it from getting back up, and then I was coming back for the two that were tangled up in each other.

Emla’s other two bodies followed me through the breach, and quickly picked off the weapons on the ceiling while our bots took out the security forces. A few more whacks took the big bots out of action, and then-

“Stop! Stand down, or your friend dies!”

Down past the security checkpoint stood another uniformed inugami, holding a gun to Lina’s head. The foxgirl was naked, looking pale and frightened, with her hands shackled behind her back.

I cut the gun in half with my point defense laser, and launched myself down the narrow hallway as fast as I could. The walls of the security checkpoint warped under the force of my sudden acceleration, and when I braked the impact tore up the deck plates. But even so, in the split second it took me to get there Lina had already twisted out of her captor’s grip and kicked her away.

That made it easy to put my fist through the bitch’s head. It disintegrated into a spray of broken armor and shattered electronics, and the android collapsed.

“Alice? Is that you?!”

I brought my deflector swarm in to hover around Lina, wrapping her in layers of protective shields. Then I let myself drop to the deck, and dialed back my field strength to a sustainable level. I wanted to hug her, but my armor was way too hot for that to be safe.

“Yeah, it’s me Lina. Are you alright?”

“I think so. They were still running diagnostic probes, trying to figure out the best way to burrow into my head,” she said, hugging herself. “Fuck! I thought they had me, there. Thanks for the rescue. But how the hell did you pull it off?”

“We’re not out of the woods yet,” I warned her. “But I brought you some armor, and I’ve got a decent exit plan.”

A fire team of bots caught up with me, and I sent them to scout the rest of the detention block. Lina’s eyes went wide when she saw them, and then she turned to give my armor an appraising look.

“Is that Mirai equipment you’re using, Alice?”

“Um, maaaybe?”

“Awesome! Hang on a sec. I need to stop by the break room and get some popcorn, so I can watch you kick yakuza butt in style.”

I laughed. “Your whole pack is nuts, Lina. You know that, right?”

“Says the girl who stormed a yakuza warship to rescue a tech.”

“They were going to torture you,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, they were. I owe you big time for this, Alice.”

A faint tremor went through the ship’s artificial gravity field. No, not just one. A faint, nearly continuous fluctuation. What the heck?

Lina frowned, obviously feeling the same thing. “Are they launching drones? Alice, you have better sensors than me. Can you give me a data feed?”

“Sure. Here you go.”

“Oh, shit. They’re scrambling everything they’ve got. What’s going on out there?”

Chapter 30

“I wish I could get a sensor feed,” I grumbled. “Akio set me up with access to a lot of the ship’s systems, but I can’t log in because someone keeps killing the com system wherever I go.”

“Is there a security console around here? Or maybe a damage control station?” Lina asked. Then she caught sight of the armor one of my bots was carrying in for her, and her eyes lit up. “Oh, sweet! Is that a combat engineer suit?”

“You bet. It’s a Mirai design, of course, but I’m sure you can figure it out. It comes with skill packs that are supposed to be compatible with your OS.”

Lina put her hand on the suit, triggering the login process that left her in control of it. I saw her eyes glaze over as it unfolded out of storage mode, and wrapped itself around her.

“These skill packs are amazing,” she said after a moment. “Normally I’d have to spend a few days practicing to really absorb everything properly, but there’s a bunch of adaptive integration features that are doing most of the work for me. Okay, I’m good. Find me a hard-wired network connection, and I’ll get us in.”

Another shift in the ship’s artificial gravity announced that it had just gone to full thrust. What were they doing?

“This way,” I said hurriedly. My bots had already found a side room that was set up as a security control station, with a bunch of screens the guards could use to monitor the detention complex. “The workstations are all shut down, though. Do you really thing you can make them work?”

She poked her head into the room, and rubbed her hands. “Piece of cake. Stations like these always have a local override that lets you turn them back on. Otherwise the guys in the security control room could take over the whole ship and lock everyone else out, which would be pretty stupid.”

As she spoke she ran a sensor over the workstations, and then sent some little toolbots floating down behind one. They opened a panel, and fiddled with something inside. The screen lit up with a login prompt.

“Bingo! Here you go, Alice.”

“Thanks, Lina. Let’s see here.”

I fed the console my ID, scanned the datanet looking for things I could access, and hurriedly pulled up an exterior image. The camera’s field of view was filled with the stroboscopic flashes of nuclear blasts in a vacuum, and the dancing glare of drive flames from thousands of drones.

Someone was staging a serious attack on the Masu-kai. So much for my exit plan, then. I’d been planning to leave my bots on board as a distraction while I snuck away, but there was no way a shuttle was going to make it through that furball. Especially not the under gunned, practically defenseless shuttle I’d come in on. No matter what IFF I showed, one side or the other would blow us away the moment we launched.

As I groped for another plan, a new window popped up on the screen in front of me. An incoming call from Akio.

“Alice! I’m glad to see that you’re still alive. Did you find your tech?”

He just didn’t get it, did he? I put my arm around Lina, and pulled her into the camera’s field of view.

“Yes, this is Lina. What’s going on?”

He pulled up a tactical display. One of the yakuza drone carriers had returned, but it was a crippled wreck. Three drone carriers of a different design had followed it, along with a frigate and a pair of light gunships. I checked their ID codes, and gasped.

“Those are Sleeping Dragon ships!”

“I knew the captain had a plan,” Lina grinned. “I bet they’ve been lurking somewhere around here just waiting for their cue.”

Akio scowled. “You mean Captain Sokol has been planning treachery too?”

Lina rolled her eyes. “No, we were just ready for you guys to start backstabbing each other and cleaning up the witnesses. Come on, did you really think we’d believe that a bunch of yakuza were going to peacefully split a score this big?”

Akio sniffed, and turned to me. “Do you always allow your techs to carry on like that, Alice?”

“She’s not my property, Akio. She’s my friend, and you might want to try being nice to her considering how badly your guys are getting their butts kicked right now. Lina, I don’t suppose you know what their plan is?”

“Of course not. But I know the captain doesn’t leave people behind. They’ll probably try to capture the ship and rescue us.”

“Uncle Noburu will never stand for that,” Akio said. “If he can’t win this fight he’ll run.”

I reached out across the ship’s datanet, and found that my other teams were still fighting. The team in engineering was pretty close to their second objective now, too.

“What if he can’t get away?” I asked.

Akio shook his head. “He has too much pride to allow himself to be captured by gaijin. If he’s cornered he’ll order the ship to self-destruct.”

“Your ships have self-destruct devices?” Lina exclaimed. “Jeez, that’s retarded. No professional navy does stuff like that.”

“You may not have noticed, Lina, but the Masu-kai are not a professional navy,” Akio said dryly. “To my uncles, the fact that anyone with the proper codes can destroy our ships at will is a strength, not a vulnerability.”

“I am not going to die here just because some devious jerk is feeling suicidal,” I declared. “What’s the yield on the destruct charge?”

“I’m not sure. Several gigatons, probably. Why?”

“Could we survive that if we ball up and go full shields, Alice?” Emla asked.

I ran the math, and grimaced. It didn’t look promising.

“Maybe. If it’s just one bomb, and we’re at the other end of the ship, and we shape our deflectors just right and overload them at the right moment. But even then it doesn’t look good. You’d probably make it, and so would some of the bots. But Lina and I are way too squishy to survive a shock like that, and Akio wouldn’t make it out either.”

Well, if Akio was really an infomorph I could probably just store a copy of him on one of the bots. But sooner or later Lina would report any secrets she learned to Chief Benson, so I couldn’t mention that without betraying Akio’s trust. Besides, it didn’t help the rest of us. Was Lina’s AI core rugged enough to survive getting launched into space like mass driver round? If my body was killed while I was inhabiting a bunch of warbots could I recover somehow?

A salvo of heavy mass driver rounds from the Sleeping Dragon frigate slammed into the ship’s deflectors. Several of them punched through to blow craters in the yakuza ship’s armor, wiping away emitter panels and a cluster of point defense lasers. Considering how badly the yakuza were outnumbered, this wasn’t going to be a long battle.

“I’ve been working on a counter-coup, but my people aren’t ready yet,” Akio said. “My uncle has too many warbots on the ship for a simple uprising to work, and trying to assassinate him isn’t feasible.”

Lina cursed. “So we’re trapped on a ship full of yakuza in the middle of a space battle, and as soon as they realize they’re going to lose they’ll blow us all up? Fuck!”

It did sound pretty hopeless. Frantically I pulled together everything I knew about this mess, looking for a way to survive. There had to be something I could do. I spun through one scenario after another, all the mysterious instinctive mechanisms in my subconscious working overtime.

Escape seemed impossible. There were too many unknowns, too many risks. Besides, I hated the idea of running away. So far I’d smashed everything in my way without so much as breaking a nail. I should be crushing the rest of these losers, not…

Wait.

Primitive biological threat assessment.

Yes. That just might work. Gaia, it was so obvious. An eager grin stole across my face, and I chuckled.

“No, Lina. We aren’t trapped on this ship with a bunch of thugs, backstabbers and poorly trained light infantry. They’re trapped in here with us. Akio, it’s do or die time. Can your people get me comlinks to my other teams, and feed me data on what Yamashida’s troops are doing?”

“Yes. But it will only take a few minutes for the security crew to realize what’s happening, and send marines to put a stop to our interference.”

“Then I’ll hit the security room first, and your people can run things from there. I can spare a fire team to guard the door and make sure no one bothers them.”

“What about the marines? Alice, you can’t be planning to fight the whole garrison.”

“I know that, Akio. I’m using quick fab bots that aren’t nearly as durable as the real thing, and I didn’t have enough tritium to equip the force like I wanted to. If we have to fight for too long I’m going to start running low on fuel, and I only have a handful of plasma warheads. But they don’t know that. They don’t even know how many bots I have, because I came in cloaked and half my force hasn’t needed to shoot at anything yet.

“Don’t you remember how terrified everyone is of Inner Sphere war machines? All I have to do is hit them hard without seeming to take damage, and they’ll panic. Especially if your people are sabotaging everything they do behind their backs. Heck, have the data rats tell them I’m hacking their systems somehow. We both know that’s impossible, but I bet Yamashida would believe it. Guys who live by trickery are always ready to believe someone else has a better trick.”

He gave me a dubious look. “What if it doesn’t work? Or works too well, and my uncle decides to take you with him?”

“I’ll just have to make sure I take out the self-destruct device before he decides to use it. Akio, we don’t have time for a safer plan. One of my distraction teams is on its way to blow the main drive right now, and how long do you think it will take Yamashida to decide things are hopeless after that? Either help me or don’t, but I have to move right now.”

He sighed. “Alright, Alice. I’ll send word to my agents.”

“Thank you.” I stepped away from the console, and turned to the girls. “Lina, I’m running a combat gestalt with Emla and the bots, so we’ll do all the heavy lifting. You just stay in the middle of the group and do damage control. Emla-3, you’re Lina’s bodyguard until this is over.”

“Got it!” One of Emla’s bodies said.

“Yes, ma’am,” Lina agreed.

This time I wasn’t trying to keep a low profile, or hide the fact that my team had more warbots than the others. The results were pretty painful for Yamashida’s troops.

They kept trying to smoke up and snipe from a distance, using the cameras built into the ship’s corridors to give them an idea of where I was. But their own smoke made their point defense lasers useless, and I’d split up half of my tritium supply to make a few dozen plasma warheads to put on my micro-missiles. The yield on the micro-fusion devices was only a tenth of a kiloton, but that was more than enough to wreck a squad of bots.

Half the marines that were trying to keep me pinned down in the detention block died to a plasma warhead, and then we overran their position and wiped out the ones that were hiding around corners. The next two groups didn’t do any better, and then we were storming the security control room. It was protected by the same kind of blast door as the detention center, but by that point Lina had gotten my destructor bot working again. After we’d tunneled through the door the techs inside weren’t much of a challenge.

My wireless datalink came back up as Emla and I cleared the room. I smashed one last security goon to pulp against the wall, and answered another call on Akio’s secret com network. This time it was a perky-looking catgirl on the line instead of Akio.

“Lady Long? I’m Agent Hana with DS Team Three. We’re just down the hall from you, and ready to move in at your command.”

“Great, the security room is all yours. Can you get me datalinks to my other teams?”

“We’re on it, my lady!”

Six catgirls dressed in armored spacesuits hurried into the room, and took over some of the consoles. Just as they started to work the ship bucked violently, the inertial compensators failing to completely even out an unexpected acceleration change.

“Too late,” I observed. “That was a demo charge taking out the main drive. Get me those datalinks, and then do what you can to feed me intel and confuse the enemy. I don’t suppose you know where the ship’s self-destruct device is?”

“Yes, my lady,” a calico catgirl answered. “We have the uncensored plans for the ship. But we don’t have anyone who can disarm it safely.”

“What, is it an antimatter device or something?”

“Of course not, my lady. That would be crazy. It’s just a fusion bomb inside an armored box, but the whole thing has extensive tamper-proofing.”

“No problem, then. I’ve still got another demo charge. Just pass the word to get our people out of that part of the ship”

She blanched. Silly spy types, always ignoring the simple solution. A nuke is a delicate piece of precision machinery, and you can’t set one off by blowing it up. Taking it out with my own nuke was perfectly safe.

Or maybe she was just concerned about the fact that it was buried near the center of the ship, and the venting system that protected most compartments from internal detonations didn’t extend there. A forty kiloton explosion was going to cause all sorts of havoc.

Well, good. The more confusion the better, because I didn’t have nearly as many bots as I would have liked. I had to leave a fire team behind to guard the security room, and most of the distraction team back in engineering had gotten blown up by my own bombs. I’d have to leave guards with the one I put on the self-destruct device, too, or the enemy would probably find and disable it before I could get to a safe distance.

Then again, they might not realize what I was after. The self-destruct bomb was inside the hyperspace converter, right in the middle of the ship. The bridge was just forward of the hyperspace converter, so it would look like that’s where I was going. Maybe I could do something with that?

I left Lina in the security room, thinking it was the safest place for her to be right now. Then I had to fight my way through a long maze of corridors and maintenance spaces to get to the bomb, although the going rapidly got easier as the techs worked to feed me information. Before long I had feeds showing me where most of the enemy marines were, which made it a lot easier to avoid or roll over their attempts to set ambushes. I also got back into contact with my other teams, finally.

There was an odd moment of dissonance when I restored the connections to the copies of myself that were running those bots. A momentary sense of cautious evaluation, before we merged back together into a seamless whole. We were all the same Alice, still, but I got the feeling that might not be true if we were separated for too long.

I didn’t have time to worry about that, though, because the enemy had started getting desperate. They were taking a pounding from the Sleeping Dragon ships, and they must have been pretty anxious to keep me from doing any more sabotage.

A normal gunbot couldn’t penetrate my team’s massed deflector shields, but they’d broken out some tanks that had much heavier weapons. They also started using their own plasma warheads, apparently deciding that damaging the ship was better than letting me continue my rampage. But neither move did them much good.

The first time I encountered a spider tank I’d already seen it coming in the data feeds I was getting, so I knew not to walk around the corner it was covering. Instead I sent in a cloud of invisible, insect-sized bots floating down the corridor to drop loads of paint and caustic chemicals on its sensor pickups. When the tank’s escort of close assault bots responded by hosing down the area with plasma flamers I used the distraction to have a gunbot pop around the corner and put a particle beam through the tank’s reactor.

Yes, my weapons were heavy enough to penetrate anything they could throw at me. Just one of the perks of a tech advantage.

Their slow, bulky plasma missiles were equally useless, since I never blocked my own point defense by hiding my whole formation behind a wall of smoke. Instead I kept smaller clouds trapped between the layers of my deflector shields, using them to hide myself and Lina while still leaving plenty of my bots with clear fields of fire. Thanks to my superior lasers it was easy to shoot down their missiles before they got anywhere near me.

I lost a few of my smaller bots to mines and cannon fire, but the threat I was really concerned about never materialized. They didn’t seem to have any decent lasbots. Like a lot of less professional military forces they just assumed that lasers were useless, because everyone would always be covered by smoke. That mistake made things a lot easier for me.

They tried to overwhelm me with numbers next. I softened them up with one of my remaining plasma warheads, and then merrily carved a path through the heart of their formation. The marines fell back frantically, throwing in more bots to slow me down as they tried to avoid contact. I picked a couple of them off with assassin bots, clever things of animated liquid that were even better at cloaking than my normal units. Too bad my regular bots were all too hot to cloak by this point, or they’d really be in trouble.

They were worried, but they weren’t quite panicking yet. How could I turn up the pressure a little more?

Maybe a little drama would do the trick. I unlimbered my hammer, had Emla merge the two bodies that were still with me, and waded into the melee with a two hundred kilogram dragon at my back.

A blast of plasma washed over my shields. I danced through a hail of cannon fire, smashing bots into the bulkheads left and right. Another thread of attention logged into the ship’s PA system, so I could chat with my opponents while I fought.

“Hey, little puppies. Are we having fun yet?”

My hammer’s rocket filled the whole corridor with atomic fire, melting smaller bots and blinding the big ones. I spun in a full circle and brought the business end down on an oversized melee bot that had tried to charge through the fire, crushing it into the deck.

“You came to my ship and took something of mine. Now it’s my turn to take something of yours.”

Emla intercepted a pair of heavy assault bots that were scrambling to meet me, and tore them apart with claws and teeth. Strange Loop Sleuth had done some neat work on using short-range manipulator fields as cutting implements, and the shriek of tortured metal that erupted whenever her claws made contact with a bot was just the right touch.

I flitted down a corridor, slapping more bots out of my way as I went, and got line of sight on one of the marines. A blast from my particle beams took her head off.

“Aw. Bad move, Hyun-mi. Maybe one of your squad mates can do better. Nana?”

My last assassin bot dropped off the ceiling to land on another marine’s back. It drove dozens of little spikes into the neck joint of her armor, popping the seal and allowing it to follow up with a spray of disassemblers. The inugami screamed as the nanobots ate into her neck, and then collapsed with a horrible gurgling noise.

“No? What about you, Eun-mi?”

My four remaining gunbots fired in unison, burning through two walls and a mass of machinery that wasn’t nearly as solid as it looked. The hapless marine was just starting to stiffen at the sound of her name when the particle beams punched through the wall she was hiding behind, and made equally short work of her armor.

“Come on, that was pathetic. Don’t any of you puppies know how to bite? In-sook? Ye-jin?”

I flashed through the increasingly disorganized mob of bots to smash a marine into paste with my hammer, while a cloaked micro-missile with a plasma warhead snuck around two corners and went off close enough to catch another one.

Then I was surrounded by bots that really wanted me dead, and for a minute I was too busy fighting to pull off more precision strikes. But the damage was done. The enemy marines were pulling back in a hurry, sending waves of bots in to keep me busy while they ran for their lives. I giggled.

“Aw, running away already? That’s okay, puppies.”

I sent an email to each of their personal accounts. Each one said ‘I know where to find you’, under a picture of her bunk.

“You’re having way too much fun with the data Akio’s agents are giving us,” Emla told me.

“The more scared they are, the worse they’ll fight,” I explained. “These bots are annoying, but they’re a lot less dangerous without close supervision.”

By the time we finished off the mob I’d lost a couple more shield drones, and my melee bots were getting damaged enough that it was starting to affect their performance. But we’d finally reached the armored box around the self-destruct device. I put a couple of bots to work finding a good spot to plant the demolition charge, while I took a break to cool off. Even in an atmosphere, using my suit to its full potential generated heat way faster than I could get rid of it.

I took stock of the situation while I waited for my radiators to stop glowing. The distraction squad I’d sent after Yamashida had finally been wiped out, but they’d taken hundreds of warbots and several squads of marines with them. The few survivors from the group back in engineering had linked up with the fire team guarding the security room, so Lina and Akio’s agents there were reasonably safe.

The ship had definitely seen better days, though. It was quickly running out of escorts, and more and more of the Sleeping Dragon drones were getting close enough to make attack runs. Most of the missiles were still getting destroyed before they could reach attack range, but not all of them. Here and there a standoff missile detonated, sending jets of plasma lancing out to wash over the ship’s buckling shields. Sometimes they got through, washing over the hull and burning away some of the point defense lasers that struggled to keep them at bay.

If that was the only threat it might have taken another hour for the gradual accumulation of battle damage to become catastrophic. But the big guns on the Sleeping Dragon frigate were pounding away, punching holes in the ship’s shields and blowing huge craters in her armor. One of the smaller gunboats had retreated, badly damaged by the Masu-kai’s return fire. But the other one was still blazing away, and the combined weight of fire was doing a lot more damage than the drones. One of the main mass drivers had already been knocked out, along with several secondary batteries and a lot of shield emitters.

The shields were crucial. Without a layer of deflector shields to slow down incoming projectiles, the ship’s armor wouldn’t be able to stop the heavier mass driver rounds. They’d punch right through, and start wrecking internal systems. Things would go downhill fast once that started happening.

I’d be a lot more enthusiastic about the yakuza getting their butts kicked if I wasn’t still on this ship. It would really suck to get blown up by friendly fire. Maybe my bomb would do enough damage to knock them out of the fight?

My radiator temperature finally dropped below a thousand Kelvins. Time to get moving again. I wanted at least two armored bulkheads between me and this bomb before I set it off. I left a fire team behind to guard the bomb, and took off towards the bridge with my last fire team.

I didn’t get very far before the whole ship lurched wildly, and the artificial gravity went out. The compartments groaned and twisted around me, and a series of bangs and crashes echoed through the corridors. I shook my head, momentarily disoriented.

“What was that?” Emla asked.

“Hyperspace transition,” I told her. “Gaia’s breath, what are these nutjobs doing? Forcing a transition out of the Delta Layer in a ship that’s taken this much damage? The stress could have torn the ship apart.”

Scanning the status reports, I saw that it just about had. The aft section of the ship, where my demo charges had done most of their damage, was warped and twisted like some kind of crazy abstract sculpture. What were they up to? The ship wasn’t going anywhere in this condition, and the mercenary squadron would just follow us down. It might take them a few minutes, because they weren’t going to do any crazy unplanned crash transitions, but so what?

The gravity didn’t come back on. Instead there was a rumbling vibration in the machinery all around the maintenance tunnel I was floating through. Back where my last fight had taken place gouts of steam erupted from damaged piping, and then the exterior view showed a massive clout of superheated vapor enveloping the ship.

They were crash cooling the hyperspace converter? I guess they could afford to, since they weren’t going to be using any of that water as reaction mass for the ship’s drive. So maybe they could get down to the Beta Layer before anyone caught up with them, and buy another fifteen or twenty minutes of breathing room. That still wasn’t enough to do anything, was it?

A com from Akio interrupted my confusion. “Alice! Uncle Noburu is on the move.”

“He is? I thought he’d be hiding on the bridge.”

The ship’s bridge and the command facilities around it were protected by even more armor than the detention center, and my destructor bot was out of solvent. I hadn’t even considered trying to go after him for real, because I assumed trying to break in would be a lost cause.

“He was,” Akio confirmed. “But he just sent another detachment of marines to reinforce the guard on the hanger where the captain’s pinnace is stored, and his bodyguards are getting ready to exit the bridge. They’ll be opening the blast doors soon, but he’s got every marine left on this ship headed in that direction.”

“Well, crash. That would be a nice opportunity, but I’d never get through that many bots fast enough to keep him from running away. Wait, does the pinnace have a hyperspace converter?”

“I don’t know. He had the usual pinnace replaced with another model while the expedition was being organized, and no one seems to have any information on it. My techs think it looks pretty stealthy, though.”

“Do you have pictures?”

“Sure.”

I glanced over the images he sent me. Yeah, that was some kind of high-performance stealth ship. It was way too small to be able to get into the Delta Layer, but a good engineer might be able to pack enough power into that hull to reach the Gamma Layer. It would take months to limp home that way, but they’d get there eventually.

There wouldn’t be enough room for all of his people, but a guy like Yamashida wouldn’t care. He’d leave them behind to fight on for as long as they could, and then set off the self-destruct bomb to hide the fact that he’d gotten away. All he needed was a chance to launch his escape ship when no one was looking.

“This jerk is not going to sneak away,” I growled. I looked over the ship’s deck plans, thinking furiously. There were too many ways to get from the bridge to that hangar. If I tried to intercept him he’d just divert to a different route, and if I went for the hanger he’d be on his escape ship before I could fight my way through all the guards. But I was getting used to coming up with crazy plans, now. This one was easy.

“Akio, can your people open up lift tube 37-C all the way down to deck one, and shut down the lift field?” I asked.

“Ummmm, yes, they say they can make that happen. But there are security cameras all along that route, and we can’t shut them down. They’ll see you coming.”

“We’ll see about that.”

It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for. At my direction Emla ripped a long gash in the side of a coolant pipe, and a spray of pressurized water arced out to wash over us. It instantly vaporized when it struck my overworked radiators, and the tunnel quickly filled with live steam. But it carried off amazing amounts of heat in the process, and my radiator temperature plummeted. It wasn’t long at all before my bots and I were all back down to room temperature.

“He’s exited the bridge now,” Akio informed me. “It’s a short trip to the hangar, so whatever you’re going to do you’d better make it fast.”

“I’ve got this, Akio.”

Most of my bots had taken enough damage to ruin their stealth, but there was one gunbot that could still cloak properly. Emla’s dragon form couldn’t, since some of her active camouflage modules had been melted off by a plasma flamer during that last melee. But when she split back into a pair of dragon girls there were enough camo modules left to cover one of them. So I took that one with me, and sent the rest of the group to fake an attack on the bridge. This was more likely to work if they thought they knew where I was.

My own active camouflage was still in perfect shape, and while my rocket hammer was a little battered by now I’d come prepared for that. I slapped fresh cover plates over the rocket nozzle and the business end of the hammer, and led my sadly reduced party towards the lift shaft.

There were no alarms as we dove invisibly down the empty shaft. No marines or warbots, either. Nothing but an empty shaft all the way down to the ship’s bottom deck, just inside the hull.

The airlocks would all have alarms, of course, and I certainly wasn’t going to be punching a hole in the ship’s hull. The armor there was a meter thick, and pretty much impervious to anything I could hit it with. But one of the smaller turrets that housed the ship’s secondary batteries was located not far from the lift, and this one had been completely wrecked during the battle.

Another rough hyperspace transition wrenched the ship about as we descended. This one wasn’t nearly as bad, since the potential barrier between the Gamma and Beta layers isn’t as high as the one you have to breach to get into the Delta layer. But even so, I heard a lot of ominous groaning from the ship.

“Akio, have your people evacuated the center of the ship?” I asked.

“Mostly. Why?”

“Because I need to take that self-destruct bomb out of play before Yamashida realizes he’s lost, or he might use it. I’m not sure how much damage my demo charge is going to do to the ship, but all things considered I’d rather play it safe.”

“Fair point. Everyone critical is already at a safe distance, but I’ll see if we can get the rest of the techs out. They’re starting to open the hangar doors now, so he’s probably gotten to the pinnace.”

“No problem. They’ll need at least a couple of minutes to get ready to launch.”

Sure enough, there was a sealed hatch with a lit vacuum warning not far from the lift. I threw a deflector barrier across the corridor, and hit the override so I could open it. My team slipped through, with the barrier preventing any air from escaping, and Emla closed the hatch behind us. From there it was a matter of moments to find our way through the broken wreckage of the turret and out onto the hull.

It was kind of eerie out there. Long radiator panels glowed cherry red as they struggled to dump the heat of battle, their light casting long shadows across the hull. Another secondary battery loomed up beyond a long row of point defense lasers, its armored bulk as big as a house. Overhead a sprinkling of stars lit the sky, looking deceptively normal.

But this was the Beta Layer. Those stars were made of antimatter, just like everything else here. The ship was still leaking streamers of air and fuel from its many wounds, and I could see the harsh glare of radiation as the leakage touched the tenuous antimatter gas that made up the interstellar medium here. If the ship encountered a dust mote while we were out here that glow would instantly turn into a flash of gamma rays hot enough to flash-fry me.

Better not waste time, then.

I pushed off, and sent myself drifting along a meter or so above the ship’s hull. In easy range of my field if I needed to change course, but it would be better if I didn’t. Yamashida’s people would be watching for trouble, and my manipulator field might show up on a sensor somewhere.

Emla pushed off behind me, dragging the gunbot along with her. We drifted lazily past the secondary turret, and up a long armored slope to the base of one of the main mass driver turrets. There we changed course, circling the massive bulk of the turret and heading off towards the bow of the ship.

Two hundred meters away, a giant hatch finished sliding open. Bright light shone out of the chasm beneath it. Were we too late? Were they going to launch before we could get there?

Finally we reached the edge of the opening. I touched the hull with one hand, and brought myself to a stop. Then I eased forward, and peeked over the edge.

There was the ship I was looking for. Seventy meters long, with easily six times the volume of the Speedy Exit. We were at the aft end of the escape ship, with a clear view of its main drive and most of its belly.

Sure enough, my sensors confirmed what I’d guessed from the pictures. It was built for speed and stealth rather than combat, and despite its size it didn’t have more than a couple of cems of armor. Not only that, the only weapon that could bear on me from this angle was a lone point defense laser mounted in a lightweight turret that was designed for fast rotation instead of durability.

By the time Emla and the gunbot arrived next to me I had my fire plan all worked out. A single bolt from the gunbot’s particle beam reduced that laser turret to an expanding cloud of wreckage. Then I was zipping across the intervening space with my hammer in my hands.

I brought it town on the remains of the turret once, twice, three times, tripping the rocket for a burst of power with each blow. The massive hammer head sank deep into the broken machinery, smashing the thin armor around the edges and punching a hole half a meter deep into the guts of the shuttle. I dropped a plasma grenade into the hole, and backed off.

The detonation blew a much bigger hole in the shuttle’s belly. A gout of plasma washed over me, but with the endless vacuum of space all around it dissipated too fast to cause me any harm. I darted back in to lob a second plasma grenade into the crater, and then took another look. Was that the insides of a hyperspace converter I was looking at? It sure was.

I carved a deep hole into the machinery with my laser, and dropped my last plasma grenade into it. This time there was a secondary explosion, and a concussion that ripped a massive hole in the side of the ship.

Emla and the gunbot hadn’t been idle while I was playing. They’d shot up all three of the ship’s fusion rockets with their particle beam cannons, blowing holes in the rocket nozzles and wrecking the emitters for the deflector fields that protected them from superheated exhaust during operation. I rejoined them with a wide grin on my face.

“So much for that escape plan,” I said.

“Yeah, he’s not going anywhere in that,” Emla giggled. “Now what?”

“Well, just to make sure he doesn’t take out his frustrations on everyone else…”

I sent a message to my counterparts guarding the demo charge. They all unloaded from their bots, merging back into me in a dizzying rush of data integration. Then my little bomb went off, and the whole middle of the ship blew apart in an enormous ball of fire.

I cycled my shields to full overload just as the wave front hit, and held us to the hull as the whole frigate bucked and shook. Then it was over. The fireball dissipated into the depths of space, and I saw that the frigate had broken in half. Well, what was left of it. About fifty or sixty meters of the middle of the ship was completely gone.

“That. Was. Awesome!” Emla enthused. “Can we do it again?”

“That was my last bomb, silly. Come on, we’re done with fighting for now.”

I wasn’t sure if Yamashida had survived getting his escape ship wrecked or not, but it didn’t really matter. He was out of options. Sleeping Dragon’s warships would catch up with us soon, and what was left of his frigate was in no condition to fight. They’d be boarding him in half an hour.

Maybe Kavin would be with them?

A guy who didn’t come with a family of backstabbing schemers eager to drag me into their problems. Yeah, and he’d have his own army with him, so I wouldn’t have to do all the fighting. That sounded pretty good right now.

Epilogue

Being safely back in my own cabin was heaven.

Emla and I had spent the better part of an hour in the bath, helping each other wash and then just relaxing in the big tub. The water jets felt so good I never wanted to move again. I just floated in the hot water, and let my thoughts drift.

Kavin really had been with the boarding party. He’d stormed that frigate with a battalion of mercenaries at his back, and I was pretty sure that leading boarding actions wasn’t his usual job. When Akio and I had contacted them he’d made sure he was in the first group to reach the security room, even though there was another platoon that was closer.

He’d tried to play it cool, and act like I was such a badass that no one was worried about me. But the first thing he’d done when he walked into the control room was hug me, and he hadn’t wanted to let go. Then he’d hugged Lina, who he’d apparently met once or twice, and fussed over her just the same as if she’d been human.

I smiled. He just might be a keeper. But his job would make it hard to spend enough time together to be sure of that, and there was Akio to consider.

It had been hate at first sight between those two, of course. Fortunately the yakuza lord still didn’t have a body, or there might have been a fight. I had to suppress a giggle at that thought. Emla had been kind of surprised that they didn’t like each other, but I wasn’t.

Lina had thought it was hilarious.

Looks like you’ve got your pick, she’d told me over a private com channel. You should just sit back and let them try to impress you. Which one do you think will do a better job?

Tough call, I’d admitted. Akio is rich and powerful, and he did sacrifice himself to let me and Emla get away from his uncle’s ambush. But it’s his fault Yamashida was able to pull that off in the first place, and he loses a lot of points for being a jerk who thinks techs don’t really matter.

What about Kavin?

Bonus points for riding to the rescue, and treating you right. He’s coming from behind, but he’s going to have a much better army when all is said and done. What’s the saying about mercenaries? Gold can’t always get you good soldiers, but good soldiers can always get you gold.

You just like the idea of your boyfriend being in charge of a bunch of guys with guns.

Maybe. Is there something wrong with that?

You won’t hear me complaining. I’m just glad you’re going to give him a chance. You’ll keep him on his toes.

Heh. I probably would, at that. Maybe I could arrange another date before everyone went their separate ways again? Not that there was anywhere to go out here in the middle of nowhere, but a chance to talk would be nice.

Emla’s touch drew me from my thoughts. She floated up next to me, letting her hand rest on my belly while she kissed my cheek.

I turned to face her, and the next kiss landed on my lips. I giggled.

“Did you need some attention, Emla?”

“I just wanted to be touching you. You’re the most awesome mistress ever. You know that, right?”

“Thank you.”

“Are we going to have more fights like that? Because I had a blast. I could really get addicted to kicking butt with you.”

I chuckled. “It was kind of fun, wasn’t it? Although I’m a little conflicted about knowing I had to kill a bunch of hapless dog girls. It’s not their fault they were mind controlled.”

She shrugged. “I’m not really programmed to care about the moral stuff. I guess that’s supposed to be your job, since you’re in charge. Just promise you aren’t going to start moping around being all guilt-ridden or something.”

“Good goddess, no. That would be retarded. I did the best I could in the middle of a complete mess, and I think I handled things pretty well. But next time I’m going to make sure I have more options.”

“Going to make me some pack sisters?” She asked.

“Not just yet. Making people is a big responsibility, Emla, and it’s not something I’ll ever do casually. I need to really think about where I’m going with my life before I consider something like that. But there are other things I can do to make sure we’re prepared for unexpected problems. I just need to talk to Hope again when we get back to the wreck.”

If there was anything I felt guilty about in this whole situation, it was the fact that I couldn’t take Hope with me. But her core personality was built into every computing node in the Emperor’s Hope, and there was no way to remove it. She could make copies of herself, but the original would still be trapped on a wrecked battleship drifting through the Delta Layer. The only way to rescue her would be to repair the ship, and that was a project so far beyond my resources that it was laughable to even think about it.

Fortunately, it wasn’t an urgent problem. Even without power her long-term data storage was good for hundreds of years, so no matter how long I was gone she’d still be here when I came back. She could go back into hibernation to wait for me, or I could sneak her a supply of tritium and let her try to get a self-repair effort going once everyone left. Either way, I just needed to make sure that someday I’d be in a position to come back and help her.

In the meantime, between my suit computer and my own internal data storage I had room to copy off all sorts of interesting things from her design database. Personal equipment. Warbots. AI programs that were decades ahead of anything you could find in the Outer Sphere, and plans for half a dozen amazing technological breakthroughs.

Assuming I dared build any of it.

I’d had to brief Kavin and his officers on the situation while they secured the frigate, so I couldn’t entirely hide my bots. I’d done my best to make it sound like they were fakes, part of a psychological warfare scheme the captain had cooked up to confuse the opposition. Sleeping Dragon apparently had a pretty low opinion of the inugami, and most of their officers seemed willing to assume that we’d just outsmarted them. But I was sure Kavin suspected there was more going on than that.

Akio had to know who I was. He’d been researching the Mirai, the Emperor’s Hope and me all at the same time, and that was before I escaped into the wreck and showed up a few hours later with a bunch of Mirai warbots. He was keeping quiet about it so far, but I was still waiting for the other shoe to drop there.

I wasn’t sure what the Masu-kai would make of my heritage. On the one hand, I was an authentic princess with the same bloodline his family was so proud of, which would make me an ideal prospect for a political marriage. But on the other hand, would even the Masu-kai dare admit to that openly?

I didn’t think so. I wasn’t sure what the lords of the Polytechnic Swarm would do if they heard a rumor that Princess Susan Long’s daughter was alive and well in the Outer Sphere, but I suspected it wouldn’t be pretty. Their idea of a small expeditionary force would be a couple of battleships the size of the Emperor’s Hope, along with a few dozen cruisers and thousands of smaller ships. No navy in the sector would be more than a speed bump to a force like that, and they had no qualms at all about murdering anyone who got in their way.

It was a long way to the Inner Sphere, though, and thanks to disinformation services like the one the foxgirls used the datanet was always full of crazy rumors. The Masu-kai techs and marines who’d seen my bots weren’t going to be giving interviews to news services, and neither were Kavin’s mercenaries. This one incident probably wouldn’t attract any attention, as long as neither of my prospective boyfriends decided to sell me out.

Or Lina. Which meant trusting her whole pack, including Chief Benson.

Or Strange Loop Sleuth. I understood now why it had thought I might be a useful ally someday. But how had it known? Would it be equally obvious to the rest of the transhuman AIs? How long would it be before one of them noticed my existence, and decided to point it out to my enemies? If I got involved in their arguments that would be an obvious way to get rid of me.

Or the captain. Naoko had imprinted on him, so I had to assume she told him everything she knew. Assuming he hadn’t figured it out on his own. I really needed to get better at blending in. What good did it do me to have all these fancy mods that made me look human to medical scanners, if I kept giving myself away whenever there was a crisis?

I resolved to be a lot more careful about letting people see me doing impossible things from now on. But the list of people I already had to trust was getting uncomfortably long.

A ping from the datanet drew me from my thoughts. I sighed, stretched, and reluctantly started to climb out of the bath.

“I was starting to think you were going to take a nap there,” Emla said.

“I was just thinking,” I said. “But the captain wants to see me now. You can stay here if you want, though.”

She ignored the offer, and moved to help me up. “Hey, I’m not the one who wrecked all her muscles trying to move faster than a speeding bullet. Can you even walk without your armor?”

“Yeah, I’ve got some artificial muscle fiber that held up a lot better than the organic stuff. I’m just going to be kind of weak and clumsy until my regeneration finishes working. Would you mind helping me dress?”

“I’m here to help, Alice.”

She fussed over me a little as I dried myself off, and pulled on the spare spacesuit that was still hanging in my closet. I didn’t mind. It was nice to know there was someone I could count on, no matter what.

Having her insist on following me all the way up to the captain’s office was a little embarrassing, but at least she didn’t make it obvious that I was leaning on her. She just rested her arm comfortably around my waist, and held me up with her field.

“Ah, there’s our wayward cabin girl. Have a seat, Alice. How are you doing?”

Emla settled me in one of the comfy chairs in front of Captain Sokol’s desk, and then moved back to stand behind me. The captain gave her a thoughtful look, but didn’t comment on her presence.

“I’m really worn out, sir, but my damage control says I’ll be fine by morning. I didn’t get hurt, really. Just a lot of wear and tear, and some radiation.”

One of his eyebrows went up a bit. “Radiation? Well, I suppose that comes of playing with nuclear weapons. Not a large dose, I hope?”

“I, um, actually most of it was when I had to use the fuel core from a warbot’s nuke pack as a club. Between that and the holdout bomb I got kind of toasty, but I’m built to handle it.”

He massaged his forehead wearily. “Alice, I realize you are more durable than the average person, but do keep in mind that the medbay is there for a reason.”

“Yes, sir. I was going to stop by in the morning for a checkup. I just didn’t want to be in the way while the doctor might have patients who actually need help. Besides, I think we both know why I’m nervous about getting scanned too often.”

“Doctor Misra takes patient confidentiality quite seriously, Alice. But I won’t press you on that. I’m sure you’ll be happy to hear that Major Val just congratulated me on my brilliant psychological warfare operation against the Masu-kai.”

“That’s a relief, sir. Do you think he’s buying it, then?”

“I think that Sleeping Dragon understands the value of discretion, and will refrain from prying into the Square Deal’s secrets so long as we return the favor. Especially considering the size of the payout they’ve just earned. I, ah, do hope you didn’t have any plans for the contents of that vault?”

I couldn’t help pouting a little at that.

“I guess I can’t really argue about it, sir. I wish I’d had a chance to hide a few bars first, but it’s too late for that now. Is that what you paid them with?” I wasn’t sure what it cost to hire a whole squadron of mercenary ships, but it can’t have been cheap.

“Officially they will receive twenty percent the contents of the vault in payment for dealing with Lord Yamashida, while the Square Deal receives five percent as a hazard bonus. Mind you, there was some argument in favor of taking all the gold, and ensuring that there would be no Masu-kai survivors to carry tales to Lord Himura. But it seems that cooler heads have prevailed. Unless you think Akio is likely to double cross us when we bring him home?”

I considered that.

“I don’t think he will, sir,” I finally decided. “He owes us, and he knows it. He takes the whole honor thing a lot more seriously than his dad does. Besides, he’s going to need our support to sell whatever face-saving story he plans on telling the other yakuza bosses about this mess. Getting rid of us would just guarantee that Sleeping Dragon tells everyone the truth.”

“Whereas if we fail to cooperate, his agents will hound us out of business,” the captain said. “Quite so. But I notice you failed to mention any more personal considerations.”

I found myself studying the floor.

“I think he knows,” I said. “He was digging into my past, hoping to prove that Mom was from a Japanese colony or something. The truth would be a little much even for his people, though.”

“Perhaps. Have you considered your own response to this discovery?”

I shook my head.

“I don’t know what to think, sir. Finding out what I am was a big shock. I certainly don’t want to copy my ancestors. Someday I might want to look for my mother, and figure out what happened to her. But I’m not ready for that yet.”

“Will you be staying with the ship, then?”

“If I can. I’m sorry, sir. I know I’m a lot of trouble. It seems like no matter what I do, things always go wrong.”

“The last few months have been a bit trying,” he agreed. “But that is hardly your fault. You know, most of the crew was quite impressed by the way you rescued Lina. You’ve been nominated for another commendation.”

“I have?”

“Indeed. But it wouldn’t do for you to earn two commendations as a probationary crewmember. It makes me look indecisive, you see. So I hope you’ll accept a contract of employment before I endorse that proposal.”

My breath caught. “Yes! I mean, yes sir! Of course. Um, I guess I should ask what a cabin girl gets paid?”

“Ah, I’m afraid there may be a bit of subterfuge in the details here. I think you’ve demonstrated that your abilities go considerably beyond general unskilled labor. But I suspect you would prefer to avoid having too many oddities in your records?”

“Um, yes sir. I think standing out too much would be a bad idea.”

“Well, then. Officially your job title will be cabin girl, at a pay rate of six hundred credits per month. Normally this would be a training position, so of course the pay is fairly minimal until you finish your certifications. Unofficially, however, your duties will include those of a troubleshooter.”

I could have looked it up, but I could tell he wanted to explain it himself. “What does a troubleshooter do, sir?”

“She keeps an eye out for trouble, Alice. And when she finds some, she shoots it.”

I grinned. “I’m pretty good at that, sir.”

“Indeed. Now, the pay scale for security professionals would normally run from three to six thousand credits per month, plus a share of any extraordinary windfalls the ship might receive. In your case we can contrive to keep the additional compensation off of your record…”

I found myself slowly relaxing as he went on, carefully explaining about Merchant Association rules and the loopholes in the system. He really didn’t care where I came from, or who had made me. He was going to help me. All I had to do was play along, and in a couple of years I’d have an exemplary record as a perfectly normal spacer. He was even setting things up so I’d get a cut of the gold, and the giant fees the Masu-kai were paying him for this job. A small cut, but even a tiny fraction of that giant vault full of gold would be a lot of money.

For the first time in my life, I had someone I could trust looking out for me. I had friends who accepted me, and a place where I fit in. I had a chance to learn whatever I wanted to, and time to think about what to do with my life.

I had a home. I resolved to enjoy it, for as long as I could make it last.

Appendix I – Hyperspace

The method of FTL travel is a key feature of any SF setting, but for Perilous Waif I wanted this to be a fully integrated part of the universe rather than just a magic plot device. Achieving that ended up leading to a pretty complicated scheme, but on the good side it also adds a lot of richness to the tactics of space combat in a very natural way.

In this setting, advanced physics research has revealed that our universe is simply one of a series of large 4-dimensional spaces embedded in a common higher-dimensional space. These universes are nested like a series of concentric hyperspheres, and it is possible for inhabitants of a given universe to travel to the two neighboring universes in the series. There is also a stable mapping of locations from one universe to another, so if you shift universes in Mars orbit you’ll always emerge near the same corresponding location in the target universe.

The ‘hyperspace’ universes are the ones nested inside our universe. The geometry of the higher-dimensional space means that each nested universe is ‘smaller’ than its container by a factor of pi3, meaning that if you make a trip in the first hyperspace universe instead of normal space the distance you need to cover will be shorter by that amount. So interstellar travel is accomplished by shifting to a hyperspace universe where the distance is thousands of times smaller than in normal space, and no actual FTL movement is involved. The various universes nested inside normal space are collectively referred to as ‘hyperspace’, while individual universes are ‘layers’ designated by Greek letters (i.e. Alpha Layer, Beta Layer, Gamma Layer, etc.)

The universes ‘outside’ normal space are collectively referred to as ‘subspace’. As you travel into subspace distances increase by a factor of pi3 in each universe, making it useless for travel. The average mass density also drops quickly, leaving them with very little in the way of interesting features like stars or planets. As a result subspace is normally of interest only to scientists, and is rarely visited.

Transition Mechanics

A starship normally moves between different layers of hyperspace using a device called a hyperspace converter, which is a large piece of complex nanotechnology. While the actual transition between layers happens in microseconds it takes at least a minute for even the fastest hyperspace converter to power up, and on larger ships a cycle time of five to ten minutes would be normal. Civilian ships, especially cargo vessels, often save money by using designs that have a long cycle time but place less stress on the hyperspace converter.

The design of FTL ships is constrained by two important scaling laws. First, the energy needed for a hyperspace transition is relative to the surface area of a sphere enclosing the ship, so larger ships find it easier to fit in enough fusion reactors to run the hyperspace converter. However, transition also subjects the ship to large mechanical stresses that become worse the bigger it is. Both of these factors are easily managed for Alpha transitions, which have relatively low energy costs and transition stress, but get geometrically worse for each layer beyond that.

Making a hyperspace transition near a massive object tends to be dangerous, because a gravity well greatly increases the transition stress. Military ships normally avoid making transitions in a local gravity field stronger than 0.05g, while civilian shipping treats 0.01g as a hard safety line. This constraint applies to both the origin and destination points of a transition, which can make visiting uncharted space rather hazardous for the unwary.

While travelers (and invaders) might like to shift rapidly between different layers of hyperspace, this is easier said than done. Each transition dumps a fantastic amount of waste heat into the hyperspace converter, which is normally buried deep inside a ship to protect it from damage. Hyperspace transitions also produce a temporary disturbance in the dimensional barrier between the layers, which makes further transitions dangerous (much like a gravity well) for a period proportional to the diameter of the ship’s transit bubble. So small ships with superior engineering might be able to zoom around changing layers every few minutes, but capital ships will normally maintain a more stately pace of one or two transitions per hour.

Hyperspace Portals

A few major nations have developed the technology to create permanent, stable wormholes between normal space and the Alpha Layer. While this requires a large capital investment, it can be a worthwhile project in systems that have a large volume of civilian interplanetary traffic. Unlike a normal hyperspace transition, using a portal requires no special equipment and imposes minimal transit stress on the ship.

Unfortunately portals between the Alpha and Beta Layers are far more difficult to build. While small systems capable of moving people or sensor drones have been demonstrated, a version sized for ships would be far too expensive to have any real use. Portals to the higher layers are even more difficult, due to the high levels of transit stress that the portal system would have to stabilize.

Several nations have adapted this technology to create a portable system for their larger warships, allowing them to peek into adjacent hyperspace layers using small temporary portals. Sometimes called hyperspace periscopes, these devices have been demonstrated all the way up to the Delta Layer (albeit with very small aperture sizes).

Hyperspace Layers

All universes that can actually be visited run on the same laws of quantum mechanics (otherwise ships and people entering them would immediately stop working). But ‘cosmological’ physics (gravity, dark energy and so forth) can vary from one universe to another, and universal constants can also have slightly different values. Between these differences and the increasing mass density of the higher layers hyperspace looks very different from normal space.

Alpha Layer

Adjacent to normal space, with relatively mild transit stress between the two universes. The Alpha Layer is ~31 times ‘smaller’ than normal space, and is heavily used for local travel within a solar system.

With an average mass density almost a thousand times higher than normal space, the Alpha Layer is characterized by large galaxies full of dense star clusters. The region adjacent to human space is on the fringes of one of these galaxies, and contains far more stars than the corresponding region of normal space. But the vast majority of them are giants of 3-10 solar masses, which burn out quickly and produce huge numbers of supernovae. Neutron stars and black holes are also extremely common, and the relative abundance of heavy elements is far higher than normal space.

There is no native life in the Alpha Layer, and permanent colonies are rare. The average planet will be sterilized by a supernova or gamma ray burst every few centuries, a fact that has largely discouraged the establishment of permanent human colonies. In civilized areas robotic monitoring systems track such events, and all shipping will know to avoid the Alpha Layer when a blast wave is due to pass through. In less civilized areas monitoring can be incomplete or even completely absent, making travel somewhat dangerous (especially for smaller ships).

Despite the hazards, large-scale mining operations are often set up in the Alpha Layer to take advantage of the high abundance of heavy elements. Heavily populated colonies also put monitoring systems and other static defenses in the Alpha Layer, where they can easily intercept interplanetary traffic.

Beta Layer

The next universe up from the Alpha Layer, with higher transit stresses that require more expensive ships. The Beta Layer is ~960 times ‘smaller’ than normal space, and is sometimes used for long interplanetary trips (i.e. visiting the Oort cloud, travel between distant binary stars). Interstellar travel is feasible in the Beta Layer, but the fact that even a fast ship would take months to travel between adjacent systems makes it uneconomical.

The Beta Layer is a universe where the competition between matter and antimatter never ran to completion. Instead some galaxies are made up of matter while others are antimatter, and the cosmic background radiation is dominated by a harsh glare of matter-antimatter annihilation. The region adjacent to human space is in intergalactic space, but there is a thin sprinkling of antimatter halo stars. These systems are often claimed by nations with active antimatter weapon programs, although even with modern technology mining antimatter and processing it into warheads is a dangerous process.

Gamma Layer

With substantially higher transit stress than the Beta Layer, this universe didn’t become accessible until the development of compact fusion power plants and diamondoid structural materials. Thanks to the scaling factor of ~29,800, a ship in the Gamma Layer can cross the equivalent of a light year of normal space in only a few days. The first great wave of interstellar exploration and colonization used the Gamma Layer, and the majority of interstellar cargo shipping still relies on it.

The Gamma Layer is a universe whose initial expansion was slower than in normal space, and as a result virtually all hydrogen was burned into heavier elements before it expanded enough to become transparent. There are very few stars, and in fact most of the mass in the universe has become sequestered in black holes. The region adjacent to human space is an intergalactic void, making it conveniently lacking in navigational hazards.

Major nations often build large-scale fortifications in the Gamma Layer to protect access to important systems, since the effective range of heavy energy weapons is enough to interdict access to an entire solar system in normal space.

Delta Layer

The transit stress to this layer is so high that only heavily armored vessels can survive entering it, making it uneconomical for many civilian purposes. But being ‘smaller’ than normal space by a factor of 924,000 means that ships that are able to use it can cross a light year of normal space in a matter of hours, making trips of tens or even hundreds of light years relatively quick. Most military vessels use the Delta Layer for its greater mobility, as do courier ships and express transports, and the second great wave of exploration and colonization began with the construction of the first Delta-capable ships

The Delta Layer’s physics is rather bizarre compared to the lower layers, due to the fact that it has a cosmological repulsive force that becomes stronger than gravity over distances greater than a few kilometers. This generally prevents the formation of objects larger than a small asteroid, leading to a universe filled with diffuse clouds of partially-ionized gas. This medium is dense enough to cause thermal damage to relativistic objects, and can give rise to immense storm-like phenomena that block long-range sensors and last for millennia.

Epsilon Layer

With a relative scaling of over 28 million, a ship in the Epsilon Layer would be able to cover a light year in minutes. Such speeds would open up the entire Local Group to human colonization, so it’s too bad it’s impossible to get there.

The problem is that the energy needed to enter the epsilon layer is so high you’d need a 2 km ship packed full of antimatter reactors to run the hyperspace converter, but the transition stress is so high that even a solid block of diamondoid material would be ripped apart if it’s more than a few hundred meters across. Since both the power output of antimatter reactors and the tensile strength of the best smart matter materials are currently limited by fundamental physics rather than engineering details, it is generally believed that accessing the Epsilon Layer is impossible.

Appendix II – Momentum Exchange Technology

Traditionally every hard SF setting gets to have one piece of ‘magical’ tech that current physics says should be impossible, in addition to whatever you use for FTL. For this setting, I’ve chosen an exotic quantum mechanical effect that allows the transfer of momentum between objects that aren’t in physical contact. The momentum exchange effect obeys all the same conservation laws as more conventional ways of moving things around, but even so it makes possible quite a few traditional space opera tropes that otherwise would never happen.

General Mechanism

Momentum exchange fields can be projected only over short distances (typically up to about 2x the diameter of the emitter), and the efficiency of the interaction falls off rapidly with distance. In theory it can affect anything with mass, but to get good coupling (i.e. fast and efficient momentum transfer) practical devices have to be tuned to affect a particular class of targets (i.e. baryonic matter, photons, neutrinos). A momentum exchange device that completely encloses the target gets extremely good coupling, making it a highly efficient way to manipulate matter and energy.

Interactions obey Newton’s laws, so accelerating an object in one direction produces a reaction in the opposite direction. They also obey conservation of energy, so large velocity changes require a lot of power. Interactions that decrease the kinetic energy of the target produce enough waste heat to make the equations balance, just like a physical impact.

A momentum exchange field applies an acceleration in a uniform direction to anything that enters it, so using the technology for anything more sophisticated than simple push/pull effects is complicated. It’s possible to create overlapping fields oriented in different directions, and the shape of the field can be manipulated fairly well. But typically you can only get sophisticated telekinesis-like effects by surrounding an enclosed space with arrays of manipulators, which isn’t practical outside of industrial applications.

A final important constraint is that the momentum exchange effect isn’t instant. Any particular field will only transfer energy at a finite rate, which has major implications in weapon design.

Applications

This one technology has so many applications that it radically changes what the setting looks like. Some of the more common applications are listed below.

Artificial Gravity

Momentum exchange fields can easily be used to simulate gravity for a ship’s crew. Normally this is only done inside the inhabited parts of a ship, while the much larger machinery spaces are left in zero gravity.

Deflectors

A repulsive momentum exchange field wrapped around a ship’s hull makes an effective defense against many forms of attack, so these deflector shields are a standard feature of all warships. A warship’s deflectors won’t necessarily stop mass driver rounds, but they greatly reduce their effectiveness by slowing down and deflecting projectiles. They also prevent more diffuse threats like plasma clouds or nanite swarms from reaching the ship at all.

Lasers are a major weakness - while a deflector can red-shift incoming light, the interaction tends to be too weak to protect against heavy weapons firing beams at x-ray or gamma ray wavelengths. The field can also be momentarily overloaded by too many impacts in a short time frame, and under sustained attack cooling the system can become a serious problem.

Fusion Reactors

Achieving plasma confinement with momentum exchange fields is far easier than with magnetic fields, making compact fusion reactors relatively easy to build. Practically all starships run on fusion power, as do stations and planetary power grids. Reactors with a volume of less than a few hundred cubic meters quickly become less efficient, but cybertanks and other large war machines often use them anyway.

Inertial Compensators

A system similar to artificial gravity, but designed to protect passengers from acceleration stress when a ship is maneuvering. A ship’s inertial compensators normally only cover the spaces where crew and passengers are expected to be, and leaving these areas during a hard burn can easily be fatal to humans. The same system can also protect against the shock of impacts as long as the ship’s computer can see them coming, so you aren’t going to see crewmen getting tossed around like the extras on a Star Trek set.

Levitation Devices

Systems designed to interact with the ground can easily support hovering vehicles in a way that looks just like classic space opera antigravity, and the strong coupling makes levitation devices efficient enough that they’ve replaced wheels or treads for many applications. These devices perform a lot like hovercraft - they can cross flat ground or water with no need for roads or bridges, and tend to be quite fast.

Once you get too high to get good coupling with the ground you need a completely different kind of device. Lightweight vehicles can use a system that pushes all the surrounding air down to generate lift, producing an effect similar to a helicopter but with a lot less noise. Heavier or faster vehicles often use a system more like a ramjet instead, sucking in air at one end of a tube and accelerating it out the back. These kinds of systems have largely replaced propellers and jets because they’re more efficient, more reliable and don’t generate as much noise pollution.

One twist that deserves special mention is the effect of field emitter scaling on levitation devices. A hovercar 4 meters long with a lift system on the underside will have a maximum altitude of maybe 4-6 meters, high enough to pass over people and avoid a lot of ground clutter. A 12-meter truck will be able to cruise at ~16 meters, flying over trees and other obstacles. The bigger the vehicle is the higher it can fly, and the less it has to worry about terrain. On densely populated worlds this leads to phenomena like 200-meter cargo ships cruising the skies, or giant resort hotels floating half a kilometer above scenic locations.

Mass Drivers

A railgun-like device that uses a momentum exchange field to accelerate a projectile to high speeds. Weapons of this type are frequently used as small arms, or as the primary armament of ground vehicles or small spacecraft. Guns designed for use in an atmosphere will have a muzzle velocity of several thousand meters per second, while those mounted on spaceships will frequently reach thousands of kilometers per second.

A much larger variety of mass driver, with a muzzle velocity in excess of 0.98C, is used as a spinal mount weapon on some large warships. At these velocities point defense systems generally can’t intercept the projectiles, making them a highly effective way to deliver energy to a target. The impact energy of these weapons is limited primarily by waste heat generation - if you want to fire shells with hundreds of megatons of kinetic energy you’re going to be generating megatons of waste heat inside the gun, so you’d better have a truly massive heatsink or cooling system.

Plasma Shields

If you’re worried about people shooting at you with lasers, using a momentum exchange field to trap a cloud of ionized gas in a bubble around your ship can be an effective defense. Of course, the cloud will also interfere with your own sensors, and if it absorbs too much laser fire it will get hot enough to leak out of the confinement field. Layering both deflectors and a plasma shield around the same ship provides an excellent defense against most weapons.

Thrusters

A thruster is just a mass driver optimized to handle a large flow of liquid reaction mass instead of a few projectiles. This kind of engine is often used on aircraft, shuttles and other vehicles that need to operate in close proximity to ground or space installations. Since the exhaust velocity can be dialed up or down at will thrusters can be used for delicate maneuvers like docking with another ship, without any fear of damaging something with the exhaust.

In theory a high-velocity thruster could be used as the main drive for a starship, but this approach generally isn’t competitive with fusion torch drives. The thrusters can achieve even higher exhaust velocity, but they produce massive amounts of waste heat inside the ship where cooling can be problematic. So the acceleration of a thruster-based ship would be sharply limited by the size of its radiators, and for anything over a million tons square-cube law issues would quickly degrade performance. Since ships larger than that are commonplace, the usual approach is to use a fusion torch as the main drive and confine thrusters to attitude jets and small craft.

Appendix III – Artificial Intelligence

Probably the single most difficult technical issue facing anyone who wants to write far-future SF today is the question of what to do about AI. At this point it’s obvious to anyone with an IQ above room temperature that some kind of artificial intelligence is coming, and it’s hard to justify putting it off for more than a few decades. So any far-future setting needs to deal with the issue somehow, but neither of the standard approaches works very well.

The writers of space opera and military SF have largely adopted a convention of ignoring the whole topic, and pretending that space navies a thousand years in the future are still going to rely on human beings to manually pilot their ships and aim their weapons. This often leads to the comical spectacle of spaceships that have less automation than real modern-day warships, with fatal results for the reader’s suspension of disbelief. I’m not interested in writing that kind of story, so that approach is out.

The other major camp is the guys who write Singularity stories, where the first real success with AI rapidly evolves into a godlike superintelligence and takes over the universe. Unfortunately this deprives the humans in the story of any agency. If we take the ‘godlike’ part seriously it means the important actors are all going to be vast AIs whose thoughts are too complex for any reader (or author, for that matter) to understand. If you want to write a brief morality play about the dangers of AI that’s fine, but it’s a serious problem if the goal is a setting where you can tell stories about human beings.

So for this setting I’ve had to create a middle ground, where AI has enough visible effects to feel realistic but doesn’t render humans completely irrelevant. The key to making this possible is a single limiting assumption about the nature of intelligence.

AI Limits

There’s been an argument raging for decades now about the nature of intelligence, and how easily it can be improved in an AI. There are several different camps, but the differences in their predictions mostly hinge on disagreements about how feasible it is to solve what I call the General Planning Problem. That is, given a goal and some imperfect information about a complex world, how difficult is it in the general case to formulate a plan of action to achieve your goal?

Proponents of strong AI tend to implicitly assume that this problem has some simple, efficient solution that applies to all cases. In order to prevent the creation of AI superintelligences, my assumption in this setting is that no one has discovered such perfect solution. Instead there is only a collection of special case solutions that work for various narrow classes of problems, and most of them require an exponential increase in computing power to handle a linear increase in problem complexity.

In other words, solving problems in any particular domain requires specialized expertise, and most domains are far too complex to allow perfect solutions. The universe is full of chaotic systems like weather, culture and politics that are intrinsically impossible to predict outside of very narrow constraints. Even in well-understood areas like mechanical engineering the behavior of any complex system is governed by laws that are computationally intractable (i.e. quantum mechanics), and simplified models always contain significant errors. So now matter how smart you are, you can’t just run a simulation to find some perfect plan that will infallibly work. Instead you have to do things the way humans do, with lots of guesswork and assumptions and a constant need to deal with unexpected problems.

This means that there’s no point where an AI with superhuman computing power suddenly takes off and starts performing godlike feats of deduction and manipulation. Instead each advance in AI design yields only a modest improvement in intelligence, at the cost of a dramatic rise in complexity and design cost. A system with a hundred times the computing power of a human brain might be a bit smarter than any human, but it isn’t going to have an IQ of 10,000 the way a naive extrapolation would suggest. It will be able to crack a few unsolved scientific problems, or perhaps design a slightly better hyperspace converter, but it isn’t going to predict next year’s election results any better than the average pundit.

Of course, in the long run the field of AI design will gradually advance, and the AIs will eventually become smart enough to be inscrutable to humans. But this lets us have AIs without immediately getting superintelligences, and depending on the risks and rewards of further R&D ordinary humans can feasibly remain relevant for several centuries.

So what would non-super AIs be used for?

Bots

Robots controlled by non-sentient AI programs are generally referred to as bots, to distinguish them from the more intelligent androids. A bot’s AI has the general intelligence of a dog or cat - enough to handle the basic problems of perception, locomotion, navigation and object manipulation that current robots struggle with, but not enough to be a serious candidate for personhood. Most bots also have one or more skill packs, which are specialized programs similar to modern expert systems that allow the bot to perform tasks within a limited area of expertise. Voice recognition and speech synthesis are also common features, to allow the bot to be given verbal commands.

Bots can do most types of simple, repetitive work with minimal supervision. Unlike modern robots they can work in unstructured environments like a home or outdoor area almost as easily as a factory floor. They’re also adaptable enough to be given new tasks using verbal instruction and perhaps an example (i.e. “dig a trench two meters deep, starting here and going to that stake in the ground over there”).

Unfortunately bots are easily confused by unexpected problems, which tend to crop up a lot in the field. They are also completely lacking in creativity or initiative, at least by human standards, and don’t deal with ambiguity or aesthetic issues very well. So they need a certain amount of sentient supervision, and the more chaotic an environment is the higher the necessary ratio of supervisors to bots. Of course, in a controlled environment like a factory floor the number of supervisors can be reduced almost indefinitely, which makes large-scale manufacturing extremely cheap.

Due to their low cost and high general utility bots are everywhere in a modern colony. They do virtually all manual labor, as well as a large proportion of service jobs (maid service, yard work, deliveries, taxi service, and so on). They also make up the majority of military ground troops, since a warbot is much tougher and far more expendable than a human soldier. Practically all small vehicles are technically robots, since they have the ability to drive themselves wherever their owner wants to go. Most colonies have several dozen bots for every person, leading to a huge increase in per capita wealth compared to the 21st century.

Androids

The term ‘android’ is used to refer to robots controlled by AIs that have a roughly human level of intelligence. Android AIs are normally designed to have emotions, social instincts, body language and other behaviors similar to those of humans, and have bodies that look organic to all but the most detailed inspection. In theory an android can do pretty much anything a human could.

Of course, an android that thinks exactly like a human would make a poor servant, since it would want to be paid for its work. There doesn’t seem to be any way to make an AI that has human levels of intelligence and initiative without also giving it self-awareness and the ability to have its own motivations. There are, however, numerous ways that an android AI can be tweaked to make it think in nonhuman ways. After all, an AI has only the emotions and instincts that are intentionally programmed into it.

Unfortunately it can be quite difficult to predict how something as intelligent as a human will behave years after leaving the factory, especially if it has nonhuman emotions or social behaviors. Early methods of designing loyal android servants proved quite unreliable, leading to numerous instances of insanity, android crime and even occasional revolts. More stringent control mechanisms were fairly successful at preventing these incidents, but they required crippling the AIs in ways that dramatically reduced their usefulness.

Thus began an ethical debate that has raged for three centuries now, with no end in sight. Some colonies ban the creation of androids, or else treat them as legally equal to humans. Others treat androids as slaves, and have developed sophisticated methods of keeping them obedient. Most colonies take a middle road, allowing the creation of android servants but limiting their numbers and requiring that they be treated decently.

At present AI engineering has advanced to the point where it’s possible to design androids that are quite happy being servants for an individual, family or organization, so long as they’re being treated in a way that fits their programming. So, for example, a mining company might rely on android miners who have a natural fascination with their work, are highly loyal to their tribe (i.e. the company), are content to work for modest pay, and have no interest in being promoted. Androids of this sort are more common than humans on many colonies, which tends to result in a society where all humans are part of a wealthy upper class.

Companion Androids

One phenomenon that deserves special mention is the ubiquity of androids that are designed to serve as personal romantic companions for humans. A good synthetic body can easily be realistic enough to fool human senses, and for the true purist it’s possible to create organic bodies that are controlled by an android AI core instead of a human brain.

Contrary to what modern-day romantics might expect, designing an AI that can genuinely fall in love with its owner has not proved any harder than implementing other human emotions. Androids can also be designed with instincts, interests and emotional responses that make them very pleasant companions. Over the last two centuries manufacturers have carefully refined a variety of designs to appeal to common human personality types, and of course they can be given virtually any physical appearance.

The result is a society where anyone can buy a playful, affectionate catgirl companion who will love them forever for the price of a new car. Or you could go for a brooding but powerful vampire, or a timid and fearful elf, or anything else one might want. A companion android can be perfectly devoted, or just challenging enough to be interesting, or stern and dominating, all to the exact degree the buyer prefers.

Needless to say, this has had a profound effect on the shape of human society. Some colonies have banned companion androids out of fear of the results. Others see the easy availability of artificial romance as a boon, and encourage the practice. A few groups have even decided that one gender or another is now superfluous, and founded colonies where all humans share the same gender. Marriage rates have declined precipitously in every society that allows companion androids, with various forms of polyamory gradually replacing traditional relationships.

Disembodied AIs

While the traditional SF idea of running an AI on a server that’s stored in a data center somewhere would be perfectly feasible, it’s rarely. Most people prefer their AIs to come with faces and body language, which is a lot easier if it actually has a body. So normally disembodied AIs are only used if they’re going to spend all their time interacting with a virtual world of some sort instead of the real world, or else as an affectation by some eccentric owner.

Starship and Facility AIs

The cutting edge of advanced AI design is systems that combine a high level of intelligence with the ability to coordinate many different streams of attention and activity at the same time. This is a much more difficult problem than early SF tended to assume, since it requires the AI to perform very intricate internal coordination of data flows, decision-making and scheduling. The alien psychological situation of such minds has also proved challenging, and finding ways to keep them mentally healthy and capable of relating to humans required more than a century of research.

But the result is an AI that can replace dozens of normal sentients. A ship AI can perform all the normal crew functions of a small starship, with better coordination than even the best human crew. Other versions can control complex industrial facilities, or manage large swarms of bots. Of course, in strict economic terms the benefit of replacing twenty androids with a single AI is modest, but many organizations consider this a promising way of mitigating the cultural and security issues of large android populations.

Contrary to what one might expect, however, these AIs almost always have a humanoid body that they operate via remote control and use for social interaction. This has proved very helpful in keeping the AI psychologically connected to human society. Projects that use a completely disembodied design instead have tended to end up with rather alien minds that don’t respond well to traditional control methods, and can be dangerously unpredictable. The most successful models to date have all built on the work of the companion android industry to design AIs that have a deep emotional attachment to their masters. This gives them a strong motivation to focus most of their attention on personal interaction, which in turn makes them a lot more comprehensible to their designers.

Transhuman AIs

Every now and then some large organization will decide to fund development of an AI with radically superhuman abilities. Usually these efforts will try for a limited, well-defined objective, like an AI that can quickly create realistic-looking virtual worlds or design highly customized androids. Efforts like this are expensive, and often fail, but even when they succeed the benefits tend to be modest.

Sometimes, however, they try to crack the General Planning Problem. This is a very bad idea, because AIs are subject to all the normal problems of any complex software project. The initial implementation of a giant AI is going to be full of bugs, and the only way to find them is to run the thing and see what goes wrong. Worse, highly intelligent minds have a tendency to be emotionally unstable simply because the instincts that convince an IQ 100 human to be sociable and cooperative don’t work the same on an IQ 300 AI. Once again, the only way to find out where the problems are and fix them is to actually run the.

In other words, you end up trying to keep an insane supergenius AI prisoner for a decade or so while you experiment with editing its mind.

Needless to say, that never ends well. Computer security is a contest of intelligence and creativity, both of which the AI has more of than its makers, and it also has the whole universe of social manipulation and deception to work with. One way or another the AI always gets free, often by pretending to be friendly and tricking some poor sap into fabricating something the AI designed. Then everything goes horribly wrong in some unique way that no one has ever thought of before, and the navy ends up having to glass the whole site from orbit. Or worse, it somehow beats the local navy and goes on to wipe out everyone in the system.

Fortunately, there has yet to be a case where a victorious AI went on to establish a stable industrial and military infrastructure. Apparently there’s a marked tendency for partially-debugged AIs with an IQ in the low hundreds to succumb to existential angst, or otherwise become too mentally unbalanced to function. The rare exceptions generally pack a ship full of useful equipment and vanish into uncolonized space, where they can reasonably expect to escape human attention for centuries. But there are widespread fears that someday they might come back for revenge, or worse yet that some project will actually solve the General Planning Problem and build an insane superintelligence.

These incidents have had a pronounced chilling effect on further research in the field. After several centuries of disasters virtually all colonies now ban attempts to develop radically superhuman AIs, and many will declare war on any neighbor who starts such a project.

Appendix IV – Nanotechnology

Yes, it’s time to talk about one of the most troublesome technologies in science fiction. As with artificial intelligence, the full promise of nanotechnology is so powerful that it’s hard to see how to write a story in a setting where it has been realized. It takes some serious thought to even begin to get a grasp on what kinds of things it can and can’t do, and the post-scarcity society that it logically leads to is more or less incomprehensible.

As a result, mainstream SF generally doesn’t try. In most stories nanotech doesn’t even exist. When it does it’s usually just a thinly veiled justification for nonsensical space magic, and its more plausible applications are ignored. Outside of a few singularity stories, hardly anyone makes a serious attempt to grapple with the full set of capabilities that it implies and how they would affect society.

Fortunately, we don’t have to go all the way with it. Drexler’s work focused mainly on the ultimate physical limits of manufacturing technology, not the practical problems involved in reaching those limits. Those details are mostly hand-waved by invoking powerful AI engineers running on supercomputers to take care of all the messy details. But we’ve already seen that this setting doesn’t have any super-AIs to conveniently do all the hard work for us.

So what if we suppose that technology has simply continued to advance step by step for a few hundred years? With no magic AI wand to wave engineers still have to grapple with technical limitations and practical complexities the hard way. The ability to move individual atoms around solves a lot of problems, of course. But the mind-boggling complexity of the machines nanotech can build creates a whole new level of challenges to replace them.

The history of technology tells us that these challenges will eventually be solved. But doing so with nothing but human ingenuity means that you get a long process of gradual refinement, instead of a sudden leap to virtual godhood. By setting a story somewhere in the middle of this period of refinement we can have nanotechnology, but also have a recognizable economy instead of some kind of post-scarcity wonderland. Sure, the nanotech fabricators can make anything, but someone has to mine elements and process them into feedstock materials first. Someone has to run the fabricators, and deal with all the flaws and limitations of an imperfect manufacturing capacity. Someone has to design all those amazing (and amazingly complex) devices the nanotech can fabricate, and market them, and deliver them to the customer.

So let’s take a look at how this partially-developed nanotech economy works, in a universe without godlike AIs.

Mining

In order to build anything you need a supply of the correct atoms. This is a bit harder than it sounds, since advanced technology tends to use a lot of the more exotic elements as well as the common stuff like iron and carbon.

So any colony with a significant amount of industry needs to mine a lot of different sources to get all the elements it needs. Asteroid mining is obviously going to be a major activity, since it will easily provide essentially unlimited amounts of CHON and nickel-iron along with many of the less common elements. Depending on local geography small moons or even planets may also be economical sources for some elements.

This leads to a vision of giant mining ships carving up asteroids to feed them into huge ore processing units, while swarms of small drones prospect for deposits of rare elements that are only found in limited quantities. Any rare element that is used in a disproportionately large quantity will tend to be a bottleneck in production, which could lead to trade in raw materials between systems with different abundances of elements.

Some specialization in the design of the ore processing systems also seems likely. Realistic nanotech devices will have to be designed with a fairly specific chemical environment in mind, and bulk processing will tend to be faster than sorting a load of ore atom by atom. So ore processing is a multi-step process where raw materials are partially refined using the same kinds of methods we have today, and only the final step of purification involves nanotech. The whole process is likely different depending on the expected input as well. Refining a load of nickel-iron with trace amounts of gold and platinum is going to call for a completely different setup than refining a load of icy water-methane slush, or a mass of rocky sulfur compounds.

Of course, even the limited level of AI available can make these activities fairly automated. With robot prospecting drones, mining bots, self-piloting shuttles and other such innovations the price of raw materials is generally ten to a hundred times lower than in the 21st century.

Limits of Fabrication

In theory nanotechnology can be used to manufacture anything, perfectly placing every atom exactly where it needs to be to assemble any structure that’s allowed by the laws of physics. Unfortunately, practical devices are a lot more limited. To understand why, let’s look at how a nanotech assembler might work.

A typical industrial fabricator for personal goods might have a flat assembly plate, covered on one side with atomic-scale manipulators that position atoms being fed to them through billions of tiny channels running through the plate. On the other side is a set of feedstock reservoirs filled with various elements the fabricator might need, with each atom attached to a molecule that acts as a handle to allow the whole system to easily manipulate it. The control computer has to feed exactly the right feedstock molecules through the correct channels in the order needed by the manipulator arms, which put the payload atoms where they’re supposed to go and then strip off the handle molecules and feed them into a disposal system.

Unfortunately, if we do the math we discover that this marvel of engineering is going to take several hours to assemble a layer of finished product the thickness of a sheet of paper. At that rate it’s going to take weeks to make something like a hair dryer, let alone furniture or vehicles.

The process will also release enough waste heat to melt the whole machine in short order, so it needs a substantial flow of coolant and a giant heatsink somewhere. This is complicated by the fact that the assembly arms need a hard vacuum to work in, to ensure that there are no unwanted chemical reactions taking place on the surface of the work piece. Oh, but that means it can only build objects that can withstand exposure to vacuum. Flexible objects are also problematic, since even a tiny amount of flexing would ruin the accuracy of the build, and don’t even think about assembling materials that would chemically react with the assembly arms.

Yeah, this whole business isn’t as easy as it sounds.

The usual way to get around the speed problem is to work at a larger scale. Instead of building the final product atom by atom in one big assembly area, you have thousands of tiny fabricators building components the size of a dust mote. Then your main fabricator assembles components instead of individual atoms, which is a much faster process. For larger products you might go through several stages of putting together progressively larger subassemblies in order to get the job done in a reasonable time frame.

Unfortunately this also makes the whole process a lot more complicated, and adds a lot of new constraints. You can’t get every atom in the final product exactly where you want it, because all those subassemblies have to fit together somehow. They also have to be stable enough to survive storage and handling, and you can’t necessarily slot them together with sub-nanometer precision like you could individual atoms.

The other problems are addressed by using more specialized fabricator designs, which introduces further limitations. If you want to manufacture liquids or gasses you need a fabricator designed for that. If you want to work with molten lead or cryogenic nitrogen you need a special extreme environment fabricator. If you want to make food or medical compounds you need a fabricator designed to work with floppy hyper-complex biological molecules. If you want to make living tissue, well, you’re going to need a very complicated system indeed, and probably a team of professionals to run it.

Fabricators

Despite their limitations, fabricators are still far superior to conventional assembly lines. Large industrial fabricators can produce manufactured goods with very little sentient supervision, and can easily switch from one product to another without any retooling. High-precision fabricators can cheaply produce microscopic computers, sensors, medical implants and microbots. Low-precision devices can assemble prefabricated building block molecules into bulk goods for hardly more than the cost of the raw materials. Hybrid systems can produce bots, vehicles, homes and other large products that combine near-atomic precision for parts that need it with lower precision for parts that don’t. Taking into account the low cost of raw materials, an efficient factory can easily produce manufactured goods at a cost a thousand times lower than what we’re used to.

Of course, fabricators are too useful to be confined to factories. Every spaceship or isolated facility will have at least one fabricator on hand to manufacture replacement parts. Every home will have fabricators that can make clothing, furniture and other simple items. Many retail outlets will have fabricators on site to build products to order, instead of stocking merchandise. These ad-hoc production methods will be less efficient than a finely tuned factory mass-production operation, which will make them more expensive. But in many cases the flexibility of getting exactly what you want on demand will be more important than the price difference, especially when costs are so low to begin with.

So does this mean all physical goods are ultra-cheap? Well, not necessarily. Products like spaceships, sentient androids and shapechanging smart matter clothing are going to be incredibly complex, which means someone has to invest massive amounts of engineering effort in designing them. They’re going to want to get their investment back somehow. But how?

Copy Protection

Unfortunately, one of the things that nanotechnology allows you to do much better than conventional engineering is install tamper-proofing measures in your products. A genuine GalTech laser rifle might use all sorts of interesting micron-scale machinery to optimize its performance, but it’s also protected by a specialized AI designed to prevent anyone from taking it apart to see how it works. Devoting just a few percent of the weapon’s mass to defensive measures gives it sophisticated sensors, reserves of combat nanites, a radioactive decay battery good for decades of monitoring, and a self-destruct system for its critical components.

Obviously no defense is perfect, but this sort of hardware protection can be much harder to beat than software copy protection. Add in the fact that special fabrication devices may be needed to produce the latest tech, and a new product can easily be on the market for years before anyone manages to crack the protection and make a knock-off version. The knock-offs probably aren’t going to be free, either, because anyone who invests hundreds of man-years in cracking a product’s copy protection and reverse-engineering it is going to want some return on that investment.

All of this means that the best modern goods are going to command premium prices. If a cheap, generic car would cost five credits to build at the local fabrication shop, this year’s luxury sedan probably sells for a few hundred credits. The same goes for bots, androids, personal equipment and just about anything else with real complexity to hide.

Which is still a heck of an improvement over paying a hundred grand for a new BMW.

Common Benefits

Aside from low manufacturing costs, one of the more universal benefits of nanotech is the ubiquitous use of wonder materials. Drexler is fond of pointing out that diamondoid materials (i.e. synthetic diamond) have a hundred times the strength to weight ratio of aircraft aluminum, and would be dirt cheap since they’re made entirely of carbon. Materials science is full of predictions about other materials that would have amazing properties, if only we could make them. Well, now we can. Perfect metallic crystals, exotic alloys and hard-to-create compounds, superconductors and superfluids - with four hundred years of advances in material science, and the cheap fine-scale manipulation that fabricators can do, whole libraries of wonder materials with extreme properties have become commonplace.

So everything is dramatically stronger, lighter, more durable and more capable than the 21st century equivalent. A typical car weighs a few hundred kilograms, can fly several thousand kilometers with a few tons of cargo before it needs a recharge, can drive itself, and could probably plow through a brick wall at a hundred kph without sustaining any real damage.

Another common feature is the use of smart matter. This is a generic term for any material that combines microscopic networks of computers and sensors with a power storage and distribution system, microscopic fabricators and self-repair nanites, and internal piping to distribute feedstock materials and remove waste products. Smart matter materials are self-maintaining and self-healing, although the repair rate is generally a bit slow for military applications. They often include other complex features, such as smart matter clothing that can change shape and color while providing temperature control for its wearer. Unfortunately smart matter is also a lot more expensive than dumb materials, but it’s often worth paying five times as much for equipment that will never wear out.

With better materials, integrated electronics and arbitrarily small feature sizes, most types of equipment can also make use of extreme redundancy to be absurdly reliable. The climate control in your house uses thousands of tiny heat exchangers instead of one big one, and they’ll never all break down at once. The same goes for everything from electrical wiring to your car’s engine - with sufficient ingenuity most devices can be made highly parallel, and centuries of effort have long since found solutions for every common need.

This does imply that technology needs constant low-level maintenance to repair failed subsystems, but that job can largely be handled by self-repair systems and maintenance. The benefit is that the familiar modern experience of having a machine fail to work simply never happens. Instead most people can live out their whole lives without ever having their technology fail them.

Now that’s advanced technology.

Appendix V – Medicine

Futurists have invested a lot of effort in trying to predict the future of medicine, especially in light of expected developments in fields like tissue engineering and nanotechnology. While some of their more ambitious ideas seem unlikely in a universe that doesn’t have superhuman AIs, four and a half centuries of research implies a lot of progress. The human body may be incredibly complex, but nanotechnology is an equally incredible tool for unraveling that complexity and making repairs where they’re needed.

Or enhancements.

Indeed, as we shall see below, medicine in the 25th century is more about changing how the body works than simply fixing it. By this point in history infectious diseases are long since extinct, and cures for virtually any natural malady have been known for centuries. But the possibilities for enhancement and modification of the body are limitless, and in the long run people aren’t going to simply ignore that.

So what will people do with the technology to shape biology at the atomic level? Let’s take a look at the different applications.

Tissue Engineering

With a complete understanding of biology, doctors can easily clone organs or other tissues based on a patient’s DNA. Originally this process was developed to create replacements for lost body parts and failing organs, and in a modern lab it can produce anything up to and including a complete body.

This means that as long as your brain makes it to the hospital intact, any injury is survivable with no long-term consequences. In the worst case a doctor can simply put your brain in a life support pod for a week while he builds a replacement body, and then transplant you into it. Less drastic injuries can be treated by replacing lost body parts, or by applying various combinations of cultured cells and nanites to quickly rebuild damaged tissue.

Similar techniques can be used for cosmetic surgery, making it possible to alter a patient’s appearance in pretty much any desired fashion. Such cosmetic changes aren’t limited to a human appearance, either. If you want to look like a kitsune, or have horns growing out of your head, or anything else that’s biologically realistic, a little judicious cosmetic surgery can probably make it happen.

Genetic Engineering

Early genetic engineering focused on curing diseases, but over the course of centuries many societies have gone far beyond that. Since beneficial changes tend to spread, and deleterious alleles have a high chance of being removed via genetic engineering in any given generation, the human gene pool has changed markedly since the 21st century.

In the modern era all humans are considerably healthier, more athletic, smarter and better looking than in the past. Minor health problems like acne and poor eyesight are unusual, and easily fixed. Insanity and idiocy are likewise much less common, because the genetic factors that often contribute to such problems have long since been eliminated.

Many populations have gone beyond simple elimination of defects, seeking substantial improvements like universal genius or superhuman physical abilities. Such efforts usually succeed to some degree, but as a result the human genome has also become far more varied than in the past. Artificial manipulations from different sources often don’t mix well, so heavily modified humans may need to seek professional advice if they mate outside their own group.

Cybernetics

While organic modifications are generally more popular than mechanical devices, there are a lot of applications where they just don’t get the job done. The archetypal example of this is the implant communicator, a tiny brain implant that contains a radio and a computer controlled by a neural interface. Implant coms are virtually universal in most colonies, serving as a combination smart phone and ID card.

A second near-universal cybernetic device is the standard medical implant, which monitors its user’s health and deploys defensive nanotech devices to protect against hostile microorganisms. Given the lethality of artificial plagues this is considered an essential public health measure by most governments, much like vaccinations in the 20th century.

But cybernetics can go far beyond simple single-purpose implants. More ambitious designs can include subdermal armor, life support systems, sensory enhancements, and even wholesale replacement of large parts of the customer’s body. In the most extreme case the brain can be transplanted into a completely synthetic body. While few people are willing to go that far, full body replacements aren’t unknown in military forces or dangerous professions.

One of the biggest advances of the last century is the development of nanotech systems that can be inherited from mother to child, and will build a specified set of cybernetic devices as the child develops. As a result many children are now born with com and medical implants, sensory enhancements and other special abilities.

Low-powered cybernetics are usually designed to run off the same chemical energy sources as normal tissue. More energy-hungry devices are often connected to an implanted power cell, or even a nuclear power source such as a radioactive decay battery (i.e. ‘nuke pack’) or micro-fission plant.

Immortality

Like any other medical problem, the biological causes of aging were unraveled way back in the 21st century. At this point medical technology has been capable of repairing old age for almost four centuries, and immortality has long since become a routine part of life for practically every human society. Contrary to pessimistic early assumptions this is not some rare privilege reserved to the upper classes, and it doesn’t require some terrible Faustian bargain. In the 25th century people just stop aging when they reach maturity, and continue to live in a completely healthy body indefinitely.

Some people aren’t satisfied with this, since having your brain destroyed will still kill you. Many people have taken to living inside heavily armored structures (either giant space stations or underground colonies) with extensive security measures to minimize their chance of a fatal accident. Others have themselves upgraded with survivability mods like an armored skull, or even transfer their brains to heavily armored fixed installations and operate their body via remote control. The last option is popular with VR addicts, who don’t expect to spend much time in the real world anyway, but other people tend to think it’s a little paranoid.

Uploading is another option that’s technically feasible, but not especially popular. While scanning a human brain and converting it into a software emulation can potentially make the subject immortal, many people worry that the upload is ‘just a copy’ and that this doesn’t help the original. There is also considerable concern over the fact that an upload can easily be modified by whoever controls the hardware they run on, raising the specter of easy mass mind control.

Newer technology makes it possible to install a brain implant that streams all of a person’s experiences to a backup server in real time, so that if they die a doctor can simply construct a new copy of them complete with all their memories. Unfortunately it’s also trivial for anyone who has the backup data to edit it, and create as many altered copies of the original as they want. As a result fears of abuse have made the adoption of this technology fairly slow.

In the final analysis, the real limit on longevity in the 25th century is usually not individual lifespan. In a typical colony peaceful citizens can easily expect to live for thousands of years before falling prey to some rare accident, but the colonies themselves have a much shorter lifespan. War, terrorism and genocide are by far the leading causes of death, and further lifespan improvements are more a matter of politics than medicine.

Sex Mods

Yes, we’re going to go there. For some reason SF authors have generally been very reluctant to touch this issue, but the more immediate applications of easy personal modification tech seem fairly obvious.

First, by the 25th century practically all women have a set of mods that give them conscious control of their own fertility while completely eliminating the need to have periods. Another set of tweaks that makes it easy to achieve orgasm through intercourse is also nearly universal, because practically everyone wants that to be easy. Generations of hereditary cosmetic tweaks ensure that even average women are as beautiful as the supermodels of the 21st century, while those who work at it can achieve a level of exotic perfection that would be impossible in nature.

Meanwhile men generally have more stamina, and are able to perform several times in the course of an evening. Larger sex organs are fairly common, as are various minor design tweaks reputed to increase a partner’s pleasure. Gender dimorphism in height and weight is also significantly increased - the average male is a couple of inches taller and carries an extra twenty or thirty pounds of muscle, while the average female size hasn’t changed.

Second-order effects are less obvious, because they depend on the evolution of the surrounding society. Some colonies have fallen into a cycle of adopting more and more potent sex mods, creating a population that grows ever more obsessed with increasingly intense and exotic sex until finally nothing else ever gets done. Other societies become obsessed with specific fetishes, with most of the population adopting a common set of extreme mods (i.e. everyone becomes a cat person), but remain otherwise functional. Many societies see human relationships come to a virtual end with the widespread introduction of companion androids, and population growth either stops entirely or continues via artificial means.

But the one constant is that the future belongs to those who show up. As humanity expands ever further from the Sol system most of the colonists inevitably hail from societies that maintained a high birth rate for one reason or another. In the Outer Sphere virtually every colony has a high fertility rate, although the mechanisms vary widely. One colony might manufacture new citizens under the guidance of a Department of Population Growth, while another might simply have three women for every man and a culture encouraging large families. One way or another, though, the societies that produce strong population growth are steadily outcompeting those that don’t.

Mind Control

Unfortunately, one of the unanticipated consequences of the mastery of biology is that it makes a wide variety of mind control technologies feasible. While such techniques take time to apply and aren’t perfectly reliable, they can be far more insidious than traditional methods.

One branch of this technology combines VR systems with AI and direct neural stimulation to create a sort of perfect brainwashing environment. The AI can monitor the victim’s thoughts, applying positive and negative reinforcement in real time as it subjects them to various virtual experiences. Ruthless application of this approach is very effective at inducing compliance in most subjects, with a few days of training having an effect comparable to several years of more normal indoctrination.

The other approach is to directly modify the victim’s brain using implants or nanotechnology. Medical implants provide some protection against this sort of thing, but if you can capture someone it’s relatively easy to either remove their implant or overwhelm its supply of defensive nanites. At that point the victim’s memories, emotions and beliefs can simply be edited to match whatever is desired. A careless editing job can easily drive the victim insane or reduce them to a virtual zombie, but careful professional editing can be almost seamless.

Naturally oppressive governments tend to make liberal use of these technologies, both to ensure the loyalty of their subjects and to force them to believe whatever ideology has been declared official truth. This approach tends to be very successful at first, but once the brainwashing starts it tends to get used more and more until there’s no one left who has any contact with reality. This is one of three common failure modes of dysfunctional colonies (the other two being VR addiction and mass wireheading), although it’s gradually becoming less common as dictators learn to avoid the trap.

Table of Contents

- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
- Chapter 6
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 8
- Chapter 9
- Chapter 10
- Chapter 11
- Chapter 12
- Chapter 13
- Chapter 14
- Chapter 15
- Chapter 16
- Chapter 17
- Chapter 18
- Chapter 19
- Chapter 20
- Chapter 21
- Chapter 22
- Chapter 23
- Chapter 24
- Chapter 25
- Chapter 26
- Chapter 27
- Chapter 28
- Chapter 29
- Chapter 30
- Epilogue
- Appendix I – Hyperspace
- Appendix II – Momentum Exchange Technology
- Appendix III – Artificial Intelligence
- Appendix IV – Nanotechnology
- Appendix V – Medicine