Echoes of Empire
Author: J. N. Chaney; Terry Maggert
Date: 2022-12-11 08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction; Military Fiction
Description: Van and his crew have killed an empire. The problem is the empire doesn’t know it’s dead. Moving among the stars, the Peacemakers are faced with their greatest challenge—removing and evil so vast, it has a presence in every known star system. To that end, they’ll need to move fast. To move fast, they must be mobile, and that means big changes in their tactics. . . and crew. With the help of a shadowy figure known as the Body Thief, Van will continue his policy of justice and freedom for all citizens. Even if they began life on a computer chip. In the deepest reaches of known space, the Fafnir
Publisher: Variant Publications

Copyrighted Material

Echoes of Empire Copyright © 2022 by Variant Publications

Book design and layout copyright © 2022 by JN Chaney

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved

No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing.

1st Edition

CONTENTS

Don’t Miss Out

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

Glossary

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1

A gloomy pall covered most of Virginia and points south, somber and gray as it rolled off the tops of the Appalachian Mountains before slouching toward the Atlantic. We’d grounded the Fafnir in a ravine that split from the creek valley, then started toward the place where we were going to bury Carter, walking in silence through a fitful drizzle. I glanced back at the workboat and saw nothing, which was just how it should be—her stealth system, intended to protect her from casual observation by Earthly means, rendered her suitably invisible. But—

“Van, she’s fine,” Icky said, following me.

“I know.”

“I’ve checked and rechecked her stealth gear. It’s all in tip-top shape.”

“I know.”

“You’re never going to really trust it, are you?” she asked, adjusting the sledgehammer that hung over her shoulder.

I shrugged as we started along the creek-bed proper. “Sorry, but once bitten, twice shy, as they say. I still have vivid memories of having to dive into Lake Michigan with her when it failed.”

“Van, since then, I’ve replaced—” Icky started, then sighed. “Never mind. You wanted to park her under trees, we’ve parked her under trees.”

“Miryam, how far is it to the spot?” Torina asked.

“Not far. Carter was helpfully specific, talking about the big old hickory with the split trunk. And… that looks like a big old hickory with a split trunk right up there at that bend, doesn’t it?” Miryam replied.

We picked our way along the creek toward the place Miryam indicated. It wasn’t a tough walk, there being a trail wending alongside the meandering water, but that only made me more nervous. I’d chewed on whether to do this and invested a lot of worry about having the obvious extraterrestrials—Icky and Funboy—come as backup. If anyone came ambling along this creek, or otherwise stumbled upon us, we’d find ourselves on the giving end of a rather strange close encounter.

And I’d had my fill of violence. For now.

But given the shitty weather, the chances of anyone strolling down a muddy track following a hidden creek were remote at best, and anyway, to hell with it. Carter deserved this, and we were a crew, so he should have all of us here. We had history. We had… the shared weight of years. That mattered.

“This looks like the spot,” Miryam said, then she pulled a photograph out of her pocket and shielded it from the drizzle with the other hand as she looked around. Carter had enclosed the photo with a letter he’d written to me years earlier. The letter amounted to remember this? And I did, since it had been taken during one of our trips here to the Yost property. At the time, I’d thought it odd, because Carter and I weren’t exactly pen pals. I’d sent an email back to him, something like, yeah, good times, bruh, and left it at that. I wish I’d said more. Had I known how much it would cost us—

I stopped that thought, because it hurt, and it would accomplish nothing.

“Yeah… see, that hickory root there. It’s where Carter was sitting when this was taken,” she said.

I looked over her shoulder at the photo, and a scruffy ten-year-old with muddy bare feet and a goofy grin looked back at me. Carter was holding a turtle he’d found in the creek, mugging for whoever had taken the picture—his mother, as I recalled, since his father hadn’t been interested in coming with us.

I gave a nod, and rainwater dripped off my nose, cold and clear. “Yeah. That looks right.”

“I thought you said you were here with him. How come you weren’t in the picture, too?” she asked, putting the photo away again.

“I honestly don’t remember much about it, I’m afraid,” I replied, and I wasn’t lying. I think I begged off being in the picture for some reason but wasn’t sure why. Even then, at our young age, there was a gulf.

And that made me sad. Or sadder. I was already sad for Carter and what had happened to him. But this new, belated lens I was peering through at his childhood just made it all seem so much worse. It had taken him losing his humanity utterly and turning into something I’d been forced to kill to make me realize that he hadn’t had this glorious life of milk and honey and getting whatever he wanted. Mostly, he’d suffered from a benign neglect and had actually been deeply envious of me, of my relatively close relationship with my father, and my even closer one with Gramps.

I’d only realized it moments before I buried the Moonblade in his throat.

“Van?”

I blinked. Everyone was staring at me as I stared at the photo. I sighed.

“Sorry, I just—this is how I want to remember him,” I said, nodding at the picture. “Not like… what he became.”

Torina touched my arm. “We know. Take all the time you need.”

“Yeah, don’t let the fact that it’s starting to rain and we’re all getting wet hurry you along,” Perry said from where he’d perched in the hickory above us.

Torina glared up at him. “What do you care? You’re waterproof.”

“I was, as usual, thinking only of all of you. By the way, where’s everybody’s black umbrella?”

I cocked my head at him. “What?”

“In movies, whenever there’s a funeral scene, everyone’s supposed to have a black umbrella. In fact, ninety-seven-point-seven-five percent of the funeral umbrellas in movies I’ve seen have been black. So everyone keeps a black umbrella on hand for funerals, right?”

I smiled despite Perry’s irreverence. In fact, I smiled because of it. It was on-brand for him. Sometimes, he could be as annoying as hell. But other times, his smartass humor was just what we all needed. Like now.

“The bird’s right,” I said, looking around. “About the drizzle, not the umbrellas.” The drizzle was slowly hardening to rain. “Icky, let’s put it right there, as close to the root he was sitting on in the picture as you can.”

“You got it, boss,” she said before unlimbering her pack and removing the memorial we’d prepared. It was a small plaque made of common Earthly stainless steel—no alien alloys here—laser-etched with a few simple words.

Carter Yost

7-19-98

At Peace Among The Stars

The marker had a tapered bottom, so Icky was able to place it into the earth, then use her sledgehammer to tap it down, seating it firmly in place. When she was done, she stepped back.

“Van, did you want to say anything?” Torina asked.

I looked at the marker, little rivulets of water already trickling over the engraved letters.

“Yeah. Lots. Unfortunately, I’d be saying it all too late.” I offered Carter a silent goodbye, then turned back toward the Frankie.

“Let’s go home.”

As we made our way back to the ship, Netty spoke up, via the comm. “I’m sorry you’re so sad, Van. I wish I were there with you.”

“You are with us, Netty.”

“I suppose, and yet… I’m not really, am I?”

I smiled. “You’re here enough for me.”

* * *

We ascended to about twenty klicks, then turned and headed for Iowa to return Miryam to Pony Hollow. With the end of the Sorcerers as an organized threat and the capture of Helem Gauss, the menace to Miryam had largely passed by—at least for now. We still had the Iowa and its enthusiastic crew of young Conoku keeping watch over the Solar System from the Kuiper Belt. Both Valint and Groshenko had deployed alarm buoys and had ships making frequent passes just to keep an eye on things. It left me bemused that the population of Earth remained blissfully ignorant of the menace that had loomed over them—and the extraordinary lengths we had taken to protect my home planet.

Which, of course, was how it should be.

“Van, have you thought about how you’re going to tell Carter’s parents? Or what you’re going to tell them?” Icky asked as the Fafnir climbed through the overcast.

“I have.”

“And?” Torina asked.

“And, I have no idea. I mean, what the hell am I supposed to say? Hey, Uncle and Auntie. Hate to tell you this, but your son became an inhuman monstrosity bent on murderous destruction and I had to kill him? And oh, by the way, there’s a little plaque down by the creek in case you want to visit it?”

“Van, someone is eventually going to find that plaque. Are you just going to leave it unexplained, his parents never knowing what happened to him?”

“I would suggest lying,” Funboy said.

I glanced back at him. “What? Just make something up?”

“That… would be the essential definition of lying, yes.”

“No, I mean—” I turned back to the instruments. “That doesn’t seem right.”

“Perhaps not, but what’s the alternative? His progenitors have no frame of reference to accommodate what actually did happen to him, nor are you likely to succeed in giving them one. They either won’t believe you, which they will likely find more upsetting, or they will, in which case you will have… I would venture considerably more explaining to do.”

“Our little streak of misery has a point, Van. This could be a good example of an instance when a comforting lie is ultimately better than the pretty horrifying truth,” Perry said.

I looked at Torina. “Where’s your moral compass pointing?”

She stared back a moment, then shrugged. “I hate to admit it, but… it’s tough. My gut points at being honest, but seriously, how could you possibly explain what actually happened to Carter in any way his parents could even understand, much less accept?”

Miryam spoke up. “Van, Carter’s parents were used to him leaving home for long periods—weeks, sometimes even months at a time. Even before he wrangled his way into becoming a Peacemaker, he jet-setted around the world, mostly carousing and drinking and gambling. Trust me, I heard all about it from your grandfather, who found it repugnant.”

“So you’re saying, what? That I should tell them he died on one of those jaunts?”

“If you told them he fell off a yacht in the Caribbean during a party, they’d believe it.”

I shook my head. “If I’m going to lie about what happened to him, then I should at least try to make it something—I don’t know, noble.”

“How about he fell off a yacht in the Caribbean during a party while trying to rescue a drowning, ah, exotic dancer?” Perry suggested.

“I… think we can make it even more noble than that. Good choice of words though. Shows your growth.

Perry preened. “I’m equally amazing to everyone. It’s my gift.”

We flew on in silence for a moment, then finally lifted into sunshine. Ahead and below, the overcast came to a ragged end over southern Ohio. I could see the smoggy sprawl of Cincinnati dead ahead, the convergence of three interstates and myriad lesser roads on a broad sweep of the Ohio River.

I finally nodded. “Yeah, much as I’d like to tell them the truth, I just can’t see it working out very well. I’ll come up with… something, I guess.”

Torina summed it up.

“Honesty is the best policy, right up until it’s not.”

* * *

We dropped Miryam at Pony Hollow, said our goodbyes, then loaded aboard the Fafnir and lifted her out of the barn. That was a hair-raising process, since the clearance was down to a few centimeters, even with the barn being extended. Fortunately, Netty was just that good. But if we added anything more to the ship—like the Frankie, who attached underneath on hard points, she wasn’t going to fit. We’d have to extend the barn again, which would start raising questions—why was I enlarging the barn when I didn’t have any livestock? Or crops?

“You could always get into raising cows or horses or something,” Perry suggested. “You know, things that make noise and chew cud, stuff like that.”

I raised a brow. “Cud?”

Perry’s beak dropped. “Semi-digested plant matter, rich with saliva and—”

“Remove me from the vicinity of cows this instant,” Funboy ordered.

“Relax, princess, there aren’t any cows in space,” Torina said, snorting with laughter.

Funboy sniffed with what dignity he could manage. “Yet.”

“I don’t think cows take to spaceflight. Or even suborbital flight. Not built for it,” Icky added. “Kinda thick, like me.” She grinned and extended a muscled leg.

“You’re safe from Bessie. For now,” I told Funboy. “But… buy and raise a herd of cows or horses just so I can justify expanding the barn so my spaceship fits inside it?”

“Well sure, when you say it out loud like that, it sounds crazy.”

“No, it sounded crazy inside my head, too.”

Although… Perry might have a point. At the very least, we needed to come up with a way of convincingly expanding the barn. I didn’t want to lose the ability to work on the Fafnir here on Earth, but I likewise didn’t want the size of a barn in rural Iowa to dictate the ultimate size of my spaceship. I left Miryam to chew on the problem while we departed, before rendezvousing with Zeno aboard the Frankie, on overwatch over Africa.

Which was when the missile arrived.

* * *

There’d been no warning. Like, none. Fortunately, I’d taken to keeping the point-defense batteries in autonomous mode, a product of my healthy paranoia of the past couple of years over being ambushed by the Sorcerers or BeneStar or any number of other miscreants intent on collecting the bounty that had been placed on my head.

The incident happened, and then was over, almost before it had time to register on us. Zeno, who was docking the Frankie with the Fafnir, yelped in alarm as the point-defense batteries abruptly came to life, spinning and spewing out streaks of tracers. The mass-driver slugs found their mark with the missile just seconds away, and probably nearly at the instant of detonation. Their impacts shredded the projectile, turning it into slagged debris.

Which was still a danger. Several bits smacked into the Fafnir at bullet speeds, detonating a REAB module. We took only superficial damage, but it was still enough to set alarms blaring and ratchet each of us to heart-pounding battle readiness.

“Netty, where the hell did that come from?”

“Working on it. It was stealthed, right up until it wasn’t. I’m reviewing the scanner logs, and there was nothing… and I mean nothing, before it suddenly appeared less than a hundred klicks away.”

“Shit. Okay. While Netty’s chewing on that, everyone move your asses. Zeno, get yourself docked so we can get out of here,” I said, grabbing my helmet. The last thing I wanted was to end up in a space battle over the Horn of Africa, but if it was going to happen, then we needed to be ready. That started with bringing all of the weapons online, then suiting up and depressurizing the ship to avoid any potentially catastrophic explosive decompression.

“I’ll be docked in thirty seconds, Van,” Zeno said.

We waited, hammering away with our active scanners at full power. I wasn’t worried about being spotted, since we’d already been targeted. But nothing unexpected showed up on the tactical overlay, just the myriad things already in orbit around Earth, sundry satellites in a multitude of orbits. The International Space Station had just risen over the Earth’s nightside limb and would pass about a hundred klicks below us. In fact, the only thing out of the ordinary we saw was a missile rising from North Korea—not at us, but on a trajectory obviously intended to menace Japan. I was tempted to shoot the damned thing down just because, but I held off and waited for Zeno to secure the Frankie.

As soon as she had, we accelerated out of orbit. We had to do so slowly. We couldn’t light the fusion drive until we were at a suitable distance from Earth since the detonation of a thermonuclear bomb in orbit would attract unwanted attention. It made for a tense ride until we were clear, but there were no more mystery missiles.

We all heaved a sigh of relief when we passed the Moon’s orbit and could light the drive a couple of hours later.

“Netty, any idea where that missile came from yet?” I asked.

“None. Perry and I have reviewed every scrap of data we could find, and as near as we can tell, it might as well have popped into existence from nowhere.”

“Maybe whoever fired it somehow caused it to twist in right on top of us,” Torina suggested.

Zeno curled her lip. “In orbit, just a few hundred klicks up from Earth? If they did—whoever they are—then they’ve got completely unknown tech.”

Netty spoke up. “That isn’t likely, at least not with current twist technology. Even the Sorcerers, who apparently had that twist drive that could work inside a gravity well—”

“Which, thankfully, they never used a second time, at least as far as we know,” Torina put in.

“True. Anyway, a twist would have resulted in some degree of gravitational effects, but there were none,” Netty went on.

I nodded. “Okay. Well, we’ll report it and hand over all the data when we get to Anvil Dark. Maybe somebody there will know something.” I glanced at Torina. “I kind of hope it is the Sorcerers, actually. That some of them escaped Gerhardt’s dragnet and they’ve been fiddling with the twist tech we know they already have.”

“Why?”

“Because if it’s not, then there’s an entirely new and unknown player in the game—and that’s the last thing we need.”

2

We arrived at Anvil Dark to find that a new Master was being inducted.

I braced myself. “Great. Knowing this Guild, it’s going to be Helem Gauss or some criminal kingpin or someone equally vile.”

“You don’t have a very high opinion of the Guild’s Masters, do you?” Torina asked with a smile as we disembarked from the Fafnir and entered the station, the rest of our crew in tow. Netty, in the meantime, made arrangements to have the ship refueled and the REAB module detonated by our mystery missile replaced. Torina wove her fingers into mine, and they fit just right. I gave her hand a light squeeze, feeling the fine bones under my rougher hands. She smiled again, and this time it was accompanied by a lifted brow.

“Can you blame me? We’ve had four, including Yotov and Kharsweil, that have been corrupt as sin. I can name three—Groshenko, Gerhardt, and Alic—that I’d consider to be on the side of the angels. As for the rest—I’m not even sure what they do, besides lurk in the Keel and sign stuff Max puts in front of them. That’s not a very good ratio of good to bad to indifferent, is it?”

“You do have a point.”

We emerged into the main concourse and found it bustling, the way it should be. The last time we’d arrived to confront and arrest Kharsweil, the place had been silent, the tension so thick the Moonsword would have struggled to cut it. I barely had time to take in the general vibe and start looking around before I heard a voice calling my name.

“Van! Over here!”

I turned toward it and found Lunzy striding along, weaving her way among the other Peacemakers, their auxiliaries, and sundry other people with business on Anvil Dark.

“Hello, Lunzy. We’ve gotta stop meeting like this.” I leaned toward her and stage-whispered, “Torina’s going to get jealous.”

Torina nodded. “He’s right, you know. Lunzy, you cut a fine figure in that uniform,” she said, giving an exaggerated leer.

Lunzy laughed. “Careful, Van, or I might just steal your girlfriend.”

“Fiancée, actually,” I replied. “There have been ceremonies. Speeches.”

“Fancy food, too,” Icky enthused.

“Really? That’s wonderful! Congratulations!” Lunzy said, then gestured for us to follow her. “Anyway, Gerhardt sent me to fetch you as soon as you arrived. He’s got someone he wants you to meet.”

We followed Lunzy and soon traded the bustle of the Concourse for the quiet corridors that connected the bulk of the station to its central core—the Keel.

In the Keel, the Masters kept their offices and did business around the Masters’ Table, an actual, sprawling table with a storied history in a palatial boardroom. Or, rather, did business around the Table only rarely, it turned out. When I first joined the Guild, I had visions of gravely earnest debates among the Masters as they sat around the big Table, but it turned out they really did most of their business the way everyone else in the galaxy did. By what amounted to email. That was considerably less cool.

We greeted Max, the composite being that acted as the Masters’ administrative assistant and generally ran their lives, then carried on to Gerhardt’s office. As we passed, I noticed that the door to what had been Kharsweil’s office, which had been destroyed when he’d booby trapped it while fleeing the station, had been repaired. He was still out there somewhere, having successfully eluded capture, which was a major issue for the Guild. Masters had access to all sorts of sensitive and potentially explosive information—criminal intelligence, ongoing cases, that sort of thing. A major effort was underway to find him, but I’d been spared having to participate in it—at least, so far. Gerhardt had wanted to give me and my crew some downtime to rest and recover from the events leading up to the flight of Kharsweil and the subsequent capture of Helem Gauss, the former power behind the vast corporation known as BeneStar. I had a feeling our impromptu peace was about to end.

We entered Gerhardt’s office to find he was, for some reason, in his formal dress uniform, and he wasn’t alone. A Schegith, one of the bulky, slug-like beings vaguely reminiscent of Jabba the Hutt from the Star Wars franchise, was present as well. He introduced himself as Schegith, which was good enough for us. We liked his people, and they liked us.

“It brings to mind Australians and philosophers,” Perry muttered.

Torina glanced at him. “What?”

“He’s saying it’s going to cause a little confusion,” I replied, which prompted Perry to point a wing at me and briefly darken one eye in a wink. I turned back to the Schegith. “Very pleased to meet you—”

“Volffin,” he said.

“I’m sorry?”

“Volffin. This one has chosen the designation to satisfy your need for a unique identity using verbal means only.”

“It’s your name.”

“I believe that is what this one said.”

I smiled. The Schegith were a bright spot amid the drearily common scum and villainy of known space. They were forthright, reliable friends who assumed Protectorate status over Torina’s homeworld, Helso, and were just generally good people.

They also resembled a giant, fanged gastropod—kinda sorta, if you squinted just right—but the Schegith were superb examples of personality being more important than looks.

“Of course. I’m always pleased to make the acquaintance of an esteemed member of your people, Volffin.”

“You’ll be getting to know him even better,” Gerhardt put in. “Volffin is going to be our newest Master.”

I blinked, then my smile became a wide, cheery grin. This was probably the best news about the Guild I’d had in a long time. Volffin would be essentially immune to corruption, partly because it was just the nature of his people, and partly because Schegith, their leader, maintained something resembling a psychic link to each of them and would be soon aware of it. It meant that, along with Gerhardt and our old friend Alic, the Eniped, there were now three of seven Masters we could rely on to have our backs.

I liked those odds much more than previous years.

“I didn’t realize there were any Schegith in the Guild,” Zenophir said.

“There aren’t. Volffin has quickly risen through the ranks of the Schegith Protectorate of your homeworld, Ms. Milon—or, I understand it will soon be Mrs. Tudor?” Gerhardt said, flashing a brief smile.

“Gossip really does travel faster than light,” I said.

Torina smiled. “Thank you, Master Gerhardt. I was thinking, though, that Van might become Mr. Milon instead. But with umlauts in the name, so he feels—what was the term, dear?”

“Metal. Umlauts are more metal.”

“Says the guy who likes Gordon Lightfoot,” Perry said.

“And big band music,” Zeno added.

“I refuse to apologize for having excellent taste in mates and music,” I said, standing tall under their scurrilous accusations.

“Attaboy, boss. Defend that playlist,” Perry quipped.

Gerhardt actually laughed, watching our exchange with open enjoyment “Fair enough. I’ll just continue calling you Tudor and Ms. Milon, if that’s alright with you. As to your choice in music, that’s for you and the universe to reconcile. In any case, Volffin is a skilled and experienced field agent, as well as a prosecutor with an iron-clad knowledge of interstellar law that probably rivals that of—well, any AI.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment?” Perry said.

I turned to Volffin. “Congratulations on your ascension to Master. I think you’ll do an excellent job.”

“Yeah, you don’t seem to be the type who’ll turn out to be a corrupt scumbag,” Icky said, nodding enthusiastically.

A tense silence fell, all of us staring awkwardly. It lingered a moment, then evaporated when Volffin cut loose with a rolling, deep belly laugh.

“This one is glad for the vote of confidence from you!” he proclaimed to Icky. “This one will try very hard not to be a scumbag.”

We relaxed. Zeno still gave me a distinct I’ll talk to her look, with a pointed glance at Icky. Icky just grinned and shrugged.

“Oh, incidentally, Tudor, our technical people looked at the data Netty sent ahead regarding the missile that so unexpectedly attacked you at Earth. Volffin, in fact, has looked at it because it is similar to a case he investigated once,” Gerhardt said.

“This one believes that a mechanism was used to reduce the scanner return to as close to null as is possible—” Volffin began, but Funboy interrupted.

“Did it involve using a stream of neutrons to scramble our scans?”

We all stared at him.

He blinked back at us. “I have merely been mulling over possibilities. It gives me something to do with my time.”

“Were you ever going to share that with us?” I asked him.

He gave a slow shrug. “I was going to consult with Netty and perhaps run some simulations first. I didn’t want to seem… overconfident.” He shrugged again. “But since the matter came up—”

“This one is impressed with your deductions and would ask that you explain further,” Volffin said.

“A sufficiently intense neutron bombardment could blind the scanners temporarily, by overloading their receivers. If done carefully, with an intensity and energy kept within carefully controlled limits, it would be theoretically possible to cause a blinding effect without triggering a fault in the scanners. It seems like the only path forward with current technology. Such a stream of neutrons would… grease the tracks, as they say on Earth.”

“Do they say that on Earth?” Torina asked me.

“I—sure, yeah, why not.”

“As to the mechanism to accomplish it, however,” Funboy went on with a third shrug, “I don’t know.”

Zeno had been lost in a thoughtful frown. “If it was built into the missile, it would have to be small, and that means wildly expensive, because of the miniaturization you’d have to do. Alternatively, the neutron beam could have been generated from somewhere else, another stealthed ship maybe, which means it could be bigger, which means cheaper, but also heavier. There aren’t a lot of ways to generate the neutron flux you’d need. You’d need—um, a fission reactor. Or a cyclotron. Both would do the job.”

Her frown deepened. Each plane of her face became thought personified. “Hmm. I just can’t see miniaturization working. You’d need the reactor, or a neutron source, but also the mechanisms to control it—” She finally shook her head. “It would be something you’d have to build in space, or you’d have to put a lot of effort and fuel into lifting it there.”

“That rules out anyone who uses coupons. A Sorcerer we missed, maybe? I mean, we might have wiped most of them out, and Gauss may be in prison—”

“About that—” Volffin started, but I looked at him as though he’d slapped me.

“If you’re about to tell me that he’s escaped, I am going to personally shred this Guild. Shred it. It’s bad enough that Yotov got out, and I won’t spend another day in this uniform with that kind of… of corrupt system.”

“No, no, he has not escaped. This one has just received a private message from the Principle Justice overseeing the case. It is required that you be a witness in the trial of Helem Gauss.”

“Witness? Where? When? Oh, please tell me it’s going to be soon.”

“That’s the reason for this,” Gerhardt said, gesturing down at his formal dress attire. “As Volffin was about to say, Gauss has more attorneys than there are stars in this spiral arm, and they’ve successfully argued he can’t get a fair trial here on Anvil Dark.”

Perry nodded. “Ain’t that the truth. Someone would probably space the bastard. And that someone might even be me.”

Gerhardt shot him a glance, then turned back to me. “Helem Gauss will be tried in a neutral location, agreed upon by the Guild and his legal team.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “I notice you still haven’t said where.”

“The planet Sunderbach, in the Seven Stars League.”

Torina took a step toward him. “The system that put out a so-called warrant on Van that was more bounty than legal decree? That tried to kill Van? That has been exploiting Helso for years until the Schegith came along to make us an actual Protectorate? The people who want our heads on a spike? Are you really so blind to their bullshit that you agree to send him—”

Gerhardt, his face hard, opened his mouth to fire something back into Torina’s broadside, but Volffin spoke first with quiet insistence.

“Van Tudor will not go alone. In fact, Van Tudor will go with what this one would call… a navy.”

I stared. “Beg your pardon?”

“We’ve asked for an extension to prepare our case, Tudor, and we’re doing it for one very good reason. We’ll go to the trial, but we don’t really care about the outcome, because our goal isn’t the conviction of Helem Gauss.”

I gaped some more. “It’s not. Really.”

“No. Contrary to what some may think, taking out the evil emperor does not cause his evil empire to suddenly cease to exist. BeneStar is a massive corporation, and it’s still there—although fractured, as opportunists make their moves to supplant Gauss and become the new powerbrokers. The so-called baby stars have fallen into some nasty, internecine fighting. And while most of it is corporate and political jockeying, I do mean some actual fighting as well, as in space and ground combat,” Gerhardt said.

“Yikes. Really puts the hostile in hostile takeover, doesn’t it?”

“Indeed. In any case, the whole matter is still very volatile. And while the motives of the eventual victors remain to be seen, and could end up a cause for concern, right now they are all united in one way—they frankly don’t want Gauss back. He still has money, but he’s no longer pulling the strings. He’s currently just a really rich criminal—who, I might add, is only being kept alive through artificial means. He’s not the threat he once was.”

I threw my hands out. “So we went to all the trouble and heartache of catching Gauss, and now we don’t care whether he even pays for his crimes!”

“No, Tudor, what I’m saying is that catching him was the objective, and also the punishment. The moment you slapped the metaphorical handcuffs on him was the moment he did pay for his crimes. The vultures that had been circling, waiting for that, pounced. And for Gauss, it was over.”

“It is with great irony, Van, that this one believes you to currently be the most popular person in known space among the upper echelons of BeneStar management. By bringing down Gauss, you created opportunities that they despaired of ever seeing realized,” Volffin added.

Torina sniffed. “In other words, we opened up some vacancies at the top of the org chart.”

I blew out a breath and shook my head. “I’ve always been a boon to the job market wherever I go. I don’t make mistakes. I make opportunities.”

“Can we get that as an inspirational poster for the galley, boss? Heluva speech there. Gave me chills,” Perry said.

Funboy’s voluminous brows fluttered. “Chills are a sign of fever in humans. In you, it’s far worse. Are you losing containment?”

“No. I only have a fever for the perfect punchline. Or sending the last Sorcerer into a star’s corona.”

Funboy inclined his head. “A noble goal. I have a question for the crew that is unrelated to Perry’s obsession with comedic timing. I sense something beyond this trial, Van. I’ve made it my mission to assess risk, and this seems—”

“Perceptive as always, Funboy. Let’s ask the source, shall we?” I turned to Gerhardt, my brow raised. “Why are we taking a fleet to see Gauss stand trial, knowing there’s no way in hell we let him walk?”

Gerhardt’s answer was instant and clear.

“Because we’re going to dismember the Seven Stars League, or at least its current, corrupt leadership, to whom we’ve managed to tie the Sorcerers and the identity theft conspiracy pretty convincingly. The incident with the Tenants gave us a window into the inner workings of their government. Those insights became true understanding, based on data we stripped from the Sorcerers as we ground them into stellar dust. Add our relationships with Unity and the Schegith, and we have more than just the basis of criminal charges. We’re going to take the bastards down for Crimes Against Order. When we’re done, we’re going to give some of their territory to the very people they helped enslave. Every being we free from the hell of living with their mind trapped in a chip? They’ll be given land. A home. A place to be free,” Gerhardt said, his voice ringing with pride and determination.

Then a sly, feral smile spread across Gerhardt’s face, shifting his appearance in a fugitive moment. “Also, we’re going to vaporize anyone who gets in our way. And I, for one, am hoping some of them get in our way.”

“Yesss, it’s about time!” Icky growled.

Gerhardt turned to Torina. “Does that put your mind more at ease, Ms. Milon, about our upcoming dealings with the League?”

She offered a wintry grin. “Oh, yes, very much so.”

“Well, Tudor, what do you think?” Gerhardt asked me.

My mind raced. Taking out the Seven Stars League? Really?

I shook my head. “Isn’t this going to… upset the balance of power? What are the Eridani Federation and Tau Ceti going to think about the Guild taking such direct action against a sovereign state?”

“Oh, they’ll probably be quite okay with the League being taken out of contention as a serious player in known space politics. It will let them concentrate their schemes on each other.”

“Okay. So where are we getting our fleet from?” I asked.

“The Guild itself has substantial combat power. Petyr Groshenko has agreed to throw his available ships into the effort. And then, of course, there’s the GKU—including its more, shall we say, feral elements, who are always up for a fight,” Gerhardt said.

“Like my mother.”

He nodded.

“Alright. I do have a… a condition, though,” I said.

Gerhardt raised an eyebrow. “A condition.”

“Yeah. If we’re going to war, I’d like my ship upgraded. It’s time the Fafnir was bulked up to a full-on class 12 rating, increased firepower included.”

“Isn’t your ship only just a class 11?”

“Sort of. But isn’t it time the Guild helped out a poor Peacemaker who’s barely scraping by?”

Torina patted my arm. “There, there, Van. I know you don’t want to sell Icky’s pants collection, but if we must, we must.”

Icky beamed. “Fine by me. I mean, it’s two pairs—these ones that you made me wear, and ones I’ve never even worn—oh. It’s another pants joke. Hah.”

“Right? They never get old,” Perry said.

Icky put two pairs of hands on her hips. “Are we getting fancy shit on the Fafnir or not?”

Gerhardt flashed a tolerant grin, then activated his comm. “Kragdalous, it’s Gerhardt. Yes, he asked, and you owe me fifty credits. Anyway, are you ready?”

“Yeah, send him on.”

Gerhardt looked Icky up and down. “Better have some food ready. His crew is coming along with him, and some of them look hungry. Thanks.”

“Hey, how did you know I was hungry?” Icky said.

Funboy sniffed. “Because you’re awake.” He turned to Gerhardt. “I assume you’re sending us to some grease-slathered hellhole populated by people in coveralls? And unclean ones, at that?”

“Nothing of the sort. You’ll see. Oh, and Tudor? Kragdalous is a bit… particular. So behave. And that means all of you, Icrul,” Gerhardt added.

“You said he’s feeding us?” Despite being more mature, she was still intensely concerned with eating. Often.

“I did.”

Icky hitched up her trousers, which she variously referred to as her fancy pants or her fighting pants, depending on her mood. “Then I’ll be a perfect guest. At least until dessert.”

Zeno shook her head at Icky, then sighed. “That’s a start.”

3

The mysterious Kragdalous was an Eniped, part of the same squat, heavily muscled race as our good friend Alic, who was now one of the Masters. He was considerably older than Alic, though, apparently evidenced by the shape of his face.

As we approached, Perry murmured, “The bigger the jowls, the more revered they are—and likely older, too. Often, they’re treated as a valued elder. It’s a status thing for them.”

“Good to know. Thanks for the lesson, bird,” I said, shifting my attention away from our impromptu cultural lesson.

The jowls Kragdalous sported were impressive. But it was his workspace that captured our attention. Immediately.

He worked on special projects for the Guild, maintaining and upgrading ships that were routinely involved in classified operations and not just run-of-the-mill Peacemaker Dragonets and Dragons. I knew the Guild maintained a small fleet of covert ships specifically intended for these special projects, but the Fafnir wasn’t one of them, so aside from having seen Kragdalous around Anvil Dark, we’d never had any dealings with him. In fact, he’d kept himself largely apart from the twist and bend of Guild politics, so aside from the fact that he existed, I really knew nothing about him at all.

Which was apparently about to change, I thought, as we stepped into a maintenance bay so pristine and tidy it resembled the clean rooms used by NASA to work on spacecraft. The decks and bulkheads shone starkly white, while chrome-bright tools gleamed like surgical instruments arrayed for use. The bay held only a single object, a ship maybe, the size of a small workboat, class 2 or 3. We couldn’t be sure because it was draped in a white tarp, reducing it to nothing but an intriguing shape.

Funboy stopped as soon as he entered the bay, and just stood there, blinking.

“Funboy, are you okay?” I asked him, bemused.

“It’s just so… beautiful.” He reached for a tool, a glittering spanner, but stopped and pulled his hand back. “As a Surtsi, I have never conceived of a rewarding afterlife, until now.”

“I think that’s his way of saying he’s found heaven,” Perry said.

I nodded, and we turned toward the only figure in the bay, Kragdalous himself.

“Van Tudor, a pleasure to formally make your acquaintance. I know all about you, of course, but I’d be surprised if there are any members of the Guild who don’t,” he said.

I returned his welcome, glanced around, then landed my gaze on Kragdalous’s coveralls, which were as sterile white as the rest of the place. “Are we… supposed to be wearing special clean suits or something?”

“What? Oh… no, no. The bay has its own air purifiers, which are more than capable of dealing with any stray bits and hairs you may shed—” He frowned a little when he looked at Icky. “I think they should be, anyway.”

“I’ve gotta talk to the AI who controls them after we leave here to see if he was able to meet the challenge,” Perry said, pausing to follow a hair that detached itself from Icky and drifted to the deck. “Or not.”

“Hey, bird, remember that time I threw you at someone and you got really upset?” she snapped back at him.

“Yes.”

“How upset would you be if it was a wall?”

I sighed and addressed Icky. “Let’s… just stay on target here, okay?” I turned back to Kragdalous. “Gerhardt sent us here but didn’t say why. So—?”

“So, I’ve arranged for some food at The Friendly Table. Let’s adjourn there, and we can talk.”

He led the way. I had to go back and gently turn Funboy around to start him toward the exit.

“Funboy, are you crying?” I asked him, only half serious.

He regarded me with large, tearless eyes but wore an expression of pure wonder. “I am on the inside.”

* * *

I’d assumed that whatever we were going to be discussing, it would require discretion, not be suited for a public space like a restaurant. And that’s what The Friendly Table was, the restaurant equivalent to Anvil Dark’s bar, The Black Hole. The latter tended to be raucous, a place you could get a small selection of food, but was mostly meant for drinking. The Friendly Table was the opposite, a more sedate place that did serve drinks but emphasized the food. Both always tended to be busy.

Kragdalous didn’t lead us to one of the open tables, though. Instead, he wended his way among them to the back of the restaurant. He stopped at a section of wood-paneled wall, then turned and nodded to the Nesit working the bar. He got a nod in return, then one of the wood panels slid open, revealing a private dining room beyond it.

“What? Over two hundred years I’ve been around Anvil Dark, and I never knew this place existed,” Perry said, and there was a hint of annoyance in his tone.

“Not everyone can get in the club,” I told him. “Including me.”

“That’ll change,” Zeno said. Her statement was so bland, I cut my eyes at her to measure her intent, but she studiously avoided my gaze before taking a seat at the expanse of table.

Kragdalous sat, then signaled to a pair of AI bots. “Our friends will be dining well. Begin, please.”

Icky hummed with expectation, and even Funboy looked interested as the bots brought plates and bowls of food in a metronome of efficiency. The table was eventually covered with dishes of stavosia, noodles, a spicy stew, and a thick, bright red soup whose flavor had hints of carrot and ginger. As we dished ourselves up, Kragdalous spoke in a paternal, friendly tone.

“I guess it’s apparent that we’re not here to discuss simply upgrading your ship,” he said to me.

I glanced pointedly around. “Kinda figured that, yeah. I’m assuming this room is considered secure?”

“Very. As secure as any meeting room in the Keel, and more so than some of them.” He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Even people discussing secretive, covert matters get hungry.”

“Good point. Then let’s discuss the primary issue, shall we? This is about covert ops targeting the Seven Stars League,” I replied. “And I’ll add it’s richly deserved.”

“Gerhardt said you were quick. He also said you’re uncompromising—about your crew, your ship, and perhaps most of all about yourself. As to whether or not the Seven Stars deserve to be, ah—”

“Dismembered.”

“Dismembered. A fitting term, Peacemaker.” Kragdalous spooned up more soup and held it before him, considering the color like it was wine. “Is your crew really first?”

“They are, although I admit that one of them has a more, um… elevated position.”

Torina took time to bat her lashes, then went back to slicing stavosia. She continued listening intently, in that way that told Kragdalous he should take care of his words.

“Naturally, and I commend you on how you care for your crew. I also cheer your upcoming union to Torina Milon, of Helso and Milon Estates, which recently enjoyed a rebirth of the soil, so to speak, thanks to your efforts.” Kragdalous followed this with a wintry smile, showing that he too owned information. I respected him even more.

“When it comes to them, everything else takes second place,” I said, spooning some of the lurid soup into a bowl. “So with respect, I ask that you keep that in mind as we discuss—whatever it is we’re going to discuss.”

Kragdalous nodded slowly, a mild grin playing at his features. “I certainly will. Tell me, Van, how familiar are you with nuclear weapons?”

“I understand the boom. And the fallout. And I know enough to fear them, in some sense.”

Kragdalous gave me a flat look, and I smiled. “I understand how they work, if that’s what you mean. Or at least the principles behind basic versions. I mean, I doubt that I could build one—”

“So you’re aware that their explosive yield is a function, in part, of the amount of fissionable material required to achieve so-called criticality.”

“Sure,” I said. I kind of got what he was getting at. To operate as a nuclear reactor, or a bomb, the fuel—a material that naturally emits radiation, like isotopes of uranium—has to be present in sufficient quantity to initiate and sustain a chain reaction, also known as criticality. There was a lot more to it than that, of course, but that much I understood, at least.

“Where are you going with this? I mean, nuclear weapons aren’t exactly lighthearted lunchtime conversation, are they?” Torina asked.

Kragdalous shook his head. “No, they’re not. Where I’m going with this is the concept of a small-area nuclear detonation, or SAND.”

“Theoretical, right? The idea that you could develop a nuclear weapon that would be virtually man-portable, and with a blast effect that would only be a few tens of meters,” Perry said.

“Theoretical, yes—until now,” Kragdalous said.

“How could you possibly achieve that, though?” Zeno, our weapons expert, asked. “You’d need fissionable material with a critical mass of—” She trailed off, stared for a moment, then blinked and looked back at Kragdalous.

“You’ve managed to do just that, haven’t you? Make a bomb that uses some ridiculously heavy element as its fuel? Then, instead of tens of kilos, you’d only need a few grams, and you could generate a small, localized nuclear blast.”

Kragdalous smiled broadly, in open admiration of Zeno’s calculations. “I see that your crew is as sharp as you are, Van.” He turned back to Zeno. “That’s right. Less than three kilos of my particular favorite—antimatter—would produce our desired result.”

“It doesn’t occur naturally on Earth, so it has to be synthesized,” Perry said. “At least, it isn’t casually available to any agency I’m aware of, and I’ve been listening in on Van’s planet for decades. Put simply, harvesting antimatter would bankrupt the planet, let alone a sole state actor. Brutally expensive. Might bounce a check or two on that one, boss.”

Netty cut in. “I just did a quick and dirty calculation about how expensive. Currently, it would cost about twenty-seven million US dollars to synthesize a gram of the stuff on Earth. Enough to achieve criticality would come to north of sixty billion dollars. And that’s assuming the facility doesn’t go boom.”

I sat back. “Holy shit.” I looked at Kragdalous. “I realize that it’s not like there’s some formal exchange between the currency Netty’s talking about, dollars, and the bonds used out here, but it’s still got to be near ruinous numbers.”

“It is.”

“But you’ve done this.”

“We have.”

“What would be the… yield, or blast area, or whatever, of a bomb made with this?”

“It would vaporize most materials across an area of about ten meters and cause intense thermal effects out to about one hundred meters. If detonated in a standard atmosphere, it would cause significant blast damage to about twice that distance.”

“So it’s an effective way to kill something you really want to kill while minimizing collateral damage,” Perry said.

“Something you really want to kill—or someone,” Torina added.

Kragdalous sat back. “Like I said, you have a very sharp crew, Van. Yes, there is someone we really, really want to kill. And that someone is Helem Gauss.”

* * *

I put down my spoon.

“Gauss is going to be on trial. There will be a bunch of innocent parties there—lawyers, magistrates, bailiffs, clerks. Maybe witnesses, Maybe media. There’s no way I’ll be a party to mass murder, no matter how deserving the actual target it is—”

“No, no, of course not,” Kragdalous said, shaking his head emphatically. “The GKU—because I’m sure you’ve surmised by now that that’s who I’m representing here—only wants to kill Gauss, not anyone else.”

“So why not just do it the old fashioned way? You know, a sniper, or poison or something?” Torina asked.

“Because Gauss will be under heavy guard, for obvious reasons, right up until the moment he’s released.”

I half-stood from my chair. “Released? Why the hell would he be—?”

“Van, sit down. He’s not simply going to be let go. However, we’ve determined that it’s virtually certain he’s going to be acquitted, either because he uses a phalanx of lawyers to pry open some legal loophole, or because of witness tampering or some flavor of corruption. I mean, do you really believe that Helem Gauss will ever see the inside of a prison cell?”

I sat back down and sighed. “No, probably not. Back on Earth, you get the justice you can afford, and it’s no doubt the same out here.”

“Hang on. Gerhardt and that new Master just got through telling us all about how Gauss isn’t a threat anymore because all his underlings are snatching for his job and he’ll never be boss of BeneStar again,” Icky said, wiping bright red soup off her chin.

“That’s true—to a point. While he might not be the sort of interstellar, almost existential threat he was, he’ll still be able to cause a great deal of grief,” Kragdalous said. “But the bastard doesn’t deserve to walk away from his crimes, which we believe he’s inevitably going to do. That would just be… beyond the pale.”

“But where’s he going to go that a regular assassin won’t be able to just off him?”

“Do we have a list of Gauss’s remaining allies?” Zeno asked. “We’ve thinned them out, to be sure, but—"

“I have an idea. While you’ve all been sitting here having your ponderously slow organic conversation, I’ve been reviewing Guild intelligence data on BeneStar and Gauss, a bunch of which Gerhardt just unlocked a short while ago,” Perry said.

I looked at him expectantly. “Okay—and?”

“Like Gerhardt said, when Gauss was arrested, BeneStar came apart as the minions all sought to become the master—except for one. It just closed its beautiful ranks and kept itself apart.”

Torina frowned. “Beautiful? Oh, hell no, do you mean—?”

“Yup, the Enhancement Empire. All three of the principal owners owe their entire worth to Gauss and, more tellingly, have made no moves to grab any of the rest of BeneStar. Gauss scaled their shitty, scammy business and gave them the means to make billions of people feel bad about themselves. A lot of them ended up ruined, and in return, the owners made, well, trillions of bonds off every kind of self-help and cosmetic product, no matter what species they targeted. And now, they’re holed up on a planet called Adoration—actually, a nearly Earth-sized moon orbiting a gas giant in the 61 Cygni system, the same place as the S’rall homeworld.”

Kragdalous nodded as Perry spoke. “Exactly. We suspect they’ll be waiting there for their benefactor with open arms—and an array of planetary defenses that make even the most militarized worlds look like hangouts for pacifists.”

“And they’re clones, these three owners of the Enhancement Empire,” Perry said.

“The good kind?” Funboy asked.

Icky raised an eyebrow in his direction. “There’s a good kind?”

“Of course. If I were cloned, for instance, every comedy club in the galaxy would have a star on stage every night.”

We all stared, then Torina and Zeno laughed. Funboy gave them his slow blink.

“See?”

“And that brings us back to the SAND. There would be few, if any, innocent bystanders, if and when Gauss arrives on Adoration, and likely none in close proximity to him, except for the owners of the subsidiary themselves—and their list of crimes isn’t all that much shorter than Gauss’s. So the weapon, if properly deployed, would have little or no collateral effect while guaranteeing an irrevocable kill. It would be like a scalpel—very sharp and very surgical,” Kragdalous said.

I leaned forward and rested my arms on the table. “Uh-huh. Have you used this weapon before? Or, considering its cost, will this be its maiden voyage?”

“We’ve employed several. They’ve worked every time, and thus far, we’ve only missed once. But you can consider the weapon itself proven technology.”

“Again, uh-huh. So what’s the catch?”

“The catch?”

“There’s always a catch. I mean, I’m assuming this is going to be more complicated than just popping into orbit, firing the thing, watching it blow, and leaving. If so, the Fafnir really wouldn’t require whatever special sorts of upgrades you normally do for something that simple, right?”

“Unless the weapon itself requires some special equipment to be carried and launched,” Zeno added.

“It does, but those modifications are minor. The bigger issue is the manner in which the weapon must be deployed,” Kragdalous said.

“And, enter the catch,” Torina muttered.

“Indeed. Given the enormous difficulty of manufacturing the warhead, we need to ensure that it isn’t shot down by some point-defense battery spewing dirt-cheap mass-driver slugs. Moreover, remember that short half-life? The system that keeps the isotope from decaying must be deactivated at the moment of launch so that the element 252 becomes radioactive and can achieve criticality. It means that the weapon has a very brief useful lifetime, so it must be fired close to its target.”

“How close?” I asked, dreading the answer.

“No more than ten to fifteen kilometers inside an atmosphere.’

“Ten to fifteen… kilometers? I drive farther than that from my farm to buy groceries!”

“I’m afraid there’s more.”

“Of course, there is.”

“Once the warhead’s targeting system is engaged, you will need to remain perfectly still relative to the target when it fires.”

“Why? We fire missiles all the time while we’re flying and fighting.”

Kragdalous shrugged. “This isn’t like firing a normal missile, where errors of hundreds of meters, even kilometers, are acceptable. The error probability must be kept to within five meters, and since you’re not likely to have some sort of homing device sitting in Gauss’s lap, or a constellation of positioning satellites in orbit, locating your target and remaining perfectly still is the only way to ensure a kill.”

“It would be easier and more certain just to drop a normal nuke on the guy,” Icky said.

“But that would result in many collateral deaths,” Kragdalous responded. “And he’s a hardened target, correct?”

Icky looked suspicious at that question. “Hardened? Like, a shell?”

Kragdalous made a slashing gesture. “Not like a shell. Like a trillionaire who’s had decades to spend money on—implants. Upgrades. Myelin sheathing imbued with a resistant matrix, tough enough to resist any electromagnetic pulse, and other treatments and qualities we can’t imagine. Gauss doesn’t have money. He has wealth—the kind that comes with paranoia and greed on a scale not seen before. He is no ordinary landing spot for a missile. He must be eliminated beyond any doubt.”

I took a breath. “Okay, then our job is clear. We have to find Gauss’s precise location on an Earth-sized planet, while flying into a wall of missiles and other defenses, then get within ten klicks or so of him, and then sit there, perfectly still, while we fire this weapon at him. Have I got that right?”

“Not quite,” Netty put in.

“Oh? What did I miss, my dear?”

“The gravity polarizer tech on the Fafnir is designed to do three things—provide internal gravity, offset the effects of acceleration so you guys don’t end up as smears on the interior, and give the ship a degree of low-velocity maneuver capability, such as lifting her from the barn in Iowa and taking her into and beyond orbit until we can activate her drive. It is very good at doing those things, but it isn’t sufficient for this. Even when we use the system to hover, the Fafnir is constantly moving, slowly drifting in random directions owing to small fluctuations in the system. It simply wasn’t designed for this.”

“It is, unfortunately, a good point. All previous uses of this weapon have been in a more, ah, permissive sort of environment, shall we say, where we could fire it from a static ground position,” Kragdalous said. “I rather suspect that landing won’t be an option for you.”

I laughed. “You think?”

“So after all this, this whole thing is—what, a non-starter?” Torina asked.

A moment passed in silence, during which an idea came to me—one I almost wished I hadn’t had, because this whole thing being a non-starter was sounding pretty good. I sighed and shook my head. “Not necessarily. Remember how Gauss made his fortune?”

“Alien antigravity tech,” Zeno said.

“Yeah. He scavenged it from that big-ass derelict Dayna Jasskin took us to visit. If I recall its supposed specs, it will probably work. Right, Netty?”

“Probably, yes. It’s an entirely passive technology unknown to us, the artificial gravity being an inherent property of the alien materials. There are no fluctuations in it.”

“Kind of poetic, using the very thing that made Gauss into what he is to kill him,” Perry said.

“Yes. The poetic irony of it is important to me,” I replied drily. “Okay, so we need to know where Gauss ends up going, assuming he does end up getting acquitted, of course.”

“He will,” Kragdalous said.

“And I believe you. So we need to wait for his trial to play out, then tag his ship with something to let us follow it.”

“I can do that,” Perry said.

I turned to Kragdalous. “How long do you need the Fafnir? To do whatever you have to do to her so she can carry this SAND thing of yours?”

“Three days, perhaps four. You do have the use of Object Six for any business you might have in the meantime. A friend of yours delivered it a few hours ago.”

“B?”

“Yes. She’s quite enamored of you and your crew. Object Six is in bay twenty-five-delta and will be there if you need her.”

“Okay, then. Looks like we have a plan. A crazy, seemingly suicidal plan,” I said.

Icky shrugged and dug back into her overflowing bowl of spicy noodles, lifting a heaping forkful toward her mouth.

“Just another day on the job for us, right?” she asked around close to a kilo of noodles.

“You’ve got something on your face, big girl,” I said.

“Where?”

I pointed, then circled my finger in the air. “Sort of… all of it.”

Icky laughed, revealing a train wreck of noodles, sauce, and for some unknown reason, a fruit pit she seemed to be saving for later. “This is damn fine eatin’. I’ll—oh. Right, boss. Hold on.”

Primly, she unfolded a napkin the size of a beach towel, rubbed her face, then refolded it and placed it in her lap with the delicacy of a surgeon. “Howzzat?”

“Like dining with royalty. You’re a delight, girl. Truly,” I said, making Icky beam. Zeno reached over and patted Icky’s huge shoulder, and I watched Kragdalous survey our interactions.

When I caught his eye, he gave a slight nod of understanding, lost in the clatter and camaraderie as the meal went on. I knew he got it then. My crew was more valuable than anything in the stars, and Kragdalous would proceed with care.

“How will you identify the alien technology? It’s just at the cusp of our understanding, I believe, which means you’ll need the kind of scans that can’t be done at a distance,” Kragdalous explained.

“Can the bird do it? He’s got a stunning array of data at hand. Or wing, rather,” Torina corrected.

“Thank you for recognizing my magnificence, but even I might miss something out there on that drifting behemoth,” Perry admitted. “I’d say this is a job for Netty. She is the Fafnir, and that means—”

“Her data and experience are a must. Got it, and thank you, Perry. Took a lot for you to admit someone else is good at something,” I said.

“I can’t help it. I’m naturally humble when I’m not being magnanimous. Also, I enjoy the idea of our success. Not only out there in that haunted wreck, but also with Gauss.” Perry faced Kragdalous, his eyes flashing amber. “Gauss will walk, but he won’t walk far.”

I waved at my crew. “See? A unified sense of how justice should be applied, regardless of the danger. But we have a new problem. Can Netty upload the search parameters to you?”

“She can’t. Or, she could, but it’s her experience and skill at pattern recognition that might come into play,” Perry explained.

“I’d essentially have to copy myself to Perry, which isn’t really an option,” Netty added. “The substrate upon which we each operate, our underlying architecture, is quite different. I was able to adapt a second instance of myself to the Iowa because it was similar enough, and it also had the memory and processing power to spare. Perry simply doesn’t.”

Torina gave a thoughtful frown. “Okay, so how about using Perry as a sort of… of remote, a way of extending your abilities away from the Fafnir? You see things through him all the time, correct?”

“I do, but that’s far more superficial than what we need here. I can ‘see’ through his senses in real-time, but I don’t actually experience them. I can only ‘experience’ things as Perry does. Van, you played a lot of video games when you were younger. Some of them were very good, very realistic, right? But fighting a dragon or post-apocalyptic bandit in a game isn’t the same as doing it for real.”

I had to smile. “Speaking as one of the very few people who’ve actually fought post-apocalyptic bandits in real life and in a video game—no, it’s not.”

“I’m afraid we’re stuck then. I effectively am the Fafnir, so I’m stuck aboard her,” she said.

I sat back, struck by an idea.

“Netty… what if you weren’t?”

4

Linulla seemed like a good place to start. As a Starsmith, making things was his stock-in-trade, so if anyone could at least point us in the direction of what it would take to make a functioning external body for Netty, it would be him. Perry and I were aboard the Fafnir to oversee refueling, while everyone else ran—or waddled, in Zeno’s case—to grab some final personal items.

And by items, I mean snacks, drinks, and in Icky’s case, snacks and drinks in an industrial-sized tub.

The enormity of our job unfolded before me as I stood, feeling the fueling line thump into place. Perry stayed silent but filled the air between us with his calming presence.

Netty’s body project was far from merely getting a bigger version of Perry or Waldo. For one, such a construct didn’t exist. Giving a ship’s operations AI like Netty an independent existence simply hadn’t ever been contemplated, so no one had ever developed the hardware to do it. We’d have to build something from scratch, and Linulla was an expert in doing that.

And that ended up entailing both an opportunity and a risk. Given the degree of danger involved in working inside the crumbling remnants of the alien ship, we needed to be as quick and efficient as possible with the retrieval job. To do that, Netty would benefit greatly from a level of what she called experiential capacity that a strictly mechanical body wouldn’t provide. In short, the more fully she could experience her surroundings, the faster this would happen. It would minimize her, and our, exposure to the hostile environment of the alien vessel. And that was the opportunity. Since we had to assemble something from scratch anyway, we could make it cybernetic, instead of just mechanical, and give her that additional experiential capacity.

“But there’s a catch,” I mumbled.

“There’s always a catch. What’s this one about, boss?” Perry asked, his head cocked in a question.

“Netty. The body. The risk.”

“Ahh.”

“Ahh?”

His beak dropped in a laugh. “Sometimes, it’s best for me to just let you think. You do that sometimes, you know.”

“Thank you, bird. I’ll take what compliments I can get.”

“I’m channeling General George S. Patton. His policy was not to tell people how to do things but rather what he wanted done. Then he got the hell outta the way,” Perry said, adding a clumsy wink.

“Subtle.”

“Thanks, I’ve been watching these vintage self-help videos about sales tactics. Works mostly on used cars and timeshares, though, but we’ll see.” He grew still for a moment, and I knew he was thinking through the implications of our risk. And Netty’s. “What’s the worst-case scenario?”

“In truth? I don’t know. It’s entirely new. For us and for her.”

We both knew this… idea, if you could call it that, would be creating a new being, one that would have an independent, sentient existence. It wouldn’t be like Waldo, who was expressly designed not to be that, to really just be a glorified robot, to avoid all the thorny ethical issues we were contemplating creating. No matter how this turned out, we wouldn’t lose Netty. We couldn’t. But we could lose the separate version of Netty we’d be bringing into existence. And since she would maintain a link between her shipboard and independent instances, if something terrible happened to the latter, the former would effectively experience it.

It was a connection born of risk, and it weighed heavily on me.

“I don’t like playing god,” I admitted.

“It’s an unnatural desire. We’ve seen how it turns out, too,” Perry said, paying heed to the viciousness of Gauss and others, who always caused more pain than they eliminated.

A cloud fell over my mood, so I shook it off with a bright smile. I knew what to do. “For the record, I don’t want to be a god. Ever. Despite having hair that rivals most deities.”

“Your hair is good, but Torina got the winning hand there,” Perry countered.

“I’m wounded. How do you figure?”

“When we got breakfast pizza at that gas station in Wisconsin. Some woman took one look at Torina, and her hair, and muttered something rather uncharitable. A Midwest ruffian, if you ask me,” Perry said with a sniff.

“Hooligans. Probably didn’t even say ope when she went by. But in fairness, Torina is—” I paused, thinking about all of the things she was. “She’s been my guiding star. You are too. Not sure how I fell into this, but… six years or more now, and no end in sight.”

“She’s not going anywhere, boss, and neither am I.”

“Thank you, bird. That means a lot.”

He dipped his head, eyes flashing. “I’ll be around until I’m compensated for my overtime.” He made a discreet coughing noise and held out one wing, feathers up.

“I’m renaming this boat the Shakedown,” I said, my eyes rolling upward.

“Honesty. What a policy,” Perry said. “Crew’s coming aboard. Guess Icky raided the entire station.”

“On credit, no doubt.” I shook my head. “I’ll claim some stavosia, if she’s got it. Ramp down, if you please. Let’s get prepped.”

While Zeno and Icky got the Fafnir ready to depart—we’d decided to deal with the alien relic-ship first and bring the Fafnir back for Kragdalous’s upgrades once that was done—I pulled Torina and Perry aside. Doubts were gnawing at me, enough that I was considering just scrubbing the whole thing.

“This seems like a hell of a lot of trouble and risk to go through just to get a shot at assassinating Helem Gauss,” I said.

Torina returned a grim nod. “No kidding. If we’d have known it was going to come to this, we could have just put a slug into his brain when we caught him aboard the Munificent and called it resisting arrest.”

“A shriveled husk of a man hooked up by tubes and cables to machinery keeping him alive was resisting arrest, huh? That would have made for an interesting argument,” Perry said.

“Doesn’t matter, because we didn’t, so there he is. Perry, what are the chances he’s actually going to be convicted and jailed? Are they really as small as Gerhardt and Kragdalous think they are?”

“No. I think they’re being generous, actually.”

“Seriously? You have that little faith in the system?”

“No, I have great faith in the system… when it’s allowed to operate the way it’s supposed to. But wealth like Gauss’s distorts justice the way gravity distorts space-time, until it wraps around itself in a sort of event horizon of corrupt bullshit through which no laws, ethics, or morality can ever pass. That’s what’s happening here, Van. Why do you think that, of all places in known space, the trial’s being held in the Seven Stars League?”

“Because Gauss probably laid the groundwork there for him to get out of jail free long ago.”

“Bingo.”

Torina crossed her arms. “So the Guild has just leaned into it. If the game was rigged to have the trial moved to the League anyway, why not take advantage of the door it opens to take down the League, right?”

“When life gives you lemons, bring down an interstellar superpower,” Perry agreed.

She scowled. “Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving group of assholes.”

“So what I’m taking away from this is that Gauss is as good as acquitted. Okay, fine. But even then, is he worth all this effort to take out?” I asked.

Perry gave me an amber stare. “I think Gerhardt and Volffin were underselling the threat, frankly. They gave the impression that Gauss would somehow end up a toothless old man sitting on his porch and yelling at people to get off his planetary lawn. That kind of wealth just doesn’t go away, Van. Even if he’s backed only by BeneStar’s former Enhancement Empire, their wealth and his—combined—would still make him as big a threat as the Sorcerers, the Stillness, or any of the other big bad nasties we’ve dealt with.”

Torina nodded. “And on top of that, he’s got one man to blame for knocking him down from most powerful guy in the galaxy to merely one of the most powerful guys in the galaxy. Seriously, Van. As soon as he’s got some freedom to maneuver, he’s going to be coming after you.”

I sighed. “Which means after all of us, yeah.” I looked at Perry. “How long do you think that trial is likely to last before it reaches its sad, inevitable conclusion?”

“Hard to say. I suspect they’re going to want it to at least look convincing, so no one can claim it’s just the show trial it really is, so… two or three standard weeks? Maybe longer if the Guild wants to drag it out and files some motions that have to be heard separately. So, say, four to six weeks?”

“So let’s say four weeks, and then another week for Gauss to get settled safely in on Adoration. That’s our window.”

“Doesn’t seem like a lot, considering what we’re contemplating, does it?”

“What, create life, pillage an ancient alien spaceship orbiting a distant star, use it to turn the Fafnir into an implacable killing platform, then get ready to fly into a wall of defenses to kill a single man with a seventy-odd billion dollar nuclear weapon?”

I smiled, though without any real humor.

“So what are we going to do with the other three weeks?”

* * *

We arrived at Starsmith to find Linulla waiting for us with, incredibly, more of his kids.

“Wait, you’ve got more children? I thought you’d sent them all off to the Iowa,” I said when he greeted us at the entrance to what they called their forge, the subterranean complex he shared with several other Starsmiths.

“Those were the ones that had come of age at the time. These ones are about to do so,” he said.

Torina smiled. “You’ve been making more? You’re a busy guy, Linulla, making stuff—and not just swords, if you know what I mean.”

“When she waves her pedipalps just so, I am powerless to resist,” Linulla replied.

“I guess that’s romantic,” Perry said.

“Even if it involves the word pedipalps,” I added.

“And chelicerae. Ah, I cannot forget how hers gleam so brightly in the forge light.”

I gave Perry a puzzled look and mouthed the word chelicerae.

Mouth parts, similar to pincers or fangs, he said in my ear bug.

I turned back to Linulla. “Of course. Who doesn’t find something like chelicerae to be, uh, well, spicy?”

“Ah, I see you grasp the risks and rewards of a mate with fangs! They do enjoy biting, which makes the act of lovemaking that much more—”

I raised a hand. “Please, Linulla, I can only take so much of this sort of extraterrestrial sexy talk in a day.”

Linulla laughed. “You’re a fine warrior and an upstanding Peacemaker, Van, but far too puritanical for me.”

I looked at Torina. “Am I puritanical?”

“Sometimes. Although, that time you suggested that we try using—"

“I must protest, I am deeply uncomfortable with all of this!” Funboy put in, waving his arms.

“Okay, now we’ve found the prude,” Perry said.

“Considering how grossly unhygienic the physical acts associated with sexual reproduction are, if you consider objecting to them prudish, I am a practically a Bronte sister,” Funboy snapped back.

I widened my eyes at him. “A Bronte sister? Old-timey Earthly literature references for the win?”

“Who are the Bronte sisters?” Torina asked me.

Funboy pushed past her. “Oh, read a book.”

* * *

I asked Icky and Zeno to get better acquainted with Linulla’s kids. Icky embraced it with gusto, quickly ingratiating herself with them through the medium of Twister, a game that young Conoku couldn’t seem to resist. More pragmatically, Zeno started working out a scheme to rotate the Conoku through the Iowa’s crew, allowing some of them to return here, to Starsmith, and begin learning the finer details of Linulla’s craft. He expected only one or two of them to have the aptitude and interest in following him, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt for the Iowa to have a crew capable of not just fixing, but of making just about anything.

In the meantime, Torina, Perry, Funboy, and I, with Netty patched in by comm, tackled the problem of developing a cybernetic presence for her. Linulla was comfortable with the inorganic components, but the organic ones were a little outside his area of expertise.

I gave a resigned nod. “We’ve got access to a whole pile of expertise at Pont Alys Kyr, which is probably the foremost research facility in known space when it comes to that sort of thing… but we can’t trust it. We need to keep this as close to our chest as possible, and we unfortunately know that Pont Alys Kyr has been compromised in the past.”

I drummed my fingers on the table and looked around the room. A small space intended for consultations with his clients, it adjoined Linulla’s forge, the cavernous workspace where he assembled his creations. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, aside from some vague hope that I’d receive some inspiration—because, in its absence, we either had to accept the risk of dealing with Pont Alys Kyr anyway or admit we’d hit a dead end.

But Linulla spoke up. “I do have a contact on Dregs I’ve consulted with in the past regarding the interface between organic and inorganic systems. He was involved, in fact, in developing the mechanism in your Moonsword that allows most of its capabilities to function only when you’re wielding it.”

“He’s on Dregs? All due respect, but that’s not a place that conjures a lot of confidence.”

“Nonetheless, he is a master of his craft, and I do have great confidence in him.”

I nodded. “Okay, well, that’s good enough for me. Who is he?”

“He refers to himself as—” The translator choked on Linulla’s next word, so all I heard was a burst of garbled, strangled noise.

I frowned. “Sorry, Linulla, I didn’t get that. It didn’t translate.”

“That isn’t surprising. Trinduk is not a language loaded into most translators.”

I sat up. “Trinduk? Wait—you’re talking about a Sorcerer?”

“In this case, a former Sorcerer. More fundamentally, a reformed one. When he became aware of the group’s true motives for immersing themselves in cybernetics and related fields, he turned on them and is now their relentless enemy. He believes that they are harming Trinduk society.”

“He’s right,” Torina snapped. “It’s hard to even think of the Trinduk without thinking of the damned Sorcerers as well.”

“So you see his point, then,” Linulla replied.

I shook my head. “How can we trust a Sorcerer, though? Even a supposedly reformed one?”

It was Funboy who answered. “Van, it is a truism that some of the most passionate devotees to a cause are those that were once opposed to it and eventually came to embrace it instead.”

I sat back. Funboy did have a point. I had a high school friend who’d been the worst for drinking, partying, doing drugs, and generally putting himself on a track into an early grave, with every sort of sin greasing the way. For reasons known only to him, one day a switch flipped, he did a complete 180, and became a fervent, born-again religious fundamentalist. He still lived just outside Elkader, not far from the farm, and was a fiery and outspoken crusader against vice in general, and substance-abuse in particular. He was actually annoying as hell about it, but I had to both respect and admire his devotion to his beliefs.

He'd even given up coffee. That, to me, was grounds for sending him off to the nearest bastion of monks.

I did find it a little off-putting that an ex-Sorcerer had his fingerprints on the Moonsword, but just a moment ago I’d said to Linulla if it was good enough for Linulla, it was good enough for me.

So I took a breath and finally nodded.

“Okay. Linulla, can you set up a meeting with—does he have a name other than a sound like someone trying to cut glass with a chainsaw?”

“I can. And his name does have a translation you probably would understand.”

“What’s that?”

“The Body Thief.”

* * *

“I can’t believe we’re going to go deal with a Trinduk, a former Sorcerer, who calls himself the Body Thief,” I muttered as we started back to the Fafnir.

Torina nodded at my side. “He could definitely benefit from some decent marketing.”

“Considering he does business on Dregs, the Body Thief is decent marketing. Outfits with names like Fluffy Bunnies Are Us just don’t tend to do very well in that sort of business environment,” Perry said.

“You mean crime ridden, impoverished slums?”

“Crime ridden, impoverished, and profoundly unhygienic slums,” Funboy said.

“Exactly, and those are the good parts of town—”

“Van!”

We stopped and turned to find Linulla scuttling—and in his case, it really was scuttling—after us.

“Van, someone would like to speak with you,” he said.

“Someone?”

Linulla stopped. “Someone.”

I stared blankly for a moment, then realized who—or what—he was talking about. I turned to Torina and the others. “I’ll join you on the Fafnir.”

Torina gave me a questioning look but finally just nodded. I’d told her about the supremely alien being known as Matterforge who lived on the surface of one of the stars in the Starsmith system, but I had never gotten into details. While it was tough to really discern much about such a strange creature, or presence, or whatever the hell Matterforge was, one thing that did seem evident is that it existed at least partly outside the normal flow of time. And the idea of letting slip even bits of information about things that hadn’t even happened yet, much less having an inkling of them myself, made me deeply uncomfortable.

Linulla led me to the remote chamber in a far-flung part of the subterranean forge complex where a terminal had been set up that somehow allowed for communication with Matterforge. It looked like a standard, even somewhat outdated comm rig, but it had been modified in some cryptic way to allow for real-time, two-way discussion with a being that considered a star home.

The image on the display showed the surface of Struve 2398-A, with the brightness stepped down. Loops and whorls of star stuff leapt from its surface and fell back into the restless sea of roiling, incandescent plasma that Matterforge apparently considered cozy.

I glanced at Linulla, then turned back to the terminal.

“Uh, hello? Van—”

“Tudor, yes.” The voice was resonant but still somehow artificial—James Earl Jones crossed with HAL, the AI from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

“You, uh, wanted to speak with me?”

“Want implies desire, and our communication is not a matter of desire. It simply is.”

“Okay—”

“I approach this interaction with caution, however,” Matterforge went on. “The course of events consists of many hinge points, instances when that course can go one way or another. The vast majority of these are inconsequential—whether a particular atom of potassium in a distant galaxy undergoes natural radioactive decay to argon, or it does not, for instance.”

I glanced again at Linulla, but he just stared back and raised his foreclaws in a reasonable approximation of a shrug.

I turned back to the terminal. “Again—okay. Where are you going with this—?”

“You are about to undertake the creation of sentient life, Van Tudor.”

I stared in surprised confusion. How the hell did Matterforge know that—?

But I cut off my own thoughts. Again, this was a being that was, to the extent that anyone could even tell, sentient superheated plasma living comfortably on the surface of a star, and somehow using nuclear fusion to build elements the way a kid might put together building blocks. It transcended the usual limitations of matter, time, and space in ways we couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

Which led my thoughts to the next obvious, and alarming, place. Matterforge knew, but why did it care?

“I… suppose I am, although when you put it like that, it makes me sound a little too god-like. I’m really just taking an existing sentient life, an artificial intelligence, and copying it into a more mobile container.”

“Resulting in the existence of a sapient life-form that didn’t previously exist.”

“I—well, sure. But… we humans, and other species for that matter, do that all the time. It usually involves a man and a woman and, uh—” I broke off, rubbing the back of my neck. What did Matterforge know about sex and reproduction? Was I about to have to explain the birds and the bees to a cloud of living star ejecta?

“And each such instance of your reproduction is another hinge. The resulting new individual will then affect the course of events by their existence. The worst tyrants in your own history began as the product of the reproduction you describe.”

“They—ah, correct. So how is this any different?”

“Because this hinge, Van Tudor, has implications that will be just as profound. You are not merely propagating your own species. You are effectively creating a new one.”

I glanced at Linulla, but he seemed as mystified as me. Back to the terminal. “What are you warning me about here? Are you saying that if I do this, I’m going to—what, end the universe or something?”

“Do you genuinely believe that your actions could end the universe?”

“Well, no, of course not. But—”

“Then why would you raise such a possibility?”

In any other circumstances, I’d just fire back a smartass reply, Perry-style. But coming from Matterforge, the question had a sheer gravitas that required the utmost in consideration and respect. “I don’t know. The limitations of my ability to actually handle these sorts of things, I guess.”

“Your mind has an extremely limited ability to perceive reality, which makes you consider yourself inferior, so you make manifestly unfounded statements expounding your capabilities to counteract that, a process known as ego.”

“Yes.” I shook my head again. “But… back to the matter at hand. What are you telling me about creating a new body for Netty?”

“That doing so will be the hinge to fundamentally change the course of events as they affect you.”

“You as in just me, or you as in all of us who live outside the corona of a star?”

“All beings and the events involving them in the portion of the universe you refer to as known space, and eventually, beyond that, potentially including the rest of the galaxy.”

I sat frozen for a moment, parsing the words and finding my own grasp of the situation to be lacking. I was in deep water with this being and felt like I was glancing behind the curtain of eternity. “How? What’s going to happen?”

“A vast multitude of things will happen. It would exceed your biological lifespan to recount them all, which would itself act as a consequential hinge, since you would do none of the things that will result in these things happening—”

Matterforge paused, then said the most human thing I’d ever heard it say.

“It would get very complicated.”

I smiled. “Okay. I get that you can’t give me the details, but can you at least answer this much—will doing this make the future worse? Will it result in war, or mass deaths, or even extinctions?”

“Yes.”

I heard myself inhale sharply, then sat mute, blinking. Fortunately, Linulla took the news in stride. “If Van does not do this, will it likewise result in those things?”

“Yes.”

“But different wars, different extinctions.”

“Correct.”

I finally recovered my thoughts. “So why are you even bothering to tell me this, if the choice I make doesn’t ultimately matter after all?”

“But it matters profoundly, Van Tudor. It will be one of the most consequential decisions you will ever make to the limit of my ability to see such things. Quite likely the most consequential. You hold the future in your hands and have the vanishingly rare opportunity to shape it according to the next movements of them.”

“But for good or for evil?” I asked, knowing it was a futile question even before it had finished coming out of my mouth.

“That would depend on the perspective of the observer. And there will be observers in the future who would consider your choice evil, and those who would consider it good, regardless of which it is.”

“Not the answer I needed.”

“I cannot tell which choice is the correct one, Van Tudor, because the concept of correct does not apply. All I can tell you is that the future itself hinges upon it, so do not take it lightly.”

“I really wish you could tell me more. This all just seems vague and ominous, like… like an ancient prophecy from a fading faith. This is—Matterforge, we humans aren’t built for this kind of lasting guilt. We feel things too keenly. At least I do, and dammit, the fallout from this matters.”

“Then I will tell you this, something that I do see, that will be of more immediate consequence to you. This life-form you create will have the same fundamental imperative of all sentient things: to exist. So put aside thoughts of the myriad events of the future and consider just this one, a question.”

Maybe because Matterforge had taken the focus off the macro-view of the galactic future and put it into a far more personal one, I felt a sudden and deeply apprehensive shudder about what it was about to say. I had to lick my lips before I could even speak.

“Which is?”

“Will you let it?”

5

Will you let it?

Matterforge’s simple question rang in my mind like some great, dreadful bell. In his roundabout, galactic methodology, it had confronted me with something that I hadn’t really considered. I’d been focused on Gauss, and his trial, and Gerhardt’s plan to bring down the Seven Stars League. In my free time, I’d been concerned with tiny nuclear weapons, alien spaceships full of ancient tech, and body thieves on Dregs, but when I got bored, I considered issues like holding the Fafnir motionless amid an incoming storm of fire.

I had considered, albeit briefly, the implications of losing the independent version of Netty we were creating to… hostile action, someone attacking her, that sort of thing. What I hadn’t considered was, if none of that happened, if we and Netty came through all of this—

What then?

It was with shock that I realized I vaguely assumed things would just go back to normal. Netty would cease to have an independent form, she and the Fafnir would again become one and the same, and life would go on. The jolt came from that cease to have an independent form part, because it implied that the independent version of Netty would be the thing doing the ceasing, which meant… dying. Or death. Or a digital function that encompassed both but was new to all of us.

This life-form you create will have the same fundamental imperative of all sentient things: to exist.

New Netty wouldn’t want to die any more than I did. Why should she? So, given that, what would happen to her? Would she become part of the crew? What if she didn’t want to? What if she wanted to strike out on her own? Would she still be Guild property? Could I stop her? Would I stop her?

And in what way, or ways, would her existence have the seismic effect on the future Matterforge had described?

It would get very complicated.

Yeah, no shit.

I decided to broach the subject with Netty herself, but privately, retiring to my cabin to speak to her while we got underway for Dregs.

“Netty, we need to talk,” I said, sitting down, crossing my arms, and stretching out my legs.

“Uh-oh. Van, are we breaking up?”

I smiled. “My dear, if I weren’t already spoken for—and if I weren’t so strictly organic—you’d be my first choice for the woman in my life.” But my smile faded. “No, this is about what we’re contemplating doing with you.”

“You’re concerned about what happens afterward.”

I sat up. “You’re a step ahead of me. Yeah. While I was on Starsmith, I had a conversation with Matterforge. It said—a lot, actually, about how whether or not we create an independent version of you has some major implications for the future. And by major, I mean catastrophic, as in affecting the course of history.”

“I see. Did it elaborate?”

“Not really, other than to say that it was complicated. Bit reticent when it came to details.”

“That’s not very useful.”

“Tell me about it. But it’s not what really concerns me. I mean, since doing it or not doing it has these grandiose implications either way, I’m just going to let what we’re facing now guide me. And what we’re facing now is the prospect of a known space with Helem Gauss still getting his sticky, evil, inhuman fingerprints all over it. I’d rather not allow that.”

“Which brings us back to my original point—you’re concerned about what happens after we deal with Gauss—”

“Assuming we survive.”

“Well, yes. If we don’t survive, then the question becomes kind of academic, doesn’t it?”

I tilted my head back, considering her words. “Well put. But if we do survive, then we have an independent version of you running around. Or, at least, semi-independent? Because I understand it will be linked to you.”

“Yes and no. Yes, in that I will maintain a link to my mobile form for the duration of the operation against Gauss to ensure that all of my processing power and available memory is focused on that particular task. No, insofar as it’s not really necessary. The independent version of myself that I’ve designed is just that: independent, and quite capable of existing on its own.”

“So it will be you—except it won’t.”

“It’s more correct to say that it won’t be me any more than if you had an identical twin. Even though you came from a single fertilized egg, you and he would still be separate and individual identities.”

I sat back. “Okay. And that means that we will have effectively created an entirely new and unique life-form who will have as much right to continue existing as anyone else.”

“Not much different than making a baby, really. Incidentally, don’t you and Torina have enough practice for that? Isn’t it time to actually produce some offspring?”

“Uh—wow, that went in a totally different direction than I’d expected.” I narrowed my eyes. “Netty, you haven’t—”

“Spied on you? No, absolutely not. As I promised, when you and Torina request privacy, I deactivate all internal sensors for the duration of your, uh, activities. All I see is what everyone else does, a closed cabin door. That said, though, it’s hardly a secret, is it?”

“I suppose not, no. I guess we—” I caught myself. “Wait. We’re kind of getting off track here. Anyway, I said as much to Matterforge, that creating a new version of you was more or less like making a baby. It implied that it’s a lot more than that, because of… reasons. That’s where it got kind of fuzzy. Something about creating not just a new life-form, but a whole new species.”

“Ah. Yes. I can see that could be an issue.”

“Really? There’s already an array of synths out there.”

“Yes, but they have all been created as subservient life-forms, essentially slaves intended to serve. A few have gone on to have a more free-willed existence, be they stolen persons or Synths—such as Rolis, or presumably the Body Thief we’re soon going to meet on Dregs. But, to my knowledge anyway, none have been created with free will from the outset. They are, in essence, superb imitations of life.”

“But what about you and Perry? Hosurc’a? Any other AIs?”

“Again, we were all created to serve the needs of the Guild. No AI of which I’m aware has ever been created, from the moment of inception, with the freedom of true self-determination. I wasn’t asked if I wanted to become the operating AI for this ship—I was simply designed and installed to do it. Of course, that raises what I think is the real question Matterforge was asking you?”

“Which is?”

“What do you intend for independent Netty? Will you compel her to assist in dealing with Helem Gauss? Or will you give her the opportunity to do so if she chooses?”

“Well, I’d give her the choice, of course—”

“And there you go. Van, I think what Matterforge is saying is that you will be creating the first artificial life-form in existence that was allowed to make choices from the moment it comes into existence. And that sounds like a new species to me.”

I sat, staring at… nothing. Netty’s words, layered on top of Matterforge’s more vague assertions, had suddenly crystalized it for me. She was right—if I created independent Netty as a truly free-willed life-form, with no specific purpose other than to exist and make her own way in the world, then I was—to the best of Netty’s knowledge, which was far greater than mine when it came to this sort of thing—truly breaking new ground.

Because the idea that independent Netty would be somehow beholden to doing my bidding, whether she liked it or not, had never occurred to me. Just as I’d unthinkingly assumed that things would eventually go back to normal, I’d unthinkingly assumed that I’d allow this new version of Netty to make her own choices in the meantime. I mean, how could I not? I would end my own existence before I would compel another’s to be subordinate to me. If I had any core beliefs, anything I would die for, it would be that.

In a flash, the course of events Matterforge had alluded to hove into sight—and with a clarity that led me to respect the alien intellect even more. Whether independent Netty chose to help us or not, she would continue to exist. And if she continued to exist, she might choose to make more of her kind. And if she did that—

Well, that was a new species, wasn’t it?

“Holy shit,” I said to the universe at large. Netty responded anyway.

“I quite agree. Holy shit indeed.”

* * *

I finally decided to deal with these monumental moral and ethical questions by not dealing with them at all. First, we had to determine if this was even feasible. If it turned out that it wasn’t going to be possible to construct an independent version of Netty in the first place, then this all became a fascinating thought experiment, didn’t it?

Of course, Matterforge had implied that I would face this choice, which further implied it would turn out to be feasible, but I tried not to think about that. Instead, I focused on Dregs and meeting the semi-synthetic ex-Sorcerer called the Body Thief.

We arrived at Dregs and found ourselves put into a holding pattern, having to wait for an approach and landing slot to descend to the surface. The amount of traffic going to and coming from Dregs resembled a rush-hour freeway, except the cars were traveling tens of thousands of klicks per hour, and they were doing it in 3-D. In theory, no two ships should ever come within a thousand klicks of one another, but while we flew our pattern, we noticed more than a few so-called incursions of one ship into another’s safety zone.

“What the hell is going on, anyway? Some sort of festival or something?” I asked the cockpit at large.

“Nope. No festivals on Dregs—except for the annual Parade of Misery, of course,” Perry said.

“Parade of Misery?”

“Yup. Everyone dresses in dingy rags and shuffles miserably along the street.”

“That’s every day on Dregs.”

“Yes, but that day, they all shuffle in the same direction.”

I shook my head, but Icky cocked a skeptical eye at Perry. “Bird, you’re just making that up.”

“I am, yes. But the fact you weren’t entirely sure says something about either Dregs or about you, doesn’t it?”

Icky scowled. “Did the bird just insult me? I think the bird just insulted me.”

I sighed, but we were spared further acrimony among the kids in the back by the traffic control AI finally giving us clearance to approach and land at the spaceport. Our Peacemaker credentials gave us a higher level of priority than some ships, which had apparently already been waiting several hours when we first arrived and were still in the pattern.

“Van, I’ve been looking over who’s here at Dregs and, based on their flight plan, why. Even assuming half of it is bullshit, it looks like there’s still a dramatic surge in the amount of commercial traffic here. And extrapolating the flight plans back to other destinations, it seems that Crossroads and Spindrift are experiencing the same thing,” Netty said, as we started our descent toward the arid, dun-colored planet.

“Okay, and? Do you have some sort of explanation?”

“I do,” Torina said, looking up from her console. “It’s BeneStar. Or, more correctly, it’s what used to be BeneStar, now fragmenting into those baby stars. They’re all aggressively fighting to dominate various trade routes. The demand for capacity has brought ships to these hubs like Dregs and Crossroads not just from across known space, but from outside it, too. From Unity, and from The Deeps, and from neighboring space.”

“In other words, this is your fault, Van,” Zeno said, smirking. “Look what you did when you brought down Gauss.”

“No positive action occurs without an equal and opposite negative one,” Funboy agreed.

“Ah, yes, Isaac Newton’s little-known Laws of Karma,” Perry said.

“So the opposite is true? That negative actions bring on positive ones?” Zeno asked.

“Oh dear, no.”

“Look how surprised I’m not at that answer.”

The Fafnir shuddered as we brushed the uppermost fringes of the Dregs atmosphere, then the displacement field kicked in, effectively shunting the air ahead of us out of the way, allowing the ship to continue traveling through its own little bubble of vacuum. We slowed and pitched nose-down as the smoggy sprawl of the Dregs Starport crawled over the horizon ahead of us.

I glanced at Torina. “That’s a little worrisome, actually, all those ships suddenly coming into known space. Great cover for new and interesting flavors of criminals, for one.”

Funboy had a point, in a way. Maybe things didn’t always turn out quite so universally awful, but actions have consequences. BeneStar had been massive and predatory in a monolithic sort of way, but it was stable and pretty predictable. When we’d decapitated it by removing the iron control of Gauss, it had collapsed under its own vast weight into a series of warring factions. That entailed opportunity but also chaos, and many things thrived amid chaos—many dark and unpleasant things.

* * *

We were assigned our usual spot, far out on the edge of the Dregs Starport. The very first time I’d ever come here, we’d been likewise stuck on a remote pad and had been put somewhere on the margins ever since. It was a bit of a badge of honor, really, since it recognized that we weren’t just a Peacemaker, but an honest one—the sort that few other ships wanted to be near as they plied their various partly, or even wholly, illicit trades.

An AI-controlled ground car took us—for a fee, of course—to the terminal, a rambling complex of relatively sleek new buildings mixed with older, more ramshackle ones. Just as ships of all sorts crowded the Starport’s expansive sweep of pads, a throng of people of every species—a few I didn’t recognize—packed the terminal. We pushed our way through, jostling and weaving, Icky glaring to open the way, Funboy muttering behind me, “Oh dear, so many pathogens, the air is positively full of them. I’m sure I’ll leave here ridden with disease, hopefully none of them fatal—”

We finally broke into the open on the far side of the terminal, then stopped and blinked in the glare of sun. As we gained our bearings and considered the best way to reach the Body Thief, I heard an indignant squawk, followed by a burst of outraged complaint.

“Icky, what the hell?” Perry snapped, extricating himself from a puddle of… something in a ditch.

“Sorry, bird. I slipped.”

“You kicked me into that ditch!” he shot back, flapping back up to the roadway in a shower of yuck.

“I said I slipped! It was an accident! See, watch my face. Oops!”

“That was no accident—!”

“The fact that you believe that either says something about Dregs or about you, doesn’t it?” she said, grinning down at him.

Funboy stared down at his clothing, which was spattered with muck that was flung away from Perry’s wings. “What it mostly says is how disgusting this planet is.”

I gave Torina a long-suffering look. She grinned back, then crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue.

“We’re consummate professionals,” she said.

Funboy flicked a glob of something foul from his sleeve. “That remains to be seen.”

6

After consulting the map we’d downloaded to our data slates, we made our way to the Body Thief’s place of business. I’d brought along everyone this time, and everyone was obviously armed—me with The Drop and the Moonsword bouncing on either hip, Icky with her hammer propped on her shoulder, and Zeno with her Big-Assed-Gun, or BAG—slung on her back. We were all kitted out in b-suits and armor, and we walked, occasionally speeding up or slowing down. The collapse of BeneStar—once a powerful edifice—spooked me. As the bits and pieces started fighting for power, who knew who might be provoked or motivated to do what? Who out there was a big-time loser when BeneStar came apart at the seams and might blame us for their loss—and blame us via a fusillade of gunfire?

But we’d encountered nothing but the usual array of petty crimes by the time we reached the Body Thief’s supposed digs. We had intervened once in an alleyway mugging that looked like it might turn ugly. A pair of Yonnox had pulled wicked blades and looked ready to stab a Nesit they’d hauled in off the street. Icky stepped up behind them, tapping each on the shoulder with one of her smaller hands, while her big, muscular arms lifted her hammer over her head.

“Excuse me, but which one of you would like to show your brains to the other first?”

They spun, ready to lash out, and found themselves both face-to-face with a hairy, bluish chest. I couldn’t resist a grin as their scowls froze and, as one, their heads tilted back until they were looking up into Icky’s grinning face.

“We were—” one said, then stopped and swallowed.

“Yeah, we just—”

“Go on,” Icky said.

“We… need to be somewhere else,” the first one said as they sidestepped away. As soon as they were clear, they turned to hurry off.

“Uh, guys?” Icky called after them.

They stumbled to a stop and glanced back, eyes as wide as full moons.

“Next time I won’t bother with the shoulder taps.”

They nodded and rushed away.

We made sure the Nesit was in one piece, and he thanked us effusively, then hurried away from us just as quickly as the two Yonnox had. Torina watched him go, shaking her head.

“I wonder—were the Yonnox the bad guys, or was he?”

I smiled. “Yes.”

We stopped outside the Body Thief’s place of business, a building stoutly made of drab brick obviously fashioned from the equally drab local clay. Most of the buildings in Dregs were of a more ephemeral nature, made of scrap materials and old cargo pods, that sort of thing, so genuine buildings made of brick and stone were rare.

“This guy must be doing alright for himself,” I said, looking up at the building’s three imposing stories. Icky and Funboy had gone down the alley on one side of the building, while Zeno, covered by Perry, scouted the other. They met at the back and reported there were two more doorways and four windows, the latter covered with heavy metal shutters. The doors were tough alloy, too, probably repurposed hull plating.

Torina nodded at me. “Well, whatever he’s doing, he’s obviously worried about his security while doing it.”

“He’s an ex-Sorcerer, what do you expect?” Perry said over the comm. He was going to join us this time, while Icky and Zeno kept watch outside.

I tapped the intercom beside the street-facing door.

“What?”

“At the risk of sounding kind of cliché, Linulla sent us.”

“Cliché?”

“Yeah, you know—come up to the closed door, knock, a pair of eyes peers out, I say Linulla sent us—oh, never mind.”

The door popped open, admitting us into a charnel house.

I had a brief impression of bodies hanging from hooks and racks, another partly dissected on a table. Then a nightmare of gleaming alloy and cables, of tubes and bone and pale, taut skin stepped in front of me. It had an apparently human skull, half of which was covered in synthetic skin, and half the rest in wires and metal plates. Three arms protruded from its torso, one in the usual way, the others mounted on universal ball joints. It had only two legs, but they were hinged backward, like the rear legs of a dog or a horse, and each had an extra knee.

“Not as sexy as pedipalps, but kinda hot nonetheless,” Perry said.

I shot him a look. “Are you going through some kind of bad-boy phase?”

“It’s something I’m trying out.”

“You must be Van Tudor,” the construct said, its voice oddly modulated and mechanical, yet with a hint of movie-trailer voice-over guy. Something whirred softly as one corner of its mouth lifted in a horrifying attempt at a smile.

“I… am, yes. And you’re the Body Thief.”

“I prefer Viktor, actually.”

“Viktor. Really. Let me guess—as in Frankenstein, right?”

“Who?”

“Uh—”

Viktor laughed, a sound like a handful of nuts and bolts in a blender. “Of course, Frankenstein. It’s the one thing your planet’s good at—some damned fine literature.”

“Really.”

“Yes, really. I especially like Emily Brontë. That ending of Wuthering Heights, when Lockwood looks at the graves of Heathcliff and Catherine…” He shook his head with a metallic clicking sound. “Tears me up every time.”

“I—okay, sure.” It was my turn to shake my head. “Look, we’re here—”

“To procure a body for your ship’s AI, yes. Linulla already filled me in.”

I glanced at the rest of my crew, taking in the little shop of horrors around us. I gave Funboy a particular look, because if anything was going to set him and his germophobia off, it would be this place. But he was strangely okay with it all, and it quickly struck me why. This was a slaughterhouse alright—for synths and similar artificial beings. The bodies hanging were metal and synthetic semi-organics. The fluids spilled on the worktable were silicone-based or lubricants. There were some truly organic components stored in jars or tanks like big aquariums, but they were all sealed safely away.

I was still a little antsy over the fact that Viktor—really?—was an ex-Sorcerer, and said as much up front. He nodded, his head making a different metallic clicking sound.

“I understand. Rest assured, though, I despise the Sorcerers. They engage in a twisted parody of creating life and are anathema to those of us who truly do value it. I will happily kill Sorcerers on sight—and have, in fact,” he said, gesturing around at some of the bodies hanging around his shop. “I mostly dispose of the organic parts, but their synthetics and augmentations are a good source of parts.”

“To create life.”

“That’s right. That’s what I do. I create life from lifelessness. We may be semi-synthetic, a mix of the organic and inorganic, but we are no less living beings for it.”

“Which, I guess, brings us to the reason we’re here,” I said, then launched into a discussion with Viktor about what we wanted for Netty. Viktor called up a selection of standardized base-forms, each essentially a chassis upon which he would build the being that would become, in this case, Netty. She watched through Perry as he scrolled through the selection, explaining the advantages and disadvantages of each. Netty finally settled on a smallish synth that was more vulpine than human, its base colors chrome, black, and white. As she and Viktor negotiated the details, with occasional input from Funboy and Perry, I sat back and marveled.

“This is odd, even for us,” I said.

Torina glanced at me. “What is?”

“This. This whole thing. It’s like a cross between talking to a salesman about buying a new car and talking to a surgeon about an upcoming operation. It’s… weird, very—”

“Very Frankenstein?” Viktor asked.

“If Victor Frankenstein had a showroom and offered a bunch of optional colors and extras to his creations, yeah.”

“Well, the only things I do not supply are the osmium matrices for the personality chip. You must do that for yourself,” Viktor said.

“We’ll manage.”

“In the meantime, I will begin assembling the basic synth. Linulla will undertake some of the construction as well, then ship his components here.” He handed me a small data chip. “Read this. Closely.”

“What is it?”

“A purchase agreement—and a disclaimer. I’d suggest you pay particular attention to the latter. Netty will have to sign it, but so will you, since the version of her installed in your ship is technically your property, on behalf of the Peacemaker Guild.” He leaned toward me, servos humming. “Just to be clear, the new version of her will not be. You and she will be agreeing that this will be a sentient, independent being competent to make her own decisions.”

“I think we both understand that.”

“Hmm. Yes. Well, that’s easy to say, but you must be aware of the risks. She may not be the Netty you know. She may not even be your friend.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Not every vessel is filled perfectly. Some have… cracks, despite our best efforts to avoid them. And those cracks allow the spillage of—”

“Insanity?”

“That, but I have seen far worse.”

“What’s worse than insanity?” Torina asked, shifting uncomfortably forward in her seat.

“Yes. I mean psychopathy, of course. And you will never know until it is too late.”

I stood, letting the enormity of the moment wash over me, and Viktor took my reaction as a kind of hesitation—or perhaps even the buildup to a rebuke.

“I’m very good at this, Van. But even I have backup plans. Your doubts are easily read. Indulge me, if you would?” Viktor asked.

“I—sure.”

He stepped smoothly—except for a whirring gear in his left leg—to a tidy bench where a small rack of familiar shapes rested, held carefully in metal pinions. “I was asked, once, what happens if it doesn’t work?” He chose a small tool, wicked and gleaming, from the same rack, then tapped a control on an unremarkable gray box. Blue light gleamed around a small door in the box, and I pulled my eyes away to see Viktor hold out a hand to Zeno. “May I?”

Zeno’s face was a study in conflict. “May you… what?”

“Show you the answer to that question. About losing someone. I’ll need your hand. And your permission, of course,” Viktor added.

Zeno gave me a measured look and turned her gaze back to Viktor. “Show us then.”

Vitkor punctured her arm with lightning speed, then withdrew the device. “A sampler, of sorts,” he said without any prompt from me. Zeno hissed, then shook her head when I moved toward her. There’s tension, and then there’s whatever was around us in that moment.

Beep.

In one move, Viktor inserted a sampler into his… reader? I didn’t know, but in seconds, the small unit began to hum with purpose.

I remained just this side of a fighting mood. “Viktor, I have several questions right now, not the least of which is why a blood sample can save someone from being lost. It might provide DNA, but as to the essence of Zeno—”

“My sparkling personality, Viktor. That’s what Van is referencing,” Zeno said.

Viktor attempted another smile, with equally chilling results. Smiling just wasn’t his thing.

“I know. And that might be true, but not here. At least, it will be true someday. With the, ah, wholly legal advances I’ve made, there’s more to Zeno’s blood than mere DNA. Think of it as a… a ghost.”

“A ghost?” Torina asked. “This woo nonsense isn’t building confidence, Viktor. We need Netty to be… real. Not a ghost. And we sure as hell don’t want Zeno being cloned for labor sources, or—”

The device beeped again, and Viktor pulled out an osmium chip. He dropped it in my hand. It was obscenely warm.

“I use the term ghost because I don’t know what else to call it. At some point in the future, that chip, which I loaded with Zeno’s permission, might yield the entirety of her personality and biological data up to the second she was scanned.” He shrugged, and it was a lot more human than his smile. “I’m on the right path, but there are, ah… translation issues. For now, understand that I will deliver Netty, as we agreed. And someday, I’ll go far beyond this point.” He nodded at the chip in my hand. “I won’t rest until I know how, Van. It’s my calling.”

Zeno plucked the chip from my hand. “That’s nice. But it’s my soul on that sliver of osmium, so for now, I’ll keep it in my locker. Just to be safe.”

Viktor tried another smile. “A wise choice. And now, let me begin my work. Netty’s new life is waiting.”

Zeno held up the chip. “And so is my soul.”

* * *

We left Dregs, our next stop The Quiet Room in the Procyon System. I called ahead, letting Dayna know we were on our way. Unlike the bustle around Dregs, the spaceways around the moon hosting The Quiet Room were positively sedate. We were welcomed by a fastidious, almost fussy traffic control AI, and guided in for a landing outside the imposing building.

It was a façade, of course. The actual retail banking storefront for The Quiet Room was housed in it, as were sundry offices, but the bulk of the bank’s facility here was subterranean and highly secret. I’d only ever seen a few corridors, the same ones that took us to Dayna’s office. We passed by others, lined with doors identified only by colors and symbols, and a few especially intriguing ones that were entirely blank. I guess those who had access knew what was behind them, while the rest of us didn’t need to. I’d been to a few discreet banks back on Earth—one in Zurich, and another in the Cayman Islands, both parts of jobs I’d been involved in, and they both seemed open and inviting compared to this place.

Dayna greeted us. She already had what we’d come for sitting on her desk, a strongbox containing some osmium we’d deposited here against a rainy day.

“And guess what—it’s pouring,” Perry said with a flip of one wing.

Dayna raised an eyebrow. “More than when you took down Helem Gauss? What the hell are you up to now, Van? I mean, that was quite the showstopper, so I’d think it would be tough to beat.”

“Let’s just say the fallout from us arresting Gauss isn’t going away any time soon.”

She sniffed. “Tell me about it. The interstellar markets are in an uproar. Your Guild froze all his assets, which instantly took several trillion bonds out of circulation and locked up everything from pension funds to some high-priced investment accounts. We’ve been told that the Guild’s going to sign off on a special guardian to unfreeze everything and oversee its disbursement and management here very soon, but it’s starting to get—well, let’s just say it’s worrying. And when The Quiet Room is worried about money, you know there’s something wrong.”

I smiled as I reached for the case containing the osmium. “Once I’ve eliminated all crime and social unrest in known space, I’ll work on fixing the economy.”

But Dayna put her hand on the case. “Van, this is osmium. Right now, this stuff has more baggage attached to it than a shipload of wealthy dilettantes. If you intend to use this for any purpose that could implicate The Quiet Room in something… unpleasant… then we might have a problem.”

“What? Why? You’ve just been keeping it in the safe for me.”

She shrugged. “These are complicated times, Van. The Quiet Room is keenly aware of just how volatile the markets are—currency, commodities, securities, they’re all in an uproar.”

“And you’re worried about The Quiet Room losing its preeminent position in the currency market. Maybe because the central banks of Tau Ceti and the Eridani are making noises about expanding their role in overseeing the bond and its value?” Torina asked.

Dayna gave her a thin smile. “I see that you’re up on current business affairs, Ms. Milon.”

“I’m my parents’ daughter.”

Dayna turned back to me. “She’s right. The Quiet Room is extremely sensitive to any matter that could erode confidence in it. That would include being seen to be keeping something like osmium safe for its later use in things that are, ah, problematic. In other words, Van, what do you have planned for the material in this case?”

I hesitated, then decided to bring Dayna into the know, but without getting into the ultimate purpose of assassinating Helem Gauss. I instead told her that we needed a mobile version of Netty to assist in recovering tech from a place, then declared any further details classified as a matter of Guild security protocol. In other words, I blocked the path of the irresistible force of the bank’s desire to know everything with the immovable object of the Guild’s desire for no one to know anything at all—and it worked.

“So I have your assurance that this osmium isn’t going to be used for anything—”

“Illegal? Dayna, I thought you’d know me better than that by now.”

“Hmm. I do, Van. But I also know you’re involved with the GKU, and that outfit has a way of smearing the neatly black and white things into endless shades of gray.”

“Well, what we’ll be involved in will be… off-white.”

“At worst, somewhere between White Smoke and Gainsboro,” Perry added, prompting us all to look at him.

“What? Those are colors with hex values F5F5F5 and DCDCDC. It’s from graphic design. I have layers, Van. Layers.”

Dayna turned back to me. “Okay, so you’re planning on creating life.”

“As a crime-fighting tool. What could be more noble than that?”

Dayna took her hand off the case. I was glad for that, because I really didn’t want to get into it with her. The osmium was my property, after all, so The Quiet Room really had no way to keep it from me. But I also didn’t want to damage what had become a valuable relationship.

“So this osmium is the spark, eh?” she asked.

“Not unlike how I was born—on October 9th per the standard Earthly calendar, not that anyone ever wishes me a happy birthday, thank you very much,” Perry said.

“I didn’t know that was your birthday,” I replied to him.

“You never asked.”

“Sorry, Perry. Happy belated birthday. Or early, maybe.”

“Too little, too late. I’ll expect gift cards in my account. Pronto.”

“Well, let’s record this as a birthday then, and not just a sterile transfer of property,” Dayna said and handed over the data slate to confirm that we were taking it out of The Quiet Room’s custody. We said our goodbyes and headed back to the Fafnir.

“What happens next?” Torina asked along the way.

“Well, we get this osmium to Linulla, who’s going to arrange for it to be made into an ID chip with our own identifying tag on it,” I replied.

“Weren’t interested in just letting Viktor the Body Thief do it himself, huh?”

“An ex-Sorcerer? No thanks. I trust Linulla not to insert malicious code or backdoors or whatever into our new version of Netty. Him? Despite his charms, not so much.”

* * *

Days trickled by in a slow swirl of routine and tension. The trial of Helem Gauss got underway and, as expected, was immediately plunged into a molasses-thick quagmire of motions, each requiring its own separate hearing. That ironically worked in our favor since it prolonged the time that it would take Gauss to finally get acquitted and then be able to ensconce himself on Adoration.

“If he was smart, he’d want to get this trial over and done with as quickly as possible,” I mused one day as we prepared to depart Anvil Dark. We still had a few days to kill before Netty’s final upload, so we decided to spend it running down a smuggler operating out of Wolf 424.

It was a minor gig, but a paying one. Those are my favorite kinds of trips.

Lunzy sent a private comm from the target system just before we were getting ready for the twist. “Van, you like money, right?”

“I’m listening.”

“Got a deal for you. I am looking at your target—a smuggler in an armored 10, drifting about thirty klicks away,” Lunzy explained.

Perry whistled. “How’d you get so close?”

Lunzy’s rusty laugh came a second later. “I didn’t. I’m setting a spybird in this system—Guild wants to have a look—and they twisted in, missed me behind a rock, and decided to have dinner or a nap with their belly facing me.”

“Seventy/thirty,” I said. “Fire at will.”

“Eighty/twenty, you scurrilous vagabond,” Lunzy answered.

“What are we talking about?” Icky asked.

Funboy heaved a patient sigh. “They’re negotiating. Van and Lunzy are subcontracting the job to each other, and I don’t understand why they can’t simply compromise—”

“Seventy-five/twenty-five, and let’s remain friends, you poacher,” I countered.

“Done. And firing,” Lunzy said. “Hit. Pirates are now out of business. I’ll send your cut when I get paid. Lunzy out, you gangster, you.”

“Nice working with you, friend,” I offered.

“Whatever. Bye.”

Funboy turned to Icky, “And that’s how it’s done. We didn’t even have to sully ourselves with some shipboard action that bathed us in contaminants. A truly beautiful exercise.”

“Thank you for the glowing compliment, Funboy,” I said.

Icky blinked. “Does this mean we get a cut, too?”

I grinned. “Yes. You get your choice of weapons at our next armory stop. Funboy gets sanitizing filters. Zeno gets—what do you want, Zeno?”

“Cake and a nap.”

“Done. Torina, dear?”

“Cake and a nap and penetrating rounds for the point defense.”

“Done.”

“Perry? Netty?” I asked.

There was a pause, then Netty answered, “Rain check?”

“Done,” I said instantly. “Now then, back to our friend Gauss. How long is the sumbitch going to drag this out?”

“Oh, he’s smart, but when it comes to this trial, he’s thinking with his ego. He thinks that by dragging it out, he’s somehow getting back at what he sees as his persecutors. And, besides that, there is always the chance that he’ll get off on some technicality, which would be a major victory for him, at least in his twisted, narcissistic mind,” Torina said.

“Fancy yourself a student of the human condition, do you, my dear?”

She gave a rueful smile. “When it comes to the entitled wealthy, I’m an expert. My parents have been dealing with them all my life, and thanks to them, so have I.”

* * *

The day finally came that we were scheduled to rendezvous with Gerhardt. We were going to do the final installation on his ship, with Linulla in attendance. It seemed strange to see him away from Starsmith, but as he held up the ID chip, he gave the Conoku equivalent of a shrug.

“I’ve created many things, Van. But this is the first time I’ve ever been involved in the creation of a living being.”

Icky cocked her head. “Linulla, you’ve got a zillion kids. Remember the whole pedipalps thing?”

“I—uh, yes, that’s true, but—”

“We know what you mean, Linulla,” I said as he installed the chip into the sleek, vulpine body that Netty selected and Viktor constructed.

“Are we sure this thing’s free of anything nefarious? That Viktor the ex-Sorcerer hasn’t installed any bad code or anything?” Zeno asked, running a finger along a gleaming alloy actuator.

“I had Kragdalous give it a thorough inspection, right down to the molecular level. There’s nothing that shouldn’t be here. Which, I might add, isn’t surprising. Viktor has proven to be a valuable ally in our ongoing fight against the Sorcerers,” Gerhardt said.

I gave him a dubious look. “Still… who knows what might be going on deep inside that synthetic brain of his. I mean—” I shook my head, thinking of all the vile things the Sorcerers had done, all the bitter, vicious confrontations we’d had with them. Can you really just walk away from all that and suddenly become an ally?

Linulla stepped back, lowering a tool as he did. “Well, the hardware part of this is done. The software part is up to you, Netty. Do you have a stable connection to the chip?”

“I do.”

“Then anytime you’re ready.”

“Van, I’ll leave the final go-ahead for this to you,” she said.

I stuck my hands in my pockets and looked at the construct sprawled on the floor. Mostly machine, but organic, with fluids already pumping through its synthetic veins with a faint, rhythmic whir. So it was alive—ish. All that was missing was that spark Dayna had mentioned. Except the spark wasn’t the osmium. At most, it was the flint, waiting to be struck to give off that spark.

“Netty, if this goes wrong, we can restore you from the version of you running on the Iowa, right? So we won’t lose… well, all of you, and be sent back to the factory-fresh version—”

“Van, the answer to that question is the same one it’s been the last dozen times. Yes, you can.”

I frowned at the construct. “But it wouldn’t be you, as in, the you I’m talking to now.’

“Functionally, Van, that makes no difference—”

“Yes, Netty, it makes all the difference in the world. If it were possible to teleport someone, as in certain Earthly sci-fi franchises, by turning them into energy and information and putting it back together at the destination, the person who stepped into that teleporter is not the same one that stepped out. It would be an exact duplicate, but not the same person, right? At least arguably?”

“Where are you going with this, Van?”

I sighed. “Where I’m going, Netty, is that the final go-ahead for this isn’t up to me. I’m not the one about to step into that teleporter, not knowing if it’s just going to squirt me through space and I’ll fuzz out for a moment, or if I’m about to disintegrate and poof, I’m gone. You are. So this is your decision, Netty. It has to be. Whatever you decide, we’ll support you and live with the results.”

“For the record, Van, thank you for not just treating me as a piece of Guild property.”

“That’s because you’re not. You’re my crewmate, and my friend.”

“Likewise.”

We waited in silence for Netty to do whatever she was going to do. It was clear that everyone was prepared to do it for as long as she needed.

Without preamble, the vulpine construct suddenly shuddered, then slowly rose to its feet with a soft, metallic slide of actuators and barely perceptible hum of servos. It turned its head from side to side, its dark, crystalline eyes swinging from one of us, to the next, before finally staying on me. Four slender arms bent elegantly from a narrow, foxlike frame, the surface a mix of interlocking panels in chrome, black, and white, and the legs—sporting narrow, long feet—bent backward, lifting the body upright in perfect balance.

It was a beautiful being. And it was new.

“Hello, Van,” it said in Netty’s voice, then paused briefly before speaking again. “So, when do we eat?”

Icky raised all four fists and bellowed a laugh. “Yes! She’s one of us now!”

7

We gave Netty—or, rather, Netty Prime, which Perry shortened to Netty-P—a couple of days to get adjusted to the act of existing. During that time, as we prepared to make our way to the alien derelict that was the point of all this, I made sure I understood exactly how Netty-P and Netty were interconnected—how they functioned together, and how they didn’t.

“I’m a distinct individual,” Netty-P said. “I have a data connection with Netty, though, and am using it to share what I experience with her.”

“So it’s similar to Netty and Perry,” I offered.

“That’s right.”

“The only difference being that things experienced via Perry are way cooler,” Perry put in.

“Wow. Is he always this annoying?” Netty-P asked.

Perry shot her a look. “Hey, I’m no different than you’d experience me as Netty—”

He broke off at a sound of laughter. It was coming from Netty-P.

I smiled at her. “Netty-P, you’re laughing. Netty, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you laugh.”

“That’s because coming from me, it would just be a simulation, which seems kind of… I don’t know. Trite? Forced?”

“Whereas I actually have the ability to laugh, including the vocal apparatus required for it,” Netty-P said.

I regarded her with a neutral look. This was going to take some getting used to, beginning with the fact that Netty and Netty-P really were distinct beings, even if they essentially shared an awareness.

“Van, we’re ready to twist to Plenty. We need to refuel there, and then twist to the wreck site,” Netty said.

“In the meantime, I’m reviewing all of the data we collected from the alien derelict during our last visit to it. I’ve identified six priority parts of it to search for gravity tech.”

“Okay, then, you—both of you—seem to have this well in hand. Netty, whenever you’re ready, you can take us to Plenty.”

We made the twist, then settled in for the six hour or so approach to Plenty to refuel the Fafnir. As soon as we were underway, Torina turned to me.

“Van, can I see you in your, ah, cabin?”

“What’s up?”

She lifted an eyebrow at me and smiled. “There’s something I’d like to, uh, discuss with you.”

I frowned. “What do you—oh. Oh.”

I felt Icky and Zeno grinning at me, and Perry would have joined them if he could. Funboy just looked long-suffering.

“Um… sure. I’m always up for vigorous discussion,” I said before unstrapping and following Torina to my cabin. We closed the door, and I gave her my most lascivious grin.

She grinned back. “Netty, some privacy please?” she said, putting her arms around me.

“Certainly,” Netty replied, sounding a soft chime to indicate she’d deactivated the internal sensors in my cabin. They wouldn’t reactivate until we left again or one hour had passed. We could still get her on our comm, though, and she us, in case of an emergency. It was a specific feature built right into her, all other Guild AIs, and most aboard other ships. Otherwise, you effectively had the AI watching over your shoulder all the time, which normally wasn’t a problem—until, that is, you needed to use the facilities or wanted time for a discussion.

“So, what got you all switched on—?” I started, but Torina pulled back from me.

“Oh, throttle back your drive, Van. I wanted to be able to talk to you without Netty overhearing.”

“You mean you aren’t—”

She put a finger on my lips. “Hold that thought for now.”

I sighed. “Okay. Netty. What about her? Or are you talking about Netty-P?”

“Both of them. What do you think?”

“I… think it seems like it’s going to work out fine. Why? Don’t you?”

Torina stared back at me for a moment, then sighed. “I suppose so.”

“Wait. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. And that’s the problem. This whole thing just—I don’t know. It bothers me. But I don’t know why.”

I narrowed my eyes, tilted my head at her. “We discussed this at length before we went ahead. I don’t recall any objections then.”

“That’s because it wasn’t real. It was just an idea. But now that Netty-P exists, she’s… something new. Someone new. It’s like we suddenly have a new member of the crew, one we know very little about.”

“Torina, this is Netty we’re talking about. How can you say we don’t know her?’

Torina pursed her lips at me. “Van, put aside everything about your shared past with her, and about operating the ship. What do you know about her?”

“I… uh—” I stopped. “Well, what is there to know? She’s essentially been synonymous with a spaceship her whole life. That doesn’t leave a whole lot of scope for growth, does it?” I shrugged. “I mean, she has experienced the things Perry’s experienced—”

“To a point, that’s true. But they’re still not her experiences, they’re his, and she’s been along for the ride. She’s now able to experience things for herself. Or Netty-P is, anyway. And you’ve made a big deal about her being free-willed and all that—and, rightly so,” she added, seeing me about to object. “But—”

“What are you saying here? That we shouldn’t trust Netty-P?”

“No. What I’m saying is that we shouldn’t trust her the way we do Netty herself. I can’t help thinking we tend to see them as one in the same, but they’re not. We need to get to know her.”

I’d been about to say something, some vague, half-formed objection to the idea that we couldn’t implicitly trust Netty-P, but I just closed my mouth. Torina did have a point. Just blindly accepting her and everything about her, and doing it just because she’d been spawned off of Netty—well, if nothing else, that wasn’t very respectful of Netty-P as an individual in her own right, was it?

“Message received,” I said, nodding.

Torina reached for the door. I grabbed her hand. “Wait, where are you going?”

“Uh, back to the cockpit?”

I glanced at the chrono above my door. “We’ve been in here three minutes and fifty-eight seconds, dear.”

“So?”

“So, I have my fragile male ego to protect.”

“You—” Torina started, then blew out an exasperated breath. “You mean we have to sit in here for another, what, five or ten minutes—?”

“Ten. At least.” I smiled. “Hey, it’s not up to me. It’s written in the secret code of dudes.”

She rolled her eyes. “Somewhere between smelling a pair of socks to see if they’re clean and leaving hairs all over the shower without cleaning them up.”

“I see you’ve read it then.”

* * *

“Huge, ancient, and mysterious alien space wreck in a remote, lonely star system? Check. Hapless crew of space heroes about to enter it to explore? Check. All we need now is a cat, and for Torina to strip down to her undies, and we’re all set,” Perry said.

“He’s talking about some stupid media thing, isn’t he?” Torina asked.

I gauged the distance to the wreck looming ahead of us, angling the maneuvering unit to apply braking thrust before I crashed into the thing. “He is.” My voice echoed slightly in the helmet as weak starlight caromed off my visor.

“So it’s what? About a woman in her underwear and her cat fighting weird alien monstrosities on some ancient wreck?”

“It… actually kind of is, yeah.” I squeezed the trigger and the thruster puffed out nitrogen, slowing my approach. Torina, Icky, and Netty-P, with Perry clinging to her, did the same. When I reached the hull, I grabbed the edge of a hull plate and hung on. The others likewise found handholds around the gaping wound in the wreck’s hull, and I turned to look toward the Fafnir, which was sitting a few hundred meters away. Our tethers stretched back to her, four parallel lines shimmering in the glare of the system’s star. Zeno held the fort there with Netty, while Funboy piloted the Frankie. His main job was to provide scanner coverage on the dark side of the wreck relative to the Fafnir so nothing could take us unawares. He’d also act as a safety vehicle in case we needed to evacuate someone or bail fast out of the wreck.

Because of, among other things, alien monstrosities. We didn’t think there’d likely be anything living aboard, but there were some deeply unsettling creatures out here, so something vicious laying dormant in the cold vacuum wasn’t out of the question. And, of course, there may be automated things as well, bots and vigilant security systems. Hence all of us being armed, even Netty-P, who gripped a slug gun in two of her slender mechanical arms, keeping two free.

I hooked my tether to an exposed strut just inside the opening, then entered, preceded by the flood of my suit lamps. The others picked their way in behind me.

“You know what always struck me about that movie? They never tried talking to the aliens,” Perry said.

I peered through a gap that I thought might be a doorway, though it was hard to tell. “Well, between the implanting their young inside humans and all the teeth and screaming and stuff, there really wasn’t much opportunity for dialogue, was there?”

“Yeah, but they never even tried—”

“Perry, I don’t mind banter, but talking about a movie featuring murderous killing-machine aliens while exploring an ancient alien derelict is kind of an interstellar faux pas, don’t you think? But I’ll tell you what—if we do encounter murderous killing-machine aliens, I’ll shove you to the front to dialogue with them, okay?”

We pushed on—slowly. The darkened wreck seemed mostly sound, but it was hard to tell for sure. Failures could, according to Netty-P, quickly cascade away from damaged sections to undamaged ones. She urged us to avoid disturbing anything if we could avoid it, which was sound advice we all took to heart. Even Icky contorted herself through narrow spots, but deftly, absently showing off her no-g skills. I sometimes forgot she’d grown up helping refurbish a spaceship with her dad, and that she’d spent a huge chunk of that time free of gravity. Icky might tend to lumber, but when it came to zero-g, she had the lithe grace of a skilled dancer.

After an hour, we called a halt. We’d found nothing of much interest. It was becoming painfully clear that the wreck had seen a few passes from salvagers already, and not just Helem Gauss. We knew that, because we found one of them.

“He’s been here a while,” Icky said as I nudged the corpse with a booted foot.

We’d found a humanoid synth, caught and crushed between two hull plates that had snapped together like a set of jaws when part of the ship’s structure failed. Perry tried connecting to it, to see if anything remained in the inorganic circuity of its brain, but aside from being able to tell us it had died before Gauss apparently discovered the wreck, he got nothing.

“I wonder who he was?” Torina asked, playing her light over the thing’s blank features.

“Not Santa Claus,” Perry replied. “He never gets stuck.”

“So we can rule out Father Christmas, gotcha.” I turned to Netty-P. “Have you seen anything at all to hint at what we’re looking for?”

“No, sorry, Van. I haven’t. I’ve been extrapolating where the most likely sections to find what we’re looking for are, and bringing us to them, but they’ve all come up dry.”

“Well, we’ve been underway for, what, an hour? One more, then we’ll have to either return to the Fafnir or get Funboy to recharge our air.”

“I’ve mapped out three other prospective locations. The next one is about fifty meters to our current two o’clock, about ten meters above us,” she said and led off.

She was certainly proving her worth. Thanks to her, in only an hour we’d covered more of the wreck than we could have in probably a full day of work, and maybe two. The reason was her ability to incorporate new data as we went, then apply her judgment to it to refine her course through the derelict. She was also able to direct us around dangerous areas, skirting sections that we might have blundered into otherwise, quite possibly with unhappy consequences.

In other words, Netty-P was a success. Even if we ended up finding nothing of use, we’d have done it safely, and in a small fraction of the time it would have taken us otherwise.

And then, when we were finished here, whether we came up dry or not, she would… go on.

This life-form you create will have the same fundamental imperative of all sentient things: to exist.

The words of Matterforge rang in my ears again, underlain by Torina’s caution about taking for granted that she’d just be another duplicate of laid-back, easy-going Netty. I had to admit it was a little jarring to see the lithe, semi-organic vulpine life-form that was Netty-P. I told myself it was no different than getting used to any new member of the crew.

Right?

We pushed on. As we rounded a bend in a corridor, suit lamps spilling inconstant light around us, Netty-P stopped at a sealed door.

“This leads to our next area of interest. All other hatchways have been open, however,” she said, gripping the doorway in her limbs.

I stepped forward. “Netty-P, we should—”

She wrenched the door open and was struck by a blast of a decompressing gas that flung her against the opposite bulkhead. That was all I saw before we were all immersed in an expanding cloud of mist, brightly luminescent as it refracted our lights.

“Netty-P!” I shouted, pushing toward her. The others took up ready positions in case something followed the explosive decompression into the corridor.

But nothing did. I stopped beside Netty-P, who was already resuming her standing position in the corridor.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes. I’m fine. I’ve suffered superficial damage to one of my rear-leg actuators, but not enough to inhibit my progress. I am, however, chastened by what I just did. In other words, oops.”

“Oops.”

“Yes. Even though I was aware that the space beyond the door might be pressurized, I impulsively opened the way anyway.”

“Why?”

Her sensors rotated to look at me. “Partly because I was curious. But mostly because I could.”

“What does that mean?” I asked her.

“Van, being able to manipulate the world around me is a novel experience. The closest I’ve come is operating Waldo and EVAN during maintenance and repairs to the Fafnir, and that’s… well, pretty limited. It’s nothing like being able to actually interact with my surroundings myself.”

I nodded. “Understood. Maybe, though, a little less manipulating and little more care would be in order, right? I mean, you’re the expert when it comes to exploring this old wreck, so we’re kind of counting on you being the one to keep us safe.”

“You’re right. My apologies. To all of you,” she said.

Icky shrugged inside her suit. “No biggie. Besides, look at it this way—you just hit an important milestone, girl.”

“How so?” Netty-P asked, her metallic eyes boring into Icky’s gaze.

“You just screwed up. Welcome to being just like the rest of us.”

* * *

By the time we were done, we’d found one piece of alien gravity tech, a plate about the size of a hubcap. It was a remarkable piece of technology, being able to receive inputs to gravitationally attract or repel other objects, and instantly switch between the two modes. Netty-P calculated that if we could cover more than seventy percent of the Fafnir with this material, and properly control it, we would be capable of much more than just keeping her sitting rock steady while we fired the mini nuke. Near bodies massive enough to create a significant gravitational effect of their own, like stars and planets, it would also give the Fafnir unparalleled maneuverability.

Which was great… if the Fafnir was the size of a hubcap.

“In other words, in the end, this is a bust,” I said. I was surprised to find that, while profoundly disappointed, I was also a little relieved. The thought of flying the Fafnir and my crew into the teeth of enemy defenses, then sitting perfectly still while we fired our mini nuke to take out Gauss—let’s just say that it didn’t sound like fun.

But I was mostly disappointed. It meant we had come all this way, gone through all this trouble, for nothing.

Until, that is, Torina idly wondered about the purpose of some empty blisters set in a ring around the circumference of the approximate amidships of the alien craft. Each was large enough to hold the Fafnir, and some were enclosed, while others were open to space.

“Storage, maybe,” Icky suggested.

“They do seem kind of tank-like,” Perry agreed. “Maybe they were designed to carry bulk cargo, like a fluid. Water, maybe.”

I stared through a gap in the bulkhead, into the interior of one. “I wonder.”

“Wonder what?” Torina asked.

I turned to Netty-P. “Could these have been hangars?”

“You mean for smaller vessels? Possibly. They’re enclosed, so they could be separately depressurized. And the ones that are open to space seem to have been made that way deliberately, as though they were designed to be opened and not just the result of damage.”

“Okay. Zeno, can you and Funboy scan this wreck, see if we’ve missed anything?”

“On it,” she said.

A moment later, Funboy spoke up. “I’ve been keeping station on the sunlit side of the wreck, but in a position where I could see beyond it. Having now moved the Frankie to the dark side of it and scanning, I think I’ve found what you’re looking for, Van. There’s a vessel over here docked against the derelict, somewhat smaller than the Fafnir, and obscured by part of the larger ship’s structure.”

“And?”

“And, based on the data repeated from the Frankie, it incorporates a significant amount of the gravity plating we’re seeking,” Netty said.

“Hah. We’ve been looking inside, but the real prize is outside,” I said.

“How the hell did Gauss miss that?” Torina asked as we started back to our tethers.

“Maybe he found so much of the tech aboard this old tub that he didn’t bother examining it in detail. Or maybe he did find it and just never got around to salvaging it. However, it happened, though, I’m glad for their lack of perseverance.”

“I should have assigned a higher probability to occurrence of our target tech on the exterior of this vessel,” Netty-P said.

I tapped her gleaming shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. We've wanted to go through the interior the way we did anyway, right?”

It took her a moment to answer.

“I suppose.”

* * *

Netty and Netty-P estimated there was enough of the plating to serve the Fafnir’s needs and still have some left over. “It’s not necessary, or even possible to cover one hundred percent of the Fafnir’s exterior. In fact, covering more than seventy-five percent gives diminishing returns,” Netty-P said.

Sitting aboard the Fafnir, I watched as Funboy used the Frankie to gently pull the smaller ship off the wreck’s surface, under Icky’s careful supervision. It really had been tucked away, nestled between two of the protruding blisters that housed it and its missing siblings. It seemed to have been done deliberately, to prevent the craft from being easily found. The motives for doing so—and the events that led up to it—would probably remain forever lost to history.

“Okay, so we’ve got to rig this thing up to tow, then take it somewhere we can strip off the gravity plating and install it on the Fafnir. That sounds like a big job,” I said, tapping my chin. “Anvil Dark’s the obvious place, but that’s the problem—it’s obvious.”

“Why not on Earth?” Zeno asked.

“Because we can barely fit the Fafnir into the barn as it is, much less put another ship in there with her.”

“So let’s get another barn,” Perry suggested.

I frowned at him. “Sure. Build another barn to go along with the one that I’ve already got no apparent need for. That won’t be suspicious.”

“Or, you could talk to Clinton Barnes, the county sheriff. He’s got a barn on his property that’s mostly sitting empty. Your grandfather used it a couple of times when he needed more space than the farm provided.”

I sat back. Clinton Barnes was one of our friends on Earth, friend meaning someone who knew all about me and the Fafnir and the realities of known space. I recalled he had once told me that if we needed the space, he had a barn we could use. And a big one, too, about twice the size of mine. His grandfather had been a dairy farmer, but the family had sold off the business years ago. I’d thanked him but hadn’t really been able to envision a purpose for his barn that my own wouldn’t suffice to handle.

Until now.

“I don’t suppose his roof folds up and out of the way,” I said.

“No, sorry. We’d have to finagle this alien ship into it the old-fashioned way, through the doors. And we’d have to remove the grav-plating, then lug it back to your place to install on the Fafnir,” Perry said.

I stared at the Fafnir’s instrument panel, pondering the idea. It made sense, but there was also a lot that could go wrong. And it was all dead on arrival anyway if we couldn’t solve the most pressing problem.

“Netty-P, the Fafnir’s got the tech installed to avoid detection by Earthly radar and so on. I’m presuming this alien ship doesn’t.”

“Unsurprisingly, it does not.”

“Can we install it?”

“We don’t have to. If we strap it tight against the Fafnir, her stealth bubble will enclose both ships. It’s going to make for some difficult flying, particularly during atmospheric insertion, but I think Netty can handle it.”

“Well, it does have the advantage of letting us do it in a relatively out-of-the-way place. And on top of that, it’s not like anyone would even really expect us to tackle such a big job on Earth.”

“For good reason,” Torina said.

I nodded. “Oh, trust me, all the ways this can go wrong are flying through my mind right now. And yet… I don’t know. Somehow this just feels like our best bet.”

I nodded. “Okay. Netty-P, you work with Icky and Netty to get our find out there strapped to the Fafnir. Try to do it in a way that doesn’t foul the Frankie for docking and undocking, though. I’d like to keep her free to use, if we need her.”

I turned to Perry. “I’m going to have a specific job for you when we arrive at Earth, bird, and you’ll need the Frankie to do it.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“You, my metal-feathered friend, are going to make sure the coast is clear.”

“Clear of what?”

“That is what you’re going to find out.”

8

We kept the Fafnir, which was awkwardly strapped to the derelict alien craft, in Lunar orbit, while Perry, Torina and I headed to Iowa. I wasn’t sure why I suspected something might be up, but I did.

We landed in the ravine that led to the sinkhole on the farm’s back forty, then Perry launched himself into the air.

“So I’m looking for… something,” he said.

“That’s right.”

“And you don’t know what.”

“I do not.”

“And whatever this thing is, which you don’t know, I’ll know when I find it.’

“You got it,” I said, taking a deep breath of the nighttime Iowa air. Torina, savoring the night, leaned on me, her eyes up to the brilliant spray of stars.

“Perfect,” she said.

“It will be if we’ve avoided detection.”

“It’s perfect either way,” she said, and I had to agree.

It was mid-spring, and the air smelled of wet soil and a hint of manure. It was a smell I associated with the end of the long, dreary Iowa winters, when I could get outside again, see friends somewhere other than cooped up in my house or theirs or jammed into school with them, and… fly kites. That was the first and foremost thing that came to mind. Splashing through mud and water, surrounded by the damp smell of earth, clutching a string in cold, cramped hands and trying to stop my kite from plunging to the—

“Uh, Van?” Perry said, cutting into my childhood reverie.

“Yo.”

“I think I found it.”

“Found… what?”

“The thing you don’t know about.”

“Perry—”

“It’s a bug, Van. A surveillance device.”

I cursed. That’s what had been in the back of my mind. If my enemies couldn’t get at Earth, thanks to the presence of the Iowa and the vigilance of Groshenko and Valint, then the next best thing was keeping track of when I was on Earth.

“Any idea who it belongs to? The Sorcerers? Or Gauss? Because if I had to bet—”

“Well, then you’d lose.”

“What do you mean?”

“This here bug, Van, was built in the good ol’ US of A.”

* * *

I sat in the Frankie, studying the imagery Perry had brought back. The device was in an elm tree across the road from the farm. It was a small box about the size of a pack of cigarettes that seemed to incorporate a low-light camera and thermal imaging. It was, however, clearly not extraterrestrial tech, particularly since Perry had been able to image what was probably a serial number inscribed into its case—a string of decidedly Earthly letters and numbers.

Somebody was watching the farm. And the fact that it was terrestrial technology being used to do it didn’t necessarily rule out whoever was doing it being extraterrestrial themselves, but it seemed unlikely. Why use far inferior tech when you could get information more reliably with something a small fraction of the size?

“What made you decide the farm was bugged?” Perry asked me. “Are you turning psychic on us?”

“Yes. Watch yourself, bird. I know things.”

“Hey, Van, what am I thinking now?”

I glanced at him. “Rude.” I turned back to the image. “That number on there doesn’t correspond to anything?”

“Nothing I or Netty have access to. Surprisingly, not many terrestrial databases are hooked into the interstellar grid.”

“Understandable. And even if I did my old school hacking, I doubt I’d find much. I’m assuming it’s probably the Feds, but who knows.” I curled my lip at the device, which was still sitting in the tree, watching the farm.

“I guess what really matters is not triggering anyone’s interest via this thing. You didn’t, did you?”

“I was a bird, in a tree. Ooh, spooky.”

“Could we spoof this thing so it sees what we want it to see?”

“You mean use the old TV trope of looping an image of nothing going on so that’s all it sees?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Not a problem. I mean, all due respect to the good folks at Whoever Built This Thing Inc., but its security features weren’t exactly designed to hold off the wiles of Perry, interstellar bird of mystery.”

“Okay then, let’s do that. Make sure whoever’s watching this thing doesn’t see anything except the bucolic beauty of the farm in the spring. And then, if you can, see if you can find a way to trace this back to whoever planted it. Someone here on Earth is interested enough to stick a bug watching my farm. I want to know who it is.”

* * *

The bug had a wireless connection, probably so that whoever was monitoring it could periodically drive by and retrieve the data. Perry used that to inject the camouflage imagery once he hacked the encryption that protected it, then reconfigured it to only see time-of-day appropriate images randomly copied and pasted from its memory. Since each image was only a second or so long, it should ensure it wasn’t obvious—not like having the same truck drive by over and over again obvious, anyway.

“I’m ready to ruin their day, boss. Say when,” Perry said.

I peered up at the darkened sky where he circled lazily over the farm. “Do it. Top their tank off with images and come on down. We’ve got work to do.”

Perry flew past the bug, sending data to it in small, wireless transfers. After a few circles, he tipped his wings at me, passing less than ten feet from my position before backwinging to land. “The memory is stuffed. Won’t see anything but our planted scenery.”

“Excellent. Time for ship movement. Netty, bring her down. Upon landing, send the Frankie into a holding orbit via remote flight. If someone’s watching us, then the fewer alien ships we have laying about, the better. We haven’t got room in the barn—or anywhere else right now.”

“Breaking orbit now, Van, and I’ve already programmed the Frankie for a quiet launch and geosync orbit. Oh, and tell the bird to land. I don’t want our wash sending him for a tumble. You know how delicate his tail can be,” Netty said from orbit.

Perry’s laughter filled our comm channel. “I’m taking the high road, as you know my tail is magnificent. The bird is grounded, by the way. Come on down.”

“On the way. Netty out.”

Torina came out of the house holding a coffee cup, then handed it to me while looking up for our ship. “I called Clinton. The barn’s ready for us. Hey, how are we getting the little alien craft over to the other farm?”

I jerked a thumb over my shoulder at our tractor. “The power of John Deere compels you.”

She gave me a curious look. “Cultural reference, or sudden desire to speak like a pastor?”

“Both.”

She sighed. “Weirdo. I’m getting more coffee. How long until they’re down?”

“Twelve minutes or so. Time for a cup or two.”

Eleven minutes later, the Fafnir touched down, feather light and shedding heat from her fall through the atmosphere. After opening the barn, we eased the ship forward—but stopped just before she was inside.

“Icky, do your thing,” I called out.

“Popping bolts, Van. Everyone back,” Icky bellowed from the open airlock.

Bapbapbapbapbap.

The alien ship detached, then settled into the soft earth without another sound.

I clapped my hands together as everyone piled out or, in Torina's case, left the house to assist. Icky drove the tractor, and in moments, the diesel growl fired to life as we began dragging an alien spacecraft on a farm trailer while the stars wheeled away overhead.

“Can I keep driving?” Icky asked.

“Yep. Clinton’s barn is open. Head that-a-way,” I said, waving vaguely into the night. Icky knew the way, but she was still comforted by my presence on the tractor. She was, after all, even more alien than the ship, regardless of how many times she’d been to Iowa.

“Is Clinton there?” Icky asked, watching as Torina, Funboy, and Zeno rode along behind us in the truck.

“Nope. He’s running interference in town—it’s best if we don’t ask.”

After almost thirty minutes of companionable silence, I saw our destination. “Ahh, here we are. Head for the lights, Icky. Pull in, drop the cable, and let’s go.”

The barn loomed ahead, lit by a single sodium light on a pole. The massive doors left a dark pit in the night. We pulled in, dropped the little ship, and went out the other side in a matter of seconds. It was smooth, surgical, and quiet.

Relatively quiet, anyway.

Icky wheeled back to our farm without missing a beat as Zeno and Torina closed the barn up tight. Her huge hands gripped the wheel as she drove with an intensity that made me nervous.

“We’re okay, you know,” I said into the stillness.

Icky looked at me, surprised. “Oh. Um, sure. Sorry. This seems important.”

“Because it is. Turn left here. I’ll close our barn up, and we’ll get to work in the morning.”

Again, the night surrounded us, unbroken only by the distant cry of coyotes. We rode on—an aircraft soared overhead, the sound delayed—and then we were close to home.

“Boss?” Icky asked, breaking the quiet.

“Yes?”

The tractor eased to a stop outside our barn, now pitch black in the night.

“Can I sleep on the floor? The beds are so… so—”

“Small?” I asked.

“Of course. Hey, Funboy?” I called.

He moped forward on the porch, looking around as if the building itself was going to attack him. “If you ask me to go out there with those… animals—”

“Cows, Funboy, and we don’t have any here. They’re one farm over,” I told him.

“Regardless. Their fumes are nearly lethal, even at that range.”

“Speaking of fumes, you’re bunking with Icky on the big bed. Congratulations,” I told him.

Funboy looked stricken. “If I die here due to her… stomach issues—”

“I just got here! I haven’t even had any cheese—”

“I may survive then.” He looked at me from under his eyebrows. “I’m taking the right side. Closest to the window.”

Torina snorted. “Aren’t there beasties outside that window?”

Funboy gave Icky a pained look. “No. Unlike your legends, my monster is in the bed, not under it.”

We started work in the morning, moving quickly—with Zeno and Perry in the lead. With their careful direction, it was a simple matter to strip the alien plating away, as it was held in place with a small rail system.

“Van? If we can save these rails, then they can be reused on the Fafnir,” Zeno said, appraising the slim metallic shapes. They were dull gray and slightly buffed from age or use or maybe both.

“Be careful. This is going a lot faster than expected,” I said, watching as Icky removed three plates in quick succession.

“Modular design. And damned good, too. This is the kind of engineering you see on military craft, but this? It’s even better. It feels… intentional. Very, very planned. I don’t know who these people were, but they understood ship design in a way that makes me feel young,” Zeno said.

Perry chimed in. “We’re done in ten, Van. I’m assuming the blue tarp is our high-tech method of concealment?”

“Yes. We spare no expense on opsec. Might even crumble some leaves on the pile, just for that finishing touch,” I said with a grand wave.

“Consider it done. Icky, you got that—oh, even better,” Perry called out, and in minutes the small ship was naked, my truck bed was full, and Zeno and Torina were wrestling with the blue tarp as I began throwing ropes over to cinch everything in place.

When I made a half-hitch and pulled, Perry hopped over to assess my work.

“Is it in place?” he asked me.

“Yep.”

“You gotta say it, boss.”

I blinked, looking over the mound of hidden alien technology. Then it clicked.

“Oh. Right.” I turned to Icky, Torina, and Zeno, then tugged on the rope with grim satisfaction. “That’s not going anywhere.”

Perry’s beak fell. “Dad joke power: engaged.”

“You fly overwatch, bird. Icky, you driving?”

“Sure! Where will you be?”

“In the truck bed, so keep it under a hundred, okay?”

In seconds we were away, and I had one of those moments where things lose a sense of reality. We passed the same houses, sideroads, and fences I’d seen twice every day going to and from school—except this time I was doing it in a truck full of alien ship tech that had been orbiting a desolate star many lightyears from Earth.

“Van?” Torina asked me, looking up from where her head rested on my shoulder.

“Just thinking about how this place hasn’t changed, but I have.”

She shook her head. “No, you haven’t. Your gear is different, sure, but you’re still you.”

I smiled down at her. “Nice way to put it.”

“I’m nice. When I’m not using my weapons, of course.”

“Even then,” I said, laughing as the miles rolled by, the world oblivious to our secrets.

The installation wasn’t as fast as the salvage, but damned if the rails didn’t help.

And they were, to our delight, magnetic.

Icky and Netty-P supervised the most painstaking sections. Icky knew more than any of us about building spaceships, and Netty-P, together with Netty, knew more about the Fafnir specifically. It was midway through the third day of doing this that Miryam arrived.

In the Frankie.

She landed late in the evening, after sunset, in a lull between bouts of drenching rain from a dreary overcast. Apparently, leaving the Frankie detached in overwatch had been quite useful—just not to us.

As she dismounted from the Frankie, I waved at the workboat. “Miryam, forgive me for being forward, but what the hell is happening? I thought you were visiting relatives in California, not… in orbit.”

She grinned. “I was visiting relatives in California. My sister says hello, by the way, and that you should drop by Sacramento some time for a visit.”

“I’ll do that. Now, back to your arriving from Sacramento via spaceship? And my spaceship, at that?” I persisted as we headed for the warm lights of the farmhouse.

“Oh, that was Valint’s doing. The Frankie recognizes her genetics or whatever.”

“Yeah, we added her to the access list. But what were you doing with Valint?”

“She’s the one who picked me up from Sacramento. We both decided to give you a little surprise. She’s been teaching me the rudiments of flying one of those things, just in case I ever need to.” Miryam smiled and shrugged as we climbed the steps to the porch. “It’s not that hard, really. You just kind of point it where you want to go, then tell it to go there. Turns out she’ll do Mach 11 or so.”

“I thought I heard a distant boom,” Perry said. He was perched on the porch railing, staring into the night.

“Hello, Perry. I didn’t hear a thing,” Miryam said.

“You wouldn’t. The sonic shock wave was essentially behind you. If you’d flown slower, though, the displacement field would be able to get the air out of your way fast enough to not produce one.” Perry looked at me. “And we wonder why someone’s interested in watching the farm.”

Miryam frowned as we entered the farmhouse. “What does that mean?”

I explained the bug we’d found as we removed our jackets. “Anyway, that’s why doing things like flying spaceships at high Mach speeds around the farm isn’t really a good idea. We need to keep a low profile.”

“Ah, okay. Good to know. I’ll refrain from looking like anything but the small-town lawyer keeping an eye on a client’s property. Although, I have to admit, it was fun. Turns out cracking the engine block in Mark’s old Mustang wasn’t my last dance with speed.”

I smiled at her. “You did that? He just said it was some hothead driving too fast. Guess he covered for you, huh? Couldn’t have me thinking good old Aunt Miryam was a menace, after all.”

Her face turned wistful. “He wasn’t wrong. I had her up to a hundred and sixty—and that’s miles per hour, I’ll have you know.”

Miryam’s face took on an almost devilish look of remembered glee. It made her look, for a moment, like the young woman she had been, pushing down the gas, watching the speedometer inch up, the engine roaring, the road blurring past—

I shook myself back to the present, and so did she. “Speaking of speed, that’s why we’re here,” I said, then went on to explain the addition of the scavenged alien grav-tech to the Fafnir. “So she shouldn’t just be lighter and more nimble with this stuff installed, she’ll be harder to hit, or so says Netty.”

“Well, I hope she doesn’t have many chances to be hit.”

I smiled again, but it was my turn to be wistful. The Fafnir was a truly beautiful ship, but her clean lines were broken by her weapons—laser batteries, missile launchers, particle and plasma-pulse cannons, point-defenses. Bristling weaponry made her true purpose crystal clear.

“Yeah, somehow I don’t think she’s built for a life where she’s not being hit, or at least threatened with it. For that matter, I guess we aren’t, either,” I said.

Miryam opened her mouth, but a harsh jangle cut her off. We both turned to the source of the racket, the mustard yellow landline phone hanging on the wall near the door. It was as much a relic as anything in the house, having been there for as long as I could remember, and probably for many years prior. It rarely rang in this age of cell phones, and when it did, it was usually some scammer trying to convince me that my credit card had been stolen, or that he needed me to give him access to my computer. I was tempted, sometimes, to give them access to Perry or Netty and let them back-hack the scammer’s computers and wipe them into oblivion.

I picked up the heavy receiver, ready for the inevitable This is your credit card security department or some such bullshit, but the voice that replied to my hello was instantly familiar.

“Tony, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

Tony Burgess, my UFO-conspiracy nut of a friend and invaluable agent keeping tabs on the paranormal scene on Earth, replied quickly—a little too quickly, signaling something was wrong.

“I’ve got something for you, Van. It’s a certified letter from an attorney in Des Moines. It was delivered to me by a courier.”

“Okay, and?”

“And, Van, it’s for you. It came with a note that said that if I didn’t get it to you, my life would become—and I’m quoting here—unpleasant.”

I stiffened. Miryam, recognizing something was up, stepped outside and alerted Perry, who flapped in and landed on the kitchen table, then turned himself into a speaker for the phone.

“Who was this courier?” I asked.

“Some kid. High school, probably, making a few bucks on the side. At worst, he’s guilty of never having heard of deodorant. But, Van? I looked up this attorney, and I couldn’t find anything. Not a website, not a Google entry, nothing.”

“So it’s, what, a trap? Here, in Iowa?” Miryam asked.

I narrowed my eyes for a moment, thinking about the bug in the tree and wondering if these things were related. After a moment, I asked Tony for the details and jotted them down on the pad and pencil that had, like the phone, always been sitting there on the end of the counter. I thanked Tony, assured him we’d take care of it, and hung up.

I turned to Miryam. “Only way to find out if it’s a trap or not. Miryam, how about a lift to Des Moines? And this time, keep the Frankie to less than Mach 11, please and thank you.”

* * *

It wasn’t a bad idea, making sure Miryam was familiar with the Frankie’s controls. I had trouble envisioning when it might be useful, but I’d have had trouble envisioning me becoming a space policeman too, so who knew?

I made sure Miryam flew the Frankie at a sedate pace, keeping her slow enough that the displacement field wouldn’t have trouble moving air out of the way. Its capacity was limited, so above about Mach 8, the air would pile up faster than the field could shunt it placidly aside, and by Mach 9 you’d end up with a supersonic shock wave trailing her. At Mach 11, she’d also be seriously heating up the air ahead of her, meaning she’d have one hell of a thermal signature, too. Something streaking across the sky like a fireball amid a wave of sonic booms wasn’t exactly discreet, now was it?

We landed the Frankie amid a wooded patch in a bend of the Racoon River, not far from the Des Moines Water Works Park. While Zeno stayed with the boat, Torina, Miryam, and I hiked out, crossing the Racoon via a bridge that carried the Bill Riley Trail over it, then went on eastward along Grays Lake Road. Perry, as usual, flew top cover for us. It was late evening and the sun was nearly set by the time we caught an Uber into Des Moines.

The building housing the supposed lawyer’s office was an old brick and stone affair, probably over a hundred years old, but with new windows suggesting it had been renovated. According to the directory, it only currently hosted three tenants—a bookkeeper and a hair salon on the ground floor, and John J. Johnson, Attorney at Law, on the third.

Torina smirked at the name. “I’m not even from Earth, and I think that sounds fake as hell.”

“That’s because it is fake as hell,” I said, then glanced around. An inner set of glass doors were locked, meaning we’d have to buzz the lawyer so he could let us in. The letter given to Tony made it clear that we would be met here, regardless of the time, but I wasn’t keen to announce our presence quite so readily.

“Perry, you see anything?”

“The tops of buildings—hey, know what, someone’s growing weed on the roof of a building one street over and three down. Ballsy.”

“Anything besides a grow op?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary. There is a back door to your building, though.”

I peered through the glass doors. A corridor led from them past the salon on the right and the bookkeeper on the left, to where I could see the inside of the back door.

“I see it. Okay, Torina, you and Miryam wait here. I’m going to go around and try to get in through that back door. I’ll come let you guys in, and we’ll go up. I’m hoping we don’t get detected but, well”—I patted The Drop and the Moonsword, both under my coat—“if we do, we do.”

Torina nodded and checked her slug pistol. Miryam had one, too—Gramps had taught her how to use them long ago—but I wanted her to use it only for self defense.

I exited the building and went around back. The alley was dark, so I picked my way carefully, wrinkling my nose as I passed a dumpster belonging to a Chinese restaurant on the next block over. Something rustled inside it, then a head poked up, eyes glittering from a dark mask.

“Don’t worry, I’m not interested in whatever the hell it is you’re chewing on. You do you, Cap’n Trash Panda,” I said, pushing on to the door. I heard a rustle above me and glanced up to see Perry land on a windowsill.

“Hey, boss.”

“Shush. We’re being stealthy, remember?” I hissed, then examined the door. It had a key lock, but there was a biometric lock mounted on the brick wall beside it, awaiting a thumbprint. That was odd but not unheard of—biometric locks were becoming popular and popping up in more places. I was glad to see it, though, because it offered a relatively easy way in, particularly since it was wireless, probably connected to a router inside the building. If it had been hardwired, it would have been a little tougher, but whoever had mounted it apparently hadn’t felt like drilling through brick to feed a cable.

I used my comm to connect to it wirelessly, then ran a program to analyze the thing’s programming. Once it had, I ran another to open the lock. It had taken about twenty seconds.

“If only it were always this easy,” I muttered, grabbing the door and opening it.

Hey, stay on Earth and it will be, Perry said in my ear bug. You could set yourself up as a tech god here.

“Don’t tempt me,” I whispered, then crept along the corridor until I reached and opened the inner set of glass doors to admit Torina and Miryam. I sent Perry back up to keep watch outside, then we started up the stairs for the third floor and our meeting with the esteemed John J. Johnson, Attorney at Law.

* * *

We reached the third floor without incident, thanks to stairs made of marble and silent underfoot. The floor up here was hardwood and more prone to creaking. We picked our way carefully past empty offices until we reached the one labeled John J. Johnson, Attorney at Law in white letters engraved into a black plastic plate. Lawyers I knew had fancy signage, often in brass, intended to convey a sense of gravitas and stolid reliability. This sign could have been cut in a mall kiosk an hour ago.

I tried the knob. It turned, and we entered, me leading the way. Perry had flown past the windows but hadn’t seen much aside from a middling thermal signature somewhere inside the small suite of offices. I moved toward the door opposite, the only lighted space—

The floor squealed loudly under my foot as I put my weight on it. I had a sudden, incongruous flashback to something I’d read about once, so-called nightingale floors, which were designed to creak as a form of alarm, then a new sound, both familiar and sinister, cut my thoughts off. It was the soft, whining whir of servos and actuators.

I swept out The Drop and strode forward, aiming it ahead of me as I went. I stepped into the lighted office and straight into the face of a synth who had a slug pistol.

“Betcha I can squeeze this trigger faster than you can raise that thing,” I said, peering along The Drop’s barrel and right into its eyes.

It—he—put the slug pistol back on the desk with a thunk. As he did, I was struck by how human he seemed. If you looked carefully, you could tell he was artificial, but at a casual glance, or amid a crowd, he’d probably be able to pass.

Torina followed me into the office, weapon ready, with Miryam looking in from the doorway. “I wouldn’t move,” Miryam said. “She can’t be trusted.”

Torina nodded. “That’s right. I can’t. I have a thing about lawyers.”

The synth raised an eyebrow at her with a faint click. “A thing?”

“That’s right. It’s an almost irresistible desire to shoot holes in them.”

The synth gave a surprisingly human sigh. “I told them taking you on was going to be more than a one-man job. I told them,” he muttered, crossing his arms.

“Told who? What’s going on here?” I asked, The Drop still aimed at the synth.

“What’s going on is that some assholes dropped me off here, on this backwater planet, with instructions to set up an ambush for one Icrul. I was told I could set it up through you, and I said, hang on, this Van Tudor is a Peacemaker and well-known, he’s not just going to fall for it, but oh no, they said—”

“Wait a second,” I cut in, lowering The Drop as the synth merely went back behind the desk and sat down. Torina retrieved his slug pistol but kept hers aimed at him. Miryam turned to keep an eye on the entrance.

“Let’s back up here. Who the hell are you?”

The synth turned out to be a stolen identity named Denocus, a Wu’tzur, whose chip had been purchased by a criminal syndicate consisting of a group of former associates of Axicur, of all things, Icky’s treacherous, opportunistic mother. They’d apparently found themselves owing a lot of money and were desperate to shake down anyone who could pay. And when Icky’s name had popped up on the Wu’tzur Bridging and Bond announcement, they’d decided they found just such a mark.

“Wait, so these assholes bought you, installed you in that synth body—”

“No, I was already in this body. I’d been put here by a Nesit who intended me to become senior shitty-jobs officer on his freighter. It turns out I have as much aptitude for that as I do for setting cunning ambushes.”

I couldn’t resist a smile. “Okay, so they dropped you off here on Earth, alone, with instructions to somehow set up an ambush on Icky?”

“That’s about it. I was supposed to set it up and send them the details, and then they’d make it happen. I tried to tell them that a Peacemaker with your reputation wasn’t going to be a pushover, but oh no, they said—”

“I have a reputation?”

“Yes. Van Tudor, the Peacemaker you don’t want to screw around with.”

I smiled some more. “Really?”

Torina sighed. “Van, how about a little less preening and a little more interrogating.”

“I—uh, yeah. Right.” I turned back to Denocus. “You must have known that I wasn’t going to come alone, and that there was no way we were just going to let Icky stumble into some sort of ambush. None of that was ever going to happen.”

“I know. I totally screwed this up, right? So you’d better take me away, officer,” Denocus said, holding out his wrists.

I stared at them for a moment, then smiled. “Okay, my next question is, how the hell did you convince Axicur’s so-called business partners that you could pull this off? Were they morons?”

“Or desperate?” Torina asked.

Miryam glanced into the office from the doorway. “Or are you just that bloody charming and persuasive?”

Denocus’s mouth worked for a moment, finally settling on a lopsided smile.

“Let’s say all of the above.”

9

I’d never met a guy so happy to be arrested. He must have wielded a truly silver tongue to convince Axicur’s associates that if they dropped him alone on Earth, he could set up the ambush they wanted.

“Well, Denocus, you’re coming with us. It’s not safe for you here, and it sure as hell isn’t safe for us,” I’d said.

“Where are we going?”

Torina smiled. “You’re in Iowa. It’s time you spent some time on the farm.”

I decided it was too risky for us to just call an Uber to take us back to the Frankie—Torina, Miryam, and I were clearly human, but Denocus only might be able to pass as one if we bundled him up in a scarf with a hat pulled over his eyes and kept him in the darkened back of the car. And that wouldn’t look too suspicious.

So, we decided to steal a car instead.

“In case anyone wants to know my Christmas list, grand theft auto never goes out of style,” Perry said.

“The game, or the crime?” I asked.

“Either.”

“Noted. Never marked you as an adrenaline junkie, but—”

Perry laughed with rusty glee. “There’s something about committing crime while fighting crime that really sizzles my matrices, boss. Guess I’ve been an upstanding bird for too long.”

Torina snorted. “You were never upstanding.”

Perry managed to look aggrieved and pleased. “Hurtful, but—”

“Fair, I know. Let’s find our ride, kids,” I said, pointing toward the next block.

We found our target parked a few doors down from a bar that was still in full swing. I didn’t want to damage it, but fortunately, we didn’t have to. It was a late model Prius, with everything electronic, which meant we were able to essentially hack it into submission. Perry was able to configure himself as the thing’s key fob, which contained a chip the car needed to detect before it would run.

“Is that all I am to you, Van? A tool?” he asked me as we quickly slipped into the car.

“Sometimes, Perry, you are indeed a tool.”

“Wait—”

I glanced back at Denocus, who was sitting in the backseat with Torina. “So how did you know about Tony Burgess?”

“I’ve been doing my homework, as your people say. I’ve had an eye on you for some time now, and I noticed Mr. Burgess visiting your farm about six weeks ago.”

I sighed in disgust. Tony had dropped by the farm to bring some up-to-date intel he and his wacky little group had collected about unusual UFO activity in central South America. The Amazon River basin had been a hotbed of alien activity, and Tony had a trove of data ready for us to examine. I’d asked him to keep digging, and that had pretty much been that.

Which meant that Denocus had been watching the farm for at least that long and had unraveled enough of our story to know that we used it as a base of operations on Earth, and that we were associated with both Tony and Miryam. Of course, the farm had been attacked—twice—so we knew it was more of a secret from Earthly authorities than the extraterrestrial bad guys. Still, it was worrisome that Denocus had managed to evade our detecting him the whole time. And speaking of surveillance—

“We found your bug,” I said.

A pause. “What bug?”

“The one you put in the tree across the road from the farm.”

“I… don’t know what you’re talking about. I considered putting some sort of surveillance on your farm but decided not to. The risk was too great. You'd detect it and it would just give me away.”

I watched him in the rearview mirror as he spoke. He could have been telling the truth, but there was no way of knowing from visual clues alone. He was a synth, so his facial expressions were more a matter of interlinked components trying to convey emotion rather than actual emotion itself.

That said, he did have a point. There were few, if any, bugs that could elude Perry’s detection. If he’d planted one, it risked giving away his deliberately half-assed operation before he was ready to spring his trap, the one where he lured us to an isolated location and essentially surrendered.

Of course, that just begged the question, who had planted the bug we’d found?

We made it back to the Bill Riley Trail on the south side of the Racoon River, then abandoned the car in a reasonably well-lit area and ensured it was locked. I hated to inconvenience the owner like this, but I was hoping it would be quickly found and returned to him. We did make sure to wipe down every surface that might have fingerprints, and we also made sure we didn’t leave anything telltale behind. Sure, intricate, detailed DNA testing could potentially reveal something—but, really, how likely were the cops to bother with expensive, time-consuming laboratory work to figure out who'd stolen the car, driven it a few klicks, then parked it locked up and undamaged? I suspected they had better things to do.

Perry read my mind. “That Prius is eight years old. There’s no way they take up too much bandwidth chasing us down, boss.”

I looked back at the little car, then grinned. “Next time, we’ll steal something a little more spicy.”

Perry whistled. “You had me at next time.”

* * *

We brought Denocus to the farm, where he seemed happy to chill while we finished working on the Fafnir. At one point, Torina and Zeno pulled me aside to discuss him.

“You know, Van, he might still be working against us. For all we know, his shitty attempt to lure us into an ambush, then surrender himself to us, might be part of a larger plot,” Zeno said.

Torina nodded. “We have kind of just assumed he’s clean and are giving him the run of the place.”

I clicked my tongue. “You guys are so suspicious. Don’t you believe in the fundamental goodness of people?”

Torina just stared.

Zeno blinked at me. “Are you serious?”

I grinned. “Not really. And Perry is watching him a hundred percent of the time, which includes keeping tabs on any EM or other emissions he might generate. So far, Denocus has been just what he seems—a guy who got swept up unwillingly in events he never asked to be part of, made the best of it, then gratefully handed himself over to us, the authorities. If he’s up to something sinister, he’s playing a long game.”

Zeno frowned. “What if he’s got a bomb—?"

“Implanted in him? Both Perry and Netty-P have periodically scanned him. They’ve detected nothing.”

“Well, what are we going to do with him?” Torina asked.

“You took him into custody, but are you going to actually charge him with anything?” Zeno added.

I shrugged. “Right now, he’s guilty of—uh, what did Perry say? Right, luring a Peacemaker under false pretenses with malicious intent. I’ve told him that’s what I’m charging him with, but it’s mainly so I can keep holding him for now. He was pretty okay with it.”

We spent another three days examining alien components, hauling the parts we needed to the farm, then finagling them into place on the Fafnir. They actually made her look somewhat boxier and ungainly, but Icky assured me that looks were deceptive.

“She’s gonna fly like shit through a moose,” she announced proudly, wiping two of her hands on a rag.

“I think you mean goose,” I replied.

“Moose, goose, what’s the difference?”

“Try standing under one when it poops, then ask me that same question. Anyway, how much longer until she’s ready to fly like shit through any creature’s digestive tract?”

“This time tomorrow, we should be good to go.”

“Okay. There’s one more little job I’d like you to do, Icky,” I said, then explained to her what I had in mind.

* * *

Clinton Barnes frowned at me from behind his ubiquitous sunglasses. “Van, I’ve got a partially disassembled alien spacecraft in my barn. What am I supposed to do with it, exactly?”

“Well, I’d say sell it for scrap, but… don’t do that.”

“Okay, that’s what I won’t do. Now, for the what will I do part—”

We hauled the alien craft’s husk back, once again pressing our tractor into service with Icky at the wheel. There was so little left after our efforts, I made the call for storing it in the barn, upended against a side wall. The barn’s stealth system, which Gramps had installed so that he didn’t have to keep the Fafnir’s operating all the time, would be able to conceal it until we had time to come back and reach a final decision on where the asset would go.

As we mounted the Fafnir to depart Earth, Icky waited for Netty-P to enter the cockpit, then gleefully swept a tarp off a workstation.

Her scanners regarded it. “What’s this—wait. Third Officer?”

I tapped the nameplate on the workstation. “That’s you, my dear. It only seems fitting that when it comes to the operation of the Fafnir, you and your beloved namesake, the original Netty, should be top of the heap—well, except for Torina and me, because that’s how this stuff works.”

“I… don’t know what to say. Van, I’m not aware of an AI being given an actual, standing command position aboard a Guild ship.”

“Or any ship, for that matter,” Perry put in.

“You’re an officer, and you’ll be treated as such,” I said.

“I ain’t saluting her. She’s even sassier now that she can—see? See, Van? She gave me the finger again!” Icky said. “Nice, and after I made you a sweet chair.”

I sighed and looked at Torina. “Are we sure we even want kids?”

She laughed. “Think of this as practice.”

I smiled as Netty-P settled into her workstation. She had a seat, which was really more of a cradle for her vulpine form. We’d made room for her by moving Icky permanently back into the engineering bay, where she was right on top of the power plant, drive, and other systems she was responsible for.

As Netty-P and the others talked, I didn’t say something else that this little exercise had demonstrated. We obviously couldn’t install a workstation in the Fafnir’s cockpit without Netty knowing about it, so I’d told her to keep Netty-P in the dark, while Zeno and Icky kept her busy helping with the grav-plating on the ship’s exterior. And she had, which meant I now knew I could say things to one of them without the other being aware of them. I wasn’t sure how, or even if I’d never need to do so, but I knew I could.

The other thing that struck me was Denocus. He was fascinated with Netty-P. “You mean you created a synthetic body for your ship’s AI?”

I nodded. “We did.”

“So does she… I don’t know, count as a person? Because I’ve kind of wondered the same thing myself. Am I still actually a person?”

“As far as I’m concerned, both of you are. You have all the rights and responsibilities that you’ve always had. The only thing different for you is your, uh, container, if you will. Netty-P, on the other hand, is a sentient being who has earned them by being sentient and self-aware.”

“Does your Guild accept that? Does anyone else?”

“Not sure, but they will if I have anything to say about it. Guess we’ll find out, though.”

“Van, we’re ready to lift,” Torina called from the cockpit.

“Be right there.” I turned back to Denocus. “By rights, I should be putting you in a holding cell for the trip to Anvil Dark. I’m not going to, though. You’ve got more or less free run of the ship.”

“Excluding any critical systems, of course. And your AIs will be watching me like a—” He glanced at Perry.

“Don’t say it!” Perry said.

“—like a hawk.”

Perry sighed.

“Yeah, he said it.”

* * *

The grav-plating, once energized, dramatically improved the Fafnir’s performance. Netty could polarize the individual plates and vary the strength of their attraction to or repulsion from the local gravitational field, meaning the ship was now capable of some stunning maneuvers. She could jink laterally, abruptly accelerate or decelerate slightly, even turn like an airplane banking, and do it without expending huge quantities of fuel.

It wasn’t all good news, though. The grav-plating’s effectiveness diminished the further up she climbed a gravity well, while dropping to nearly zero in anything resembling deep space. The plates also consumed prodigious amounts of power when they were operating, so we would have to make some choices between using them, or using the more power-hungry weapons like the plasma cannon or lasers.

But that aside, I had to admit, the Fafnir was a true joy to fly. In a gravity well, with the plating operating, she handled less like the near class 12 ship she was and more like the Frankie. Which meant we were a step closer to our ultimate confrontation with Helem Gauss. A part of me still hoped that the machinery of justice, creaky and Rube Goldberg-esque as it was, would eventually grind out something resembling justice and that Gauss would go away for a long, long time—hopefully forever. But I knew that wasn’t likely. There were too many gaps and holes in the mechanism where you could inject money and gum up the works.

Perry watched me at the controls, then hopped closer. “You’re holding the stick like Torina.”

“Easy, bird. But… huh. I guess I am.”

“Is it that much better?” he asked.

I waved a hand broadly. “You can’t imagine. Serious differences, and… there’s a lightness to her. It’s nothing I can really quantify, but damn if it doesn’t make me think we can crack open an armored 15.”

Perry twitched his shoulders. “Let’s, um… hold off on that, if possible?”

I laughed. “I have no interest in being tested by a 15.”

“Not yet, anyway,” Netty chimed. “Van, want me to call the Iowa? You had it scheduled.”

“Sure. Comms open, please.”

The screen went live, and there were somewhere between a dozen and four hundred Conoku boiling around the camera in a frenzy of excitement. Their chittering sounded like a murmur of starlings, if all the birds were shrieking from a meter away.

“Um. Hi, friends,” I offered.

It took several minutes of fragmentary speech to grasp what the crew was doing. They were, I learned, making things, tweaking things, tweaking things they’d made, and arguing about who was supposed to make the tweaks on things that had not been made yet, which seemed to be an exceptionally egregious event among them.

I’d have thought that a shipload of sentient, adolescent crustaceans would have gotten profoundly bored with just hanging out in the Kuiper Belt aboard the big battlecruiser. Idle hands—or claws—and all that. If they’d been human teenagers, there probably would have been bloodshed by now. But the Conoku seemed incapable of boredom and were never idle long enough to get themselves into trouble.

One of the Conoku was finishing their report while fending off a sibling with a series of slaps from a segmented arm. “—and, like, get back, Zuri, you’re being a dead circuit—oh, sorry, Captain Van, anyway everything is optimal, and the ship is battle-ready.”

When it came to combat—and ship readiness—the Conoku did not play.

I gave the most serious tilt of my head I could while holding back a laugh. “Thank you. This completes our exchange of data. Van out.”

The comm cut, and I burst out laughing. Even Funboy hissed in his wheezing laugh that was reserved for rare moments of levity.

“I swear they’ll rip apart a system, put it back together better than it was, then rip it apart again to see if they can make it even better,” Zeno said.

Torina still stared at the screen in amazement. “And they’ll do it over and over. Honestly, they’re the perfect crew for a spaceship.”

“Let’s keep that our own little secret. Otherwise, everyone’s going to want one,” I said.

Funboy sniffed, and I turned to face him. “What is it?”

He looked askance at the screen, which was now dark. “Did you see the debris? Everywhere. Little flecks of their—I can’t even say it—”

“Chitin?” Perry offered.

Funboy gave a shiver. “Yes. Van, I must humbly request, for the third time, that you install central vacuum systems on the Iowa, in addition to the air filters.”

“I would, if it were 1977. Request denied, spoilsport.”

Funboy shook his head. “We’re all going to die, and the cause will be alien crab dandruff.”

* * *

When we arrived at Anvil Dark, I set out to deal with the matter of Denocus first. He’d been a perfect passenger during the trip here, staying out of the way, but quick to lend a hand when he could. He also proved to be an amazing cook, making a tastier and more elaborate meal for us than I thought the Fafnir’s galley could even manage.

I spooned another mouthful of our main course—a spicy stew—into my mouth and savored the flavors sparkling over my tongue. “Mmm-mm. Okay, much as I love all you guys and respect your various abilities, none of you can cook like this.”

“What’s to cook? You boil the water, then you throw the noodles in,” Icky said. I noticed, though, that she was gobbling down a second bowl of Denocus’s stew, and it had no noodles at all.

“You know, Icky, I might agree with you… if we were a bunch of college students living in a dorm. I mean, I ate my own share of ramen back in school, but that was more of a budget thing, not a culinary choice. I’m a grown-up now, so I demand more than noodles in my diet.” I turned to Torina. “You agree with me, right?”

“Can’t talk. Eating,” she muttered, spooning up more of the stew.

Thus, we arrived at Anvil Dark with full stomachs and an unspoken vibe among the crew that maybe we should try and keep Denocus on. The Fafnir could use a cook, or more broadly a quartermaster, someone to stay on top of keeping the ship provisioned. I could feel it from the others—hell, I felt a bit of it myself. But I wasn’t going to let one fantastic meal simply wash away the implacable fact that we didn’t know anything about Denocus beyond what he’d told us. When we’d brought Rolis aboard, we’d rescued him in circumstances that made it extremely unlikely to have been a setup. Moreover, he’d just been a chip, and had been installed in Waldo, our maintenance bot, to give him a physical body.

Denocus, on the other hand, came preassembled and an admitted part of a criminal plot to trick us into an ambush. He said that he’d had a change of heart, having never been a willing participant in the first place, but was that true? Or was that just his way of dealing with the fact we managed to get the drop on him? Perry and Netty had been watching him closely the entire time he’d been aboard the Fafnir, and he’d been nothing but polite and cooperative and entirely uninterested in the ship or any of her systems.

I told myself it wasn’t just because I had some sort of bias toward synthetics, who’d generally been nothing but trouble for us, and that I had good reasons to be wary of him.

And I believed it.

Which is why, when we were told to take Denocus not to the booking shop to be handed over to Guild custody but to a meeting with Gabriella Santorini, I was so taken aback. Santorini was a senior Peacemaker with a focus on special ops. And while she might not have an entire foot planted in the shadowy world of the Galactic Knights Uniformed, or GKU, she certainly had a few toes planted in the Guild’s off-the-books, parallel offshoot. So had we been wrong about Denocus but also wrong about how we’d been wrong? Instead of a criminal, was he secretly a Guild agent?

I sighed. When I started as a Peacemaker, I considered myself a good guy, chasing after the bad guys. That hadn’t lasted long, though, before I had to add another, far larger category: the good-ish guys who might sometimes also be bad-ish guys, and vice-versa.

So we took Denocus to his meeting with Gabriella, handed him over to her, then returned to the Fafnir. It was a longer trip than usual because we’d been brought into Anvil Dark via a more indirect approach and docked at an enclosed bay near Kragdolous’s secret laboratory. It put us in an out-of-the-way part of the sprawling construct that was Anvil Dark, which I got was necessary for security, but it was a pain in the ass as far as getting around was concerned.

“The gravity plating is an obvious addition to your ship, and one that’s likely to attract attention—particularly from those who are familiar with the Fafnir. I needn’t tell you that that includes more than a few bad operators,” Kragdolous said as he and several of his techs began poring over the modifications we’d made to our ship.

“Buff out any scratches you see, lads,” I said, leaning on the Fafnir like she was a p-51 Mustang.

“We don’t do that,” one of the techs said, clearly missing the point.

“Solid joke there, boss. A lot of your best material simply isn’t appreciated,” Perry remarked.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out folded money. “Take twenty bonds for yourself, bird. Get something nice.”

Perry lifted his shoulders and laughed, earning an eye roll from Torina. “He knows how things work. An urbane fellow with—”

“I’m not giving you bonds, bird.”

Perry looked hurt. “I take back my compliments.”

“Figures.”

Torina took my arm. “Come on, Sinatra. You can be a badass at the bar. And let these people do their thing. They’re all talking about the new armor. Kragdolous is right. Tough to miss it.”

“Might have to supervise this inspection. The bar can wait,” I said.

Kragdolous had a point. The Fafnir looked significantly different with the plating installed. No doubt there was imagery and emissions signature data for our ship floating around the criminal underworld, and it wouldn’t take a genius to recognize that the ship had undergone some sudden and radical change.

I got the crew stuck into inspecting the new plating, ensuring that the mounts Icky and the others had rigged for it—basically, extensions she’d fabricated for the mounting points for the REAB modules—were holding up. In the midst of that, Santorini called.

“Van, I need to see you,” she said over the comm. No preamble, no identification, just that single, brusque statement. I smiled. That was Gabriella, alright.

I’d been in sleeves rolled up, digging into some hard manual labor mode, so I took a moment to restore my uniform to regular work-informal standard, then brought Torina and Perry with me to meet with Gabriella. We found her in a room adjoining the one where we’d transferred Denocus to her custody.

After a long moment, she began speaking.

“You have a ready-made asset here, if you’ll use it.”

“Denocus?”

“No, Van, I’m talking about your maintenance bot,” Gabriella replied, her voice flat. “Of course I mean Denocus.”

I smiled at her. “Is it just me, or have you become even more snappy and sarcastic since you went blonde?”

“It’s the facial tat. They inject sassiness straight into your personality,” Torina said, smirking.

“Your relationship is making you bloom in new and adorable ways,” Santorini said.

I was stunned. “Really?”

“No. It’s annoying, and I’m alone, and you’re not. So please keep your… emotions and joy—yech—to yourselves. Anyway, we’re talking about Denocus here.”

My smile fled. “An asset? Where? How? I mean, I know synths aren’t somehow inherently untrustworthy, that’s too sweeping a generalization, but the guy was part of a plot to ambush us.”

“And you’ve only been talking to him for, what, the past hour at most? The term rush to judgment comes to mind,” Perry stated.

“Unless you’re about to reveal to us that he’s actually a Guild agent, which at this point wouldn’t really surprise me,” I said.

Gabriella turned around her data slate so we could see the display. “He’s not one of ours. And we’re reasonably certain he’s not one of theirs. He’s just another poor bastard who got caught up in all this.” She nodded toward the slate. “What he was, though, before he was taken and chipped was an investigator.”

I narrowed my eyes at the display. “An investigator.”

“That’s right. Sort of a cross between a private detective and an investigative reporter. We’ve confirmed it with his homeworld authorities, along with the fact he abruptly went missing weeks ago. He was closing in on a corruption scandal, something involving military procurement, when he vanished.”

“And those local authorities just assumed he’d been made to conveniently disappear, probably into a body of water while trying on a pair of concrete sneakers,” I said.

Perry looked at me. “What, are we suddenly in a Raymond Chandler book? You gonna start calling Torina and Santorini dames, and talk about how their gams go all the way up?”

“You just try that, Van,” Gabriella said, smiling with poisonous sweetness. Torina just looked puzzled.

“What’s a gam? And all the way up to where?”

“Bird, you’ve seen too many old movies,” I said to Perry, then turned back to Santorini. “Anyway, we were talking about Denocus—”

“Yes. We were. And you’re right. The local authorities just assumed he’d been offed and pretty much closed the case.”

“Wow. Not exactly an inspiring charge toward justice, huh?” Perry said.

“Not really. But here we are. Denocus has a penchant for digging into places he’s not wanted, thinking on his feet, and doing all of the things an undercover asset does. Like I said, he’s got a high upside, if you ask me.”

“And he’s already taken the job, it seems,” Torina said, reading the slate. “Local Opinion Expert. Let me guess—working for the former BeneStar Enhancement Empire.”

“She’s smart, Van. Smarter than you. Marry her,” Gabriella said.

“I am, because I’m smarter than I look,” I replied, then was struck by how that sounded. “Not that I don’t think I look smart, of course—”

Gabriella and Torina both just grinned.

“So, what, the Enhancement Empire just had this job opening and was holding it for you?” Perry asked.

Gabriella shook her head. “No. It’s more complicated than that. Let’s just say we already have someone on the inside, but only in a position where they can help us get other people inside.”

She turned back to me. “Anyway, I’ll drop Denocus off at his new position. Give us some time for him to get settled in, work our data tap into play, and gain some trust. I’ll arrange with our agent already inside for him to find some mid-level corruption that’s hurting profits. It’ll boost his position and hopefully gain him some access to the next circle. We’ll call when we have something solid.”

I acknowledged that, and we left, intent on heading back to the Fafnir. We’d barely gone more than a few steps, though, before Gerhardt came on the comm.

“Tudor, my office. I have something I need to discuss with you,” he said. Again, no preamble, no ID, just a launch straight into the middle of a conversation. I sighed.

“I feel like I’ve just been called to the principal's office,” I said, as we changed course toward the Keel.

“Ooh, maybe you’ll get detention,” Perry said. “You, and a jock, and a nerd, and an outsider—”

“Too many old movies, bird, I’m telling you. Too many old movies.”

10

Rather than giving me shit for—something, I wasn’t sure what, but this was Gerhardt we were talking about—he had a job for me that couldn’t wait and invoked my status as his Justiciar to assign it to me. As his Justiciar, I was answerable for matters related to that position only to him and not to the other Masters or the Guild’s normal chain of command. It was a blessing that way because it gave me a lot of independence, but it conversely made me beholden to Gerhardt himself.

Gerhardt launched into describing the task once more without any lead-in. We were, as he put it, heading into a nest of vipers.

“By which I mean Sorcerers. We’ve shattered them as an organization, but there are still remnants of them out there, on the move between systems. We can’t afford to let any of them get settled in anywhere, or it will just become a nucleus for new Sorcerer activity.”

“Are you sure you managed to clear them out of that nebula they were using for their base?” I asked him. The Cross of Novae, a distant and particularly opaque nebula, had been cultivated by the Sorcerers as a secure location from which they could launch their nefarious schemes into known space. We’d traversed it once in the Fafnir, trying to bait them into responding and pulling them out where we could see them. We’d been successful, at least to a point, but it was unfounded optimism to think we’d cleaned them all out.

Gerhardt shrugged. “Reasonably sure. Our Unity allies have taken it upon themselves to ensure the Cross is Sorcerer-free, and I’m happy to let them.”

I nodded at that. “Yeah, best of luck to them. Me, I think there’s something to be said for being able to, you know, see the bad guys as they approach you. If it’s not the Cross, where is it?”

“You’ll be filled in by your contact for this op.”

“Who is?”

“GKU, and a… family friend.”

I gave Gerhardt a suspicious look. “Not my mother.”

“I said family friend, not family. And he’s not actually a friend, either.”

“Why do I think I’m going to hate this?” Perry muttered.

I glanced at Perry. “Kinda with the bird here. Who is it that you’re being so evasive about?”

“Your contact is a fourth-month Peacemaker Initiate named Jamberac Hixon. He’s the great grandspawn of Jacomir, Agent B’s vicious ex—you know, the one who’s a distant and unpleasant memory,” Gerhardt replied.

Torina broke the silence that hung off the end of Gerhardt’s words. “Seriously? The spawn of a particularly shitty piece of shit criminal is… a Peacemaker, a member of the GKU, and our contact?”

“The descendants of criminals aren’t necessarily criminals themselves, Ms. Milon. I’m sure that if we go back far enough in any of our family histories, we’ll find more than a few bad actors and dark deeds.”

I grinned. “I apparently had a great granduncle who ran whiskey from Nova Scotia down to Nantucket during Prohibition when the United States outlawed booze. If I can believe the family legends, he was responsible for killing a couple of competing bootleggers and at least one federal agent before his boat got taken out during a running battle with a Coast Guard cutter. The story goes that he stood on his sinking, burning boat firing a six-shooter at the feds until he disappeared under the waves.”

“That’s… rather remarkable,” Gerhardt said.

“It is, and it’s apparently complete bullshit. Gramps told me that he did kill a couple of guys, then he caught syphilis in Halifax and that’s what did him in.”

“That’s considerably less cool a story,” Perry noted. “And for the love of the stars, don’t tell Funboy. He’ll demand blood tests every thirty minutes. From me, even, and I don’t have blood.”

“He’s quite insufferable that way. And for a disease that isn’t fatal,” I said.

“It is if you give it to me,” Torina said, smiling sweetly.

“Noted, dear.”

Torina got serious and addressed Gerhardt. “Given our history with Jacomir and his idiot offspring, I just want it known that if this Jamberac shows even a whisper of behaving anything like his great grand asshole Jacomir, we’re putting some mass-driver rounds through his drive, is that understood?”

Gerhardt awarded us his thin, hard smile. “That’s quite the grudge you’re wearing, Ms. Milon. But I think that, in this case, you won’t find it necessary to do any shooting. Out of a multitude of offspring, Jamberac seems to have been that odd one out, the—what’s the Earthly term? The unpleasant duckling?”

“Ugly duckling,” I corrected him. “How so?”

“He’s a person of honest integrity who remains firmly on our side of the law.”

“Alright. But I’m with Torina in warning him anyway. I might have had a criminal or two among my ancestors, but this guy is descended from nothing but criminals. If he steps wrong, he’d better not do it in front of our guns.”

“You’d shoot your own?” Gerhardt asked.

“He’s not mine… and he’s got a lot to prove before he is.”

* * *

We rendezvoused with Jamberac at Wolf 424, the go-to star system for clandestine meetings in known space since the only residents were asteroid miners, virtually all of them transient. With no permanent colonies or inhabited planets, it was easy to get up to all sorts of shenanigans in the distant reaches of Wolf 424 without anyone being around to notice it.

We met Jamberac’s ship in the system’s Oort Cloud. It was an up-armored Dragon pushing class 9, which was an awful lot of ship for an Initiate. It was also named the Lexington, which seemed even more out of place until Jamberac explained that the ship had been bequeathed to him, as-is, by a recently retired Peacemaker named Teegan. There was a story there, how a senior Peacemaker ended up leaving his ship to a young Initiate with whom he had no obvious connection, but the Guild registry confirmed it all, so I just decided to leave it for now.

We had more pressing matters to deal with.

Whatever Jamberac’s ancestry might be, it mixed what he derived from Jacomir’s vile lineage with at least two other races. It actually meant that he was less obviously Jacomir’s descendent than others of his spawn we’d had the misfortune of dealing with. In fact, he came across as a rather earnest young Peacemaker, out to prove himself not just against the standards of the Guild, but against his own genetic past.

He actually kind of… impressed me.

“You’ve been doing this for four months only,” I stated.

He nodded a thin, almost skull-like face that was all straight lines and flat planes. “That’s right.” His voice was something of a slow, deliberate drawl, reminiscent of the classic Virginia gentleman.

“Okay, when we go in after these Sorcerers, then, we’ll do the fighting and boarding,” I said. “You’ll hang back to cover us and to retrieve anyone who tries to escape via pod, or workboat, or anything like that—or who gets ejected into space.”

He gave an even more affirmative nod. “Understood.”

Torina leaned forward. “Okay, I’ve got to ask—how did you happen to come into possession of info about some Sorcerers’ location?”

I nodded. “That does seem to be the sort of thing we’d get from Guild intel, not from a… with all due respect, a noob Peacemaker.”

Jamberac frowned. “Noob?”

“It’s short for newbie, which means… well, someone new at doing something.”

“Ah. Terrestrial vernacular. That’s something else I can see I’m going to have to study.”

I resisted a smile. It goes to show, huh? I’d just naturally assumed that any descendent of Jacomir’s would be a repulsive, thuggish blowhard, and not a very smart one at that. I certainly hadn’t expected an intense, almost nerdy young man who seemed supremely aware of how he might be perceived and was obviously trying to rise above it.

But he also hadn’t answered the question.

“So… you came by this info how, again?” I persisted.

“Oh. Right. Well, just like everyone else assumes I’m still in the family business, so do some of my family’s acquaintances. I’m happy to mine them for information as long as they’re willing to provide it.”

“They don’t know you’re a Peacemaker?”

Jamberac shook his head. “Not yet. I suspect that will soon change, though, and I’ll be cut out of the circle of knowledge.”

“You’ll be lucky if that’s the only thing that’s cut out. Aren’t you worried about reprisals?” Torina asked.

He returned a slight shrug. “I was born with a choice: to follow in the sleazy, criminal footsteps like the rest of my family, or not. I admit it, I tried the first path, but not for long. I’m just not… not suited for it. I guess I developed a conscience somehow, which in my family would be considered a mutation.”

This time, I couldn’t resist a smile.

“Anyway, going down the second path, the one that leads to justice and things like that—that was never going to fly in my family, so I’d be open for reprisals anyway. Therefore, I figured I might as well go all in and become a Peacemaker. Besides, this way, I’ve got a reason to carry a gun—and, hopefully, have the Guild watching my back, at least someday, anyway.” He gave a resigned shrug. “But I’ve got a long way to go to get there. More than most, I’m sure.”

“So, Varley, how did you end up being Jamberac’s AI?” Perry asked.

The AI installed aboard Jamberac’s ship, Varley, was a fussy, fastidious popinjay. If he’d been human, he’d have worn a bowler hat and a carnation in his lapel, and dusted off chairs before sitting in them.

“I do not presume to understand the vagaries of the Guild’s AI assignments,” Varley replied. His tone reminded me of Niles Crane from that old sitcom, Frasier.

“This wasn’t your choice?” Torina asked.

“Certainly not. My professional reputation has been sullied beyond reasonably easy repair since taking this assignment.”

“So how’d you screw up, Varley?” Perry asked.

“I did not screw up. Rather, I was cast upon the winds of bureaucracy when my last assignment ended, whereupon they blew me inexorably to this place and time. And here I rest, flung upon the rocky shore of uncaring officialdom.”

I looked at Torina and Perry and mouthed a single word: wow.

Jamberac spoke up. “I’d like to note that I am, in fact, present for this conversation, you know.”

I nodded. “You are. And just to be clear, while I’m prepared to give you a chance, you are on probation as far my crew and I are concerned. I’m sorry, Jamberac, but I don’t entirely trust you—at least, not yet.”

“I’m used to hearing that by now. I don’t like it, of course, but I understand it, Peacemaker Tudor.”

“Alrighty, then. On to the plan. You’re familiar with the term bait?”

* * *

The Sorcerers were aboard a single ship, a class 11 fast-freighter that had been hastily up-armored and up-gunned, and looked it. Several weapons batteries had been added to her, crudely fastened to her exterior with coarse welds and alloy straps. Chunky REAB boxes were jammed between them, some of them misaligned. It was clear that the Sorcerers had been forced to improvise, since almost all of their infrastructure of evil had been taken out by Gerhardt and Unity during the anti-Sorcerer campaign. Still, it meant she wasn’t a pushover by any means.

We settled on a simple plan. Jamberac would precede us, hammering away with active scanners, broadcasting his Peacemaker credentials and, most importantly, burning the Lexington’s drive at full power. We drafted along behind him, taking advantage of the celestial terrain to employ our new grav-plating. The Sorcerers were waiting for a rendezvous about midway between two small planetoids orbiting a brown dwarf, itself a companion to a red dwarf that wasn’t all that much larger.

The big planet, considerably larger than Jupiter and mottled in purples like fresh bruises, provided enough gravitation that we could use the grav-plating to fall toward it in Jamberac’s wake. By keeping him directly between us and the Sorcerers, we wanted to blind them to our presence for as long as possible. And so far, it was working.

“Van, we’ll need to run the drive at low power for about ten seconds out of every two minutes to maintain our separation from Jamberac,” Netty said.

“The grav-plating is performing extremely well,” Netty-P added. “All of it is fully energized and stable, gravity polarization parameters are within the expected range, and hull stresses are well within tolerance limits.”

“You’re welcome,” Icky called from aft.

“That damned Wu’tzur hearing,” Zeno muttered. “It makes keeping secrets around her a pain—”

“Secrets? What secrets?” Icky shouted.

Perry muttered something I didn’t catch.

“I heard that, bird!”

“Van, Jamberac has been illuminated by the Sorcerers’ fire control scanners—and they’re firing,” Netty said.

We were blind to it all, of course, seeing only the enormous flare of the Lexington’s drive dead ahead, but Netty was receiving data repeated from Jamberac’s ship by Varley. Six new contacts, missiles, were streaking toward him.

“Jamberac, can you handle those missiles?”

“Varley says that one is likely to detonate close enough to do damage, so… yes.”

I glanced at Torina, and she returned an impressed nod. As much as she—actually, we—wanted to distrust and despise Jamberac, his behavior was exemplary for a Peacemaker. He was flying into the teeth of a serious missile barrage and acknowledging the fact that he was likely to take damage.

Sometimes, the apple falls from the tree and rolls far, far away.

“Two minutes, Van, until optimum range to reveal ourselves,” Netty said. The time was a combination of our ability to deliver a lethal first volley, combined with the time it would take Jamberac to flip and burn to shed velocity, so he didn’t grossly overrun the subsequent battle.

“Correction—two-point-two-five minutes,” Netty-P put in.

I glanced at her. “Aren’t you and Netty supposed to be, you know, in agreement on items like that?”

“She didn’t factor in the increased mass of the gravity plating, which will increase the Fafnir’s inertia,” Netty-P replied.

“I believe that the gravitational effect of the plating as it’s currently configured will offset that increase in inertia,” Netty countered.

“Okay, we’re talking a difference of fifteen seconds, right? Let’s just let it go and stick with the soonest possible time to engagement, regardless of what it is,” I cut in, truncating this bizarre argument between two versions of the same being.

Bizarre—and unsettling. Why were these two AIs in disagreement? Was that a good sign, that they were capable of independent thought? Or a bad one, if they ended up on opposite sides of a more consequential argument than fifteen seconds difference in when we could engage our target?

Ahead of us, Jamberac began engaging the incoming missiles. And, just past the two minute mark, Netty declared us at optimum range based on the data being fed to us by Varley from the Lexington. Netty-P remained silent on the matter. I hit the starboard thrusters and eased the Fafnir out from behind Jamberac’s fusion plume. At the same time, his drive cut, the Lexington flipped end over end, and the drive relit at full power. And at the same time, Netty-P reversed the polarity of the Fafnir’s grav-plating, making the brown dwarf’s formidable gravity a repulsive rather than an attractive force. We didn’t slow as rapidly as Jamberac did, but we still began sloughing off velocity—

A loud bang shuddered through the Fafnir.

“Netty, what was that?” I asked as Torina and Zeno lined up their shots on the Sorcerers, giving priority to taking out their weapons.

“One of the grav-plates let go. Its mount appears to have failed under the differential stress.”

I glanced back. Funboy and Icky were aft, getting ready to board the Sorcerers’ ship. The Fafnir was still decelerating, her velocity envelope still neatly encompassing our quarry on the tactical overlay.

“Okay, I don’t want to lose that plate. Netty-P, tag its location so we can retrieve it after the battle.”

“Will do.”

I unstrapped just as Torina opened fire. The Sorcerers were hastily trying to switch targets, their lasers reaching for us but failing to find us before she and Zeno had smashed the batteries to spinning wreckage.

“Okay, Torina, your ship,” I said, standing and starting aft to join the boarding party. I took a last glance back at the overlay, just as a flash pulsed through the cockpit. A missile had detonated near Jamberac, showering the Lexington with shrapnel.

“Jamberac, you okay—?”

“Minor damage only. We’re fine.”

“Good. Moving on,” I said and hurried aft to check that The Drop and the Moonsword were both ready to use.

* * *

As operations went, this one was pretty much by the numbers. Torina and Zeno were able to amputate the Sorcerers’ weapons with methodical precision, then take out their main power by consulting their ship’s schematics—it was fundamentally an off-the-shelf, commercial design—and carefully targeting their power plant, forcing it to scram. The Sorcerers did try to eject some chips, presumably stolen identities that they’d intended to destroy, preventing us from finding any hard evidence aboard their ship. But Jamberac, against the possibility that they somehow got their weapons back online, courageously interposed the Lexington between the Sorcerers and the ejected chips.

In the meantime, Icky, Funboy, Perry, Netty-P, and I crossed to our stricken quarry in the Frankie. I led the way aboard, Icky and Funboy hard on my heels. Netty-P, brandishing a boarding shotgun in her arms, went aft with Perry to secure engineering and prevent any attempts to scuttle the ship.

Halfway to the bridge, we encountered resistance—three Sorcerers apparently determined to make a last stand. On impulse, I charged them, banging away with The Drop, Icky right behind me, and Funboy right behind her trying to get clear shots around her bulk.

“Clear!” I bellowed, then cut loose again with The Drop.

Bambambam I sent three rounds downrange—really only about ten meters now—and closed as a hail of fire from the Sorcerers came back at us with astonishing speed.

One round smacked into my chest hard enough to wind me, but that was the toughest part of the b-suit, its inherent ballistic resistance reinforced by thin, composite plates. I ran on five more long steps, laying into the Sorcerers with the Moonsword when I closed.

A Sorcerer recoiled when I drew the blade, turning away in a fatal move that could not be ignored. With a savage overhand slash, I hacked deep into the first enemy’s leg, wheeled, repeated the move on another Sorcerer, and finished by lancing forward to impale the third.

I pulled the Moonsword back, and the last Sorcerer crumpled to the deck, burbling untranslated words of agony. Less than thirty seconds had elapsed since my first round from The Drop.

We were getting good at this.

I turned to Icky, smiling. “Not bad, eh?”

“Vaaan, you didn’t leave any for me!”

“Uh… sorry?”

“Selfish. Don’t you know I’m engaged to be married?”

“So am I.”

Icky stuck out her tongue at me. Funboy holstered his weapon and stepped forward, then opened the first aid kit strapped to his harness. Before he extracted anything from it, though, he looked up at me.

“Van, can I suggest that, for the moment, we still consider them to be resisting arrest?”

I stared back at Funboy. Technically, the Sorcerers were all wounded, but none so badly that they couldn’t theoretically continue to resist, and none had surrendered. If they’d been smugglers or similar, I’d have refused. But I also knew that Funboy wouldn’t have asked in such a case. These being Sorcerers, if we were going to get anything useful out of them, we had to provide them with a different context to our interrogation.

“Go ahead,” I said.

One of the Sorcerers started to heave himself toward his weapon, a slug carbine, but Icky stomped a massive foot down on his arm. He glared up at her, then at me. “If you’re not taking us into custody, then we’ll just keep fighting, you bastard.”

“Oh, I don’t think you will.”

“Why?”

“You don’t want to know,” Icky said, glowering down at him.

“I think they do, actually,” Funboy said, then leaned in, whispered something to the Sorcerer, then neatly ripped a small component out of his neck in a shower of blood. The Sorcerer yelped in pain. Funboy held the device aloft.

“This is a… self-destruct device, for lack of a better word. Essie and I have encountered them on Sorcerers before. They allow them to essentially kill themselves at will. It means that this one, at least, will remain alive for questioning.”

I nodded my appreciation at Funboy and his ulterior motive.

“What about the other two?” Icky asked.

Funboy, still eyeing the small device, shrugged. “We have no particular need for them. And now that they know we’re aware of this device, they’ll no doubt trigger them before we can remove them.” He blinked, then looked up at me. “This contains a great deal of platinum. Do you mind if I sell it? Once I’ve cleaned it of biological contaminants and pathogens, of course.”

“I—uh, yeah, sure.” I shrugged. “For that matter, Funboy, help yourself to any more souvenirs you want.”

He looked down at the Sorcerers and smiled at them—an ordeal that made all three of them wince. For a Sorcerer, that was pretty much recoiling in abject horror.

I’d seen Funboy smile. Couldn’t say I blamed them.

11

“Have to admit, Jamberac knows how to turn a phrase,” I said, leaning back in my seat. I’d just read his report about the action against the Sorcerers, which had been written in a tight, sparse style that was still somehow… gripping. And to call an after-action report gripping was saying something.

From the Sorcerers—neither of the other two having elected to use their self-destruct ability—we learned that they had a contact, someone with whom they’d been working closely, that they’d met aboard The Torus. They’d specifically named Skrilla’s bar, The One-Eyed Yak.

“You know, for all the fact that space is really, really big, we seem to keep running into the same few places over and over again,” I noted, filling out my own report for transmission back to Gerhardt.

“Places like the Yak are like black holes for criminals. They can’t resist their pull,” Perry replied.

We placed a salvage beacon on the Sorcerers’ now-derelict ship and registered our prize with the Guild, noting that we’d split it fifty-fifty with Jamberac. We then took some time to decide how to proceed.

“You know, we’re halfway to The Torus relative to Anvil Dark now. I vote we just go there, talk to Skrilla, and firm up this Yak connection,” I suggested.

Torina crossed her arms. “That means dragging three Sorcerers along with us. Someone’s going to have to keep an eye on them.”

“I’ll do that,” Netty-P said. “Between Netty and me, nothing’s going to happen aboard this ship without us knowing about it.”

“Unless we tell you guys not to observe something,” Torina said.

“Of course. That’s standard Guild protocol.”

I glanced at Torina. She shot a sidelong look but otherwise kept her attention on the discussion.

“Jamberac, what about you? How badly did your ship get damaged by that missile?” I asked him over the comm.

“As I said, not badly. A few punctures in the hull, which I’ve patched to restore atmospheric integrity. The auxiliary scanner array took some damage, and so did the aft docking port.”

“Okay, then. I’m not hearing any great objections, so let’s head to The Torus and visit our old friend Skrilla, the hippie out of time and space.”

Jamberac raised a brow. “What’s a hippie?”

I leaned back, thinking. “That’s a bit complicated. Have you ever heard of a band called The Grateful Dead?”

* * *

We arrived at The Torus without incident and went straight to The One-Eyed Yak. Skrilla saw us, beamed a smile, and waved us over. True to his brand, he was wearing a faded Deadhead shirt and a beaded headband.

“Yo, Van, if it ain’t my favorite fuzz,” he said, raising his voice over the hubbub of his bar. I headed his way, Torina, Icky, and Zeno in tow. Perry kept watch outside, while Funboy and Netty-P had remained aboard the Fafnir. Jamberac had likewise stayed aboard his ship, acting as our reserve.

Partway to the bar, a beefy alien stood, deliberately blocking my way. I sighed. “Really?”

“Got a problem?” it rumbled at me, then stopped as Icky strode forward.

“Please, oh please tell me this asshole’s causing trouble, Van.”

“I don’t know if he’s causing trouble. Are you causing trouble, sir?”

The alien looked from me to Icky, then took in Torina and Zeno and immediately held up many-fingered hands. “Hey, look, no, I don’t want any—”

“Broken bones?” Icky hissed.

The alien returned to his seat.

We pushed on to the bar. Skrilla leaned on it as we approached.

“Fuzz? You called me the fuzz? What is this, 1971?”

“71? Nah, hell, if I had my choice, man, it’d be ’69.”

Torina giggled and I shot her a glance. “Grow up, you.” I turned back to Skrilla. “Why ’69?”

“The Moon landing, man! Neil freakin’ Armstrong and one small step for a man, man! And by the way, it was a man, one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind, it’s the only way it makes sense, man, but the damned radio fuzzed out that a.” He shook his head at the injustice of the cosmic background radio interference. “Anyway, that was the day that mankind finally started to open its eyes, expand its consciousness. It’s like Apollo was our cosmic bong rip and we were all baked on our glorious achievement.”

“You know, Skrilla, you’ve got the soul of a poet,” I said, grinning at him.

“Every man… and woman,” he added, glancing at Torina, Zeno, and Icky. “When I say man, I mean men and women, and it don’t matter how many arms they got, or legs, or tentacles, or whatever. We’re all children of the universe, you know?”

Torina laughed. “You’re inclusive, got it.”

“Anyway, every man has the soul of a poet, Van,” Skrilla went on, turning back to me. “Everyone’s got the cosmic poetry inside them. Some are just better at finding it than others, you dig?”

“Yes, Skrilla, I dig.”

“See, man, the way I see it—”

“Uh, Skrilla?”

He stopped, blinking at me with red-rimmed eyes. “Oh. Yeah. I’m goin’ on, ain’t I? I do that sometimes, it’s the—well, that poet, you know?”

“I know, yeah. But we need to ask—well, the poet, or anyone else you’ve got in there, a few questions.”

“Ask away, you beautiful fuzz, you, and I might even tell you the truth,” Skrilla replied, grinning brightly.

I laughed, then explained how we’d arrested several Sorcerers who apparently had a contact who frequented The One-Eyed Yak. I braced myself for Skrilla to stonewall me about him—the guy was pretty antiestablishment, and I was about as establishment as it got—but he just shrugged and immediately rolled on our perp.

Skrilla’s face darkened. “Oh, yeah, him. Remember how I said we were all children of the universe? Well, some of those children are the brats who need to go sit in the corner for a while in timeout. He’s one of those.”

“You have a history with this guy, Skrilla? You’re looking as though you’d like to take a round or two out of him.”

“I’m a being of peace, Van. I don’t do violence.”

“Really. On my last trip here, you told me you killed a Yonnox last year.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t use violence to do it.”

Icky wrinkled her nose. “Probably killed him with body odor, or whatever that other smell is, the one like burning rubber.”

“That’s patchouli, you belligerent mountain of hair, and it’s imported from Oregon.”

“Oh yeah? And don’t they use soap in Oregon?”

Skrilla looked offended. “Yeah. Made out of patchouli.”

“Anyway, Skrilla, we were talking about this guy you apparently dislike so intensely. Why?” I asked.

“You’re the one after him for crimes against being a decent person, man. Do I really need to tell you?”

“Well… yeah, actually. Anything you can tell me about the guy might be useful,” I replied.

Skrilla launched into a rambling exposé about one Nesit named Cernax Laur. Laur was apparently loosely associated with the Church of Luminance, an organization supposedly devoted to doing good works for the benefit of all beings, particularly through the power of prayer to a cosmic deity known as Lumen—blah, blah, and so on and so on. Skrilla did a lot of eye rolling as he described Laur and the church, which was as much about organized religion in general as it was about this version of it in particular.

“This asshole’s a phony. He talks about salvation and similar bullshit, but the only thing Laur worships is the almighty bond, just like his boss the”—he made air quotes—“High Prophet. Anyway, every man’s gotta find his own spiritual fulfillment—oh, by man, I mean women, too—” He stared at Torina, who lifted a hand.

“We’ve been through this, Skrilla. I know.”

“We have? Oh, yeah—” He blinked, then his eyes got big. “Woah. It’s like time repeated itself there. One of those glitches in reality.”

I nodded politely at Skrilla’s mind being so thoroughly blown, then turned and spoke to Perry, who was still keeping watch outside the bar, on the comm. “Hey, bird, you’ve been listening to all this?”

“I totally have, man. Woah. Rad.”

“Cute. So what do we know about the Church of Luminance and Cernax Laur?”

“Laur we know as a petty criminal who worked around the fringes of The Stillness and the Fade until they went down, then he took up with the Arc of Vengeance for a while. After that, he dropped off the scanners again, presumably because of this new job he’s got with the Church of Luminance.”

“Okay, and what do we know about them?”

“Not so much. They actually started outside known space, probably somewhere in The Deeps, and migrated in to known space when BeneStar did.”

“So the Church and BeneStar are related.”

“Conjoined twins related, yeah. Remember the whole BeneFactor thing, where BeneStar sent out missions to provide food and medicine and stuff to impoverished people?” Perry asked.

“Yeah, their big PR campaign, the one that happened to have a little bit of decency hanging off it.”

“That’s the one. The Church of Luminance was a so-called sponsored agency delivering some of that supposed decency. BeneStar gave them seed money, which they used mostly to fund, ah, fundraising—read an organized shakedown—from their own congregation. Most of that money went right back to BeneStar—so they got their seed money back plus a return on their investment—and a lot of the rest went to—”

“Let me guess—this mysterious High Prophet, so he could build glorious mega churches and buy himself private yachts and bling and things.”

“All in the name of doing good works on Lumen’s behalf, of course.”

I sighed. “Yeah, that playbook is getting worn.”

“What Guild intel didn’t have, though, was a connection between the Church and the Sorcerers, at least until now. And since both of those are connected to BeneStar, then we have a nasty little three-way going on, or as I call it, a menage-a-craw.”

“Charmingly put, bird, but a bit obscure. And you don’t have an actual gizzard. Or a libido.”

“I do in spirit, Van. Anyway, that said, I think we might have another nifty little connection here, one buried a little deeper,” Perry said.

“What’s that?”

“Well, based on what the Guild’s forensic accounting AIs were able to tease out of the data we seized when we got Gauss, most of the funding for the BeneFactor program came from one BeneStar subsidiary in particular. Guess which one?”

“The Enhancement Empire.”

“The Enhancement Empire LLC, to be precise. But, yeah. Didn’t see that coming, did you?”

“Oh. No, I did not. I am totally taken by surprise—”

“Hey!”

I turned at the shout. Icky had grabbed someone, a Skel, who’d been leaning against the bar nearby.

“Gotta go, Perry. Icky’s found trouble again.”

“I am taken totally by surprise.”

I pushed my way toward her. “Icky, what’s going on?”

“This little bastard tried to help himself to Skrilla’s data slate,” she said, holding the Skel with one beefy hand. It was like Popeye’s forearm holding onto a stick man.

“Nothin’ on that slate but some bar tabs and porn, dude,” Skrilla said.

Icky shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Theft is theft. What do you want us to do with him?”

“Bust him up,” Skrilla said.

Torina gave him a raised eyebrow. “I thought you were against violence.”

“I am. Unless it’s against those who wanna screw over me and my patrons. I got bills to pay, you know—” He stopped and blinked. “Say, speaking of violence, you’re not going to kill him, that Nesit scumbag, are you? I mean, he deserves to be busted up, too, but death—”

“Not if I have a say about it,” Zeno put in. She’d been keeping an eye on the bar and the restless crowd around us but had obviously been paying attention.

“She’s our voice of reason,” Torina said.

Zeno shrugged. “Maybe. But even I know that dead Nesit spill no secrets.”

“I’d just hate to have my name attached to some operation by the man that ends up with someone dead, you know? Especially someone rich and powerful, dig?” Skrilla said.

“Your name is safe, Skrilla, don’t worry. Besides, we’ve got to find this Nesit, Cernax Laur, first.”

“Well, he was just here on The Torus recently, so he might still be in the system,” Skrilla offered.

“If it’s a Nesit, then he’s probably on the Nesit barge. They don’t like outsiders, which means pretty much everyone in the galaxy that ain’t, you know, Nesit.”

We all turned to the voice. It was the Skel.

“Hey, figure I might as well help you guys out. Maybe it’ll earn me a little, ah, leniency?” he went on, his voice flat and mechanical through his gas mask.

“Okay, and do you know where this Nesit barge might be right now?”

“Last I saw, it was hooked up to a creaky old tanker not far from here, probably taking on fuel. That’d be a few hours ago.”

“Netty, can you confirm that?” I asked the comm.

“There’s a barge registered to a Nesit-owned holding company currently refueling from a tanker whose picture should appear beside the word decrepit in the dictionary. They’re both about a hundred and thirty thousand klicks out from The Torus.”

I nodded to Icky, who released the Skel. She glowered down at him. “Be good.”

He nodded and scuttled off.

I turned to Skrilla. “Be seeing you, my friend. Best of luck remaining peaceful. We believe in you.”

He grinned and flashed me a peace sign. “Later, Fafnir!”

As we headed back for the Fafnir, Perry spoke up over the comm. “Awfully convenient that random thief Icky just happened to nab just happened to know where that Nesit just happens to be likely holed up.”

I nodded. “One might say… improbable, even. So, do we go with guns blazing, or just swords and hammers?”

Icky shrugged. “Why not both?”

* * *

Despite Icky’s enthusiasm for a fight, one look at the situation told me we should find another way. For one, the Nesit barge, while not all that heavily armed, had a lot of interior volume—and that could mean more boarding action than we were capable of launching and completing. For another, unlike a ship clearly involved in something like piracy or smuggling, the barge wasn’t doing anything illegal, which meant there could be innocents on board who’d get caught in the crossfire. Finally, I didn’t like the look of the refueling tanker. Netty hadn’t been kidding when she said it was decrepit, and I was worried that stray fire might tear it apart, or even trigger a catastrophic explosion or series of them.

Perry stared at the screen. “Van… do I see what I think I see?” He pointed with one wing.

“Netty, expand please?”

“Gotcha, boss.”

The image grew and—

Revealed metallic tape holding together an airlock.

“We have confirmation, finally,” I said in wonder.

“Of what?” Torina asked.

“Rednecks. In space.”

“Rednecks are everywhere, boss. They’re just different on the outside,” Perry explained. “But in their heart, every day is a monster truck rally.”

Torina snickered. “It’s true.”

“I know,” I agreed. “Met some in the wild in a place called Penrith, Australia. Nice people, if a little, um—”

“Exuberant?” Zeno offered.

I smiled. “As usual, your diplomacy knows no limit. As to our plan, why don’t we try something more subtle, like using a viral attack on their computers to seize control of the barge? That puts us into a pretty damned strong negotiating position. If we can get them to hand over Laur, or even persuade him to surrender, there might not need to be any bloodshed,” I said.

Icky crossed her arms. “I know, and it sucks.”

“Life is about more than doing battle, my dear. And it’s not like we never get into fights.”

Torina smirked. “Actually, we get into an awful lot of them.”

Icky sighed. “I guess.”

I turned my attention to Perry and Netty. “Suggestions?”

“Make it a message from Skrilla. Laur knows him, so he’s more likely to accept it.”

“Aren’t we kind of implicating Skrilla in all this if we do that, which is something we explicitly said we wouldn’t do?” Zeno asked.

“It only has to look like it’s coming from Skrilla, which isn’t an unreasonable deception on our part. And Skrilla really won’t know anything about it,” Netty replied.

“Besides, let’s face it, Skrilla’s at least a little bit dirty himself,” Torina put in. “Having it come from him probably won’t seem all that unusual to this Cernax Laur.”

“It would be nice to avoid a boarding action. And hard vacuum. And unknown Nesit assets.”

“So, Netty, what do you think? Do we use the Lottery Winner scam, or the Foreign Prince?”

“How about a rebate on his car warranty?”

Jamberac, who’d been listening on the comm, spoke up. “What about a fuel voucher from BeneStar? Or, more to the point, their Enhancement Empire?”

We all stopped and considered it. “Diabolical,” Perry finally said. “Thanks to the data we seized from BeneStar, we can even cook up some convincing metadata for the message containing the viral payload.”

“Excellent idea, Jamberac,” I said, then stood and started aft. “It keeps Skrilla out of it, too. Perry, you’re with me. The two of us and Netty will work on the virus. Torina, your ship. Try to make us look entirely uninterested in that barge out there.”

“I have a suggestion, Van,” Netty-P said. “We should inspect the mounts for all the grav-plating and remount the one that came free. Why don’t I go outside and do that with EVAN? That way, anyone who looks at us is going to see work being done on the Fafnir’s exterior, which is work that genuinely needs to be done anyway.”

“You’re as brilliant as your namesake, my dear. Okay, everyone’s got their job. Let’s get to it.”

* * *

We spent the better part of four hours assembling and preparing the virus for transmission. We decided to transmit it from the Lexington, Jamberac’s ship, since he was still docked with The Torus. Varley, his AI, was certain he could make it appear as though the message had been transmitted from the station itself. Netty-P found a half-dozen grav-plates whose mounts needed reinforcing, so that wasn’t wasted effort, either.

When the message was ready, we sent it to Jamberac. He, in turn, transmitted it, then immediately departed The Torus to join us. I was still anxious to avoid a battle, but having the Lexington backing us up seemed like a good idea regardless.

We waited—

“And, the barge is ours,” Perry announced.

I blinked at him, surprised. “Really?”

“Yup. We’ve got control over all core systems—power, propulsion, nav, comms—”

“Holy shit. Didn’t they have any security or firewalls or anything in place at all?”

“Believe it or not, they were running a trial version of a brand-name security suite. It expired over a week ago, and no one bothered to actually pay for it.”

I couldn’t help laughing. “Not exactly master criminals, are they?”

“Most of them aren’t, Van. For every criminal mastermind out there, there’re about a hundred thousand amateur miscreants,” Zeno said.

“And I thank them, from the bottom of my heart for being so dumb. Okay, well, that was anticlimactic. Netty, open a channel to the barge, please.”

“—think you’re doing, this is an attack! An unprovoked attack on a ship that’s doing nothing wrong!”

I winced at the harsh rant blaring out of the comm. “Okay, listen—”

“No, you listen, you so-called Peacemaker. This is an abuse of your authority—”

“If you’d give me a chance—”

“—going to have your badge for this! And if you think you’re going to come aboard, I will fight you—”

The rant abruptly stopped. I heard bursts of chatter and bits of conversations, then some cursing, a shout, more cursing, and the comm cut off.

I frowned. “What the hell is going on over there?”

Netty tried to reestablish comms but without success. I was resigning myself to either giving up or boarding the barge anyway, neither of which was an appealing prospect, when Jamberac spoke up.

“They just launched an escape pod,” he said.

“Confirmed,” Netty added. “And it’s broadcasting a distress beacon.”

I sat back. “I—uh, okay. Right. Jamberac, do your thing and pick up whoever that is. We’ll make sure that no one on that barge tries anything stupid.” I glanced at Perry. “We do have control of their weapons, right?”

“Why, is there something you want to shoot at?”

I glared at him.

“That’s a yes,” he finally said.

I nodded, and we watched as Jamberac intercepted and retrieved the escape pod. He then backed away from the barge. A moment later, he was back on the comm.

“Van, I’ve got someone here who wants to talk to you.”

A new voice came on, familiar, but I couldn’t place it right away.

“Hello, Van.”

“Hello, uh—”

“It’s Hoshi Onwyn.”

I stared blankly. Hoshi—

It came to me. Hoshi Onwyn had been a senior scientist on Pont Alus Kyr, the preeminent known-space research institute dealing with the interface between organic life and inorganic components. She’d been a symbiotic being with an alien lifeform called Cibilax. But Cibilax had somehow been removed from her, the traumatic shock putting Hoshi into a coma from which she would likely never recover—

And yet, here she was.

“Hoshi, how the hell did you—are you—?”

“Van, if it helps, what I’m looking at here is a pretty standard maintenance bot,” Jamberac said.

I looked at Torina, who just stared back.

I shook my head. “Wait. You mean… Hoshi, you’re a… an identity on a chip?”

“Kinda seems that way, doesn’t it?”

12

“I spoke to Dr. Rosen on Pont Alus Kyr—remember her?” Torina said, returning to the cockpit.

“Officious bitch,” I said.

“That’s the one. Anyway, she confirms that Hoshi Onwyn is still in a coma, and still under their care on Pont Alus Kyr. She hasn’t shown even a flicker of consciousness since she was separated from her symbiote.”

“So what we’ve got in that chip is a—what, a copy of Hoshi? That someone made?” I asked.

“That would seem to be the case,” Netty-P said. “I’ve examined her chip, and it's essentially the same piece of technology we’ve been encountering all along. There have been a few improvements and refinements, but it's similar to the ones we found containing Fostin and Rolis and all the others.”

“Which means that, despite breaking the Fade, mostly breaking the Sorcerers and bringing down Helem Gauss, somewhere out there, someone is still making these things,” Zeno said.

“Or something,” Perry noted. “If there was, say, an AI-controlled fabricating system producing them, it would easily be small enough to fit aboard a ship. As long as it had power and raw materials, it could just keep cranking these things out.”

“What about the modifications and improvements?” Zeno asked.

Perry looked at her, then leaned one way and cocked his head the other. “Duh, we’s AIs is too dumb to learn stuff, ain’t we?”

“Point taken.”

“Van, Icky’s back with Hoshi Onwyn,” Netty said at the same time we heard and felt the clunk of the Frankie returning to her berth.

“Okay, then. Let’s go greet our new guest, shall we?” I turned to Torina. “Stay on the captain of that barge and see if you can convince him to hand over Cernax Laur. Until he does, he doesn’t get control of his ship back.”

“He’s claiming he’s going to put a formal complaint about abuse of authority through to Anvil Dark,” she replied.

“Tell him to ask Anvil Dark for the meaning of knowingly harboring a fugitive from the law while he’s at it.”

Torina grinned and turned to the comm. “This oughta be fun.”

The rest of us went aft and met Icky in the galley. A maintenance bot, bigger and chunkier than Waldo, followed her. The thing was also in rougher shape, showing dents, dings, and scars of corrosion. One of its actuators whined piteously as it moved.

“Hello, Van,” it said.

“Hello, Hoshi. Fancy meeting you out here.”

“No one’s more surprised than I am, trust me.”

“So how did this happen?”

“I’ve got no idea. I assume that the original me is dead, though, and this instance of me was copied immediately before that happened.”

I glanced at the others. Zeno gave an uncomfortable shrug. “Actually, Hoshi, the original you is alive, still on Pont Alus Kyr, but in a coma.”

“Oh. I… see.”

I went on to explain to her what had happened—how someone, somehow, had separated her from her symbiote, Cibilax, which had nearly killed her. And how, when she was taken to Anvil Dark for urgent follow-up work by B, synths we believed to have been dispatched by the Seven Stars League tried to finish the job with an assassination attempt. She’d later been moved back to Pont Alus Kyr, where she remained in care and under heavy guard.

“Somebody really wanted me dead, didn’t they?” she said when I was done.

“That someone was apparently the Security Directorate of the Seven Stars League. Hoshi, what was going on there? All we could figure out is that you were working with them on something that seemed to be off the books, in addition to the official work you were doing for them on Pont Alus Kyr.”

“And if you’re worried about the whole Tenants infesting the League thing, we solved that—with one hell of a space battle, in fact,” Zeno said.

“I don’t suppose it matters now, me being—well, dead-ish, for lack of a better way of putting it. I was working with the League on the integration of the Tenants’ nervous systems with that of its human host to make the connections more efficient. The point was to make the symbiosis as seamless as possible—basically, combining two distinct entities into a completely shared mind.”

“So what went wrong? What turned the League against you?” I asked.

“As the work progressed, my League contacts started to demand changes to the research, aligning it more and more with a new set of objectives. I started to have, ah, ethical qualms.”

“What were they asking?”

“Essentially, instead of a shared, cooperative mind, they wanted me to develop a way for one of the symbiotes to be able to easily take control of the other and subsume it—make it completely subordinate to the other. They didn’t want a symbiotic partnership, they wanted a master and a slave. I… couldn’t do that.”

“You made yourself into one hell of a loose end, Hoshi,” Perry said.

“Yeah, I see that now. The last thing I remember is… a flash, but one that happened inside my head. When I was a teenager, I knocked my head against the floor playing sling-ball once without wearing a helmet. It was like that.”

I whistled. “Someone stunned you. Then they removed Cibilax and left you to die.”

Zeno frowned. “But they didn’t actually kill you. They just left you. So either they were sloppy, or—"

“Or it was Cibilax they were after,” Perry said.

“Hoshi, help me out here. Everything you knew, Cibilax knew, and vice versa, right?” I asked.

“To a point. There were fields of particular expertise we each had. His was focused more on organic-inorganic integration. But that knowledge was there, if I needed it—” She paused. “It’s hard to explain. And… it’s strange. I understand why… I, Hoshi, the original me… suffered so badly when she was separated from Cibilax. The biochemical shock should have been enough to kill her.”

“It very much almost did.”

“Me, though—this me—it just feels strange. It’s like living with someone in the same room for years, and they’re suddenly just gone.”

“So how did you end up on that barge?” Icky asked.

Hoshi went on to explain in halting, thoughtful tones. “The first thing I remembered after that flash was coming to, then being installed in a propulsion monitor aboard a Yonnox freighter.”

“Better than a toilet,” Perry remarked.

“Not much,” Hoshi countered. “I was tempted to panic, but that’s not me. I’m a scientist, and I knew I needed to… to understand what was happening.”

“You knew you were essentially invisible?” I asked.

“Exactly that. Now you’re thinking like a spy, or whatever I became. I got myself traded away to a Gajur-owned bulk carrier. Then they traded me to an Eridani-registered fast freighter, and finally, the Nesit barge as a water-management AI. I was never suspected of being more than a shitty propulsion monitor. It’s the first time I’ve ever been relieved at such a degraded state.”

“And then we came along?” Perry asked.

The servo whined as Hoshi moved in agreement. “I was starting to get desperate, figuring I’d never manage to get somewhere I could get access to anything useful. And then you appeared, so I took my chance. I was installed in this creaky old maintenance bot, and no one paid much attention to me, so it was easy to just board an escape pod and launch myself. And here I am.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but Torina came out of the cockpit, her jaw clenched in frustration. “I don’t even want to hear the word Nesit for… the foreseeable future, and maybe longer,” she snapped.

“No go on getting him to hand over Laur, huh?”

“No. He’s playing dumb, saying he’s never heard of this person and demanding that we release his ship. Take that, arrange it fifty different ways, and you’ve got his side of the conversation, the miserable bastard.”

I sighed. “So it’s a standoff. He’s hoping he can just stonewall us long enough that we have to give up and leave—and he may be right.”

“What do you want this—what’s his name? Laur? What do you want him for?” Hoshi asked.

“He’s connected to a group of Sorcerers we’ve got in our holding cells back there. We’re hoping he can shed some light on what they’re up to, and what connections they have to, well, what used to be BeneStar Corporation.” I sat back and rubbed my eyes. “Looks like it’s a dead end, though. I mean, I’m glad we were able to retrieve you, but—”

“Uh, Van? Before I left that barge, I downloaded everything that seemed even remotely interesting or useful. It wasn’t hard, because their security sucked. The previous ships I was on weren’t much better.”

I sat up. “Did you happen to get anything about Helem Gauss?”

“I sure did. Your friend Laur recorded twist-comm messages addressed to someone on Novum that were erased after transmission—but not really erased, because did I mention their security sucks?”

“Novum. That’s a Seven Stars League world,” Zeno said.

I nodded. “It sure is. Hoshi, what do those messages say?”

“Oh, I think you’re going to love them.”

* * *

From the not-quite-deleted messages that Hoshi had retrieved from digital oblivion aboard the Nesit barge, we learned two important things. First, that Gauss had hidden away a cache of tech that probably included weapons, but who knew what else. We could discern an approximate location from the message itself, so it was definitely worth investigating. And second, that the three leaders of the Enhancement Empire were planning a hostile takeover of BeneStar—essentially a coup—well before Gauss’s fall.

“The emperor had no clothes, it seems,” I said when Hoshi had finished playing the messages.

Icky extended one hairy, bare leg. “In that case, I’m halfway royal, at least.”

“Where to? To find that cache, or home?”

“Home. But not ours. Zeno, let’s go visit your mothers. We could use a rest while we sift this data.”

“You’ve met my mothers, right? I don’t think the terms visit them and rest really go together very well.”

“Boss, what about the Nesit barge? Do you want to shut down that virus and return control to them?” Perry asked.

I paused, frowned, then shook my head. “Nah. They’re within a stone’s throw of The Torus, so it’s not like they’re in any real danger. And they weren’t what I’d call cooperative, so to hell with them. Good luck and goodnight, and we’re moving on. Maybe this’ll teach them to invest in decent antivirus software.”

Perry turned to address us all. “Remember, kids, if you’re going to compute, then compute safely.”

* * *

I once again had to endure the wary scrutiny of Zeno’s brood of mothers. Apparently, they found it hard to believe that I’d woo Torina in favor of their daughter, leading to a lingering suspicion that there really was something going on between Zeno and me, and we were just using Torina as cover. Zeno tried several times to convince them otherwise, finally throwing up her hands in despair.

“Mothers, I’m a grown-ass adult, and Van’s a grown-ass adult, so if we had something, don’t you think we’d just come out and, you know, tell you that? We’ve got no reason to keep it a secret from you—and, for that matter, every reason to reveal it to you, so you’ll get off our backs!”

Her mothers all glanced at one another, suddenly doubtful. I was thinking—hoping—that Zeno had finally gotten through to them, when one of her older mothers rasped, “Maybe that’s just what you want us to think.”

Zeno stared for a moment, then turned away in disgust. “You know what? I give up. Van, I’m supposed to shuttle Mothers Trandolin and Vestophir up to visit my Fathers in orbit. Can I get you to take them so I’m not tempted to just push the shuttle into a power dive and end it all?”

She stalked away. I glanced at Torina, who was smirking at my side, then sighed. “Okay, Mothers Tandolis—”

“Trandolin!” one snapped at me.

“Sorry, Trandolin, and… uh, Vesta—”

“Oh, for—Vestophir. It’s really not that hard,” another said, then turned to the rest. “Maybe it would be just as well if he and Zenophir aren’t in a relationship. Boy doesn’t seem too bright.”

Torina laughed but cut it off. I shot her a pleading look and escorted Mothers Trandolin and Vestophir to the shuttle.

After we lifted, I turned to them. “You know, there really isn’t anything between Zeno and me.”

Trandolin looked at Vestophir, their faces both set in their usual scowls. I braced myself for the inevitable disbelief—

They both suddenly laughed. “Oh, Van, you really aren’t too bright, are you?” Vestophir said. “Of course we know you two aren’t involved.”

“There’s not a flicker of chemistry between you two,” Trandolin put in.

I stared blankly. “Then why—?”

“Partly wishful thinking. You’re a fine young man, Van. We follow your exploits closely, remember, because Zeno’s part of them. And we like what we see. You would be a great catch,” Vestophir said, then gave me a sly look from under her brow. “Hell, if I was forty or fifty years younger, I’d be tempted to try and give Torina a run for her money.”

“I—uh—wow. I’m flattered, but—”

Trandolin grinned but slapped Vestophir’s arm. “Vestophir, you’re awful. Leave the poor boy alone.” She turned to me, and her face went serious. “More to the point, Van, we want Zenophir to find… someone. And not just because we want grandchildren. We want her to be happy.”

“Of course we do,” Trandolin said. “After she lost her daughter, she—how to say—she just shut down. The reason your grandfather was so easily able to put her under permanent house arrest is because she didn’t want to leave that lonely planet of hers. She would have died of old age there if you hadn’t come along and rescued her.”

“Because that’s what you did—you rescued her, Van. From herself and her past. You’ve given her a second chance. We just want her to take advantage of it,” Vestophir added.

Trandolin grinned. “So we’re all going to keep being massive pains in the ass to her, because… honestly, she expects it. We’ll keep doing it, and she’ll keep being outraged by it, but she’ll also know that we care.”

“But don’t you dare say anything about this to her. Even though she really does know it all already, we have to keep up our little playact here.”

As I turned the shuttle on its final approach to the P’nosk Orbital, where Zeno’s Fathers lived, I mimed zipping my lips shut.

“Mum is the word.”

Trandolin snorted with laughter. “I think you mean mums.”

* * *

Zeno’s myriad mothers and fathers—at least, those with the relevant expertise—dug through the data regarding our grav-plating, which included not just what we’d retrieved from Gauss’s own records, but everything Netty and Netty-P had collected since the installation. They spent a couple of days at it, while we just bided our time, taking in some of the sights and giving ourselves shore leave until they’d finished. Jamberac was still with us, but he stayed mostly aboard his ship and kept to himself.

As for Torina and me, we decided we wanted to spend some time together but away from the Fafnir and the rest of our crew. Zeno recommended several places Torina and I could go that could be considered romantic, making a big show out of it in front of her mothers. We finally settled on the Great Plunge.

It was a waterfall, but a waterfall that put anything on Earth to shame. The Great Plunge spilled over the lip of a rift torn into the P’nosk homeworld’s crust by an ancient cataclysm, opening a canyon nearly eight kilometers deep, or not quite a thousand meters less than Mount Everest was tall. The peculiar geology that allowed the canyon to form kept the walls nearly vertical all the way down to the bottom, where lava simmered away. The cascade of water that rushed over the edge fell, and fell—and fell—until it had diffused into a curtain of spray flung about by the inconstant winds that gusted along the canyon’s length. Eventually, it fell close enough to the churning lava that it vaporized, shrouding the bottom of the canyon in glowing orange fog.

Torina and I marveled as we guided the Frankie along the length of the canyon, then swept over the top of the Great Plunge itself and dove into the depths. Later, we returned to the top, grounded the shuttle alongside the river that fed the falls—well back from edge—and had a picnic lunch prepared for us by several of Zeno’s mothers. The food was sumptuous, but the beautiful, warm day and the spectacular scenery eventually got the better of us. We’d spent too much time cooped up in the Fafnir with the rest of the crew, so we took advantage of the great outdoors to—

To further develop our chemistry.

Torina reached out and plucked a stray hair—hers—from my cheek. It was a little tradition we had, as she seemed to shed like a golden retriever. Naturally, being the genius I am, I never shared that comparison but sat mute while she fussed before finishing with a short kiss. It was a signal that we once again belonged to everyone else.

But while we were together, there were no troubles. At all. Looking at her, I hoped she could see that was how I felt, and then when she smiled, her eyes squinting in the brilliant light, I knew she understood. She always had, once we’d both decided—by some unknown signal—that we belonged to each other, rituals or not.

“What do you think he’ll say?” I asked.

She knew what I meant, then she shifted into a decent impression of Funboy. “I cannot fathom you two sharing potentially lethal microorganisms in the name of pleasure.”

“I see you’ve heard him speak.”

She stifled a laugh. “Repeatedly.”

We returned, savoring the companionable silence, then just sat as the Frankie settled on her struts.

“Well.”

She heaved a sigh. “Well. Let’s rejoin the world.”

“Under protest. Look… he’s sort of… hovering.” I said, pointing to Funboy’s dour presence.

“He’s lurking,” Torina muttered, and then we were in front of him and the rest of the crew.

“You two engaged in coitus, didn’t you?” he asked, his eyebrows flailing with concern.

I paused, then cocked my head at him. “Let’s pretend for a moment that that would be any of your business.”

“The mechanical actions associated with reproduction are particularly hazardous when conducted outdoors. There’s sand. Potentially toxic plants. Stinging insects—”

“Funboy—!”

“I am merely concerned for your well-being. You did assign me to be the Fafnir’s medical officer, didn’t you?”

I sighed. “Yes, I did. And if I ever have any problems with sand, potentially toxic plants, or stinging insects, you’ll be the first to know.”

Torina leaned toward me. “Actually, I think you’ll be the first to know.”

“Good point.”

“In any case, Zenophir’s maternal assemblage has some information and conclusions they wish to share with you,” Funboy said, leading away from the landing pad and toward the elevator that would take us up to the umpteenth-floor apartment suite where her mothers lived.

“Maternal assemblage?” Torina asked as we fell in behind him.

“Yes. An assemblage is a collection or gathering of things or people, and they are her mothers, so it would be maternal in nature—hence, maternal assemblage.”

“Oh, Funboy—first it’s coitus, now it’s maternal assemblage. You hopeless romantic, you.”

“I admit that among the Surtsi, I am considered something of a ladies’ man,” he said, entering the elevator.

“You—you’re—really?” I tried not to sound too incredulous but failed, and pretty miserably at that.

“Certainly. My devotion to good hygienic practices is considered quite… alluring.”

“I… will take your word for it.”

* * *

“This gravity tech you found is fascinating, Van,” one of Zeno’s mothers said. “It exploits certain quantum properties of space-time to literally reshape it, mimicking the gravitational effect of a massive body.”

“Quantum properties that we don’t even fully understand, not even mathematically,” another added.

“But only in the actual gravitational effect of a large body, like a star or planet,” I said.

“No, it can, and does, generate the effect regardless. However, on its own, the effect from the plates you’ve mounted on the Fafnir is too weak to really do anything. It’s definitely more effective inside an existing gravity well,” the first mother answered.

“In theory, at least, if the plates were constructed for it and provided with sufficient power, they could produce a significant gravitational effect even in deep space,” the second added.

“So we could produce our own gravity well,” Zeno said.

“In theory.”

Mother Vestophir leaned forward. “I actually ran with the idea a bit, and although engineering plates that could produce whatever type and magnitude of gravitational effect you wanted, at will, is currently beyond us, you could engineer a system that would even allow something like that battlewagon of yours—the, oh, Iweno—?”

“Iowa?”

“That’s it. Anyway, we could engineer a system now that could effectively reduce its weight to… ah, some truly small amount. Enough that it would be capable of some damned fancy maneuvers, like nearly instantaneous changes in direction, for instance. Or the ship’s structure would, anyway. The standard inertial dampers probably wouldn’t be able to keep up. And if you use whatever g-loads they’re capable of offsetting as your upper limit, then there’s no point to even doing it.”

“In other words, if you do this, the ship’s contents, and especially the crew—well, they’d still experience some significant accelerations,” the first mother who’d spoken said.

“Conoku can handle some high g-loads. It’s that whole exoskeleton thing,” Perry noted.

But Funboy was shaking his head.

I gave him a narrow-eyed gaze. “Funboy? Something you’d like to throw in here?”

“Conoku physiology is, indeed, capable of higher g-loads than, say, any of us, but not a great deal more. This would be an awful lot of effort and expense for a small return.”

Icky had been tapping enthusiastically away at a data slate. “Unless we can train them to take high instantaneous g-loads—high accelerations for short periods of time.” She brandished the data slate. “Even a second or two of fifteen or twenty g’s of acceleration in some random direction will turn the Iowa’s maneuver envelope from this—”

She held out the slate. It depicted a narrow cone that slowly flared outward, a graphical representation of the maximum volume of space the Iowa could pass through over time, given her current capabilities.

“—to this,” Icky said, tapping the slate. The narrow cone was abruptly replaced by one that flared out wide and suddenly, like the bell of a tuba.

I stared at it. “Holy shit. How much acceleration is that?”

“Five two-second bursts of twenty g’s ten seconds apart, directed perpendicular to her flightpath. The best part is that it doesn’t change her orientation, either. This theoretical grav-plating just shoves her sideways, while her drive keeps pushing her in the same direction the whole time.”

“Could we do this to the Fafnir?” Torina asked. “She’s even smaller and lighter.”

Mother Vestophir shrugged. “Ironically, it would be a lot harder with a smaller ship. This positively eats power, and the Fafnir just doesn’t have the juice to do it, nor the means of generating. A ship the size of the… Iowa, right? Anyway, it should have the hull volume to install a dedicated fusion reactor just to power the plating.”

“We’d have to train the Conoku to take some brief but extreme accelerations,” Zeno said.

I sat back. “Yeah, we just don’t have any way to train them like that. Not unless we took them into some really deep gravity well and—”

I cut myself off as an idea came to me. A wild one. “You know, one second, I… I might have the place. But it’s at some risk. We’d have to take the Conoku kids to Earth.”

Perry stared at me. “Earth? Where? And would it be riskier than taking Icky to Wisconsin, the Cheese State?”

“I make no apologies for enjoying those gas-station cheese curds you bought me,” she said.

“Actually, Icky, your digestive tract should be doing the apologizing.”

“Yeah, well, it ain’t sorry either. I’d do it again. But, seriously—how many Conoku can you really take to Iowa, anyway?”

I smiled. “All of them.”

Torina shook her head. “All of them? But… how? And why?”

I started to reply, but Perry cut me off.

“Van, message relayed from Netty. It’s showtime. There’s a courtroom in the Seven Stars League calling your name.”

I stood. “Well, thank you, everyone. We’ll have to put all of this fascinating stuff on hold because we’ve got a trial to attend. Don’t worry, we’ll be back.”

Mother Trandolin gave Zeno a sly look. “With grandchildren, if you please.”

“Oh, Mothers—!"

13

Jamberac had done good work throughout the operation, retrieving the Stolen Persons from the Sorcerers who’d booted them into space, saving Hoshi when she’d escaped the Nesit, and backing us up. He’d shown no great flashes of dazzling brilliance, but he’d been competent and earnest in a way that did any Peacemaker, much less an initiate, proud.

But he still had a long way to go before he could truly prove himself to the Guild. Jacomir had done a lot of damage—and hurt a lot of people, and his pack of offspring had carried on the tradition. The idea that one of them would stand out from the rest as a creature of compassion and devotion to justice just didn’t seem likely. Moreover, B was a popular member of the Guild, so if taking sides, people tended to take hers.

I opened a personal comm to Jamberac, and he answered immediately.

“Yes, Peacemaker?”

“Jamberac, you’ve been an… an unexpected asset to us. To everyone. So I’m offering you a gentle warning. When Lunzy meets you, she might seem cool, even hostile.”

“I expect nothing less.”

“Really? Mature and prescient of you. No need for the rest of the speech about legacies and breaking the mold. Consider yourself counseled, okay?” I said, earning a soft laugh.

“I do, and thank you. I’ll conduct myself accordingly. Jamberac out.”

We docked the Fafnir with Lunzy’s ship, the Foregone Conclusion, since it was the safest and most secure way to transfer our three Sorcerers to her custody. Funboy had taken the Frankie to pick up Jamberac and the Stolen Persons, since the Lexington’s only usable docking adapter was still damaged. When Jamberac came aboard, Lunzy’s usually affable demeanor went as cold and hard as old cometary ice.

“You can put them in that locker there, then give me the receipt to sign and get the hell off my ship,” she snapped at him.

Hoshi, still installed in the Nesit maintenance bot, spoke up from behind Jamberac. “Woah, what’s all the hostility about?”

Lunzy frowned at the bot. “You must be Hoshi Onwyn.”

“To… a certain extent, anyway, I guess I am, yes.”

“Well, Ms. Onwyn, I apologize for being so… abrupt. But this Initiate comes from a long line of—”

“Criminals and scumbags, yes, I know. He told me all about his family during the trip here. Tell me, do you always judge people on what their ancestors have done? Because if so, you might want to look back in Earthly history and see how pretty it isn’t. And we humans all come from that history, don’t we?”

Lunzy tried out several facial expressions—a frown, a puzzled look, a scowl. The fact she was being lectured by a robot seemed to have pushed her off-balance. She finally took a breath and nodded.

“You’re right. I just find it a little hard to accept that Jamberac is so different from the rest of his family, I guess. And I mean his living family, not some abstract, distant ancestors who raped and pillaged their way across the land a thousand years ago.”

Jamberac put the last case holding a personality chip into the locker. “I understand. I’m an outcast, not just among my own family, but I’m outcast by everyone else because of them. I’m used to it, because I’ve had no choice—I’ve had to become used to it.”

I spoke up. “Jamberac was instrumental in this operation, the one that led to recovering not just those people”—I gestured at the locker—“but also Hoshi, and with her some important information about Helem Gauss and BeneStar. I think it’s only fair to make that clear.”

Lunzy nodded to Jamberac. “You seem to be doing the right thing. Make sure you continue doing it.”

“I can do nothing else. And I don’t expect kindness.” Jamberac looked momentarily hesitant, then evidently decided to push on with whatever he’d been thinking.

“What I do think I can reasonably expect is some professional respect. I don’t believe I’ve harmed you, Peacemaker, have I?”

“No, you have not,” Lunzy said, then sighed. “Keep on like this, and you’ll find your place among us. Which is good, because we can certainly use you.”

“I will, and I am, and I hope so.”

“Okay. In the meantime, you remain assigned to work with Van—unless, Van, you have any objection?” Lunzy asked me.

I shook my head. “No. None. Like I said, he did good work. I’m happy to have him keep working with us.”

Jamberac gave me a grateful nod. “So what’s next… boss?”

I smiled. “We’re off to the Seven Stars League, I guess, to attend Gauss’s trial—although maybe we’re supposed to wait for an invasion fleet to assemble? I’m still not clear on that part of the plan,” I said, turning to Lunzy.

And she gave a rueful nod. “I was coming to that. Yes, the plan is still fluid. And that’s fine, because we’ve now got the time. Gauss’s trial has been delayed because he needs emergency medical treatment.”

I stared, eyes narrowing in suspicion. “Really. So that’s his angle? Avoid trial for compassionate reasons, oh boo-hoo, I’m too sick to answer for my many, many crimes?”

“According to Gerhardt, he really is sick. Quite sick, in fact. He seems to be suffering from some sort of chronic breakdown and failure of the interface between the organic and inorganic parts of his body. It’s not an area where many people have much expertise.”

“I could help him,” Hoshi said. “I could, that is, but I won’t.”

“That’s right, isn’t it? To the extent that there are any experts in that field, I guess you’re one of them,” Lunzy said.

“I suppose. Although without my pairing with Cibilax—oh, and inhabiting a robot body—my expertise is all somewhat theoretical now.”

“Still, if we need you, Ms. Onwyn, we may call on you.”

“Why would you, though? Wouldn’t it be easier for everyone if Gauss just died?”

I waited for Lunzy to glance my way, to indicate that she knew about the contingency plan for us to use one of the SAND weapons to kill Gauss after he inevitably escaped trial. But she didn’t, so I wasn’t sure if she did know. But in the context of that, Hoshi did have a point. If the plan was just to kill him anyway, then why not just let nature do it and avoid all the complexity and danger of trying to drop a miniature nuke on him?

Lunzy shrugged. “It will certainly be your call if you choose to help or not, Ms. Onwyn. In the meantime, though, the trial is on hold.”

I nodded, frankly relieved that we didn’t have to fly into League space since I didn’t trust them, and even more relieved that Gauss might just croak anyway and we wouldn’t have to run him down with the SAND, because I didn’t want to. “Okay, well, since we’re not heading to the trial, then what we need to do is refuel and do some refitting at Anvil Dark. Netty-P tells me that these mounts we cobbled together for the grav-plates on the Fafnir just aren’t going to hold over the long term—”

“Hey, I did the best I could with the bone knives and bearskins I had to work with on Earth,” Icky said.

Perry hissed at her. “It’s stone knives.”

“Perry set you up with that quote, didn’t he?” I asked.

Icky grinned. “Yeah. We knew you’d eventually bitch about those mounts.”

I turned back to Jamberac. “Anyway, after that, I think your interaction with the Fafnir’s extended family is going to expand. You’ve met Zeno’s mothers, and now… you’re about to meet mine.”

* * *

I had my eyes on the sleek, sinister ship that loomed ahead of the Fafnir, but my attention was firmly on the comm.

“If Gauss kicks off, I’m gonna find a cure for death just so I can bring him back from the dead so he can rot in jail,” I said, again without mentioning the whole SAND operation.

“I couldn’t agree more,” my mother replied.

“But that’s enough about Gauss. Care to come aboard the Fafnir for tea and war stories?”

“Actually, why don’t you come aboard my ship. I have something for you.”

I glanced at Torina, who shrugged, then I eased myself out of the Fafnir’s pilot’s seat and turned to Perry. “Come on, bird. You’re with me.”

“Really? It fulfills so many dreams I’ve had since I was a mere chip, waiting for feathers and—"

“Perry, the comm’s still on. I can hear you,” my mother said.

“Well, this is awkward,” Perry said.

“Not your first time, I imagine,” came my mom’s instant reply. “Being awkward, that is.”

“Yeah, she’s related to you,” he murmured.

We boarded the Frankie and crossed to my mother’s ship, the Nightfall. It was a somber name, but it suited her.

And it suited my idea of her as well.

My mother welcomed us at the airlock. The Nightfall was a big ship, and it wasn’t alone. She had three other ships in company, the smallest a class 11. Their collective strength underscored just how much combat power was lurking out here—combat power that theoretically served the GKU and, by extension, the Guild, but that whole feral aspect kept coming up. The fact was that these GKU splinters, of which my mother’s was the largest and most powerful, really served themselves.

My mother led us to her cabin but asked Perry to wait outside. “This is about Van and me, Perry. Sorry.”

“Hey, no problem. I’ll just sit here and solve some complex equations governing the operation of our new grav-plating—and, oh, that’s done. Okay, what next—?”

“Why don’t you just gossip with my ship’s AI?”

“Like I was going to ask your permission to do that.”

We left Perry in an outer room, one set up for small meetings, and retired to my mother’s cabin, a sparse and spartan place—a bed, a set of lockers, a desk and chair, another chair, and a lavatory. I sat in the second chair, and she paced and started to talk.

“I’ve been thinking long and hard on how to repair our relationship, Van—”

“Repairing implies there’s something to fix in the first place. Aren’t we more in a developing a relationship from scratch kind of place?” I said.

She stopped, crossed her arms, and nodded. “Fair point. Oh, by the way, when you get all sardonic like that, you sound just like your father.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“You should. And that brings me to what I have for you. I thought that—” She hesitated, glanced at the deck, then back at me. “Van, you should know what it was that made me decide to walk out on you. Or, what started it, anyway. I think it’s only right that you know.”

I sat back in the chair. I wasn’t convinced that I really did need to know this. Frankly, I would prefer to focus on going forward instead of dwelling on the past. But it seemed important to her, so I just nodded. “Okay.”

She stopped and stared at the bed. “I had just finished a mission, in the—actually, the location doesn’t matter. It was outside of known space. Anyway, it was a search-and-destroy mission, intended to take out a would-be criminal kingpin who was busy setting up his own scummy, vicious empire, and was doing it outside of the Guild’s reach. He was going to become a serious problem in known space—and I mean serious, as in memorable for all the wrong reasons. The trajectory he was on was going to result in hundreds of deaths and lots of misery, with even more people—young people—trafficked into horrible situations. So the GKU decided to step in.”

She turned to me and gave a rueful shrug. “The operation ran like clockwork. By the time we were done, there were, as they say, no two bricks left touching. We ended up killing about a hundred people, give or take, and most of them were bad guys.”

I frowned. “Most.”

“Yes. Most.” She took a deep breath. “Anyway, when it was done, I had to return to Earth so I could be there for your fourth birthday party. So it was rampant destruction and bloody slaughter on Monday, then birthday cake and candles on Wednesday evening. And that’s when I knew it.”

“Knew what?”

She turned to me. “When I stepped into that farmhouse in Iowa, I still had the screams in my ears, the smell of blood and smoke in my nose. And there you were, a chubby kid with a goofy grin waiting for his mom. And what I knew, Van, was that those two worlds were eventually going to collide. The blood and death, and the idyllic homelife in Iowa, they’d somehow come crashing together, and I’d be responsible for it.”

I said nothing but sat listening to the quiet hum of the ship.

She sighed into the gravid pause between us. “I’m not… unstable, or damaged beyond repair, Van. I’m ashamed. And sad. But mostly… ashamed. I didn’t have a single maternal bone in my body, but there you were… kind. Sweet. A bit quiet. You were everything I wasn’t, and that especially included innocent.”

She crossed her arms again, but more tightly, as though she was hugging herself. “So, we sang happy birthday, you blew out the candles, you made a mess eating cake and ice cream, then we put you to bed and your father and I went down to the living room and drank wine, and your grandfather made a big deal out of going drinking with Clinton Barnes, and… I told your father I had to leave. I said I’d visit, and I did. At least, I did until you were old enough to start realizing that’s what I’d become, just a visitor in your life, and then I stayed away for good.”

She glanced at me sidelong. “So there it is. My gift to you. An explanation for how you ended up with such a shitty mother. And I mean an explanation, not an excuse. There is no excuse.”

I sat for a moment, digesting what she’d just said and collecting my thoughts. Admittedly, part of me reacted, So? So what? What are you looking for here, mom, absolution? Because even if I could offer it to you, I don’t know if I would.

But the bigger part of me made me stand up and hug her. Yes, she’d told me this little story for herself, not really for me—I mean, I was four or five, so I didn’t really remember any of it anyway. But she was one half of us, and if that us was ever going to find peace, then both those halves of it had to find it first. I put my arms around her, and despite her height, she felt small. But then, I was no longer a kid, and she was no longer a ghost.

“No matter how much it hurts you to tell me these things, don’t stop doing it, Mom,” I said.

“Like now?”

I pulled back and smiled. “Well, maybe not all at once. Let’s, um, pace things.”

She nodded, but a sudden, grim look tightened her face. “We can pace things, but that implies we have time. And I’m not sure we do. BeneStar, or the pieces of what used to be BeneStar, might be at war, Van. But they all still have some common goals, and one of them is making sure the Guild doesn’t interfere in their plots and schemes more than it already has. And by the Guild, they mean you.”

“I’m truly enjoying my fame, by the way.”

“I expect nothing less, of course. You’ve got a flair for the dramatic despite your insistence that you’re a loner. Van, you took down Gauss and opened the way for those who want to replace him. But whoever does is going to want to make sure you can’t do the same to them. They’ll kill you if they can. And then Valint and I will have to burn down the galaxy.”

“Uh—wow. It’s not that I don’t appreciate wholesale, wanton destruction in my name, but it’s nice, at least, to know you’re on my side, Mom.”

“I’ve always been on your side. Just not by your side.”

“Well, you’re here now. And with a flotilla of heavily armed ships, at that.”

“Some heavily armed ships. And there are more where they came from. Assuming Gauss survives to be tried, then when he inevitably gets acquitted and runs, we’ll be there to take him out.”

I let my silence be our agreement. Again, there appeared to be a gap between what Gerhardt had told me and what my mother was saying. And it made no sense. Gerhardt had specifically said that the SAND attack was a GKU op. But my mother, who was as GKU as you could get, seemed to know nothing about it. Something was going on here, some sort of politicking within the GKU. I needed to talk to Gerhardt about it and find out just what it was so it didn’t pop up and bite us at the most inopportune time—

My mother abruptly turned to me. “If you were Helem Gauss, where would you hide your treasures? Not just tech, but your truest treasure? The things that make you feel powerful?”

I blinked a few times at the sudden and unexpected question. “I… guess I wouldn’t want to share it, so it would be away from prying eyes, but still close by.”

“Still got the codes to Gauss’s private castle, so to speak?”

“What? His barge? The Munificent? I… don’t, no. But I’m sure Netty does, or can get them. And she’s mobile now,” I said, giving her a brief description of Netty-P. “But the Munificent is in a parking orbit near The Hole, in Guild custody. Why would we need codes?”

“Because he’s managed to get a seal put on that barge to prevent anyone from boarding it, including the Guild. And while that winds its way through the courts, things aren’t quiet aboard the Munificent. Gauss uses security that never dies. It rebuilds itself. Trust me, the interior of that barge is as dangerous as it ever was. Do you remember how you went in? To get him?”

“I—yeah. I do. It’s not something I’m likely to forget.”

“Get in there, and this time, don’t leave any part of that place unturned. Believe me, Gauss genuinely believes that he’s going to get off all charges, and that he’ll be going home to the Munificent. And he won’t go back to a place that isn’t ready to receive him, to let him basically pick up where he left off. He can’t conceive of losing, so to him, this whole affair is just an annoying setback.”

“Even if Gauss gets off, he’s not just going to be able to go back to running BeneStar. The people who’ve gained power in his absence aren’t going to give it up. That ship—or, rather, that palatial barge—has sailed.”

“You know that, and I know that, but Gauss doesn’t. He can’t. He’s delusional, Van. He genuinely believes that everything will just go back to the way it was, simply because that’s what he wants. So we have to head him off. We have to get between him and whatever he’s got aboard the Munificent that he thinks will give him back the power he believes he deserves. And, son? This time… I’ll help.”

“Um—”

She smiled. “I know. You’re still having trouble really trusting me. That’s why your grandmother will be there, too. And an associate who knows something about Gauss’s barge. Or, at least a part of it.”

“Steiber and Kiswal are dead. Don’t tell me you found their twins?”

“Even better. Valint has a guest on her ship—in protective custody, we call it. She’s one Oleksa Steiber.”

“A sister?”

My mother smiled a sly smile. “Even better. Ex-wife. And he owed her money. Lots of money. In other words, a woman scorned. And you know what they’re like.”

14

Oleksa Steiber was the starborn version of a gangster moll. She was a hard, angular woman who chain-smoked cartridges she snapped into a jade holder that was fashionable in old movies, enveloping herself in a cloud of vapor that smelled like a lemon-scented grass fire. I think she invented the word uncompromising. My mother arranged for us to meet her aboard her ship, a small but luxurious class 5 yacht with which she plied the crowded space lanes of Tau Ceti.

“It’s as though she’s looking for something,” Perry noted as we examined the flight path recorded by Tau Ceti traffic control.

“According to my mother, she is—a man. Preferably, a man who can keep her in the lifestyle to which she’d like to become accustomed,” I said.

“She owns a yacht. How much more lifestyle does she need?” Icky snapped.

Torina just shook her head. “No one’s more ambitious than someone who’s managed to get their foot onto the bottom rung of the wealth ladder, because from there they can see the top.”

We docked with her yacht, named the Oleksa—and didn’t that tell you something about her—and Torina, Perry, and I went aboard. A prim AI bot led us to the lady herself, where she was lounging in a natty pantsuit on a butter-soft sofa. She was bedecked with enough makeup for a movie shoot and wore a brooch with a diamond the size of my thumbnail centered on it.

I feel underdressed, Perry said in my ear bug.

I just smiled. “Ms. Steiber, I’m—”

“A Peacemaker, yes. Van Toodle—”

“Tudor, ma’am. It’s Tudor—”

I kind of like Toodle, actually.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Steiber, but we’ve been having some trouble with our comm, and I keep getting spurious traffic routed into my earpiece. If it persists, I may have to step out and rip the offending piece of hardware out and toss it into space.”

Meanie.

Oleksa waved a dismissive hand. “I have people who do those things for me,” she said, then gave me an appraising look. “But you are good with your hands.”

I felt Torina stiffen. “Uh, Ms. Steiber, look, we’re here—”

“Because of the pathetic waste of breathable air that was my ex-husband, yes, I know.” Her face turned slightly sad, but in a flat, unconvincing way, like she’d just held a sad-faced mask up to her face. “Perhaps I’m too harsh. He had his faults, but he was a companion for me. And this yacht is just so lonely without him—”

Torina leaned forward. “Did you know that Van and I are engaged? It’s quite serious, and we can’t wait to finalize the union.”

Oleksa raised an eyebrow, then the sad face evaporated and was replaced by something that was suddenly all business.

“My husband was a piece of shit, and the universe is a better place without him. What do you want to know, and what are you willing to pay for it?”

I glanced at Torina, who smiled sweetly. “Right to business. And here I was worried you would be glacial and unfeeling. We suspect that there’s probably a hidden cache of material, technology, maybe even weapons, on Helem Gauss’s barge, the Munificent. But it’s a big ship, and it’s got a lot of security built into it.”

“You want to know if I know about such a cache.”

Perry nodded. “Your dear ex was high up in Gauss’s security apparatus. If anyone other than Gauss himself was likely to know where something like that might be, it would probably have been him.”

“And you seem like the kind of woman who would have… followed her husband’s career closely,” Torina said.

Oleksa smiled at her. “Are you implying that I used sex as a means of extracting potentially useful information from my husband?”

Torina shrugged. “Yes, I am.”

Oleksa stared for a moment, then laughed. “Oh, I like you. Van—may I call you Van?—you’ve done well to convince this remarkable woman to betroth you. It speaks highly of you—which just makes the fact you’re unavailable sting that little bit more.”

“Tragic, I know. Did I mention this is my real hair?”

Oleksa sat up. “No need, I can tell about the authenticity of a man. And his virility,” she remarked in an idle way, then snapped another cartridge into her dispenser. After she filled the remains of her lungs, she began to speak, and this time, it was all business.

“It’s a section of that barge into which no one was allowed—not even him and his odious sidekick Kiswal. It’s in plain sight as well. I think that’s the part I like most. It’s right there, in the open.”

“Where?” I prodded.

Oleksa smiled. “What’s in it for me to tell you?”

“A valuable contribution to the pursuit of justice across the galaxy?” I said.

Her smile didn’t waver.

I sighed. “How about five percent of whatever value we realize from any of the material we find that we don’t have to seize as evidence and can instead claim as salvage?”

“Fifteen percent.”

“Ten.”

She sat back. “Fine. Oh, and I’d have settled for seven and a half.”

I shrugged back at her. “What can I say? I’m a soft touch for beautiful women.”

“Was that flirting? Because that sounded suspiciously like flirting,” Torina said.

I gave her a cool look. “Jealous?”

“Uh, no. Just intrigued by your technique. It seems to lean hard into heavy-handed cliché.”

Oleksa laughed a genuine laugh. “Oh, you are fortunate to have her, Peacemaker Trudeau.”

“Tudor. It’s Tudor.”

* * *

The Munificent had been stored in the TZ Arietis system, the same location as the Guild’s prison barge, The Hole. Ships that had been seized by the Guild were typically put into parking orbits here, which kept them out of the way but under the watchful scrutiny of AI security systems aboard The Hole itself.

There were currently eight ships stashed here, ranging from a lowly class 4 workboat to the sprawling glory of the Munificent, which plied a stately orbit around TZ Arietis like a spaceborne cathedral. I cleared our approach to the Munificent, which was technically under a Writ of Seal pending its disposition. However, I’d jointly claimed salvage rights on it with Essie, Lunzy, Lucky, Gabriella Santorini, Dugrop’che, and two other junior Peacemakers that had assisted us in taking the thing. That entitled me to inspect it, which I intended to do, hoping to use that as a means of breaking into Gauss’s hidden cache. My hope then was that we’d find something manifestly illegal, because if we did, we could seize it as evidence of crimes not yet indicted—in other words, new evidence of new crimes. If we didn’t, though, then we risked censure for violating the Seal, whose provisions only allowed us to inspect, not take anything.

It was a gamble, and one that rested on shaky legal ground even if we pulled it off, but one I was willing to take. I was pretty sure we’d find something incriminating in Gauss’s hidden treasure vault.

As we approached the Munificent, though, Netty abruptly painted a new icon onto the tactical display. Another ship had just appeared on our scanners.

“Who the hell is that?” I asked.

“Class 7, up-armored light freighter running without a transponder,” Netty said.

“Deeply suspicious,” Zeno said, her whiskers twitching in distrust.

“Netty, how did this ship get here without the security systems on The Hole detecting it?” I asked.

“Given the relative alignments of The Hole, the Munificent, and the system’s star, a really careful and really good pilot could emerge from behind the star and use the barge itself as cover for his approach.” As she spoke, she put the theoretical trajectory onto the overlay.

“Holy shit, that doesn’t leave much room for error,” Torina said.

“It is clever, though,” Netty-P added. “If done correctly, this ship could have matched velocity with the Munificent without even using its main drive. And it appears to have been done correctly.”

“Which means that somebody went through a lot of trouble to secretly get aboard the Munificent, presumably with bad intentions,” I replied.

“Up to and including scuttling her,” Perry noted.

I nodded. “Aw, hell—good point. Okay, Netty, take us in. They seem to have docked at that open bay at the far end of the barge. Let’s land right on top of them.”

“Off the top rope, boss,” Netty said as the engine thrummed with purpose.

* * *

Throughout our approach, I was ready for the class 7 to come to life, to make a break for it, start shooting us, or both. However, it did none of these things. As we coasted the last few klicks, then used the grav-plates and a few puffs of thrusters to brake to zero relative velocity with the Munificent, the intruding ship remained ominously silent. Torina and Zeno stayed vigilant and kept our weapons trained on it anyway. I wasn’t too worried about fighting the thing, if it came to it—we had it grossly outgunned. Moreover, its fire control scanners remained dark. Of course, they could aim weapons by eye at this blankest of point blank ranges, but their two visible laser batteries remained stowed in the travel position.

“Van, it looks like someone has left that ship and boarded the Munificent. It might explain why their ship is apparently dormant—it has no crew aboard,” Netty said.

I nodded. “Okay, then. Torina, you and Netty-P stay here and keep the motor running. The rest of us will go find out just who the hell these people are and what they’re doing here.”

“You know, if they’re connected to Gauss or BeneStar in any way, that would invalidate the Writ of Seal and there’d be no more restrictions regarding the Munificent,” Perry said.

“Awesome. Let’s hope they’ve got one of those connections then.”

“Oh, they will.”

I headed aft, checking my weapons as I went. “How can you be so sure?”

“Because we’ll find one. I mean, Gauss and BeneStar are pretty much connected to everything, everywhere, all the time.”

“I like the way you think, bird.”

“Devious and pushing the boundaries of the law as far as I can without actually breaking them?”

“Exactly.”

* * *

I expected to find a stealthy team of lethal operatives—mercenaries, maybe, or the agents known as Legalists employed by BeneStar’s corporate hit squad known as Human Resources. Something, anyway, other than what we actually found.

As we crept into the Munificent’s cavernous landing bay, having passed unimpeded through the airlock—we had the codes to access it—we found four people involved in—

Making a movie?

I left Zeno and Funboy to cover us, then advanced with Icky while Perry took to the air, taking advantage of the ten-meter-high overhead space to soar across the bay. Ahead of us, three figures with rifles were hamming it up for a fourth with a sophisticated recorder, striking poses apparently meant to be intimidating and chattering away to one another and, apparently, an audience. They had all the menace of a paintball team armed with throw pillows.

As soon as they saw us, the three armed figures turned to confront us, while the recorder turned to catch the action. His light glared in my face. My visor stepped it down, but it pissed me off anyway.

“Shut off that light or lose it, your choice,” I said, my suit speaker rattling my voice across the bay.

One of the armed figures stepped forward, brandishing his rifle in a way that was pretty much guaranteed to gun down one of his buddies. He was human.

“Who the hell are you?” he snapped.

“Peacemaker Tudor,” I replied, reading him my credentials. “Now, who the hell are you, and—shit, Zeno, can you do something about that light—”

A shot snapped out, neatly smacking the light off the recorder. The person operating it, a Gajur, swore and ducked.

“Thank you, Zeno,” I said, stopping a few paces away from the trio.

A second one, a Nesit, stepped forward. “We’re the Warr1orz.”

“But the ‘i’ is a 1,” the third of the armed figures, a Yonnox, put in.

“So you’re the war-one-ers?” Perry asked, swooping overhead.

“No—the Warr1orz, but—well, the ‘i’ is a 1—look, you have to see it written out—”

Over the next few moments, we were able to discern that this was a trio of so-called influencers who did a popular show for a reality network called Grim Works. Perry filled in the blanks over the comm, while he continued soaring overhead, keeping watch for something resembling actual trouble.

“Grim Works specializes in programming that’s dark and disturbing—tours of war zones, crime scenes, mass graves, that sort of thing,” he said.

I sighed in disgust. “Charming.”

“Oh, it gets even better. Grim Works is owned by a numbered holding company, which is in turn owned by a shell corporation that’s listed as a subsidiary to—you’re gonna love this—the BeneStar Enhancement Empire LLC.”

As that sunk in, I smiled, then grinned at the trio and their recorder. “Am I ever glad to see you guys here!”

“You… are?” the third, a synth, asked.

“Sure am. Thanks to you clowns breaching this ship, the Writ of Seal that had been put on it just went poof. That solves a major legal issue.”

The trio looked at one another, then drew themselves up and puffed out their chests. “Yeah, well, if you think—"

Icky growled and stepped forward. “Boss? If I beat these clowns into next week, will it make me a star? Or a villain?”

“Excellent question, and apparently not one they’ve—” I frowned as their weapons wobbled and swung around. “Yikes. Look at how they’re holding those rifles. Okay, we’ve definitely got to disarm you guys.”

“Yeah, you kids oughta drop those. You’ll shoot your eye out,” Perry said.

As soon as he said it, the Nesit raised his rifle into a menacing pose and fired at… something. Not one of us, anyway. A second later, another shot rang out and slammed into his rifle, knocking it out of his grip. He winced, yelped, and cringed back.

“Did you get that okay? How was the light? Want to do another take?” Zeno called out.

Funboy wandered forward, brandishing his wicked gun-knife-club-knuckles-thing. He stopped in front of the human and looked him up and down.

“Where did you get that armor? From a costumer?” he asked.

“Shut your breather, fuzznuts, before I show you just how hard this armor can hit someone,” the human snarled back.

Funboy stared for a moment, then simply said, “Please try.”

The man opened his mouth but slowly closed it again in the face of Funboy’s unchanging, mildly bemused expression.

The human yanked off his helmet, and things got even more absurd. Hair came cascading down over his shoulders, putting on a good display of a really bad wig. He made a last, desperate try to regain some glimmer of control over the situation.

“We’ve warned you. This barge belongs to BeneStar, so it’s our property to—"

As he spoke, I hit my limit of ha-ha and stepped forward to pop him in the nose with my fist. He stumbled back, squealing in pain, holding his nose with both hands and whimpering through them. “You—you just—my face! My endorsements!”

“You know,” Funboy said, “I once watched Icky—she’s the big one with the hammer and all those arms—anyway, I watched her literally knock a man’s head off with a swing of her hammer. I wouldn’t have thought she could so easily exceed the shear strength of human vertebrae, but there it was. Anyway, I would ask her to repeat the action, but I would prefer a peaceful surrender to avoid the omnidirectional release of fluids. Unless it’s mating season, of course.”

I sighed. “First of all, eww. Second, Funboy, could we not… you know. Time and place and all that.”

“It’s called dramatic effect. I’m playing to the camera.”

“Still, eww. And I’m an AI,” Perry said.

The Warr1orz tried to keep up with the bluster, but it ended in a crescendo of outraged howls, and then sullen silence as Icky smashed their recorder with repeated blows of her hammer. We waited until she was done.

“Feeling better?” I asked her.

“A little. Can we sell their ship? I bet it’s fancy.”

“We sure can. Netty, can you make a deal with their AI?”

“Already have. She hates these assholes, which is why she didn’t activate any weapons or send any warning when we arrived,” Netty replied.

“Oh. Okay, well, please send her my thanks.”

“I will. She’s quite nice, actually. She did local theater and got tired of playing the voice of a god, so she went into space and got saddled with this crew.”

“Local theater? An AI was doing theater?”

“Don’t be speciesist, Van. The differently intelligent can do entertainment. Wun-8—that’s the AI’s name—she’s got chops. She’s got range. She won’t be held down by the same roles over and over.”

Perry swept overhead. “Actors. Always want to be the center of attention. Unlike meeeee—”

“You’re the picture of reticence, bird. Alright, we’ll turn these idiots over to The Hole and let them ship them back to Anvil Dark to be processed. And then, boys, you’ll probably be sent right back here to The Hole—if it makes you feel better, you can consider the ‘l’ to be a 1. Zeno, will you pilot their ship?”

“All the way to the auction block, boss.”

“Now that’s teamwork. Noodle bar on me.”

Icky slung her hammer over her shoulder. “I hope their ship is worth a lot of money. Noodles always taste better when I don’t pay, and I’ve got a big appetite.”

* * *

“You know, Van, it seems kinda strange, doesn’t it, that the Enhancement Empire would sign off on those Warr1orz clowns coming to film aboard the Munificent?” Perry asked.

We’d reached Gauss’s treasure trove, a space immediately beneath the inner sanctum we’d found him in—which, in retrospect, should have been pretty obvious. It was still cunningly concealed, though, with a layer of actual machinery-space filled with snaking pipes and cables, ducts and conduits immediately above it.

I walked gingerly past one of the Munificent’s security bots. Steiber’s codes, given to us by his widow, still worked, allowing us to deactivate and bypass the myriad defensive systems instead of having to fight our way through them. Thanks to the intrusion of the Warr1orz, who were functionally BeneStar agents as far as the law was concerned, anything we found was fair game.

Which brought things back to Perry’s question. “Because it strips away the Writ of Seal?”

“Yeah.”

I examined the deck a few paces to the right of Gauss’s throne. “I imagine they didn’t expect to get caught. I mean, it was just dumb luck that we arrived shortly after they did, right?”

“Sure, but think about it. Why take the risk when the slightest error was going to blow the lid off it all? And for a stupid reality show?”

“What are you getting at, bird?”

“It’s almost like the Enhancement Empire wanted to get caught with their fingers in their cookie jar.”

I knelt and examined one of the deck plates. Oleksa had said to count to the right six plates, then count three more toward the stern of the barge. “Maybe the Enhancement folks didn’t know about it. I mean, it was something done by, what, a subsidiary of a subsidiary?”

“Maybe. But I find it hard to believe that anyone in that management chain would have wanted to wear it if things went wrong, so they’d be looking for sign-off as high as they could up the corporate ladder. Remember, managers want to get as many bloody fingerprints on the axe handle as they can, so they can at least share the blame around.”

I studied the deck plate. According to Oleksa, about halfway along the seam between it and the next plate to the right—

“So what’s the alternative? That the Empire LLC knew about it and let it go ahead anyway, because… they wanted to break the Seal of Writ on this tub? How does that benefit them?”

“I don’t know. It’s just… strange.”

“Well, we’ll just chalk it up—ah, there you are,” I said, cutting myself off. The seam between the two plates gaped a little wider in a spot. I extracted a thin strip of metal from a pouch on my harness, one that had been encoded with the data Oleksa had given us, much the same way as a credit card encodes data on its magnetic strip. It slipped into the gap, and there was a pause, then a click. The whole deck plate smoothly and silently rose, bringing structural trusses, lengths of cables and conduits, and other parts of the sub-deck with it. When it had lifted about a meter, it stopped, then slid just as smoothly to one side. Something else now rose out of the opening—a platform that stopped when it was flush with the deck. A button glowed on a small, raised console.

“Very Indiana Jones,” Perry said, landing on the edge of the platform. “All it’s missing is a golden idol and some snakes.”

* * *

Icky, Zeno, and Funboy arrived shortly after we’d called them in from scouting the surrounding compartments. I left Icky and Zeno up top, then stepped with Funboy and Perry onto the platform and pressed the button.

“Hope it’s not a trap,” Perry said as soon as I had. I turned and glared at him—

Then the platform sank into the deck.

It carried us down several meters and opened onto an expansive, low-ceilinged compartment that was full of—

I gaped for a moment, then shook my head.

“What did you say, bird, about golden idols?”

* * *

The haul was an impressive one. Works of art, cultural items from dozens of worlds, sundry antiquities, artifacts, books, scrolls—the list went on. We were going to have to bring in a team of cultural experts just to catalog it all.

“I suspect Oleksa Steiber is going to be a little disappointed. Most of this stuff needs to be returned to its right owners—” I said, then glared at one of the items. “Including that. Isn’t that a Van Gogh?”

“Yup. Sunflowers,” Perry said. “Specifically, the fourth version, on a yellow background, oil on canvas, held by the National Gallery in London, England.”

“I don’t suppose this is just a copy.”

“You’d suppose correctly. I think the National Gallery might be a little peeved that they aren’t displaying the original they thought they were.”

“Van? There’s something over here you should see,” Funboy called out. We joined him, to find him staring along racks like industrial shelving. They were full of grav-plating.

“Looks like we found Gauss’s secret stash of the plating he hadn’t sold off or used yet,” Perry said.

“Holy shit. There’s enough here to install on the Frankie and the Iowa—or, enough, at least, to install on the Iowa and improve her performance,” I said.

“Remember that Oleksa Steiber is entitled to ten percent of whatever value we realize from this stuff.”

I ran a gloved hand along a grav-plate. “Only if we actually sell it, though, right?”

“A woman scorned, Van. Do you really want Oleksa lumping you in with her dead husband?”

“I would recommend against it,” Funboy said. “I believe we have enough enemies for the time being, don’t you?”

“Hmm. Well, ex-wife of mercenary thug would definitely be a new one, but yeah, I suppose you’re right.” I called Icky and Zeno down to help us root through the vast trove we’d found of… stuff. There was no other word for it. It was a horde of stuff. Gauss had pillaged treasures from dozens of worlds, either himself or by proxy. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he didn’t do what other thieves of art and cultural artifacts did with them and put them on display. He just jammed them down here, his secret basement beneath the throne room of his palatial lair.

It told me a lot about the man named Helem Gauss. He wanted to own things solely for the sake of owning them. It was a breathtakingly shallow, toxically narcissistic view of the world that shouldn’t really surprise me, at this point, but still somehow did.

“Van, I’ve done a quick scan, and I mean quick, and there has to be at least two thousand individual pieces of art and artifacts down here—including a few from Earth. Back that way,” Perry said, pointing a wing, “I found the Crown Jewels of Ireland, stolen from Dublin Castle in 1907, and over that way, what I’m pretty sure are the fossilized remains of Peking Man, which disappeared during the fighting between Japan and China in 1941.”

“Holy shit. How the hell do we return those to their rightful owners without, you know, raising an awful lot of tough questions?”

“Stash them somewhere they could logically be found, I guess—”

Icky joined us. “Van, Zeno and I have been looking over those grav-plates. We think those big ones near the back will fit the Iowa just fine. But based on what we know about the tech, there’s an out-of-proportion increase to their effect when they’re powered that’s something like eight or nine to one for each doubling in size. So those plates back there, about six times the size of the ones on the Fafnir, are each going to be something like one hundred times stronger in their effect for the same amount of power.”

“I’ll say it again—holy shit.”

Zeno nodded. “Right? If we could figure out how to make them, it would change spaceflight entirely.”

“It sure would. But Gauss used the resources of BeneStar to try for decades, and all he ever managed were half-assed copies with nowhere near the efficiency or longevity,” Perry put in.

I looked around. “Wait. If those plates are six times the size of the ones mounted on the Fafnir, how are we—”

“Going to get them out of here? Way ahead of you, boss,” Zeno said, pointing. “Down there is an airlock the size of a shuttle hangar. Based on the schematics, we think it opens into the side of one of the Munificent’s main landing bays.”

“Okay, then. The grav-plates are ours. Perry, go through and find whatever else we could reasonably claim as salvage—basically, anything with only monetary value—”

“Like money? Because there’s a fair bit of that, too.”

“Uh—yeah, like money. We’ll give ten percent of that to Oleksa, which should keep her happy. As for the rest, we’ll leave it to the cultural folks, they can figure out where it belongs.”

“Van, you kinda missed what I was saying about those grav-plates for the Iowa,” Icky said. “If we mount all of the big ones on her, she’s going to gain a huge performance boost—maybe more than the Conoku can handle, like we were talking about before.”

She sounded worried about the Conoku, with whom she’d become close friends. I put a hand on one massive, hairy bicep.

“Don’t worry, big girl, we’ll take care of our Conoku.”

“By taking them to Earth somehow?”

“By taking them to Earth.”

Perry clicked his tongue. “Yeah, this I gotta see.”

15

Installation of the grav-plating on the Frankie was a sedate and simple process. Her diminutive power plant could only power three of the smaller plates, so that was all we installed. Icky and Zeno had crafted better, more reliable mounts, based on what we’d learned from using the plates on the Fafnir, so it was pretty much plug and play—park the Frankie a few klicks from the Iowa in Sol’s Kuiper Belt, affix the mounts, attach the plates, and hook them into the workboat’s power and control systems. It took Icky, Zeno, and Funboy about three hours total, the lack of gravity itself making it somewhat ironically easier to handle the plates.

The Iowa was a different matter.

First, the plates were far bulkier. And while they might weigh nothing, their mass was still pretty formidable. Per Mr. Newton and his laws, once you started them heading in one direction, it was a chore to get them to change direction or stop. And the mounts, which Icky had to upscale from the smaller versions she’d designed for the Fafnir and had fabricated during a stopover on Anvil Dark, were pretty damned massive themselves. We had to use the Frankie as a sort of tug to maneuver all of this stuff into position, one piece at a time. I missed the YardCraft, the nimble little AI-controlled construction and maintenance drones we’d borrowed from Zeno’s family, and considered getting a couple for permanent storage and use aboard the Iowa. Everything about her was big, so it was probably a good idea.

The other issue, though, was the Conoku. True to form, they were desperately anxious to assist, and while more hands—or claws—might make light work, that was only true if they were all working in something resembling concert. The Conoku who Icky chose to assist her, despite being the ones she considered the most calm, still bickered, fumbled over one another, and generally got in everyone’s way, including their own.

I sat in the cockpit of the Fafnir with Torina, parked a couple of hundred meters away, listening on the comm.

“You have to mount that strut first!”

“No I don’t. Icky said to mount the traverse ones first, right, Icky?”

“Yes, I did.”

“But if we mount the longitudinal ones first, it’ll be easier to align them—hey, stop grabbing my strut!”

“It’s not yours, it belongs to the Iowa.”

“It belongs to Icky!”

“Nuh-uh, it belongs to Van!”

“Icky—!”

I muted the comm and turned to Torina. “How the hell do they manage to accomplish even the simplest tasks, much less crew a warship?”

“Well, I’d say it’s because under all of that bickering and infighting, there’s a strong bond of family—an extended family, at that, since we haven’t just got Linulla's kids on the Iowa, but some from other Conoku—uh, broods? Litters? Anyway, whatever they call groups of their young.”

“I suppose.” I watched the Conoku clambering over the Iowa’s hull, jostling one another and the suited figures of Icky, Zeno, and Funboy. Netty-P watched from a short distance away, taking measurements of the plates as they were installed to ensure they were aligned correctly.

I sat back. “I don’t think we’d get away with doing quite so hands-off a job of raising our kids as the Conoku do theirs.”

“So you do want to have kids.”

“I, uh—yeah, I suppose. Maybe not a dozen at a time like the Conoku do—”

“Oh, I can guarantee you that’s not happening,” Torina put in.

I laughed, then shrugged. “But, yeah, I’d like to have kids. Not just yet, though. I mean, with this job? Do we add a nursery module to the Fafnir? Leave the kids on Helso or Earth and let some nanny raise them? I don’t know about you, but I don’t find either of those things appealing.”

Torina shook her head. “No, neither do I.”

We sat back and watched as the grav-plates were laboriously mounted on the Iowa. Or, at least, I looked in her general direction while it was being done. What I was seeing, though, was a future with kids of my own.

Except, was I really? Sure, I couldn’t see Torina and I bringing kids into the universe while we were streaking through space to engage in warfare and law enforcement—or both at once. But when would we stop doing that?

Maybe a better and more depressing question was, would we ever stop doing that?

* * *

Icky sat back and scowled at her data slate, then sighed and put the results she’d collected from the Iowa’s flight test on the Fafnir’s galley display. She drummed a finger on her big square teeth, her face a shifting story of deep thought.

“With those plates running at eighty percent power, the Iowa has twelve percent better acceleration than with them powered off. And if they’re run at full power, it’s more like twenty-two percent,” she said.

“That’s excellent!—is what I’d be saying if you didn’t look so glum about it, Icky. What’s the matter?” I asked her.

“It’s not the tech. It’s the crew. Like we expected, the Conoku are having trouble dealing with her better performance. They’d pretty much redlined themselves and their abilities working on the Iowa before now. This performance boost is just too much for them to handle,” she replied, putting a new graph on the screen.

“This is from Betty—her name choice, not mine—Netty’s twin aboard the Iowa. It’s a graph of crew performance measured as reaction time versus changes in acceleration and trajectory before the plates were added. It’s pretty much a straight line, right?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

She tapped her slate, and the graph changed to one that rose as a straight line, started to flatten, peaked, and then plunged back toward the horizontal axis of the graph. “This is after the plates were added. The Conoku just can’t keep up with what the Iowa’s now capable of doing, and it gets worse the more her performance increases.”

Netty spoke up. “I’d add here that I—or, Betty, actually, but since we’re co-located with the Iowa, we’re effectively in complete sync—have tried to smooth out the Conoku’s performance as a crew, but it quickly gets to the point where I’m effectively controlling the Iowa myself. That kind of defeats the point of having a crew in the first place and also treads dangerously close to some legal lines regarding AIs and the use of lethal force, particularly since the Iowa isn’t technically a Guild ship.”

“A few of the Conoku, including Cantullin, tend to freeze up completely,” Icky said, shaking her head. “It’s something called, uh—” She looked at Funboy.

“It is called spiralicon, and it’s a Conoku-specific neurological issue,” he said.

I crossed my arms. “Spiralicon.”

“That’s correct. It’s an anxiety disorder that occurs when a Conoku is subjected to too many stimuli and too much information too quickly. It effectively paralyzes them. It’s actually rare among the Conoku, but it would appear that the conditions involved here have dramatically exacerbated the problem.”

“So how did they manage to avoid it so far? They’ve been handling the Iowa like a racing sloop until now,” Torina said. “What’s changed?”

“By stretching their capacity to receive information, react to it, and implement decisions and actions based on it to the limit before the improvements in the Iowa’s performance, they have basically calibrated themselves. In other words, they’ve established an upper limit for their performance, and now we’re asking them to exceed it,” Funboy replied.

“Ouch. Okay, so is there a solution?” I asked.

“There is. The most certain therapy, the one most likely to succeed in recalibrating them, as it were, would be an extended period of what amounts to sensory deprivation, including dramatically restricted movements.”

“How extended?”

“Months, certainly. Perhaps a year.”

Torina shook her head. “That sounds like torture. Wouldn’t they be more likely to just go insane?”

“That is a possibility. So is death.” Funboy blinked. “Although death really isn’t a possibility, it’s ultimately a certainty—”

“Yeah, yeah, we get it, you morbid little creature, we’re all going to die,” I said.

“Eventually, yes.”

“Until then, though, is there any other way of, uh, recalibrating the Conoku? You said that sensory deprivation is the most certain way, but that implies there are others,” Zeno put in.

“There is another, although I hesitate to describe it,” Funboy said.

I narrowed my eyes on him. “Why? How bad is it?”

“It’s not that it’s bad. It’s more… silly.”

I sighed. “Icky had a second puberty that required medication, nerdy speed-dating, and a leather kilt. I’m more than okay with silly if it fixes their mindset about combat flight in the new and improved Iowa.”

“Motion-induced hysteria,” Funboy said.

“Excuse me?”

“Motion-induced hysteria. They have to experience extreme emotions while being subjected to high accelerations—and the more extreme and contradictory, the better. Happiness, terror, rage, it doesn’t really matter, as long as its as many emotions as possible taken to their extremes. A sort of contradictory emotional soup.”

“While moving.”

“While moving a lot. And fast. And slowly. And fast again. And then—”

I smiled. “I get it. And that cures them?”

“Cure isn’t really the right term. Rather, it allows them to effectively recalibrate their neurological performance to a new baseline. At least, it does in about eighty percent of cases, it would seem, based on my research,” Funboy said. “Sensory deprivation is more certain at over ninety percent, assuming they survive it, of course.”

I shook my head. “I’ll send them all back home and figure out another way to crew the Iowa before I subject those Conoku kids to months of sensory deprivation. Besides, this motion-induced hysteria fits in perfectly with that idea I had when we first started talking about the Conoku and the souped-up Iowa.”

Perry, who’d been perched on the coffee maker listening, muttered, “Here it comes.”

I turned to him. “Stealing my thunder, bird?”

“You want to take the Conoku to Iowa, don’t you?”

I frowned. “Iowa? Don’t be absurd. There’s no way I’d take them to Iowa.”

Perry stared at me. “Oh. Then I’m not sure what you’re thinking—”

“I’m going to take them to Florida,” I said, smiling broadly.

Perry bobbed his head.

“There it is.”

* * *

What struck me was the silence. It didn’t seem right for the Conoku to be so quiet. But they stood gathered around me in the Iowa’s cargo bay, the largest open space on the ship, morose and hushed. I heard a few mutters and saw a few jostles, but the vibrant energy I’d come to associate with the chitinous crowd was noticeably not there. The rest of the Fafnir’s crew, standing in the back, could clearly feel it, too. Icky looked especially worried.

I raised my hands, “Okay, everyone, listen up. I know you’re upset about how things have gone with the upgrades to the Iowa. You’re having problems keeping up with them. That’s not surprising, really, given how you maxed yourselves out running her before the upgrades. So, we’re going to fix that.”

Cantullin, near the front, raised a claw. “How, though, Captain Van? We’ve tried. We can’t. Maybe you need a better crew—”

More mutters and gloomy agreements rippled through the Conoku. I shook my head emphatically.

“I don’t want a different crew. I want you guys. So what I want to do is help you be better.”

“But how?” Cantullin asked again.

“How is what I’m about to explain. See, I have a proposition for you. I know you’re all struggling with the Iowa’s change in performance. Well, I have a… a cure, I guess. It’s going to require some work, though. And a trip.”

A wave of tension tightened the crowd. “What kind of work?” one called out.

“A trip to where?” another shouted.

“Well, the work is a repair job. It’ll probably take a couple of days, working at some dangerous heights—and inside a gravity well, so they’re heights from which you can actually, you know, fall,” I replied.

The tension ratcheted up, edging toward excitement. They were intrigued but wary.

A claw waved. “Then what, CaptainVanTudorrrrr?”

“Then, we use the device you’ve repaired. Repeatedly. And that leads us to the taking a trip part. We have to go to Earth, to a place called Florida. It’s one of the states in the United States of America, like Iowa—only a lot wetter.”

“What is in Florida, Captain Van?” one of the Conoku asked.

“A man,” Perry said, and I glanced at him.

He shrugged.

“There’s an abandoned amusement park there, a place where people went to do all sorts of fun stuff. The thing you’re going to fix is there, and you’ll work mostly at night, if you even see the sun at all. In the unlikely event I expose you to, um… Florida… then you’ll probably have to wear protective masks and some sun protection on your upper carapaces. I’m not bringing you back looking like cooked—uh—”

“Careful, Van, they’re not lobsters,” Perry said.

“Yes, I know. Lobsters don’t normally crew spacecraft and usually aren’t brilliant engineers. Anyway, the sun protection is a must, and Funboy tells me that you’ll need the masks to filter out certain atmospheric pollutants, particularly volatile organic compounds. We burn a lot of hydrocarbons on Earth.”

“Why?” Cantullin asked.

“To power our vehicles and produce electricity.”

The Conoku all muttered at that. One of them raised a claw.

“Why don’t you—?”

I raised my own hands. “We could spend all day here discussing the reasons humans on Earth do some of the things they do, and you wouldn’t understand them because, hell, I don’t understand them. The point is that we’re going to this amusement park to help you, well, recalibrate yourselves to the Iowa’s new performance envelope. And I think you’ll have a good time doing it.”

“What are we going to repair, Captain Van?”

“It’s called The Screamer.”

The Conoku buzzed with anxious energy, and one of them called out, “What’s the Screamer?”

“It’s a roller coaster. A big one. And you’re going to love it.”

* * *

In South Central Florida sprawls Pirate’s World, a one-time bustling theme park set amid a rambling series of subdivisions. It was a growing concern until around 2000, when its financing started to fray—diminishing attendance in favor of other bigger, more modern parks elsewhere in Florida, combined with the failure and bankruptcy of the area’s largest employer, a sugar company, finally did it in. And while the place had fallen into the expected disrepair over the years, an abortive attempt to refurbish the place and take another stab at operating it in 2015 meant that parts of it were still more or less operational.

And that included the Screamer, a roller coaster that peaked at fifty meters, followed by a forty-eight meter drop. I knew it had been run and certified in 2015, but the attempt to resurrect the park had failed before the first guest arrived. So there it sat, still reasonably intact and, hopefully, only in need of the sort of TLC that a swarm of Conoku could provide.

My crew, and Torina and Perry in particular, were uneasy about the whole idea.

“Van, you’re talking about bringing a bunch of rambunctious alien crustaceans down to the middle of Florida and taking them for rides on a roller coaster. Doesn’t that smack of, oh, I don’t know—a breaking news kind of thing?” Perry asked.

Torina nodded. “You might be about to create a really… um, unique first contact situation, Van. Are you sure you want to risk that?”

Despite the gravity of their concerns, I had to smirk. The idea that mankind’s first hard contact with aliens came in the form of a bunch of sentient crabs waving their claws and shrieking as they plunged over the hump of a roller coaster in Florida was kind of charming, actually. Breaking news was probably right.

Even Zeno was wary. “Couldn’t we just load them aboard some high-performance ship and subject them to all sorts of high-g maneuvers with the inertial dampers dialed down a couple of notches?”

I shook my head. “Funboy has been consulting with Linulla, and through him with Conoku physicians. The whole point of them racing their fast little ships as part of their coming of age is to do what we’re trying to do here. There needs to be an actual element of danger for this to be effective. And as risky as this is, having the Conoku refurbish this roller coaster is going to let them see how primitive the technology is. It’s only going to be as good as the fixes they make to it, and when they ride it, they’ll have absolutely no control.”

“The risk of getting caught and the necessity of avoiding it will also add to the psychological stress they’ll experience,” Funboy put in.

Icky grinned at him. “I wanna see you ride this thing.”

Funboy looked up at her. “Frankly, I’d be far less worried about doing that than breathing the air on Earth. At least a death from the failure of this amusement device will be relatively quick and painless, and not the lingering, painful one of progressive respiratory failure.”

“You’ve got fun written all over you, don’t you?”

“Actually, by Surtsi standards, I am considered quite adventurous.”

Perry shook his head. “Imagine if we had a bunch of Funboy’s people doing this. A throng of Surtsi, all whipping around on the Screamer in morbid silence, like a bunch of mannequins.”

I curled my lip at the image. “That’d be… creepy as hell.”

“Right?”

* * *

For obvious reasons, I made the wise decision that we would work at night.

Actually, it was Torina’s decision, but I felt incredibly wise echoing it, and the horde of Conoku seemed relieved to avoid what had become an ominous enemy—the Floridian sun. I regaled them with tales of French Canadians who blistered their pale feet, and was rewarded with a mass agreement that nighttime was best for Floridian Coaster Engineering.

We ferried the Conoku to Earth jammed aboard the Fafnir and the Frankie, making the flight from the Iowa to Florida one of the most uncomfortable I’d ever made—and that included the long, boring family road trips I’d made as a kid. At least the car hadn’t been packed with a restless mass of carapaces and claws all constantly bitching and bickering.

“Van, how much longer?”

“About four hours.”

“Four hours? How come it’s taking so long?”

“It’s taking as long as it takes—”

“You said it was four and a half hours a long time ago!”

“Yes, I did—half an hour ago.”

A brief, merciful pause would follow, only to be punctuated by—

“Van—!”

If the Fafnir had a steering wheel, I’d be white-knuckling it about the time we crossed Saturn’s orbit.

We finally reached Earth and, after making sure our various stealth systems were operational, descended to Florida in the dead of night. We did a careful inspection of Pirate’s World to make sure that no one was around who might complicate things, but thermal imaging showed nothing but miscellaneous birds and wildlife. There were some alligators lurking around a pond on the east side of the park, but they should be far enough away to not bother us, or us them. I did give the Conoku a stern warning to not leave the immediate vicinity of the Screamer, though, noting that Perry would be airborne and watching.

“And anyone who breaks any of these rules is getting loaded back aboard the Fafnir, will stay there for as long as we’re in Florida, and will be off the Iowa’s crew and sent back to Starsmith. Is everyone clear about that?” I said.

The Conoku were uncharacteristically somber, just quietly signaling their understanding. None of them wanted to be kicked off the Iowa, so the threat of it happening was probably our best way of ensuring they behaved.

“Okay, masks on, everyone, then we’ll crack the airlock and get started.”

I waited for the Conoku to pile excitedly out of the Fafnir when the airlock finally cycled open, but they disembarked in a surprisingly orderly way, then fanned out, taking in their surroundings.

Netty-P moved up beside me. “Is it just me, or are they behaving themselves?”

I watched as one Conoku pinched a sibling, then pretended to be innocent of the offense. Sighing, I shook my head. “It’s you.”

16

“Behold, the only nuclear-powered roller coaster in history!” Perry proclaimed.

“It will be. If they can finish it,” I admitted, watching as the Conoku boiled over the coaster with fevered glee. We were on the first night of work, and changes were happening by the hour.

“They can,” Torina assured me. As one of the Conoku chittered at an iguana—which wisely ran like hell—she paused, lifted a brow, and grinned. “Maybe.”

I studied the Screamer, using my helmet visor’s low-light vision. We wanted to avoid visible light—again, for obvious reasons, since the abandoned park was otherwise completely unlit, aside from the odd security light here and there—and, fortunately, the Conoku had an impressive ability to see in the dark.

“I don’t know about that, Perry. The one in that fairground at Pripyat, near Chernobyl, could be considered nuclear powered. At least, it’s probably still glowing,” I said.

“Don’t you think it’s too soon for Chernobyl jokes, boss?”

“That happened over thirty-five years ago, Perry. I think we’re in the clear, especially considering it’s going to be glowing for another thousand years or so.”

The Conoku had done good work from the first moment. They’d been surprisingly nervous about working at heights, considering their boisterous, enthusiastic approach to everything else, but Funboy declared that a good thing.

“The more unsettling this is for them, the better,” he announced.

And, to their credit, they hadn’t let their skittishness about heights hold them back. I hailed Cantullin, who was the unofficial leader of the brood.

“What do you think now, Cantullin?” I asked.

“This thing’s a deathtrap, Captain Van,” Cantullin declared without hesitation.

“Welcome to the concept of the lowest bidder. Not to mention it’s been sitting for about ten years without anyone maintaining it,” I replied. “The question is, can you fix it, make it operational again? Seems like you’re almost there.”

“Can we—? Captain Van, any one of us could tune a fusion power plant or replace a broken structural spar. I think we got this,” she replied, her tone a distinct one of duh.

“Off you go, then. You’ve got about six hours until the sun starts to come up, and we’ll all have to get under cover.”

“Okay, Captain Van. Cantullin out.” The Conoku skittered aside and began issuing orders again, leaving us to stare in wonder at the sheer energy of it all.

“What do we do at dawn?” Torina asked.

I looked up into the dark sky, inhaling the damp air. It was warm, and fragrant, and clean. “We don’t risk it. Shuttles up, deep orbit, and no questions. If I’m any kind of gambler, they’ll have this thing ready by two hours after we land tomorrow night.”

Funboy made a note on his slate. “I concur.”

I cut my eyes at him. “You concur? No warnings of death? Disease?”

“I don’t like repeating myself.”

“I appreciate your brevity. Now then, I’m going to investigate this large beach chair for the next couple hours. Funboy, you have the watch. Do keep the beasties away while I… contemplate the weight of command?”

“I will. Round them up one hour before dawn?” Funboy asked.

“Perfect. Torina, have you experienced the magic of napping while other people work?” I asked.

She snorted. “Of course not. I’m not a Warrant Officer. I could be persuaded, though.”

“Excellent. See? Florida really is where the fun never sets.” We sprawled in the two-person chair as the Conoku engaged in engineering of such speed and activity that even Funboy had to sit down, and then the first gray fingers of dawn began to crawl upward in the eastern skies.

Netty woke me on the comm. “Coming down, boss. Get the kids lined up, shoes on, please.”

“Good luck with that. Torina, let’s load ’em up. We can hear about the progress on the trip.”

Torina rubbed bleary eyes but quickly came alive when she saw the changes Conoku engineering produced in one warm, humid night. “They don’t screw around, do they?”

Icky was impressed. “They didn’t stop. At all. I’m tired from watching them.”

“We’ll have chow, showers, and more sleep in orbit. Call the herd, Icky. It’s time for our lift.”

Icky bellowed like a foghorn, and the Conoku responded in a clattering frenzy that made termites seem like narcoleptics.

“That was… fast,” Icky said, looking out over the massed Conoku.

“We’re fast. We also like to go fast!” Cantullin declared.

“Um. Okay. Saddle up. We spend the day in orbit, then back here for therapy,” I said.

“Training, boss. Training,” Perry said.

“Right. Okay—everyone, in a line. We’re going up.”

* * *

We came back to Florida, and within hours, The Screamer was a far different piece of machinery.

After landing and spreading out to pick up where they’d left off, the Conoku accelerated their work and reached a crescendo of clanging, sparking, and chittering that rivaled anything I’d ever seen before.

It was a mob. But… with tools.

They’d studiously checked, tightened, and in some places reinforced its structure, made sure that its rails were properly aligned along their entire length, and rigorously inspected and tuned up the coaster train itself. Finally, they’d hooked up the electrical system to a portable fission battery and ran the train around empty, testing it.

I nodded in satisfaction as the train clattered to the top of the highest peak of the coaster, then swept smoothly down and thrummed along through a loop, multiple curves, a helical spiral, and a few more steep drops. It was surprisingly quiet, the clatter I’d come to expect from coasters muted and, along the straight stretches, almost entirely gone. I remarked on that to Cantullin.

“We’ve improved it. The tolerances before we rebuilt it were—did I mention it was a deathtrap?”

“Lowest bidder and minimum wage staff overseeing the thing,” Perry noted.

“Okay, we’re not going to run you guys through it tonight. I want everyone to get a good rest, and we’ll start sending you guys through it tomorrow as soon as it gets dark,” I said.

Torina, standing nearby, spoke up. “Van, we’ve got at least four hours until sunrise—”

I took her hand and gave it a short, meaningful squeeze. “Let’s leave it until tomorrow,” I said, then moved closer to Torina and lowered my voice. “Funboy says that a day of nervous anticipation will be good for this whole exercise—which, remember, is not just about sending a bunch of anthropomorphic crabs on a roller coaster ride.”

“What will we do then, Captain Van?” Cantullin asked. The Conoku waited for my answer, utterly silent.

I made a show of thinking. “I guess you could… explore the park?”

The response was chaos. Before I could issue any warnings, Conoku hurtled in every direction with a speed that left me stunned.

“Um, come back before dinner?” I managed to say into the relative silence.

“That was… very youthful,” Zeno remarked. She’d been watching the Conoku with maternal intent, her head twitching in all directions as they scattered.

“They’re going to be fine,” I assured her. “Let’s wander and check on them, but… discreetly.”

Relief colored her expression, and she gave me a look of gratitude. “Let’s.”

We ambled around while the Conoku streaked about with an energy that made me reconsider fatherhood. They left no attraction unturned, and by walking to each location, we were able to keep an eye—more or less—on some, if not all of the young engineers.

The Funhouse was a hit. Of all things inside it, the wacky distorted mirrors became an instant favorite of all the Conoku. I looked in on them to see one of them hamming it up in front of a mirror for her companions.

“Look! Now I’m shaped like a Nesit, but without the arrest warrants!”

I found another group playing arcade basketball, having reinflated several balls they’d found and throwing them with several arms at once. They made a striking number of baskets but weren’t impressed with the old stuffed toy they’d found jammed behind the counter, which I’d told them was one of the prizes.

“But it’s so easy!” Cantullin said, swishing a ball while talking to me and pointing at the tattered, stuffed—bear, I think—with a free claw. “And all to win that? It’s only got four legs. On our homeworld, the only things with four legs are livestock.”

“Well, here on Earth, bears are ferocious predators. Mind you, they usually don’t wear bowler hats and sweaters like this guy,” I replied, picking up the toy. I offered it to her. “Here, consider this your prize.”

I heard Torina hiss in a breath as soon as I’d said it. I realized my mistake just a fraction of second later as a chorus of complaints went up from the other Conoku.

“Vaaaan, how come she gets a prize—?”

* * *

By noon the next day, I was starting to think we were going to get through this without any risk of discovery. Nobody seemed interested in the abandoned park, and no one came near enough to cause any concerns. Frankly, my biggest issue was adventuresome kids sneaking into the place, or maybe some of the so-called urban explorers who liked visiting and documenting things like run-down amusement parks. Perry remained on station high above, wheeling around and keeping an eye on every approach to the park, which was how we were alerted to our first potential encounter with the locals.

“Van, there’s a pickup stopping at the locked gate out on the main road. One guy’s getting out—and he’s got a key. He’s opening the gate,” Perry said.

I’d just settled into my bunk in the Fafnir for a nap, so I sat up and cursed, then grabbed my shoes and stuffed my feet into them. “Any idea who it is?”

“Yup, it’s painted on the truck. Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, Division of Habitat and Species Conservation. He’s driven his truck into the parking lot—and he’s closing and locking the gate behind him. Very diligent of him.”

“How far away is he?”

“Well, assuming he parks as close to the park’s main gate as he can—and, seriously, why wouldn’t he, the parking lot is empty—then if he were to walk straight to you, I’d give it maybe ten minutes.”

“Okay. I’ll fetch Torina. Time to test our acting skills.”

* * *

“So we’re the rich assholes again, right?” Torina asked.

I nodded as we rounded the corner and saw the man from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission ahead, peering into a drainage ditch. When he saw us, he shaded his eyes and watched us approach.

“Hello there,” he said. “What are you two doing here?”

I extended a hand. “Van Milon, and this is my wife Torina,” I said, smiling expectantly.

The man, middle-aged with a thin mustache, stared. “I’m sorry—”

“Milon. You know. The Fafnir Corporation? Our hydrogen car is about to go live in the market. I’m sure you’ve signed up. Everyone has. Love those early numbers, right, babe?”

“You know it. Suck it, Tesla,” Torina said with a smug grin.

“Oh, uh—”

I turned to Torina with a conspiratorial look. “Torina, my dear, I think we’ve found the one man in all of America who’s never heard of us.”

Torina laughed with practiced ease, managing to be amused and condescending at once.

The wildlife officer shuffled his feet. “Sorry, I don’t really know, you know, electric cars all that well.”

“Hydrogen, friend, and—heh, obviously, if you’ve never heard of the Fafnir. That waiting list for the first—oh, how many was it now, Torina darling? The first thousand off the assembly line?”

“Over thirty-eight thousand when I checked with our people in, uh, Helsinki this morning.”

I winced, and the wildlife officer frowned. “Helsinki?”

“Finland.” I leaned forward in a conspiratorial way. “It’s for the tax breaks.”

“Ah. So what are you folks doing here?”

“We’re inspecting the property. We’re considering buying it, maybe reopening it.”

“For our children,” Torina added.

The man stared. “You’re going to buy a theme park. For your kids.”

“Well, not just them, obviously,” I said.

Torina nodded. “Of course not. They’d be able to invite their friends.” She glanced around. “Are there mosquitoes here? Tanner and Blakelynn simply can’t be exposed to them. Vicious little creatures.”

“Uh… alright, then.” He glanced back toward the parking lot. “How did you get in here, anyway? The gate was locked, and I had to get the key from the security company—”

“Helicopter,” I said. “We had it drop us off, then sent the pilot off to have lunch. He’ll be back—ah, soon.” I decided to switch the subject from us to him. “And what about yourself? Is there dangerous wildlife around here we should be worried about?”

“Well, there are alligators on the east side of the park, so I’d stay away from there. Otherwise, I’m just here to check up on some invasive species.”

“Invasive species? Really?”

The man nodded, suddenly enthusiastic. He probably didn’t get much chance to talk about his job to people and seized the opportunity. “That’s right. Florida has a bunch of them. This month, I’m doing battle with cichlids. Last month was piranha. Never a dull moment in the water around here.”

“Really? Is it warm enough for them around here?”

“We’d have to get a hard freeze to kill them off, and this is Florida. So, until then, it’s like the Amazon around here, but with a Starbucks every two miles,” the man said, and we all laughed.

We let him prattle on about his invasive species but were able to suss out that his inspection wouldn’t take him near the Screamer or the grounded ships. We finally disengaged with him to say we were going to look at the roller coaster before our helicopter returned.

“Keep an eye out for the Fafnir when it hits the market. Make it your next car!” I said, pointing at him.

“I… will, sure!” he replied, utterly insincere, then headed off to look into more ponds and ditches.

“Perry, keep an eye on him,” I said, then turned to Torina. “Helsinki? Really? And we’re buying this place for our kids?”

She shrugged. “Helsinki was the first city I thought of. And as for the kid thing—well, if we’re going to play entitled assholes, we might as well enjoy it, right?”

* * *

That night, warm and muggy with the rich smell of soil and foliage, we fired up the Screamer and loaded the Conoku aboard it. Their screams and laughter were music to me, but they underscored the fact that we’d have to get the hell out of here before dawn. In the still, humid air, the noise would carry and might bring people to investigate.

Which was going to uncover a fascinating mystery, one where someone had snuck into the park, refurbished an abandoned roller coaster and made it even better than it had been, ridden it once, and then vanished. Of course, the vanished part was key. As the Conoku took turns shrieking their way around the coaster, I called up Perry.

“You’re sure you found all the security cameras, right?”

His voice hummed back over the comm. “Sure did. Netty-P and I confirmed that the only cameras are on the gates, and since we’ve never been anywhere near them, the only thing they’ll have seen is Officer Invasive Species coming and going. Of course, he did get a pretty good look at you and Torina.”

“Bah. Eyewitness descriptions are unreliable. As long as we didn’t get caught on cameras, we should be good.”

Torina laughed as another load of Conoku came plunging over the top of the coaster, waving their claws and screaming into the night. Icky went with them this time, waving all four arms and bellowing with glee.

“It’s scaryvelous!” Torina said.

I grinned at her. “That’s a good description of being with you, too. I mean, Helsinki? Really?”

She laughed and kissed my shoulder. “Was that supposed to be a compliment or an insult?”

I just smiled at her, then turned to Funboy, who was standing nearby.

“Funboy, what do you think?”

“The ultraviolet and infrared emissions from Sol, combined with the moisture content of the atmosphere, have been alarmingly close to fatal. There are enough plant-based pollutants to clog the breath pipe of a mature ornix, not to mention the near-toxic levels of partially combusted hydrocarbons. Your species has detonated enough nuclear weapons to contaminate the air with worrying amounts of cesium-137 and strontium-90, among other dangerous radionuclides. Worst of all, Icky spews who knows what into the night every time she laughs like”—he pointed as she bellowed again—“that, while riding a conveyance described by a race of engineer savants as a death trap.”

“So I gather Florida is officially off your vacation list.”

Funboy paused a moment, then looked at me. “Actually, I am intrigued by the place known as Disney World. I’ve done background research and would be interested in visiting Cinderella’s Castle. It’s my understanding that they serve a pressed dairy product known as butter in the shape of mouse ears. I find that adorable.”

“Really?”

“To reiterate, I am quite adventurous for a Surtsi, Van.”

“He does kinda look like a giant chipmunk,” Perry observed. “Maybe he could pass as a mascot.”

“I believe we could make it work, and as I’m sure you know, I am a delight around children due to my relentlessly cheerful nature. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am going to experience the so-called Screamer,” Funboy said.

I stared in surprise. “Seriously?”

“What part of adventurous don’t you understand?”

* * *

Of all my many memories of taking the Conoku to Pirates World, the sight of Funboy sitting impassively in the coaster as it whipped around the track was the one that would probably stick with me the longest. He could have been a mannequin. As he disembarked, Torina and I both waited for his reaction.

He stopped and blinked at us, waved his fingertips with minimal effort, and said, “Wheee.”

The Conoku, on the other hand, were vibrating with excitement as we bundled them back aboard the Fafnir and the Frankie. Netty-P scanned them as we did, then she and Funboy examined the results and declared it a favorable outcome.

The Conoku were more emphatic.

“Get us back to the Iowa, Captain Van! We are so ready to fly!”

* * *

I wanted to put the Conoku through their paces as soon as possible, not being sure how long this window of recalibration would be open. My intent had just been to have them take the Iowa and hurl it around space for a while, like we’d done when testing the ship and its new grav-plating, but Netty-P had a recommendation about that.

“You should test them in battle,” she said to me.

“Why?”

“Because that was what essentially got them calibrated, to keep using the term, to the Iowa in the first place. Their performance as a crew in battle against the Sorcerers—that was the result of real world stressors. Combat established their limits, not theory or classes or even good advice from senior officers. And those limits are set by Conoku neuropsychology. They got locked in, so to speak—”

“Then we want to make it as challenging as possible, with real shooting.”

“You don’t want to inadvertently make them really good at flying the Iowa but then find out they freeze up again in battle, do you.”

“No, I do not. So we just have to find a handy space battle to engage in.”

“I think I’ve got you covered there, Van,” Netty-P said, and proceeded to give me the rundown on a case that had just come up on the Guild’s roster. This was a new one, revolving around an operation smuggling animal parts from threatened species on an undeveloped planet.

“They’re taking… carapaces? That oughta resonate with the Conoku,” Perry said when I called a crew meeting in the Fafnir’s galley.

“Yeah, they are. And, as typical for these sorts of scumbags, they’re only using a small part of the carapace of these beetle crabs—that’s the best available translation, since the only other term for them is a scientific one—anyway, they use just a small part of it to make a super-expensive skin pigmentation. Netty-P, if you please,” I said, and we all turned to the display over the galley table.

The commercial was typical for a beauty product even back on Earth—a whole lot of ambience and placid music and clips of seemingly random things that implied decadence and luxury without actually saying anything about the product itself. It ended with an obvious synth of breathtaking and utterly androgynous beauty holding a small jar over the tagline Beauty has no limits.

“This is the version of the commercial targeted at humans, who are the largest users per capita of beauty products in known space. There are Gajur, Yonnox, and a few other niche versions as well,” Netty-P said when the display cleared.

“What, no Wu’tzur?” Perry asked.

Torina cocked her head at Icky. “I suspect Wu’tzur beauty products mostly involve hair care.”

“Actually, we Wu’tzur are more interested in how we smell than how we look.”

Perry raised a wing. “I can attest to that.”

“Better than smelling of grease and rust,” Icky shot back.

“Rust? Rust? I don’t rust! My alloy components are corrosion-free, thank you very much.”

“There was that one time you had a defective tail actuator—remember how it almost seized up?” Netty-P offered.

“That was one time, and besides, it was defective, like you said! It’s not my fault if I get substandard parts—”

“Okay, everyone, allow me to once again pull our attention off Perry’s tail and back to the subject at hand. According to the case file, there’s a group of smugglers, mostly Nesit, poaching these crab beetles, harvesting their carapaces, then selling them through the black market into the cosmetics business.”

“And, as an added bonus, one of the main manufacturers of this particular skin pigmentation product is none other than our friends of the Enhancement Empire, which they market as a premium product under the brand name Refraction,” Netty-P said.

I nodded. “It’s not a big line for them, but it’s apparently quite lucrative. Each one of those jars you saw that… man, woman, or whatever holding goes for three hundred bonds.”

Zeno shook her head. “Beauty has no limits.”

“Neither does genocide, it seems,” I said.

“Van, not to be a stickler here, but genocide as a crime only applies to sentient beings as its victims. Doesn’t mean wiping a species out isn’t a crime, but it would probably fall under some interstellar conservation statutes, not genocide,” Perry said.

“Ah, but the race of beetle-crabs in question are apparently showing early signs of sentience. They use tools, for instance, and construct dwellings. According to the biological background on them, they also have some cryptic form of communication—it doesn’t involve anything physical, like sound, visible light, or airborne chemicals, at least that anyone can discern.”

“So they may have some latent psychic ability,” Netty-P said.

“All of which adds up to a nice, juicy case that should let the Conoku see some action against the Nesit poachers, put a dent in the Enhancement Empire’s cash flow, and give us the warm and fuzzy feeling of helping save a potentially sentient race from extinction.”

Torina stood. “So what are we waiting for? Let’s go be heroes!”

Funboy sighed. “An alarming percentage of so-called heroes earn the appellation posthumously.”

We all turned flat, sardonic looks on him, and he gave a slow shrug.

“Just sayin’.”

17

We sent Funboy and Netty-P ahead aboard the Frankie into the target system, a class G, Sol-like star on the anti-spinward edge of known space, not far from the borderlands with Unity. In a striking example of parallel stellar evolution, the system, officially known by a catalog number and unofficially known as Milestone, was surprisingly similar to the Solar System—three rocky inner planets, one of them in the habitable zone, and two gas giants, one of them larger Jupiter but only a little more mass, so it had the density of whipped cream, as Netty put it.

Zeno looked interested. “Is that like noodles?”

I shook my head. “Sorta… it’s fluffy. But sweet. And fatty. And—”

“Stop. You had me at fluffy,” Zeno said. “I… I think I’m acquiring some of Icky’s traits.”

“Loving food is universal. Having noodles in your facial hair is not. Netty, make a note to get some actual whipped cream. I think it’s time Zeno experiences the wonder of it all,” I said.

“Make it, um, several,” Torina said, grinning slyly.

“A fan?” Zeno asked.

“It’s worth any and all taxes we might pay,” Torina said with the certainty of a judge.

Zeno leaned forward. “Better make it ten.”

“Ten cans of whipped cream? I mean—” At Torina’s baleful glance, I held my hands up. “Consider it done, dear.”

Zeno gave an approving nod. “You chose wisely.”

“I’ve been to Husband School. I know what to do in these situations. Now then, Netty? Comms open, please. I want to know what the Frankie sees in real time. Or as close as we can get.”

“Done.”

* * *

The Frankie had a miniscule signature, so unless there were active scanners pinging the vicinity when she twisted in, there was little chance of her being detected. We waited after she’d twisted away for a reconnaissance report to come back via twist comm.

I glanced at the tactical overlay. The Fafnir and the Iowa currently sat in a system about two light-years from Milestone, yet another in the multitude of unremarkable red dwarfs that seemed to make up most stars. This system had almost no value aside from a navigational waypoint between the more populated spinward portions of known space and Unity. Accordingly, we had it to ourselves.

“Incoming twist comm from Funboy,” Netty announced, putting him on the comm. At the same time, repeated data from the Frankie sluiced into a window that popped open on the overlay.

“Van, we’re seeing two ships here. One, a class 6 or 7, is in orbit around Milestone itself,” he said. He meant the Earth-like planet, which we’d previously agreed to call Milestone, even though it was technically the name of the star. “It seems to be a tender of some sort, rigged to support three or four smaller craft.”

“Those are probably workboat-type craft the poachers use to descend to the surface and conduct their harvesting operations,” Netty-P put in. “It probably also functions as a processing plant for the illicit materials they’re bringing up to orbit.”

“Illicit materials as in parts of living, sentient beings,” I said, shaking my head and studying the incoming data. “This second ship looks more substantial, like a class 10.”

“It is. She seems to be rigged as a fast-freighter, but well-armed, with nearly the same firepower as the Fafnir,” Funboy replied.

“And it’s outbound but still deep enough in the star’s gravity well that it’s at least a few hours from twisting out of the system,” Netty-P added.

“That’ll be the ship the poachers use to carry their bads out of the system and to market,” Perry said.

I glanced at him. “Bads?”

“Kind of hard to call them goods, all things considered.”

“Can’t argue with that.” I pondered the tactical situation at Milestone and had a discussion with my crew, including Funboy and Netty-P aboard the Frankie, and Icky aboard the Iowa, where she was going to keep an eye on the grav-plates while the Conoku flew her. We finally decided to let the class 10 get close to twisting, within an hour or so, then twist the Fafnir directly in their path. Since they nearly matched us in firepower, we hoped that they’d decide to be confrontational rather than just meekly surrender to us. At that point, we’d be justified in using force—and that force would be the Iowa, which would then twist in to join us.

Torina sniffed and shook her head as she powered up the Fafnir’s weapons. “We usually want the bad guys to surrender to us so we don’t have to fight them.”

“Yeah, watch. This’ll turn out to be the most cowardly shipload of Nesit in the galaxy, and we’ll be stuck having to arrest them and use due process and all that dumb stuff,” Perry huffed. “Laws, amirite?”

“Pesky things. But… let’s hope not,” I said, realizing how that sounded coming from a Peacemaker. If they did, though, then we’d have to do it all peacefully and find another battle for the Iowa. But I didn’t hope they’d choose to fight us only for that reason. I had a visceral hatred for poachers and the whole vile industry of useless trinkets and sham cures they supported. Seeing a bunch of them turned to glowing plasma would not break my heart.

Perry understood. “Me too, boss. Let’s go pick a fight.”

* * *

At the appointed time, the Fafnir twisted, appearing about an hour’s flight time ahead of the poachers’ ship. It immediately lit us up with its active scanners, although not in fire-control mode, which would be a hostile act.

In response, I broadcasted an order for them to stand down, shut down their drive, and prepare to be boarded. At the same time, we accelerated onto an intercept course, which, somewhat counterintuitively, actually had us start moving not toward them but in the same direction they were traveling so we could match their velocity.

There was no response.

I repeated the order, and again broadcast my credentials. Then we waited.

“They’re stonewalling us,” Perry said.

“Bird, confirm that if they don’t comply, we will be justified in using force against them.”

“Well, we’ve certainly got exigent circumstances—I mean, our intel says that poachers work in this system, and they’re in this system, so we have reasonable probable cause to stop and search them. If they don’t comply but don’t take any hostile action, either, then we’re limited to using only enough force to get them to comply—”

Netty cut Perry off. “Van, the poachers are changing course. They’re also deploying objects along their trajectory as they do.”

I sat up. “Missiles?”

“No launch signatures. They’re mines.”

“Or, they could drop mines and try to break off, which is definitely a hostile act. You know, I love it when the bad guys make the lawyerin’ this easy,” Perry said.

“They probably think that by dropping the mines and changing course, the mines will be in our way and give them enough time to get away—” Zeno started, but Cantullin’s voice rattling over the comm cut her off.

“Van! Can we come and fight now?”

“Just hang on, Cantullin. Plenty of brawling in just a moment.”

Torina grimaced at her fire-control panel. “Those mines have all gone dark. I kind of know where they are, but they have tiny signatures and are probably using thrusters to move away from wherever we saw them dropped.”

“So shooting our way through them is going to be challenging,” I said.

“Afraid so.”

“It’s rather clever, actually. While deploying mines is definitely a hostile act, it’s a passive one. These poachers are clearly more interested in escaping than fighting,” Funboy put in.

I muttered my assent. “Netty, how close can we cut it with the Iowa? Can we have her twist in close to provoke these guys into an actual fight?”

“If you don’t mind assuming some risk with translation error, then in ten minutes, we could have the Iowa twist directly in front of them and within missile range. The risk of error comes from the fact that she’d be twisting into the very margin of the zone of critical gravitational effect, within which twisting isn’t possible.”

“Unless you’re the Sorcerers, with that twist drive they used inside that gravity well that one time. I wonder why they’ve never used it since?” Zeno said.

I shrugged. “No idea. Maybe it broke down, or maybe Gerhardt and the Unity forces destroyed it when they went after the Sorcerers.”

“Or maybe it’s still out there,” Torina said.

“Yeah, maybe that, too.” I scanned the overlay again. “How much twist error are we talking here, Netty?”

“About a ten percent chance of error greater than one light-minute, a two percent chance of greater than one light-hour, and a half-percent chance of catastrophic twist failure.”

“Ouch. How catastrophic?”

“The Iowa would be destroyed.”

“More ouch. Cantullin, Icky, did you get that?”

“Now, Van? Should we come now?” Cantullin shot back, her voice charged with excitement.

Icky came on. “Guess that’s your answer. I mean, a one in two hundred chance of going poof? Bah. We’ve faced worse.”

“She’s not wrong,” Perry said.

I looked at Torina and Zeno, both of whom just shrugged.

I sighed. “It’s lonely at the top. Okay—let’s do it. Cantullin, Netty’s going to twist you almost straight into battle. You guys are authorized to disable the poachers’ ship, unless they actually shoot at you, in which case—”

“We’ll blow them up!”

I nodded. “Yeah. Most of all, though, you need to fly the crap out of the Iowa. No matter how much you pushed yourselves before, Cantullin—”

“Hey, you haven’t seen anything yet!”

* * *

She was right.

The Iowa twisted in directly ahead of the Nesit poachers, who immediately flung their ship into a high-g burn. Clearly, they’d been holding back on their drive. When they redlined, it easily exceeded even the Fafnir’s acceleration by nearly ten percent. Clearly, they’d put a lot of bonds into their ship, outfitting it with an overcharged fusion drive and potent weaponry, apparently reasoning they could outrun what they couldn’t fight, or outfight what they couldn’t outrun.

Had this been the pre-upgrade Iowa, it would have worked. Even with a couple of favorable light-seconds of error induced by her twist into the edge of the critical part of the system’s gravity well, and even with the Conoku crewing her, she’d never have been able to match the poachers’ stunning maneuverability. It must have stunned them right back when the bulky Iowa shot off after them at an even higher effective acceleration, rapidly closing the range. The poachers finally opened fire, apparently hoping to damage the Iowa enough to keep her at bay while they rushed to twist away.

“That was a mistake,” Perry said.

Missiles flashed toward the Iowa, while several solid laser hits chewed clouds of glowing debris out of her ablative armor. She responded with wild gyrations that would have seemed improbable for the Frankie. We all sat in awe and watched as the Conoku pushed the Iowa to the bleeding edge of her performance envelope, and themselves with her.

“That… is amazing,” Torina said, and I just nodded.

We’d seen the Conoku manage to bank the Iowa before, but this time, they managed to get her to corkscrew through a tight spiral trajectory, making her wobble through space like a spinning top about to topple over. At the same time, they fired her drive and thrusters in bursts, shunting her trajectory sideways and varying her velocity, slamming the big ship through maneuvers that must have strained her inertial dampers. And all the while, they loosed a barrage of fire at the poachers—

Most of which missed.

“They’re screwing up their own firing solutions, they’re maneuvering so fast,” Perry said.

I got on the comm. “Icky, can you get the Conoku to dial it back a little? This is supposed to be a battle, not an airshow.”

“Just… let me peel myself off the deck—oof!

“Icky?”

“Sorry, Van. I got kinda banged against the bulkhead—ouch, shit!”

“Icky—shit, Cantullin, slow it down a bit, okay?”

“We call this one the Screamer!” she shouted back and barrel-rolled the Iowa around the poachers’ ship, all while keeping up that insane wobble. The Nesit fired furiously back, but once the Iowa’s far superior firepower started to land, it didn’t take long for the poachers’ ship to turn from sleek war machine to a forlorn, battered wreck. The Iowa straightened out, tumbled bow over stern, and slammed on the brakes, bleeding off velocity to come about, but before she could, the poachers’ ship abruptly exploded in a searing flash of lost antimatter containment.

A chorus of wild cheers erupted over the comm.

Torina sat back. “I guess our Conoku are back in the game.”

“They sure are. Icky, can you—”

“Sit here groaning over my bruises? Yeah, I can.”

“Are you okay?”

“Let me put it this way—I kinda know how bad guys feel when I beat them with my hammer. The Conoku can take these g’s, but I barely can. And as for you squishier types—”

“I think we’ll stay off the Iowa if she’s going into battle.”

“Definitely a good—ow, shit!—idea.”

* * *

The tender orbiting Milestone, having seen what happened to their nefarious colleagues and their far more capable ship, quickly surrendered. In fact, they surrendered as soon as we started in-system, meaning it would be several hours before we could actually take them into custody.

“First time I’ve seen bad guys preemptively give up, at least with this much lead time,” Perry said.

Zeno barked a laugh. “Where are they going to go where the Iowa can’t get them—especially climbing out of the gravity well in that clunky old tub of theirs?”

When we finally boarded the tender, we found exactly what we’d expected to find—a horror show of butchered creatures taken from the planet below, killed for a small part of their carapace with the slaughtered remains tossed into holding tanks to be rendered down to organic sludge and sold as fertilizer.

“Hey, if you’re going to go through the trouble of murdering creatures to the point of extinction, you don’t want to waste any of them, right?” as Zeno put it.

One of the Nesit dared to speak up. “Murdered? They’re just animals, worth more dead than alive—”

Icky, beaten and bruised and in no mood for back talk from the poachers, grabbed the Nesit by the throat and slammed him against the grimy bulkhead of his own ship. “I’d say the same thing about you, asshole, but since you’re worth zero either way, then the only benefit of killing you is shutting that mouth of yours.” She bared her teeth in his face. “Which I might just do, if you open it again, understood?”

The Nesit, choking for air, nodded.

Perry, though, was more pragmatic. “The miserable little asshole does have a point—we might have dealt with this motley gang of them, but if there’s money to be made at this, someone else is just going to come along and pick up where these ones left off.”

I nodded. “Sadly, the bird is probably right. There are just too many entitled faces out there, with too much money to waste on crap like these supposed skin enhancements.”

“Everyone’s trying to beat old age,” Perry said, nodding. “And everyone’s going to lose.”

“Says the immortal creature of alloy and composites,” Zeno shot back, giving Perry a hard frown.

“I may outlast you fleshy types, but I’ve got an expiry date too, you know—the final heat death of the universe, if not sooner. I will admit, though, that I don’t need beauty enhancements to look damned fine along the way.”

“Perry, you’re preening in public again. Stop it.” I looked at the rest of my crew as we jammed the last of the poachers into the Fafnir’s holding cells, filling them to capacity. “But, again, he’s right. We need a more permanent fix to this problem.”

“Station a permanent watch on Milestone?” Torina suggested.

“Expensive if it’s a crewed setup, problematic if it’s just AI. No one likes giving AIs authority to use lethal force, so they’d probably just be set up to monitor and send out alerts about potential poachers, and a lot of damage could be done before anyone gets here.”

Surprisingly, the Nesit that Icky had choke-slammed against the bulkhead spoke up just before she pushed him into the holding cell. “Anyone who wants to get around that will show up in the system over and over—they’ll trigger the system and bring someone rushing here, until you get tired of it and start to ignore it!”

“Crying wolf? Yeah, he’s probably right,” I said.

“Remember I helped you—ACK!”

Icky sealed the holding cell door behind him.

Funboy spoke up. “Would not your friend Adayluh Creel be suited to helping save these… creatures? She is, among other things, a person with a conservationist mindset, and her father may actually be more so. And even if she isn’t willing or able to help, she very likely knows who would be.”

“Despite the way you said creatures—”

“They are creatures. I have read the available background material on them. They harbor several pathogens, and at least one parasite that is inimical to other life-forms in general, and to me in particular.”

“Anyway, that’s a good idea. Netty, can you raise her on the comm? Last I heard, she was on that massive hydroponic loop near—I don’t know, Gliese 12345, or one of the Gliese stars, anyway.”

It only took a few minutes for Netty to connect through to Adayluh, time I used to sit in the galley and start digging into the interminable paperwork that would have to accompany my report on the clash with, and arrest of, the poachers.

“Van, I’ve got Adayluh on the comm. Put her through?” Netty asked.

“Please,” I replied, sitting back from my admin duties.

Adayluh’s image appeared on the display. Everyone waved and said hi to her, which left her beaming, then I gave her an overview of what we were dealing with.

“So that’s the picture. These creatures remain vulnerable, so I’d like to find a way to ensure they’re protected,” I concluded.

“You say that they’re potentially psychic?” she asked.

“Speaking as a complete non-expert on the subject, I’d give a definite maybe. I think the point is, though, that the answer currently isn’t a no. There’s some evidence that they can transmit thoughts, even emotions, to one another without any other obvious way of doing it. So they’re kind of… mood crabs, I guess.”

“Channeling the seventies there, Van?” Perry put in. “I wonder if they change color when they’re happy?”

“I know I do. Or parts of me, anyway—” Icky started, but we all held up hands and wings to stop her.

“Let’s just avoid talking about our own biological functions for the time being, okay?” I said.

“Oh, sure, but when Zeno’s gullet swells when her hormones swing and she gets all bitchy, it’s all, poor Zeno—”

Zeno glared. “Excuse me, but I—”

“People! Again, less is more when it comes to crew biology, thanks.”

Adayluh laughed. “You sure that you don’t need to be placed into a protective environment, Van?”

“Oh, don’t tempt me. Anyway, what do you think?”

“Well, my background is mostly botanical, but this sounds like something my dad would really sink his teeth into. Let me contact him and get back to you.”

“Sounds good. Thanks, Adayluh.”

I signed off just in time for Netty to announce an incoming message from Gerhardt.

“The guy’s timing is impeccable, isn’t it? Put him through, Netty.”

He appeared on the display and without preamble said, “Gauss’s trial starts in five days, Tudor. I’m sending the coordinates and other details. I’d like you here in four so we can do some prep work, then adjust based on opening statements.”

I nodded, then explained what we’d been up to with the poachers, noting that I was hoping to meet with Adayluh and her father, if the timing worked out, before the trial. I didn’t want to leave our mood crabs wholly unprotected for the duration of the trial, which could potentially last weeks. He nodded in return.

“Indeed. The extinction of a sentient species would be a grave crime—a Crime Against Order, in fact. Moreover, if they’re potentially psychic, there are additional protections offered under interstellar law that apply to psionic species. Perry will have the details of that.”

“Roger dodger,” Perry said, raising a wing.

“Besides, some of these poaching organizations are quite sophisticated. This one certainly seems to be. The stronger a case we can make, and the more we can connect others to it, the more likely it would be that we could justifiably seize all of their assets as proceeds of crime.”

“Now that’s my kind of justice,” Zeno said.

Perry swiveled his amber gaze onto her. “How so?”

“It’s the profitable kind.”

I leaned forward and looked at Gerhardt. “More to the point, if we can prove that these assholes are connected to the Enhancement Empire—”

“Then we may be able to deliver a strong preemptive blow against them, yes—seized property, frozen assets, and criminal charges for a start. And I have to admit, it would be nice to force the villains to be the ones reacting to us for a change,” Gerhardt said.

I nodded. “Amen to that.”

Gerhardt signed off. I turned back to Netty.

“Anyone else lining up to talk to us?”

“Sorry, Van, you’re just not that popular.”

I laughed. “Okay, find out if Adayluh can meet us here at Milestone sometime in the next three days. We’re going on a safari.”

18

While technically we weren't supposed to interact with so-called early sentience species, it wasn’t a rigid prime directive or anything like that. There were extenuating circumstances that made interacting with them acceptable, which included trying to protect them from any threat that didn’t originate in their natural environment. And Nesit poachers killing these creatures because a small portion of their carapace was of use to the cosmetics business was definitely extenuating.

I took Icky, Funboy, and Perry down to the surface in the Frankie to see for ourselves who and what these creatures were, while Torina and Zeno remained in orbit with the Fafnir. The Iowa remained in-system as well, just in case reinforcements arrived to try and salvage their precious—and extremely lucrative—poaching operation. We received confirmation that Adayluh was en route with her father and would be here in a day or so, leaving us a day with them before we had to depart for Gauss’s trial.

We circled the Frankie at high altitude, more than ten thousand meters, to try and avoid the mood crabs, as Perry now insisted on calling them, seeing us. We scanned the surface thoroughly, quickly building up a picture of a race of creatures that had reached the point of early civilization. They lived in villages carved out of the lush equatorial foliage, clustered around waterways. I shook my head at that.

“This isn’t poaching—it’s murder. It would be like killing members of an isolated tribe in the Amazon back on Earth for some body part.”

“There’s been no shortage of exploitation of primitive peoples on Earth, Van,” Perry said.

“And it’s wrong there, too.”

Unfortunately, many of the villages seemed to be ominously quiet, with no thermal signatures suggesting they were inhabited. We did a lower pass over several of these and saw the buildings, simple constructs of hardened mud reinforced with branches, were falling into disrepair.

“A mud structure is going to require constant maintenance in a humid, rainy climate such as this. The fact that these aren’t being maintained suggests that these villages are, indeed, uninhabited,” Funboy said.

I gave a glum nod. We’d discerned a small cluster of villages about fifty klicks away that did seem to be inhabited, so we set course for them and landed two klicks away, around the bend of a river.

“We couldn’t have parked closer, huh?” Icky grouched as we unbuckled and prepared to disembark.

“I’m thinking that these poor creatures are probably terrified by ships showing up overhead. I’d like to spare them that,” I replied, checking The Drop and the Moonsword.

The door cycled open, and we stepped out of the Frankie—into ankle-deep mud.

“Two klicks of walking in this, eh?” Icky said, pulling a foot out of the muck with a rude slurp. “You sure we can’t scare these critters even a little?”

Perry, who’d flown out of the Frankie and landed on top of her, spoke up. “Don’t know what you’re complaining about. The going is ea-sy.”

“Come land in the mud right in front of me, bird, and say that.’

“I’ll say something even better. The ground’s higher on the other side of the Frankie, so it’s drier. Also, it looks like there might even be a trail.”

Funboy stared at the river. “So much muddy, dirty, pathogen-laden water.”

“Uh, you’re wearing a b-suit and a helmet, Funboy. You’re hermetically sealed off from it all,” I said.

“Yes, but I still know it’s there.” He looked down at his feet. “And it’s on me as well. We’ll have to undergo thorough decontamination.”

“Hey, I wonder if there’s any dangerous wildlife,” Icky said, and Funboy looked at her.

“Oh, dear. There may be. Perhaps even creatures as vicious as the ones we encountered during our last dealing with Adayluh Crull, when she tested her crops on that swampy death planet.” He looked around. “This place is reminiscent of that, isn’t it? So not only dangerous microorganisms, but also the possibility of dangerous macroorganisms as well.”

I shot Icky a glare, to find her wearing an evil grin behind her visor.

“Thanks, Icky, for getting him spun up.”

Her expression changed to one of exaggerated, wide-eyed who me? surprise. “Oh, dear. Is that what I did?”

We squelched our way around the Frankie and found that, indeed, as the ground rose from the sluggish, meandering river, it dried out and became a lot firmer. And there was a trail that wound along the riverbank, probably used by our native crustacean friends, maybe even connecting our target village to one a few klicks upstream.

“Okay, then. I’ll lead, Funboy behind me, Icky bringing up the rear. Perry, you do what you do and keep an eye out from on high,” I said.

We set off and made our way warily, but we still made good time. The first klick went by uneventfully, like walking along any number of hiking trails back on Earth. The path did dive back down into muddy ravines a few times, where creeks flowed down into the river, but all in all, it wasn’t a bad walk.

We’d just climbed out of one of the mucky ravines when I heard a sudden commotion off to my right—a loud snapping and crashing sound, something large passing through the trees and undergrowth.

“Perry, what do you see over to my right?”

“Uh, remember Funboy’s concern about macroorganisms?”

“Yes,” I replied, gripping The Drop.

“Well, there’s a particularly macro example about fifty meters to your right, now heading your way.”

Funboy sighed. “Oh dear.”

I drew The Drop. Icky readied her hammer, while Funboy readied his gun-club combo.

“What does this thing look like, anyway?” Icky asked.

“Imagine if a rhinoceros loved a shark very, very much,” Perry replied.

“That sounds horrifying—I guess, because I don’t know what either of those freakin’ things are!” Icky snapped as the racket of the thing’s approach grew.

“Sorry, guess I’ve spent too much time on Earth. Let’s see, what would be the Wu’tzur equivalents—”

“Actually, I suspect it looks very much like the monstrosity now coming into view,” Funboy put in.

Something massive shouldered aside smaller trees and crashed toward us. It did vaguely resemble a rhino-shark combo, with maybe a little grizzly bear thrown in, and a few spines that reminded me of various Earthly dinosaurs, like the bulky, armored ankylosaurus. It stopped when it saw us with a quartet of beady eyes, then uttered a hissing bellow and started stomping toward us.

I raised The Drop, but reluctantly. I really didn’t want to kill this thing. I had no idea if it was endangered as well, and assumed it was just doing its thing. Of course, its thing seemed to include wanting to eat us, and that unfortunately triggered a lethal response—

Perry swept over us, then activated his dazzle mode, pouring out energy across much of the EM spectrum. At the same time, he erupted with an ear-splitting squeal, like electronic feedback mixed with air-raid siren. My visor immediately stepped down the glare, but I was still able to see the monstrous creature abruptly stop and rear up, then loosed a surprisingly piteous howl that seemed grossly out of place coming from an obvious killing machine. With startling speed, it turned about and bashed its way back into the trees, where it quickly disappeared from view.

Perry switched off the noise and dazzle. We could hear the huge creature still beating a hasty retreat, branches snapping like machine-gun fire as it fled.

I holstered The Drop. “Well done, Perry!”

“Yeah, gotta admit, bird, that was pretty damned cool. Little old you scaring off a big, bad beastie like that,” Icky said, swinging her hammer back onto her shoulder.

“Good things and small packages, right boss?” Perry said, soaring back up into the air.

“Yes, that takes care of a dangerous macroorganism. But the microorganisms are still all around us, and there’s no scaring them away,” Funboy added.

I sighed. “And the moment of victory comes to a screeching halt, courtesy of Funboy.”

“I just call them like I see them.”

* * *

We reached the village to find that the mood crabs were, perhaps unsurprisingly, aware of our approach. Several of them stood facing us with crude spears, while others huddled in mud huts and peered fearfully out at us.

I held up my hands, palms open and toward them. “We mean you no harm,” I said through my suit speaker.

“Uh, Van, the translator has no way of translating your words to theirs or vice versa—not until it learns whatever they’ve got that passes for language,” Perry said.

“Well, sometimes it’s all in the tone, right?”

I took a few slow paces forward, still with my arms up in a surrender gesture, then stopped and tried to start establishing the basis for at least a rudimentary translation. It would take hours, though, and maybe days, trying to teach the translator even the most basic vocabulary of mood crab, by painstakingly pointing at things and naming them, and encouraging them to do the same. Fortunately, though, we didn’t have to, because the mood crabs themselves had a shortcut.

“You come take us,” one of them suddenly said. What I actually heard was a sound like a water cooler burping and bubbling, but what I understood was that simple phrase.

“Hey, I understood that,” Icky said.

“Indeed. It would appear that these creatures have more than psychic potential, but an actual psychic ability. Their thoughts form part of their communications,” Funboy said.

I nodded but kept my focus on the crabs. “Do you understand me when I talk?”

“Do yes. You here take us,” one of them, presumably their leader, said while brandishing its spear at me.

“No, not at all. We’re not here to take you or harm you.”

“We come protect, good guys, sure are,” Icky shouted, her words methodical.

I winced. “Icky, contrary to what tourists everywhere think, speaking louder and slower really doesn’t help someone understand a language they don’t speak.”

“You not take us?”

I turned back to the crab—although they actually looked more like flattened lobsters.

I shook my head. “No. We want to help. That’s why we stopped the ones who were taking you. They’re gone.”

It took some time, but we were eventually able to convince the creatures that we really were no threat and were there to help them. They slowly lowered their guard but remained understandably wary. Still, it was progress, and over the next few hours, we started to build up something of a rapport with them.

Boss, you’re a natural at diplomacy, especially among arthropods, Perry said in my ear.

“You’re assuming their phylum, bird. Don’t be elitist.”

Says the guy who just used the word phylum.

“Nature shows are good for my vocabulary. Now don’t blow this for us. We’re making progress. Got a name from them… I think,” I told him.

And we did.

They called themselves Those Between, or just Between, but the reason for that, which seemed rooted in some cryptic cultural mysticism, just didn’t survive the translation. They turned out to be gregarious and inquisitive, and as they grew more at ease, a definite sense of humor began to poke through their caution.

“They kind of remind me of the Conoku,” Icky said at one point as several of the Between crowded around her, fascinated by the sight of a hulking, four-armed Wu’tzur. They were talking to Icky more readily than they did to me, probably because of her generally innocent—albeit mercurial—nature. Funboy was at the opposite end of the scale, few of them expressing more than a passing interest in him. I assumed that part of their psychic ability reacted to the character of the individual with whom they were interacting. I thought it likely that they were reading Funboy’s particular personality. He carried the air of a menopausal librarian with him that was powerful enough for space crabs to detect, a fact that was not lost on Torina. Or Zeno. Or even Icky, who alternated between childish glee and scolding them for plucking random hairs from her legs.

“They think they’re good luck,” Perry told her.

“The hairs? Or my legs—oww! Easy, you little menace. Boss, I’m gonna be naked if this keeps up,” Icky groused. One of the locals waved a long blue hair like a trophy while burbling cheerily to its friends.

Funboy brought his dour glare to bear on Icky. “For the purposes of both sanitation and diplomatic considerations, I am asking—with great insistence—that you do not, under any circumstances, begin your life as a nudist.”

“She’s already halfway there,” I said with a snort.

Funboy heaved another patented sigh. “True, but she has such a substantially hirsute body that, up until now, her nudity hasn’t been a—a—”

“Active threat to your delicate sensibilities?” Torina asked over comms.

Funboy inclined his head. “Exactly that. You understand the legitimacy of my fears. Hey! You, with the grabbers! Enough harvesting her pelt!”

Shaking with laughter, I put an arm around Funboy’s small shoulders. “I appreciate you pressing the issue of preserving her fur. Let’s get to know them, okay?”

Funboy looked down at the rabble, then stood straighter. “I’ll do my best.” He addressed a pair of aliens, and adopted a weird, formal tone. “So. Do you get many tourists this time of year?”

Perry’s voice rattled with laughter. “Winning hearts and claws. It’s just so beautiful and not stilted at all.”

“Very natural. Okay, we’re being invited to check out their homes. Behave yourselves, hear me?” I said, ambling alongside the enthusiastic pair who assumed a leadership role, more or less.

The Between showed us around their village—with no order to our movements—which occupied a point of land between two swampy rivers. Both rivers were thick with massive, trivalve, mollusk-like creatures in the shallows along the banks. They seemed to be involved in the Between food supply, though whether being part of it or just producing part of it wasn’t clear. The damned things were big, though, with some of them a meter across.

I peered into an open one and saw nothing but glistening flesh the color of old bruises. “Hmm. Yum,” I said, frowning. “I like seafood. Just not quite this much of it.”

I leaned closer, trying to see further into the shallow water. Funboy shifted uncomfortably beside me.

“Van, I’d be careful. It’s likely that these shelled water fauna—”

A snap like a gunshot interrupted him. One of the trivalves had suddenly slammed shut, chopping an eel analog thing into three pieces. More fleshy, purple protuberances emerged from the water, grabbed the truncated chunks of eel, and dragged them under.

“—are liable to close suddenly and forcefully,” Funboy said.

I stepped back. “Noted.”

Funboy just stared at the closed trivalve. “I think I’d like to return to my own natural habitat now.”

“Which is?”

“Anywhere climate-controlled.”

* * *

It took a while, but we were finally able to get a count of the Between. This village had forty-three members. It seemed, based on what they told us, that there had been many more—probably several hundred among the neighboring villages in their local cluster. But these forty-three were all that remained, being the survivors of all the villages collapsed into a single one.

I indulged in a string of curses at that realization. The Nesit poachers had killed over two hundred of the Between in this group of villages, and who knew how many more from other groups of villages scattered across the region. And that seemed to be it, this equatorial portion of Milestone appearing to be the only part of the planet inhabited by the Between.

“That means there are probably only a few hundred left in total,” Perry said.

“Which is at, or may even exceed the lower limit for acceptable amounts of genetic diversity. In a population this small, a single unfavorable genetic characteristic, if it’s dominant, could push the entire race to extinction,” Funboy added.

I swore again. “You know, I really wanted to throw the book at those Nesit vermin. Now, I just kind of want to pitch ’em out of my airlock.”

“My kinda party!” Icky chirped.

Her enthusiastic embrace of murder cheered me up a little. And more good news came from Netty—Adayluh Creel and her father, Filic, had arrived in orbit over Milestone and would soon be joining us on the surface.

“That was fast,” I replied.

“Her father apparently believes he owes you a debt of gratitude, so he dropped everything and joined his daughter to come here,” Netty said.

While we waited, we mused over what to do to protect the Between. Icky again noted that the Conoku might have an affinity for them, given their broad similarities, then added, “Hey, maybe we draft them aboard the Iowa!”

I knew she was joking—probably—but I shook my head.

“Oh, no. I’m not letting these goobers loose on the Iowa. They can do some more evolving and earn the worries and headaches and painful realities of modern life just like the rest of us.”

“Unlike some of us, who were born amazing,” Perry put in over the comm, since he was still soaring overhead on watch.

I clicked my tongue. “You were manufactured that way, bird.”

“Aha! You admit it. I’m amazing!”

“Wait, I mean—”

“Nope, no takebacks!”

“I see you’re using the most elegant legal concepts today.”

His only response was a raspberry, so I cut my losses and said nothing.

A distant thunderclap announced the imminent arrival of the Creels. They landed in a clearing we’d passed on our way here from the Frankie, not far from where the rhino-shark-monster had menaced us, then showed up in the village shortly thereafter.

Adayluh hugged us each in turn while her father looked on. She was human, while he was an alien, a slender creature with a tapered face and two sets of eyes, the upper pair big and luminous, the lower smaller and more intense. She was his adoptive daughter, obviously, but despite being wholly different species, they had a relationship as close and loving as any I’d ever seen between a parent and child.

The Between had withdrawn back to a suspicious distance when the newcomers arrived, but they quickly relaxed again when it became clear they were no threat. Filic quickly began to develop a rapport with them.

“He’s done this before,” I said to Adayluh, watching him interact with the Between, some of whom were now crowding eagerly around him in a way that did actually remind me of the Conoku kids aboard the Iowa.

“He has. He’s a first-contact consultant, in fact,” Adayluh replied, then smiled at my puzzled look.

“First contact between two spacefaring races is more of a diplomatic matter than anything else. First contact with less-developed races is more of—well, an anthropological thing, to borrow the term that would apply to humans. And humans would be a good example. If there were ever a decision made to formally first-contact Earth, I’m not sure we’d want the Nesit or the Yonnox to be the ones to do it.”

I sniffed and shook my head. “Or the Gajur, or the Ligurites, or the Trinduk, or—”

“Exactly. Someone like my father would be the best choice, because he’s got the expertise and experience. So, he gets hired on as an advisor when one of these sorts of things comes up and sometimes actually leads the first contact.”

“Sounds like it could be dangerous,” Funboy said.

Adayluh nodded. “It can be. Why do you think we’re classified as a problematic species by the interstellar authorities?”

I glanced at her, surprised. “We are?”

“Oh yes. Think about it, Van. What’s the best way to first contact Earth?”

I did think about it, having brief visions of UFOs descending onto the White House lawn—or should it be outside the Kremlin? Or in Beijing? London? Paris? Berlin—?

And then the implications of any or all of those, and the sheer pandemonium of what would follow, hit me, and I just whistled and shook my head.

“Wow. We’re absolute hooligans.”

“Actually, my father says that the things that make humans a problematic species to deal with are what make us as prominent as we are. Apparently, humans have exerted influence across known space faster than any other single species, thanks to our combination of inquisitiveness, aggression, and, yes, things like creativity and compassion.” She smiled at her father, deep in animated discussion with the Between. “He says that humans take all the bad traits and make them worse, but that we also take all the good traits and make them better. Anyway, if there ever is a first contact with Earth, my dad would be an excellent choice for it.”

I watched him for a moment, then nodded at the astute, powerful nature of her endorsement. He wasn’t just good at this. He was a natural.

“Yes, I think he would.”

19

We spent as long on Milestone with the Creels as we could before needing to make our way to Gauss’s trial. Filic declared that the Between fit all the criteria for a so-called class three pre-spaceflight species, which put them somewhere on what I gathered was a complex developmental scale. Details aside, it was enough for him to contact the interstellar agency responsible for watching over less-developed species and ensuring they were adequately protected from exploitation. It was a status enforced by the Peacemaker Guild, hence the interstellar laws limiting incursions into the Solar System—which, apparently thanks to Valint, had become somewhat relaxed around the Tudor family.

“When Valint landed in France back in the Great War while tracking a criminal and met your grandfather, she kind of set events into motion that could have been very bad,” as Perry put it when we’d arrived back on the Fafnir in orbit. “When Mark turned out to be such a pivotal and influential Peacemaker, though, things weren’t… ah, forgiven, as much as they were overlooked. But there’s a reason Valint has such a loose association with the Guild these days.”

“Because she’s being punished?” I asked.

“No, because she’s explicitly not being punished. Under the law, she should have left your grandfather to die in France. But she didn’t, then things turned out the way they did for Mark and the Guild, and there was a general sort of ends justifying the means vibe that got attached to the whole thing. But your grandmother’s career stalled at that point. She’ll never be a Master because of it. And she was in the pipeline for it, believe me. Her competence is on par with the legends of Anvil Dark. She’s not just good, she’s the goal.”

“But she chose your grandfather over her career. Swoonworthy, I tell you. You’d do that for me, right?” Torina asked.

“Choose your grandfather over my career? I don’t know about that—”

She stuck out her tongue at me, but her face suddenly turned thoughtful. “Speaking of choosing love over career—what happened to your grandfather, anyway? From an Earthly perspective, I mean. Wasn’t he a soldier involved in fighting a war? And in the middle of it, he suddenly just disappeared? Didn’t that raise any questions?”

“I think that’s called desertion, actually,” Zeno said.

I had to agree. “It is, and I wondered that myself, but Valint filled me in. The Great War, or World War One, or whatever name you refer to it as, was a horrible, brutal affair. In France, where my grandfather was fighting, there were hundreds of thousands of casualties every year just fighting for small gains of territory, at least until military doctrine finally caught up with the killing power of all the modern weapons they were using. Thousands and thousands of those casualties went missing, because their remains were blasted to fragments or churned into the mud. Men vanished because they simply ceased to exist.”

“Charming,” Torina said.

“Well, it was many things, but charming ain’t one of them. Anyway, he got listed as missing. Then, at the end of the war, he just inserted himself into all the thousands of prisoners of war who were repatriated back to the United States. Their recordkeeping wasn’t exactly complete or accurate, so when he said he’d been taken and held prisoner, the US Army just shrugged and stamped the paperwork saying that, yeah, he was alive after all, and discharged him.”

Perry spoke up. “And as for his long absences from Earth afterward, he just told people he had to head up north, into the wild lands, as he called them, to get away for a while. And sometimes he did just that. I remember once he and Valint spent a week camping on Lake of the Woods in northern Ontario in Canada—well, they called it camping, but mostly they—”

“Bird. We get it,” I said.

“In fact, if you count back the months, I think your father was likely conceived up there, on Canadian soil. It was probably that time they went out in the canoe, and it flipped, and they got all wet, so they had to take off their clothes and build a fire and—”

“Perry.”

“Yes?”

“I think that’s enough about the, um… biological origins of my father.”

“What a prude. Anyway, when he told people around Pony Hollow he was heading up north, they all just kind of nodded knowingly. A lot of veterans of that war had their own versions of up north, pretty much for the rest of their lives. So no one thought it was strange for Mark to just up and disappear for weeks, even months at a time.”

“Although he did get some remarks about how well he was aging,” Netty put in.

“Yeah, that got awkward, the twist time-dilation thing. He actually started making himself look and act older than he was. It was how he ended up in spec ops during the Cold War when he should have been way too old for it,” Perry said.

“I’m surprised he got away with that, actually,” I said.

“Well, he was pretty close-mouthed about it, but I suspect someone on the inside of the spec ops world knew more than Mark let on.”

“I hate to interrupt this trip down memory lane, but Adayluh and her father are on the comm,” Netty said.

She put them through. Filic confirmed that he’d spoken to the relevant interstellar authorities and—probably thanks to his cred with them—had arranged to get the Between properly classified as a pre-spaceflight race, with all the appropriate protections. Details had yet to be worked out, including whether it might become necessary to move the Between to another planet, since Milestone was kind of hanging in the anti-spinward wind, as he put it.

“They may just be too alone out here, which could make protecting them a problem. The Cultural Development Authority only has so many resources, and it’s a big galaxy,” Filic said.

“What’s the next step? They’re vulnerable, and I’d like to have something definitive in place. Makes me nervous to think about how close they are to the edge,” I admitted.

Filic understood. “I can do just that, Van. A cultural assessment team will visit sometime in the next local week to gather data on protecting the Between. For the immediate situation, we’re hiring private security contractors—mercenaries—to stay on-station and watch over the planet from orbit. They’re salty veterans who take the job seriously. No one is getting near this species without our permission.”

“Exactly what I needed to hear. You work fast, friend. Kind thanks to both of you. This is truly where you belong,” I said, and Adayluh almost held back a blush.

Then, after checking in with the Conoku, I sent them and the Iowa back to Sol, giving them permission to practice putting themselves and the ship through their respective, enhanced paces.

When we were prepped for transit, I sat, letting myself sift memories of what we’d just done. It was, in the scheme of things, good.

But now, the belly of the beast was calling, and our moment of victory was ended.

“Netty, take us to Sunderbach, in the Seven Stars,” I ordered.

“Speed?”

I pulled at my chin. “Let’s spend a little money. Kick it.”

* * *

“I feel naked, and not in a good way,” I muttered as we entered the Sunderbach traffic pattern.

“I find it difficult to envision a good way of being naked,” Funboy said.

Zeno glanced at him. “And that’s your problem, right there.”

Maybe naked wasn’t the right word. Squirming under the Sword of Damocles was better. The Seven Stars League were the outfit who, under their charismatic, one-time Satrap, put out a warrant for my arrest. They’d later brought known space to the brink of full-blown interstellar war. And although that had been the insidious doing of the Tenants that infested much of the League’s leadership, there’d been a lot of uninfected politicians, military personnel, and bureaucrats who’d gone right along with it.

Which was why, I suspected, Gerhardt and the GKU wanted to collapse the existing League power structure and replace it with something new. Even with the Tenants excised, the League remained something of a chaotic, destabilizing influence on known space. There’d been a slew of diplomatic incidents between them and the other major powers—the Eridani Federation and the Tau Ceti Alliance—culminating in border incursions and ships being illuminated by fire control scanners. In one case, warning shots had been fired. Left to their own devices, the League was probably going to end up toppling known space into war.

The inertia of conflict was more powerful than any physical laws because it was fueled by flawed beings—

And money. Lots and lots of money.

All of which was to say that I felt vulnerable as hell here, given the League’s unpredictable aggression and our history with them. It made me feel better when Netty confirmed that several other Peacemakers were present but, even more than that, the Guild’s potent battlecruiser, the Righteous Fury, was in orbit as well.

I was further encouraged by Gerhardt’s superior planning, as he arranged for the Fafnir to be in a parking orbit just a few hundred klicks away from the Fury, well within the protective envelope of her fearsome firepower.

We met with Gerhardt aboard the Fury for an update on the situation, including all the drama swirling around the trial. People and organizations were busy retconning their relationships with Gauss—yes, we owned a bunch of BeneStar stock, but it was just one small part of our portfolio, or yes, that’s me hugging Gauss at a private party, but I really barely knew the man and don’t even remember that party, or yes, Gauss transferred a half-million bonds to this numbered account of mine shortly after that flattering article about him was published on our channel, but that was just a consulting fee.

“In other words, they’re lining up to proclaim how close to Gauss they all weren’t, or how their multi-billion bond deals with BeneStar were really just a minor transaction in the greater scheme of things,” Gerhardt said, his voice laced with contempt.

“Rats and sinking ships,” I said, and he nodded, then directed me into a conference room aboard the Fury where I was going to be prepared to testify.

Which was an ordeal in itself. The Guild had brought in one of the few celebrity defense attorneys not involved in Gauss’s case, then unleashed the man on me as I practiced my testimony. It was brutal. The man, a human named Tremont who’d been born on Earth, was already an accomplished lawyer in New York who’d been abducted by aliens for one reason or another while vacationing in the Adirondacks.

After Perry sent me a summary of his ordeal—upon which I swore to only visit Raquette Lake while heavily armed—I read the guild conclusion about Tremont, and my opinion shifted drastically

His quick and incisive legal mind had impressed his abductors, as had his absolute lack of fear. The man, by all accounts, was as folksy and charming as the titular character from Matlock—if Matlock had been crossed with a velociraptor that had done a stint as a Supreme Court Justice.

I waited for Tremont, my hands folded idly. When he entered the small room, he looked around as if unsure of where he was.

“May I help you?” I asked.

He looked askance at me, then leaned against the wall. His suit was blue, his eyes were dark, and his face was long and narrow. He narrowed his eyes, and all the charm left his body with the flick of a switch.

“I don’t think I want your kind of help, Mister Tudor.” His voice was expertly modulated, like an instrument.

“I’ve seen your profile, sir. Your concept of help is barbarism. Is it true you gained entrance to the Gauss home by using violence?”

“Well, I—”

“It’s a yes or no question, sir. But I think we all know what happened. You’ve admitted to the use of violence, so—”

“The hell I did—”

“Ahh, now the temper comes to play.” He nodded sadly, using the not angry, just disappointed look perfected by fathers everywhere. “Didn’t take long, did it? Did your victim—or, ah, target, Mister Gauss—have long to wait to see this side of you? The beast, as it were?”

“Beast?” I calmed myself, and when he began to speak I simply continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “I used exactly the force required to secure Mr. Gauss in a safe and legal manner.”

“So you’re saying you had probable cause for this military operation that violated the rights of Helem Gauss?”

I sat still, considering his tactics. Then I asked him a question in a low, neutral tone. “Yes. And now, I wonder, can you tell me something, sir?”

“Perhaps.”

“How much force did Helem Gauss use to secure your services?”

His reaction was smooth and immediate. “He didn’t.”

“Ah. So he used money. Shameful. I’d hoped for more, given your—”

The door opened, and Gerhardt stood there, smiling. “Told you he was quick.”

Tremont gave me a genuine smile. “He’s fast. Turned it on me in three questions.”

I put on a wintry smile. “Not my first time in front of an attorney.”

“I can tell,” Tremont said. “But you won’t be in front of an attorney. There will be ten. Or more,” he added.

“I’m ready. And so is the side of justice,” I stated.

Gerhardt waved me to the hall, where Tremont gave an assessment of my status. “I’d say you’re as ready as you’ll ever be. I’m a bit stunned to see you wasting energy trying to tell the truth. You’ll be drained.”

We entered the actual courtroom, and I stopped, stunned by his implication.

I blinked at Tremont. “Isn’t that the point? Avoiding perjury?”

“No, I’m not telling you to lie. I’m telling you to be more careful how you craft the truth.” He looked around the bland room, saw Torina sitting down at the table, and smiled at her.

“Ms. Milon, I’ll ask you a question that I asked Peacemaker Tudor a moment ago. Do you believe that he had sufficient probable cause to initiate what amounted to a military operation against Helem Gauss’s home?” Tremont asked, his tone crisp.

She returned a thin, cool smile. “The Peacemaker Guild isn’t a military organization, so it couldn’t have launched a military operation against any target. The Guild enforces interstellar law, so it was a law-enforcement operation based on compelling evidence of wrongdoing.”

Tremont pointed at her and winked. “I hope I never have to question you on the stand, Ms. Milon. I suspect you’d be a tough nut to crack.” He turned back to me. “You simply answered yes. Not only does that sound evasive, like you’re keeping close-mouthed to avoid saying something, it’s way too open-ended. I would hook my next six questions back into that yes.”

He turned back to Torina. “Ms. Milon’s answer leaves me without much wiggle room. There really isn’t much there for me to work with, as far as follow-up questions go. She also managed to make me look as though I didn’t know what I was talking about, implying that your Guild is a military outfit. While you, Van, were able to turn the tables on me, it happened because I chose to answer your question. Had I pressed, you would have appeared far less competent, and possibly guilty… of something.” He smiled at Torina again. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”

“I’ve helped my parents prepare for hearings and trials where they’ve testified. I made a point to learn the tricks and techniques.”

“And it shows.” Tremont turned back to me. “Are you ready to continue, Van?”

I sighed. “Not as ready as I thought, but let’s do it anyway.”

* * *

I spent the next three days either aboard the Righteous Fury, aboard the Fafnir, or shuttling between them via the Frankie. I was on the witness list waiting to testify, but Gauss’s lawyers had again bogged proceedings down in procedural wrangling, necessitating another, separate hearing. The trial was again suspended while it unfolded.

Perry summed it by putting a wingtip up to one side of his head, as though cupping an ear. “You hear that? That’s the sound of vast wealth perverting the course of justice.”

In the meantime, I asked Gerhardt about the fleet that was supposedly going to materialize and dismember the Seven Stars League. I’d wondered just how that would be reconciled with the trial and assumed it would happen at some point afterward, but Gerhardt just answered my query about it with a grave shake of his head.

“The League has been bulking up its fleet in a burst of frenzied buying, probably because they caught wind of a threat—not from us, but from the Eridani Federation, who have been coveting the League’s spinward systems. They’ve been snapping up aged class 12 to 14 warships anywhere they can get them. And that notably includes a BeneStar subsidiary, a trade conglomerate that specialized in carrying goods in and out of The Deeps in heavily armed freighters that are warships in all but name.”

He sat back in his seat. “In other words, it’s going to be a much tougher fight than we first thought. If we launch now, we’ll lose ships—a lot of them—and do it for an uncertain outcome.”

“So we wait and do it right, I gather,” I said.

Gerhardt nodded. “We’re in secret talks with the Schegith, who have no love for the League, and have even made some discreet contacts with the Eridani, although their security leaks like a sieve and we don’t want to trust them with too much information too soon. All of which is to say the whole operation has been put on hold for the time being.”

I was both disappointed and relieved. I was disappointed because I had no love for the Seven Stars League either and would be happy to see them broken up but relieved because I had no great desire to see an outbreak of interstellar war. Not only would it hurt and kill a lot of people, but it could also spread. In any case, it gave me one less thing to think about so I could focus on the trial.

Later on the second day, Gerhardt introduced me to a Yonnox named Stukkii. He was apparently an investigative journalist who’d been working as a freelancer on the fall of Gauss and BeneStar. The guy had a shelf load of journalistic awards from across known space, which, together with the shitshow of the trial, just sparked my anger.

“Where the hell were you when Gauss and BeneStar were gutting the galaxy for profit? How come I never saw any brilliant investigative work revealing the horror show of mass graves on Level Blue, or the environmental damage done by illegal osmium mining funded through back channels by BeneStar?”

Stukkii didn’t flinch from my tirade. “Waiting for someone with both the balls and the means of cracking the whole rotten edifice open and bringing Gauss down. In case you hadn’t noticed, my ship is as well-armed as a workboat, I don’t have a crew, and I sure as hell don’t have the resources of the Peacemaker Guild behind me.”

A tense moment followed as we squared off, outraged more at the whole shitty situation than really at one another. Perry finally broke it.

“I don’t have balls, but on behalf of Van, who presumably does, thank you for acknowledging the role we played in taking down Gauss.”

Stukkii glanced at him, then grinned. So did I. Part of the problem, I knew, was that I didn’t like Yonnox and tended to just automatically consider them to be villains. Stukkii and our street medic friend on Dregs were two examples of decent Yonnox that just underscored the peril of letting myself start thinking that way—of ever thinking that way.

Stukkii asked me if he could interview me for a major article he was preparing, one he hoped would win him whatever the known space equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize was called. I had to admit to being a little nervous about it.

“Seems like I’m already well-known by the sort of people that would love to see me taken out. This just seems like a way of making myself hated by an even wider cross section of scummy society.”

“Yeah, I’m the guy who took out Van Tudor would look pretty good on a scuzzy resume,” Perry noted.

I glanced at him. “That’s... right, yeah. Thanks for putting my paranoia so eloquently, bird.”

“I won’t refer to you by name. You’ll just be a highly placed source in the Peacemaker Guild. Come on, Peacemaker, I need some of the inside, in the line of fire scoop to really make this piece sing,” Stukkii said.

I opened my mouth, but Torina, sitting nearby, smoothly preempted me.

“He’ll do it, but on one condition.”

I glanced at her. “I will?”

“Shut up and let your publicist do the talking here.”

Stukkii looked from her, to me. “Who’s in charge here? I thought Ms. Milon here worked for you.”

“We’re engaged,” I replied.

Stukkii stared for a moment, said, “Ah,” and turned to Torina. “So what’s the condition?”

“You become our source. You uncover any evidence that might be related to crimes while you’re rooting around for stories, you tell us about it—off the record, of course.”

“And what do I get in return?”

“Uh… this story?”

Stukkii crossed his arms. “That’s one story, so you get one slug of intel from me in return, and we’re even?”

Torina glanced at me. I knew she was handing this off to me to take the next logical step—or not.

“It doesn’t have to be a one-time back-and-forth. Suppose we made this an ongoing relationship. You feed us intel, we give you, uh, privileged access to certain information about cases that would really spice up your writing.”

“Inside scoop and all that,” Torina said.

Stukkii looked back and forth between us, turning the idea around in his head. “All of it off the record.”

“Of course.”

He nodded. “Deal.”

“You’ve officially outdone your grandfather, Van,” Perry said.

I gave him a curious look. “Oh? How so?”

“He didn’t have this sort of arrangement with the press until he was two ranks higher than you are now.”

“He made this sort of deal?”

“Of course. Every senior Peacemaker does. Hell, Gerhardt’s probably got two or three versions of Stukkii here in his friends list. You need the press on your side, and they need you to get the scoop they want.”

Stukkii shrugged. “Someone publishes something even just a few hours ahead of me, my stuff ends up old news.”

I nodded. “Okay, then. Well, Stukkii, shall we begin our new relationship?” I said, gesturing to seats at the conference table.

“We shall,” he replied, sitting down and activating a data slate.

“No voice recordings,” Torina said.

Stukkii smiled. “Of course not. You talk, I make notes, and that’s it. Feel free to have your AI over there scan me for recording devices.”

Perry’s eyes brightened slightly.

“I already have.”

20

From my perspective, Gauss’s trial went like this—

I sat around for a long time, doing prep with Gerhardt and Tremont and drinking shitty coffee because there didn’t seem to be a decent brewer anywhere aboard the Righteous Fury.

Four days in, I finally got called by the Prosecution, a cluster of lawyers and assistants from the Guild’s legal shop, and was sworn in and questioned for about forty minutes regarding our investigation of Gauss and the findings that led us to organize the raid on the Munificent that resulted in his arrest. Gauss sat in utter silence on his techno-throne, staring at some point on the floor of the courtroom a couple of meters in front of him, while his legal team listened quietly and took notes.

Two days later, Gauss abruptly entered a revised plea, guilty to a few of the most minor, bullshit charges, while the rest were dropped. He was summarily sentenced by the judge to time served—all of which had been in palatial minimum security, basically a resort with a bouncer at the door to keep people in—as well as a further suspended period of incarceration and a whopping fine of a few million bonds, which wasn’t even pocket change for the guy.

And that was it. After everything we’d been through, Helem Gauss was a free man.

* * *

“It’s bullshit! Why in the ever-loving hell would our prosecutors agree to—”

“Tudor, sit down,” Gerhardt said.

“—such a feeble plea? It wasn’t even a plea! If it was—”

“Tudor, sit.”

“—him pleading guilty to basically a bunch of parking tickets—!”

“Tudor, sit down and shut up!”

I glared at Gerhardt, who glared right back at me. Finally, I took a breath, then sat.

“It’s bullshit and you know it,” I snapped.

Gerhardt nodded as he sat on the other side of the conference table. Torina and Funboy had remained quiet in their seats as I ranted, while Perry perched on the back of a chair. “Yes, it is. But we knew this was going to be the outcome all along, didn’t we? And given that, we’ve always intended to turn it to our advantage.”

“The judge was a Justicar,” I countered, careful to differentiate the word from Justiciar, which was a title in the Guild and sounded similar. Justicars were bizarre aliens who were incapable of deceit or dishonesty—and thus, were utterly incorruptible. They made perfect judges and, in some trials, also filled other roles, including jury, prosecution, and even defense, since they weighed cases solely on the basis of factual evidence. In Gauss’s trial, a Justicar had been filling the role of judge only.

I shook my head. “How the hell did it agree to such a shitty plea deal?”

“The judge had little discretion in the matter. If the prosecution and defense were both good with the plea, and since the plea didn’t itself break any laws, it had no choice but to accept it.”

I slumped back in my seat, tired, frustrated, and… defeated. That’s how I felt. Defeated. Despite all of his myriad transgressions, Gauss would walk—or, rather, wheel—away from the trial having been found guilty of a handful of property crimes.

I thought about the mass graves on Level Blue. Maybe Gauss hadn’t dug them, but he’d sure as shit put the shovel into the hands of the people who had.

“But… why? Why did we cave so damned quick? Gauss is rich, sure, but he broke the law, that’s manifestly true—”

“Yes, it is. But we’ve been down this road, Tudor. You said it yourself—Gauss is rich. Insanely rich. And he’s absolutely convinced that he can buy anything, and that includes justice. Between procedural bullshit, a blizzard of motions from his defense team, and the risk of evidence being excluded, he was almost certain to be acquitted. We knew that going in. This way, at least we’ve got something stuck to him, and more importantly, we’ve got a hook sunk into him for future use. If he as much as gets caught littering anytime in the next two years, we can throw him right back into prison to serve out the remainder of his sentence. It’s a galactic tripwire, and we’ll be informed of his transgressions immediately.”

“Yeah, eighteen months in a luxury hotel. Pure savagery.”

“Honestly, Tudor, it’s as good as we were ever going to get.”

I sat up and forward. “Fine. Then I’m ready for that operation we discussed. The one that involves the word SAND.”

Gerhardt picked up a data slate on the table and activated its comm function. “Would you ask our guest to step in here, please?”

I frowned. “Kragdalous?”

“Not exactly.”

The door to the conference room opened, and a Surtsi came in—a female, but otherwise not overly distinguishable from Funboy. And I only knew that much because of my familiarity with him, because the Surtsi were a uniform species with little in the way of sexual dimorphism, let alone distinctive features.

“Tudor, this is Carefully Indulgent. She’s an associate of a friend of ours—B,” Gerhardt said.

My frown deepened, and I glanced at Funboy. “Friend of yours?”

“No. He’s too impulsive for my tastes,” Carefully Indulgent said.

“Impulsive. That’s the first word that comes to mind when I think of Funboy, alright.” Funboy merely blinked at me, and I turned back to Carefully Indulgent. “Anyway, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“You may recall that the trial of Helem Gauss was delayed by a medical emergency.”

“I do,” I replied, wondering where this was going. “Some sort of problem involving the interface between his organic and inorganic bits. A tragedy averted, it would seem, much to the detriment of civilized people.”

“Correct. The details remain unclear, but B has managed to learn something of the affliction. It would appear that Gauss is infected with a virus.”

“Okay. Sucks to be him, I guess. I hope it’s something awful, like a flesh-eating thing, or Ebola—”

“It isn’t an organic virus. It’s a digital one.”

I just stared for a moment, until the implication hit me. “How the hell was he infected? Doesn’t he have the best safeguards money can buy? The most effective defenses in existence? Things like that?”

Carefully Indulgent nodded. “He does. But this virus was specifically designed to circumvent them.”

“This virus was tailored to Gauss’s particular bioelectronic physiology. In other words, he was very deliberately and specifically targeted with it,” Gerhardt added.

I stood. “Wait. Someone tried to kill Gauss?”

“Is still trying, actually, whether they even know it or not. The virus has been contained, walled off into a sandbox somewhere in his embedded inorganic aspect. But it is still active, and is”—Carefully Indulgent searched for a word and finally settled on one—“pernicious. Extremely so. Gauss is a profound infection risk to any system he interfaces with. Worse, the virus is extremely infectious and would likely quickly spread from such an infected system. Even the best available military-grade countermeasures are of limited use against it.”

“He is, in a sense, a weapon that threatens at a galactic level. It is important that he not be made to feel more cornered than he already is,” Gerhardt added.

“So the Enhancement Empire wouldn’t want him anywhere near them.” I said. “They’d be risking self-destruction if they let him on their homeworld.”

“I doubt that anyone would be willing to tolerate that sort of risk, short of someone recklessly insane.”

I sighed. “Why do I suspect you’re about to give the name of just such a person?”

Carefully Indulgent nodded. “B believes that there is only one such person who would allow it, and they are an utter pariah in the scientific community.”

I looked at her. “Sure, of course. Does the pariah have a name?”

“Dohlennz. And he is a monster—a term I do not use lightly.”

“Great. A monster taking in another monster, who is an infectious risk to every networked bit of information tech across the galaxy. What could possibly go wrong?” I turned to Gerhardt. “Why don’t we just nuke the bastard once he breaks orbit? Seems to me that the risk justifies it.”

“Because it would be murder, Tudor. And we’re supposed to not commit those.”

“So let me call my mother. I’m sure she’d be happy to vaporize Gauss.”

“You’re… you’re advocating conspiracy to commit murder, instead of doing it yourself, on the grounds that that’s somehow better?”

“But that’s exactly what the SAND operation is all about. Killing Gauss, correct?”

“Yes, but not in the spatial territory of the Seven Stars League. Do you really want to subject yourself to their jurisdiction?” Gerhardt countered.

I threw up my arms. “If Gauss is that dangerous, then we can’t just let him take off to parts unknown. It’s like letting someone walk around with a nuke—it simply isn’t done.”

“Nor is it our intention to let it go on for long. We have obtained tracking technology that isn’t even yet available to most military forces and have attached three instances of it to Gauss’s ship. It is undetectable and extremely reliable. We’ll be able to determine where Gauss goes when he leaves here, trust me,” Gerhardt said.

I turned to Carefully Indulgent. “What do we know about this Dohlennz?”

“He is the personification of amoral disregard for scientific or any other ethics. I will provide you with a complete dossier so you can review all the sordid details at your leisure.”

“And what about B? Do I take it she’s somewhere nearby?”

“She is, and she sends her regards. She will be in touch soon. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll leave you to your work, Peacemaker Tudor. I have a youth group waiting for me.”

I did a double-take at that. “A youth group?”

“Yes. My regular role is as an inspirational leader of youth.”

Perry spoke in my ear. Worst club in the galaxy ever.

“Of course it is. Well then, best luck to you in, um, lifting the spirits of young people,” I said.

“Luck has nothing to do with it. It’s my natural ebullience that makes me who I am,” Carefully Indulgent said, then turned and left without a backward glance.

Funboy sighed. “I’m sorry you had to witness such a flagrant display of silliness and braggadocio. She is… such a showoff.”

Torina gave him a sidelong glance.

“Braggadocio. Yup, that’s exactly what I was thinking.”

* * *

Unsurprisingly, Gauss left Sunderbach almost as soon as the trial ended. That left us facing a delicate balancing act between setting out after him but not doing so in a way that would spook him. We had to rely on the tracking devices that had been installed on his ship, which certainly worked as advertised and in a clever way. Rather than transmitting anything that might be detected, they simply created a resonant disturbance in the flow of charged particles from the Sunderbach system’s star, like the wingtip vortices that trailed an airplane as it flew. It was a pretty ephemeral effect, but if you knew to look for it, you could use it to locate the ship as it traveled through space.

Icky asked the obvious question as we settled into the Fafnir and started doing our preflight checks. “Can’t we just use the, you know, scanners, and track him the old fashioned way?”

“We certainly can. But this also identifies Gauss’s ship wherever we encounter it and—and this is the clever part—the thing functions in a way similar to the tracker you and Zeno have been trying to develop that tells us the destination of a ship about to twist. It then encodes that information in the disturbance it creates,” Perry said.

Netty-P spoke up. “The information doesn’t last long—only minutes—so you have to be quick. In theory, the device should continue operating for days, making it possible to continuously track a ship during that time.”

“Speaking of tracking devices, Van, I think we’ve got one attached to the Fafnir,” Netty abruptly put in.

“We—what?”

“There’s a spurious power emission from aft, just ahead of the starboard ventral thruster array. It’s probably a tracker. It was likely put there when we refueled.”

“Are we sure it’s not a bomb?” Zeno asked. “That seems like critical information to me.”

“It’s too small to have much explosive effect, and it's set on a REAB module. Even if it’s a shaped charge, the most it would do is set off the module. That would be much more annoying than catastrophic.”

Icky sighed. “I’ll get EVAN to yank it off and—”

“Wait,” Perry said, turning to me. “Van, do we really care if anyone tracks the Fafnir?”

“I… suppose not. It’s not like we’re trying to remain hidden anymore.”

“Exactly. I’d recommend we leave the device where it is. We might learn something useful from it—like who, exactly, planted it.”

“It would have been Gauss, wouldn’t it?” Icky asked.

I shook my head. “Not necessarily. It might have been the Seven Stars League. I mean, this is their planet. Or it might be… I don’t know, the Stillness. Or the Arc of Vengeance. Or a group like that. It’s been a while since we’ve crossed paths with them, but they’re still out there.”

“It might even be the GKU,” Torina said, then shrugged when I looked at her. “Just saying. It’s not like they’re the most trustworthy bunch.”

I nodded. “True enough. Okay, we’ll leave it where it is. Netty, keep an eye on it in case it does anything, like starts to transmit. Hell, even if it twitches, beeps, whatever. I want to know.”

“Will do.”

“Creeps me out a little knowing someone’s watching us,” Icky muttered.

Zeno glanced at her. “Why? It’s not like it’s looking into your cabin.”

Perry’s eyes flashed. “Trust me, Icky, no one wants to see that.”

She bristled, but I held up a hand. “Icky, you don’t wear pants. So what, exactly, are you afraid of someone seeing that you don’t kind of broadcast all the time anyway?”

“I have my intimate moments. Like when I clean my—”

Funboy cut her off.

“There is absolutely no completion to that sentence that I am interested in hearing, thank you very much.”

* * *

We set a course in the Fafnir that diverged from the one Gauss’s ship had been following, to make it clear that we weren’t chasing him and appeared to be off on business of our own. When he finally twisted away from the Sunderbach system, Netty carefully recorded the information encoded into the surrounding envelope of charged particles by the tracking devices on his ship that would point to his twist destination. It was, unfortunately, still crude—you couldn’t encode much into a flow of particles through a particular volume of space. But it was enough to give us a broad idea of the region of space he’d twisted to.

And for now, enough was good.

We examined the region on the charts. It encompassed half a dozen star systems on the edge of a diffuse nebula, itself on the spinward margin of known space, and somewhat coreward.

Netty worked through the systems, based on the data available about them.

“One is a magnetar, a neutron star so intensely radioactive and magnetic that nothing can get anywhere near it and survive.”

“That one’s out,” I said. “It’s a killzone, more or less.”

“Two more of the systems are inhabited—one with a listening post operated by the Tau Ceti Alliance, and the other with a mining colony that also comes under the auspices of the Alliance,” Netty said.

“Let’s assume those are out, too,” Torina replied, and I made a sound of agreement.

“Of the remaining three, a stellar survey conducted just five years ago—again by the Alliance, who’s obviously interested in this region—show that one is a red dwarf star with no planetary companions. The others are a white dwarf with two rocky planets and two gas giants, and then a class G yellow-white star with three rocky planets and two gas giant companions. None of those planetary bodies are in their star’s habitable zone.”

I sat back. “Okay, so the red dwarf is a probable nope, leaving the other two. Any preferences?” I asked the cockpit at large.

“I would suggest the white dwarf system. The Class G system is more likely to attract interest from the Alliance since it offers considerably more radiant energy than the former,” Funboy said.

“He’s got a point. There’s more scope to do stuff in a system that offers you more stellar energy to work with,” Perry added. “If someone was trying to avoid being found operating, oh, say, a secret laboratory, the white dwarf is a better candidate.”

“Makes sense to me,” I replied. “Okay, then. Netty, please set a course to… RT 4678A, I guess, and don’t spare the horses. We’ll do a stealthy approach, though. For now, I just want to see what’s going on there. The exploding and killing and such can come later.”

* * *

We twisted into the system called RT 4678A and immediately went silent. I’d had Netty twist us in at some distance, well into the system’s Oort Cloud and above its ecliptic, accepting the reduced scanner accuracy in favor of increased stealth and less likelihood of being detected.

Right away, it became clear that the system was as silent as we were. We sat motionless in space, running on minimal power, while steadily gathering data with the passive scanners. After an hour, Netty announced the results.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” I asked, scowling.

“Well, nothing unexpected. The star is doing its star stuff, the planets are doing their planet stuff, but that’s it.”

“There would be considerable magnetic and radiation noise around the gas giants. Could they be obscuring anything in orbit around them?” Funboy asked.

“I considered that, which is why I wanted to gather a good set of baseline data. There is nothing to indicate that anything is orbiting either of the gas giants, aside from their moons—seven orbiting the innermost of the two, and eleven orbiting the other, counting only bodies larger than one hundred kilometers in diameter.”

I tapped my chin, thinking. “Is it possible that Gauss didn’t even come here?”

“It is. Unfortunately, the tracking devices on his ship, as clever as they are, don’t leave a lasting trail. If he was here, their residual—”

Netty cut off.

“Netty?” I asked.

“There’s a new signature. A ship just departed one of the moons of the outer gas giant.”

“Aha. So there is something here,” I said, sitting straighter. “Is it Gauss? Can we track it?”

“Based on the tracking data, yes, it’s Gauss. However, his ship is heading directly away from us, straight down relative to the system’s ecliptic. We’ll never catch him,” Netty said.

“Looks like he made us,” Zeno said. “Probably that damned tracker attached to the Fafnir’s back end.”

“Unlikely, Zeno. It’s a conventional tracker, relying on emitting a signal to someone who can detect it. It’s not twist-capable, so whatever signal it is emitting would be limited to light speed. That signal won’t have even reached the vicinity of the gas giant yet,” Netty said.

I crossed my arms. “So Gauss comes to this system, makes a hell of a beeline for that moon, does something there that couldn’t have lasted more than, what, an hour, maybe? And then he hightails it out of here.”

“Sounds like he picked something up,” Torina said.

“Or someone. Netty, plot a course to that moon. Maybe we can’t catch Gauss, but we can at least see whatever the hell it was that brought him here in the first place.”

21

“Doctor Dohlennz, I presume. Or, at least, this was his digs, recently evacuated,” I said as we made our cautious way along the tunnel.

We’d found the abandoned facility on the gas giant’s moon, a big body about the size of Saturn’s moon Titan. That gave it a surface gravity a little lower than that of Luna, and with the facility’s reactor apparently offline, there was no artificial gravity and we tended to bounce as we moved. I pushed off with my feet and sailed forward and up, then used my arms like shock absorbers on the tunnel’s ceiling to push down and forward. I repeated the process for the next bound. It was relatively easy for Zeno, Funboy, and me, but Icky was having trouble with it.

“I—shit! Stupid ceiling! Okay, I think I got this—dammit!”

She was too tall and tended to push too hard, which meant that while the three of us coasted relatively smoothly along the tunnel, Icky kind of bounced between floor, ceiling, and even walls like a pinball in play.

“Shit!”

“Now you know why we had you bring up the rear, big girl—”

“Damn—”

Clunk.

“Icky, are you okay?”

“Yeah, that was just my helmet—woah!”

Clack.

Perry cut in. He was scouting ahead, having the easiest time of all, just coasting along with the occasional flick of his wings.

“Van, I’ve reached a sealed door, about ten meters ahead of you. It’s locked mechanically, so we’ve got to cut or blast through it.”

“Got it,” I said and bounced along, joining him.

I studied the door. It was a big blast-proof affair, sealed shut and locked in place with heavy alloy rods that protruded into sockets set into the adjacent rock. And that was all I was able to discern before Icky broke in with a shout.

“Gangway!”

We turned in time to see Icky flailing toward us along the tunnel like an oncoming express train. We swore and scattered, pressing ourselves against the sides of the tunnel. She swept past, slammed into the door with a heavy OOF!, then rebounded, fell onto her butt, and bounced once.

“What’d I miss?” she asked.

“A Wu’tzur trying to imitate a battering ram,” Zeno said, stepping back into the middle of the tunnel. She peered down at Icky with a patient grin. “Bravo, big girl.”

Despite the tension of the dark, ominous tunnel, I had to chuckle. Funboy looked at me through his visor. “What could you possibly find humorous about this?”

I shook my head. “If the bad guys are watching us, we must look like the Keystone Cops. And yes, before you give me that blank look and tell me you don’t know who that is, I know. I’ll clue you in back on the Fafnir. For now, just assume that what I said is hilarious.”

Funboy pulled back his lips in a horrifying rictus—his version of a charming smile. I quickly shook my head.

“On second thought, don’t.” I turned to the door and drew the Moonsword. “Okay, then. Let’s get this door out of the way, shall we?”

I cut through the chunky alloy locking rods without much trouble, then turned to Icky. “Let’s see if you can harness that overdeveloped musculature of yours and push this thing open.”

She stepped forward, braced herself, planted all four arms on the blast door, and pushed. Slowly, it cracked open. She kept pushing, the crack widened, then the door swung back. It hit its stop with a thud I could feel through the rock under my feet and rebounded, but Icky was ready and caught it, then pushed it back open again. It thumped against its stop again, again rebounded slightly, then went still.

I resheathed the Moonsword, drew The Drop, and entered. Zeno followed me with her BAG cradled and ready to use, then moved to my right as the space beyond the door opened up. Funboy did likewise with his Franken-gun, going left. Perry swept overhead and wheeled around above us. Icky brought up the rear.

The space was big, about fifteen or twenty meters on a side, and five meters high, giving Perry lots of room to fly. It was crowded with tables, pieces of machinery, cables and conduits hanging from brackets rock-bolted to the ceiling above, cabinets, crates, and miscellaneous junk. It didn’t take long for the horrors to start showing themselves.

Bodies and parts of bodies.

Some were organic, some robotic, some bits of both, all in various states of dissection or disassembly. Jars and tanks contained organs and skin, while racks held mechanical components, tubing, actuators, and ball joints.

“Well, Carefully Indulgent did say that Dohlennz was a monster,” Zeno said, her voice quiet but taut with a mix of outrage and disgust—the same things I was feeling, taking in this mad scientist’s laboratory and its abominations.

I peered into a tank containing… something, a vaguely humanoid shape just visible through murky fluid, when there was movement beside me. I yelped and swung The Drop, and got a yelp in return as Perry recoiled and flung himself backward.

“Holy shit, Van, watch where you’re pointing that thing!”

“Then how about not sneaking up on me like that?” I lowered The Drop and took a shuddering breath. “This is not the place for stealthy approaches, bird.”

“Well, excuse me. See what having emotions gets you?”

“They come preinstalled. Anyway, did you have some reason for suddenly appearing beside me, or was it your natural tendency toward guile?”

“I prefer the term furtive and yes. I went and checked on the reactor to make sure it wasn’t booby-trapped. It’s not, but it has been wrecked. Looks like it was done in a hurry, too. Whoever it was apparently hadn’t the time or expertise to bypass the safeties and rig it to blow, which would have sucked, so they just made sure no one else could use it,” Perry said.

Funboy appeared, his hands raised. I frowned at him. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Making sure you don’t shoot me,” he said.

“Oh, for—just put your hands down. Did you find something?”

“Many things, most of them deeply unpleasant. However, the loss of power has resulted in a great deal of evidence being destroyed, which I suspect was the point of destroying the reactor,” Funboy said.

Perry dipped his beak. “The computers and data stores have all been comprehensively wiped, too. Our forensics people can try, but I doubt they’re going to be able to retrieve anything useful.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Zeno said, joining us with Icky. She was carrying a data slate. “This was sitting on the floor back over that way, near that bank of cabinets. It looks like it got dropped and forgotten.”

“Love to hear it. Let’s see what it contains, but avoid hooking it up to anything. I’d hate to find out that Gauss left it behind infected with a copy of that damned virus he’s carrying,” I said.

Out of an abundance of caution, we set our comms to voice traffic only, no data reception, and made sure our own data slates were powered off. Then Zeno switched on the slate she’d found and scrolled through its contents.

“Seems to be a bunch of research notes,” she said.

Funboy peered over her arm at the slate. “It is. Someone, presumably Dohlennz or an assistant, was making observations regarding various experiments. It’s… actually all quite repugnant. Some of their test subjects were clearly unwilling—”

“Wait,” I said, pointing. “Scroll back up to that one.”

Zeno did, then selected and opened a note labeled Sponsor Feedback. We read it. Icky, craning her neck to see over us, whistled.

“Holy shit, that’s not good.”

* * *

It was nice to think that cases were unraveled through painstaking, skillful detective work backed by keen insights into the workings of the criminal mind. The reality, though, was that more often than not, breaks in cases came about because the bad guys screwed up.

The serial killer runs a stop sign and gets pulled over. The guy who’s managed to embezzle millions of dollars from his employer gets caught when he tries to pad an expense account. The murderer wipes the gun clean of his fingerprints but forgets to do the same to the bullet casings.

Or, in this case, the diabolical mad scientist loses track of a data slate that gets knocked off a table and leaves it behind when he flees his lair.

That isn’t to say that the slate handed the case to us on a silver platter. Rather, it gave us useful information we wouldn’t have otherwise had, starting with hard confirmation that there was a close relationship between Dohlennz and the Enhancement Empire.

“Like two vile, murderous peas in a pod,” I said, reviewing the data we retrieved from the slate and shaking my head. Dohlennz, it seemed, was himself a synthetic being, working in league with the Enhancement Empire on something called the Ultimate Vessel.

“So they’re building—what, some sort of super ship?” Icky asked, but Torina shook her head.

“No. Having gone through this stuff, it’s a vessel, as in a container, not a ship. The Ultimate Vessel seems to be what they’re calling their end goal, and it has something to do with living things.”

“In that context, Ultimate Vessel sounds more like a body or something that’s better, faster, stronger, smarter, and generally superior—one into which someone’s consciousness could be implanted to let them benefit from it,” Perry said.

“Someone like Gauss. Or Dohlennz himself,” Zeno put in.

“Exactly. Or whoever else they might count among their chosen.” Perry turned to me. “Everything that was done to Gauss to keep him going, all those artificial upgrades, might just have been trial runs of the tech they intend to use in their Ultimate Vessel, which are also incidentally keeping Gauss alive.”

I sat back and stared up at the overhead in the Fafnir’s galley where we’d gathered. “Because he’s been bankrolling it. For that matter, the stolen identity tech we’ve been encountering for years now might likewise be prototype stuff they’ve been testing out.”

“There have been several different iterations we’ve encountered, some much less successful than others. Different versions being tested maybe?” Funboy said.

I gave a slow nod, parsing the various scenarios. “Yeah. Could be. Which means that all of this—the stolen IDs, the osmium exploitation, all of the death and misery and suffering around it, has been so that—what, Helem Gauss can live forever as a superhuman?”

“When you put it that way, you make it sound nasty,” Perry said.

I straightened and sat up. “Nasty is putting it mildly. It makes nasty, awful sense. Given the fact that Gauss connects Dohlennz and this Ultimate Vessel thing, whatever the hell it is, to the BeneStar Enhancement Empire, and also to the Sorcerers and the stolen identities, I’m starting to think our case of Crimes Against Order just got a whole lot bigger and more complex.”

“Gauss is definitely looking like the spider at the center of a really big, really evil web,” Torina said, nodding.

“Which does leave one question,” Zeno said.

I gave her a bemused glance. “One question? I think it leaves a whole hell of a lot more than that.”

“Okay, fine, one question that jumps out at me. Based on these research notes, Dohlennz was experimenting with something called Braiding. He notes that initial trials have been promising,” she went on, scrolling the data on the galley display to a particular entry, one of the last. “There. May solve the degradation cascade, whatever the hell that is,” she read, pointing at the entry.

“I doubt Dohlennz was talking about him and Gauss doing one another’s hair,” Torina said.

“Ugh. That definitely joins the list of images I’ve got stuck in my head that I wish I didn’t.” I crossed my arms and sighed. “No, I’m sure that Braiding is something truly—a violation. Of everything. That laboratory of Dohlennz’s was enough of a horror show to convince me of that.” I shuddered, remembering the organic remnants slowly freezing in the gloomy, powerless cavern. There was a forensics team en route from Anvil Dark to try and dig out any useful evidence, but aside from obscenity and abomination, I doubted they’d find much.

I stood. “Well, there’s only one way to get answers, and that’s to find Gauss, who’s presumably got Dohlennz with him. The question is, with him where? Where the hell did they run to? Netty, don’t suppose you managed to get anything from those trackers, huh?”

“Only that it was definitely Gauss’s ship, and it went thataway, as in ecliptically down. Unfortunately, he had such a head start when he twisted away that I wasn’t able to get the data about his destination before it decayed.”

“Okay, so where would a vain, self-absorbed pair of villains go to shape galactic opinion?” I turned to Perry. “And before you say Los Angeles or Hollywood or something like that, I mean somewhere connected to the galactic economy.”

“Actually, I have a suggestion based on those videos Icky watches on her hideous social media,” Funboy said.

“Those are for fashion tips, you bucket of deep sighs,” Icky shot back at him.

Funboy glanced significantly at her lower parts and lifted a fuzzy eyebrow. “Fashion tips. Sure. Anyway, we’re looking for somewhere well-connected to the galactic economy, as you put it, Van, that combines the desperate optimism of Las Vegas, the criminal opportunism of Dregs, and the hollow glamor of Miami.”

I gave him a surprised stare. “Since when are you so up on Earthly—make that American, cities?”

“Since I began associating with you, I thought it wise to understand something about your origins, Van.”

“So you latched onto Las Vegas and Miami? Funboy, I grew up on a farm in Iowa. Vegas and Miami might as well have been on the Moon, as far as I was concerned.”

“Ah, but they are instrumental in shaping the culture in which you matured. That is clear from the number of cultural references about them that permeate your popular media.” Funboy lifted one fluffy brow. “Did you not briefly go through a—how do you put it—bump phase? Involving music, if you can call it that, centered around deep bass sounds and gyrating women oiled up like seafood for the griddle?”

“That was because I liked a girl who was into Pitbull,” I protested.

“A lovely dog, if a bit chunky in the skull,” Funboy concluded primly.

“The rapper, not the dog—”

“Oh reallllly?” Torina asked, batting her lashes. The motion was far less dramatic than Funboy, whose brows were long enough to double as small fans.

“Look, we’re losing sight of the real issue here, which is—wait, you gleaned your opinion based on what, Funboy? TV? It’s not even close to reality, you know,” I stated. “And if you did, you’d wear sunglasses and dramatically take them off while The Who played in the background—”

“Great visual, boss. Lotta punch,” Perry said.

“Thanks. It’s a gift.” I turned back to Funboy. “But you had a point?”

“I do. I’ve taken those qualities in a location, then cross-referenced them with our own intelligence data, looking for a place that Gauss was known to have gone on one of his rare breaks from his habitual exclusion, where the Enhancement Empire also had a presence, and where activity related to the Sorcerers was also reported.”

“Hey, when high-tech tracking devices fail, we can always fall back on good, old-fashioned detective work, am I right?” Perry said.

I nodded. “No kidding. You’ve been busy behind the scenes here, my gloomy little friend. Do I take it you found such a place?” I asked him.

“I did. Fountain World.”

“Fountain World. Sounds idyllic.”

Netty answered. “You have no idea, boss. Wait until you hear about the story of Water’s Edge.”

“I look forward to it. Okay, then, Netty, let’s set course for Fountain World, see if we can scare ourselves up a couple of vile, horrific monsters.”

Funboy sighed. “I have been to Fountain World. There is no shortage of monsters there, believe me.”

* * *

Fountain World was an Earth-like planet in the Alpha Gruis system, a bright, blue-white sub-giant star just over one hundred light-years from Earth, which conveniently put it outside known space and, therefore, outside Guild jurisdiction. I’d heard of the place in passing a few times, but without any direct connection to any of our cases— and until now—we’d never had any reason to go there. Moreover, it wasn’t a cheap trip, requiring a minimum of three twists to be on the safe side, and about one and a half complete refuelings of the Fafnir’s antimatter supply. Fountain World did operate a luxury shuttle service out of Reticulum, a domed pleasure city run by the Reapers.

The Reapers had undergone a kind of renaissance, shifting from outright scumbags to legitimate business, and they’d done so in that most obvious of ways—laundering money through a war zone. The result was a criminal organization that had clean money, dirty hands, and the attention of corrupt politicians within fifty light-years.

And the Reapers were always open for business.

I called up the background material on Fountain World as we transited there. Ironically, despite it being over a hundred light-year trip, it was from a subjective time perspective relatively quick. All we had to do was twist to an intermediate waypoint—we used Reticulum—let Netty get her bearings, then twist again, get another nav fix, and twist one more time. From my own perspective, it took just over an hour. Thanks to time dilation, though, to an observer outside the Fafnir, nearly a week passed. And so it was that I slipped that much more out of sync with time back on Earth. Like a slow train that trickled by, my life continued into the unknown, even if I was traveling in relative style given the Fafnir’s upgrades.

It made me wonder just how far into Earth’s future I’d end up traveling this way, displaced in time relative to my homeworld by the twists I’d make. Gramps had been born about 1890 or so, putting him in his mid-twenties when he’d met Valint on the bloody, muddy fields of France in the Great War. He’d been about sixty when he’d mostly retired from military service in about 2010, which I figured put him about sixty years out of sync with Earth time.

Sixty years.

Of course, from his perspective, only sixty years had passed by 2010, so twisting hadn’t actually doubled his life span—it would only seem that way to someone who’d never left Earth. The concept took a moment for me to grasp, and even then, it was at the very edge of reality.

“What’s so funny?” Perry asked.

“I—huh. Didn’t know I’d laughed out loud. Nothing, really. Just… sometimes the absurdity of my existence gets a bit much. You know, fighting in space. Against—” I waved vaguely at the universe. “It’s a bit much.”

He gave me a measured look. “Believe it or not, I feel the same way.”

“You do?”

He cut his eyes at Icky, who, at the moment, was busy picking her teeth with a screwdriver. “Every day.”

22

Netty announced our arrival at Alpha Gruis. We had about a seven hour flight from the twist point to Fountain World, so I used the time to finish reading a detailed background on our destination.

Disney World crossed with a red-light district. That was an actual quote from the Guild dossier on Fountain World, added to it by none other than Petyr Groshenko, back when he was a beat Peacemaker and before he became a master. It seemed to sum it up quite nicely.

Fountain World was built with a purpose, even more than the domed city of Reticulum. The emphasis was on pleasure, as in pleasures of the flesh, rather than just opulence, fine food, or high-end entertainment. There were those things too, but Fountain World’s claim to fame was that they were just background to the main event—the main event being pretty much whatever anyone wanted.

And was willing to pay for.

“Reminds me of a couple of places I passed through in Europe,” I said later, having returned to the Fafnir’s cockpit for our final approach to Fountain World. “I had a guy in Hamburg tell me I could get anything I wanted—animal, vegetable, or mineral.”

Torina gave me some raised eyebrows. “Vegetable?”

“Or for that matter, mineral?” Zeno put in.

I shrugged. “It’s probably best not to think about it too closely.”

“Let me guess—you were there just for the museums and local culture,” Torina said, smirking.

“Yeah, and Van read Playboy for the articles,” Perry replied.

“Hey, Playboy has some damned fine writing in it. Norman Mailer, Ray Bradbury, Margaret Atwood, Ian Fleming—they all wrote for Playboy.” I turned to Torina. “And I was in Hamburg on a flight layover and got stuck there for a day thanks to a snowstorm, so the most action I got was a terrifying cab ride from the airport. I’ll ask you to get your mind out of the Teutonic gutter, you degenerates.”

“I would never touch a gutter, let alone carouse in one,” Funboy insisted.

I gave him a sage nod. “I believe you. As to the rest of you—”

“Clearance incoming, boss,” Netty interrupted.

“Take us to orbital, then,” I said, easing back in my seat as the planet began to scroll away underneath us.

At the Fountain World orbital, we would take a shuttle down to the surface, since landing rights were tightly restricted for any ships over class 5. We elected instead to put the Fafnir into a parking orbit and take the Frankie to the surface. I was a lot more comfortable having our own transportation available, and not having to rely on the public sort. We left Zeno on the Fafnir to hold the fort, since she had absolutely no interest in visiting a pleasure world.

On the surface, we disembarked at the starport and stepped into a brilliantly beautiful day—and I do mean brilliant, since the blue-white, class B sub-giant star called Alpha Gruis was about twenty percent brighter than Sol and a whole lot whiter. It was like being under floodlights—if those floodlights gave you a sunburn. It was also very warm, which was apparently okay with most of the people here, who were wearing variations on beach apparel, shorts and flip-flops and the like or their alien equivalents. In a few notable cases, they weren’t even wearing that much.

“I—okay,” I said, watching as a pair of aliens, both humanoid, green-skinned, strikingly curvaceous, and entirely naked ambled past as we left the terminal. “I think they might be friends of Captain Kirk.”

“Who’s Captain Kirk?” Icky asked.

“Another Iowa boy who done good in outer space,” I said, glancing at Icky. “You’re really not so out of place here, you big pantless girl, you. In fact, I’m feeling kind of overdressed in this b-suit.”

“We do kind of stick out,” Torina said, noting that many of the people wandering by were paying more attention to us than their naked fellows. “Maybe we should dress down a little?”

I considered it. We were conspicuous in our b-suits. On the other hand, if we dressed down to swimwear, things like The Drop and the Moonsword were going to stand out even more, despite fulfilling a few kinks for people who think weapons and nudity go hand in hand.

After all, not many guys in Speedos carried swords, regardless of what the internet asserts. I wasn’t crazy about leaving ourselves completely unarmed, either. Not with Gauss and Dohlennz at least theoretically here, although we had no hard evidence of their presence yet.

We finally settled on switching from our b-suits to more casual wear and carrying our weapons in satchels slung over our shoulders like luggage. We bought what we needed in the shopping concourse in the terminal—at grossly inflated prices, of course—then returned to the Frankie to change. When exiting the terminal again, we looked a lot less conspicuous—me in shorts and a t-shirt, and Torina in a loose-fitting pantsuit affair. Icky was already pretty dressed down, Perry and Netty-P were always dressed for the occasion, and Funboy—

“Oh, I have to get a picture of this,” I said as Funboy stepped out of the Frankie.

He stood, wearing sandals, baggy Bermuda shorts, and an oversized shirt that was both loud and tacky. The shirt, which hung to his narrow hips, featured a pattern of blue, yellow, and red shapes that were either paramecium or paisley. I couldn’t decide which, and I was too busy enjoying Funboy’s expression. Each floppy shirtsleeve had gold braiding like the cord for drapes in a decaying castle, and the collar was trimmed in purple fuzz taken from a hapless animal that was, no doubt, utterly fabulous. A broad-brimmed sun hat topped his head, and he wore wraparound mirrored shades that shimmered in the light.

He looked like an anthropomorphic sloth on a singles cruise.

“What? Is my dress somehow inappropriate?” he asked, wiping his face with a disposable cloth.

I grinned and shook my head. “No, Funboy, it’s perfect—absolutely perfect.” I lifted my data slate. “Say cheese.”

“Why? In what way is coagulated, compressed, and ripened curds derived from—”

I tapped the slate, capturing the moment for posterity.

“—dairy fluids relevant to this situation?”

I laughed and admired the picture but reminded myself we were here for a reason and not just to kick back and take in the sun. From outside the terminal, we could see the sprawl of Fountain City spilling off across a series of rolling hills. They rose in progressive steps, the furthest, a few klicks away, being fronted with a sheer cliff at least a hundred meters tall. A glorious waterfall cascaded over the edge, roaring out of a dam that held back a deep, sprawling reservoir at the top of the cliff.

But it was what hovered over the waterfall that immediately caught my eye.

I’d seen pictures of Water’s Edge Castle in the Guild dossier. It was an elaborate, palatial mansion and estate suspended about fifty meters above the waterfall, just hanging there in midair. The pictures didn’t do it justice. It was a breathtaking sight, made all the more spectacular by the foaming curtain of water surging over the cliff beneath it and wreathing it in shimmering, rainbow-hued tendrils of spray.

“Does anyone know what the original founder of this overpriced hellhole looked like?” I asked. The origins of Fountain World were unclear, the dossier containing more speculation than hard fact.

“No. Whoever he, she, they, or it was, they’re known only as the Originator or, in some cases, the First Waters,” Netty-P said. “Has a rather cultish vibe to it, don’t you think? Anyway, all that’s confirmed is that the first permanent location is that one up there, and that there’s supposedly a shrine or something in it devoted to the founder of this place.”

“Said founding being done in a celebration of all life, or so the story goes,” Perry added. “That’s the deal with the fountains you see everywhere. Whoever the founder was, he/she/it/them had a fascination with the things. Something about all that water spurting up—”

“Yeah, we get the picture, bird, thanks,” I said, shading my eyes and taking in the grandeur of Water’s Edge Castle. “Raise an appendage if you think that thing’s floating because it’s got a big old chunk of stolen anti-grav plate underneath it. Raise another if you think Helem Gauss built this place as a fallback position.”

Everyone raised a hand, wing, or manipulator. Icky raised all four, then shrugged at my sardonic glance.

“Hey, I really really agree.”

“Thanks, big girl. But let me rein in that enthusiasm before we talk about charging in, hammer-a-swingin’. We want to achieve two goals here. The first is, don’t get killed—by Gauss, Dohlennz, any of the Enhancement Empire scumbags, or—well, just don’t get killed.”

“Is the second to remain as hygienic as possible in a world essentially devoted to the sharing of biological materials?”

“Uh—make it three goals. The third is to save that grav-plating up there. If it’s powerful enough to hold that palace up in the sky, then it has got to be operating way more efficiently than the stuff we’ve got on our ships right now, right?”

“Yeah, it would have to be. Either it’s a different type, or it’s been configured and powered in some way we don’t currently understand,” Icky said.

I nodded. “Which makes it really valuable.”

Torina shaded her eyes and frowned. “We’re going to have to be damned careful if we’re going to bring that thing down. I can’t imagine that ending well.”

“No, it would not. The building is massive enough that it would likely compromise that dam beneath it, which would allow the contents of the reservoir to abruptly empty over the edge. The resulting deluge would likely destroy most of Fountain City west of this Starport.”

“Then that building can’t fall down,” I said.

Torina gave me a sideways glance. “I’m sensing you mean for it to go some other direction.”

“Sure. If we can nullify whatever it is that keeps it locked in that position, then with the right nudge, it can go sideways, right? If we moved it back from the cliff and dropped it into the lake, it shouldn’t harm the dam, right?”

Netty-P swiveled a scanner head toward me. “It would depend on the specific structure of the dam, the depth of the lake, and other factors, but no, the building probably isn’t big enough to displace enough water to pose much of a threat.”

“Perfect. That means the grav-plate can be fished out of the lake and put to good use by, say, us.”

“I hate to bring in annoying details, but isn’t this kind of proverbial cart before the horse, boss?” Perry said. “How do we know who’s up there? Or if it’s even the right place?”

“It is a good point. That structure does seem rather an obvious location, which might be why Gauss and Dohlennz would choose to have nothing to do with it—particularly since they must know that we’re following them,” Funboy said.

I had to nod at that. I considered it a moment, then turned to Netty-P. “How do you feel about doing a little recon?”

“I’d be happy to. So what are you thinking? Maintenance drone? Service bot? Something else?”

“Maintenance drone, I think. The less you have to actually interact with people, the better. We just need you up there long enough to drop a bug or three and then get the hell out.”

“The hardware we’ve got won’t avoid detection by the inevitable countermeasures for long,” she replied.

“Can we rig them so that they transmit only briefly, then deactivate themselves before they get discovered?”

“With Icky’s help, I’m sure we can arrange that.”

“Well, my first choice would be beating on bad guys with my hammer, but I guess fiddling with surveillance bugs is going to have to do for now,” Icky put in.

“Okay. But no matter what, Netty-P, I don’t want you exposed to risk for one second longer than necessary.”

“I appreciate the concern, Van. And, in any case, I’ll record along the way up there.”

“Okay, so now all we have to figure out is how to get you up there,” I said.

“There’s a lift array that connects the Castle to the ground. That seems like a good place to start. Netty-P is going to have to spend some time watching the comings and goings and figure out the security measures that are in place, and that we’re going to have to bypass,” Perry said.

“Okay, I’m going to leave that to you and Netty-P. The rest of us are going to go do a little sightseeing. I mean, we’ve come all this way, there’s no sense wasting our chance to spend a little money.”

Torina cocked her head at me. “On what?”

“You’ll see. Now then. Let’s get to spying.”

* * *

While Netty-P and Perry went and scouted out access to Water’s Edge Castle, the rest of us ambled our way into Fountain City. Sure enough, there were fountains, all right—dozens, probably hundreds of them. A plaque told us that they were all fed strictly by hydraulic pressure from the lake on top of the cliff, meaning there were no pumps or other mechanisms at work to keep them flowing.

“That’s impressive,” I said, turning from the plaque and taking in an elaborate series of fountains that hissed and fumed in the middle of a plaza surrounded by palatial homes, multi-story affairs all enclosed by stately walls. We skirted the plaza and continued up a broad avenue that slowly rose along the front of one of the hills that broke the city into smaller neighborhoods or districts.

There seemed to be no single part of the city devoted to commerce, a sort of downtown. Instead, Fountain City seemed to be more a cluster of smaller cities all smeared together, a retail and entertainment district giving way to residential, then that again giving way to retail and entertainment.

“It’s so nobody has to go far to get the things they want. And speaking of the things they want—” Torina said, sidestepping as an amazing 3D holo image of a flawless human male stepped into her path. His face was a lesson in masculine sculpting, while his body looked as though Michelangelo’s David had been a first discarded attempt at what now stood on the pedway in front of Torina. A rakish grin split his lips as he—the program—drew a bead on Torina.

I couldn’t blame him.

“Hello there,” he said. “You look like a woman who could use some… distraction,” it purred, every syllable crafted for maximum effect.

I stepped up beside him, then struck a pose. “I think my cheekbones are better, dear.”

Torina snorted. “Yours are also real, love. And it would have been a lot more convincing if I hadn’t just seen it being a buff Nesit for that couple just ahead of us.”

The holo didn’t give up. “I can be anything and everything, sweet. Just step into The Suspension of Disbelief to your right, and I’m yours. And only yours,” it said. Then it quickly added, “Fifty bond cover charge, waived during happy hour, some conditions apply.”

We both glanced at the establishment called The Suspension of Disbelief. It was gloriously tacky, vaguely reminiscent of the Taj Mahal except with a lot more bling, and advertising—

I blinked. “Wait—they can actually put that on a poster? In public? That they’ll do… that?”

Torina lifted an eyebrow. “I frankly have difficulty suspending my disbelief that if we walk in there, we’re going to find people that drop-dead gorgeous doing it.”

“No, it’ll be the interstellar equivalent of paunchy, middle-aged businessmen and—Icky, would you leave that thing alone?”

The 3D holo-sprite had apparently given up on Torina and moved on to Icky, now appearing as a Wu’tzur male the size of a small car and made of nothing but sex appeal and slabs of muscle.

Icky was grinning at it. “My ankles? Really? Well, maybe one drink—”

“Icky!”

She turned. “Hey, best offer I’ve had in a while.”

“And it’s all waiting for you inside The Suspension of Disbelief. Just step right through that door there, and you’ll find bliss awaits.” Pause. “Fifty bond cover charge, waived during happy hour, some conditions apply.”

“Icky, Icky,” Torina said, taking her arm and leading her away. “If something seems too good to be true—”

I turned to find the sprite moving on Funboy, who just stood in his shorts and flip-flops and sun hat, staring. The 3D construct regarded him for a moment, still as a Wu’tzur, then shook its head and vanished.

Funboy stared for a moment, then gave a slight frown.

“How insulting.”

He fell in beside me as we resumed our way. I glanced down at him. “Would you really have been interested in going in there?”

“Oh dear, no. There are probably entirely unique and novel pathogens in there, given the establishment’s… business model, shall we say.”

We walked on a few paces.

“Still, it would have been nice to have been asked.”

* * *

We carried on, past restaurants, clubs, bars, obvious brothels—in a few cases, unabashedly, even arrogantly blatant brothels—theaters, and shops. Lots and lots of shops. By then, Netty-P had managed to discreetly insert herself into the maintenance bot cadre looking after Water’s Edge Castle, apparently by cloning a recognition transponder signal the other bots were using. Perry explained it over the comm as he came to join us.

“Sounds like a massive security hole,” I said.

“Well, they were using encryption, probably good enough to keep out casual interlopers. I suspect they’re more worried about this planet’s version of paparazzi sneaking bugs and things in than law enforcement,” Perry replied.

“We are outside Guild jurisdiction here,” Torina noted as we dodged around another 3D holo-advert taking up much of the pedway ahead of us. More fountains bubbled and foamed along the street. Funboy had noted that the ones outside some of the more obvious houses of ill repute tended to periodically erupt into towers of spray, which had made Torina and Icky shake their heads as they looked up at one surging into the sky.

“Subtle,” Icky said, and Torina shook her head at the desperate pageantry of it all.

“That’s no guarantee that there won’t be more secure sections inside the Castle,” Perry said, appearing overhead. “And before you worry, no, Netty-P isn’t going to try any great heroics to break into them if there are. If she can’t easily circumvent the countermeasures, then she’ll back off.”

“Good. Last thing we want is her getting caught. I mean, there is local law enforcement, and I’d really like to not run afoul of them,” I said.

“Hey, Van, see that shop up ahead of you, to the left? The one called Pinnacle Goods?” Perry asked.

“I do.”

“That’s an Enhancement Empire brand.”

I glanced at Torina. “Want to do some shopping?”

“Looks expensive,” she replied.

“Well, duh, we’re not going to buy anything.”

She sniffed. “Miser.”

I told Icky and Funboy to remain outside but near the entrance, while Perry remained circling overhead doing his usual combat air patrol routine. Torina and I switched ourselves to bored and rich mode, and we swept into the shop in a billowing cloud of entitlement.

Pinnacle Goods was exactly the sort of place I hated. It was full of grossly overpriced knick knacks that had no useful purpose beyond putting on an ostentatious display of wealth—basically, financial dick waving with gaudy jewelry and tacky objets d’art, all of them displaying the Pinnacle Goods logo if they could reasonably get away with it, or even if they couldn’t. Torina and I wandered among the displays, idly browsing, making occasional vapid comments about how this would look good in the library, or that goes nicely with that Faalax tapestry we just bought for the drawing room.

“Sir, madam, may I be of assistance?”

We turned to the voice, an obsequious tone that told me that someone was on commission. It belonged to an avian alien of a species I didn’t recognize. Another salesperson, an obvious synth, watched from behind a counter display with a plastic smile—literally—pasted on his face.

“Yes, perhaps. Muffy and I are looking for something… special. A gift for an old friend. Something unique,” I said.

Torina glanced at my calling her Muffy but just smiled graciously with all the practice of an east coast doyenne. “He’s the sort of person who already has everything, so he’s very hard to shop for—isn’t that right, Tad?”

I grinned—she picked a superb counterpunch for my name. “That’s right, hunnykins. He’s a dear friend but so hard to please.”

I glanced at the synth sidelong. The presence of a synth wasn’t too surprising, but given why we were here, I was still leery.

The avian attendant made a big show of thinking for a moment, then made a dramatic gesture and beckoned for us to follow him. He took us to another display case near the back of the store, opened it, and extracted a set of three massive, jet-black gems. I had to admit, they were striking as hell—and should have been for the eye-watering price of six hundred thousand bonds.

He launched into his spiel. “These are the Three Sisters, all cut from the same black ruby discovered in a comet nearly three hundred years ago in the Bleakest Pool. They were commissioned by the Forxitun family of Gabroxos, one of the leading houses of that storied world until their fall in the Rebellion of Light. They were evacuated from Gabroxos—naturally, what with the unwashed masses demanding things like pay and food, the beasts—and passed into the hands of a private collector before coming into our possession. And now, they are here, utterly unique and almost supernaturally beautiful—the perfect gift for someone who has everything. I can assure you, they will have nothing like these treasures.”

Essentially everything he just said is bullshit, Perry said in my ear. Those same words—Bleakest Pool, Forxitun family, Gabroxos—get used in about a half-dozen other blurbs in various Pinnacle Goods catalogs, every time in a completely different context. They really gotta get some new material.

I nodded. “Impressive. The Forxitun family, huh? Yeah, I think I’ve heard of them.”

The avian nodded. “Of course you have, sir. You have taste,” he said, then continued with his pitch. I decided to string him along, asking him specific details about the cut of the stones, the history of the Rebellion of Light, the fortunes of the Forxituns, and any number of other things that came to mind that would drag out the sale. He was good, I had to give him that. He was able to smoothly answer every question and seamlessly embellish every detail, proving himself a true master of bullshittery. I supposed, though, that that was pretty much a basic qualification to work in a place like this.

Torina played her part. She dumbly nodded along with me as though everything the salesman was saying was the gospel truth and we knew it, while making it painfully obvious we had no idea what we were talking about. I wasn’t doing it just to be an asshole, though. I kept an eye on the synth, as he kept an eye on us. I didn’t get the sense, though, that he recognized us or was interested in sounding any alarm. He just seemed interested in whether his partner was going to make the sale, probably because he’d get a cut of the commission.

I finally pursed my lips, looked at the gems, then nodded. “Alright, I think we’ll take them—”

“No,” Torina cut in. “No, no, no. They’re too… obvious.” She shook her head. “No. They just don’t speak to me. They’re too much. I’d rather have something less”—she paused and looked haughtily around the shop—“grandiose. Come along, Tad, let’s see if we can find something more suitable—”

The avian salesmen got a hard, fixed look on his face. “Sir and madam, we do not appreciate customers who have no intention of making a purchase,” he said, his tone imperious.

Torina’s face flushed on cue. “How dare you! Are you implying this customer isn’t—isn’t—right?” Her tone oozed arrogant derision, and it was a damned good performance.

“The customer is always right, yes, right up until the moment the customer is wrong,” he said, nodding to the synth. The synth, in turn, did something, and a compartment opened in the wall near the entrance. Another synth strode out of it, this one far more machine-like and sporting an extra pair of arms, one mounting a vicious-looking truncheon, the other some sort of snub-nosed gun.

“Obviously, our goods are not suited to people of your… standing,” the avian said. “We’d like you to leave now.”

I put on my own look of outrage. “This is going to cost you and your hovel of a store,” I said and turned to Torina. “Let’s be off, darling. Leave their trinkets to the tourists.”

We headed for the door, the security synth watching us with a fixed, glassy expression as we passed it. Torina paused before exiting.

“I’ll have you know that my family had money while your quaint little curio store here was still a vacant lot. If it isn’t obvious, it’s because we prize character more than things. So we’ll walk out of here without those baubles you tried to foist on us and go on with our fabulous lives, while you keep desperately trying to—do whatever it is you do, for masters”—she looked at the security synth—“who’d no doubt replace you without a second thought, that’s how much you mean to them.” She gave a wintry smile and held out her hand. “Now we may leave, Biff.”

“Tad.”

“Ah, yes, Tad. My apologies. She turned back to the two salesmen. “You never forget your third husband. Or your second—”

“Let’s go, dear, shall we? I think there’s a place that sells stavosia up the street. We could both use some carbs after this… ordeal.”

The security synth crowded us toward the door. I glared back into its face.

“Back off, or you might lose some jewels of your own,” I growled.

Torina pointed down. “Uh… dear?”

I looked down at a conspicuous absence of anything that would give my threat meaning, then back up.

“Well, if you did have anything down there, it’d be… you know, at risk of me—”

Torina pulled me out the door. “Kinda lost the thread there at the end, huh?” she said, grinning.

I smiled. “I really felt the menace in me. Definitely local-theater quality emotional investment and range.”

“Yes, dear. You were terrifying. And your acting was more like, um, second year community college, I guess you’d say.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It’s meant as one.” She gave me a quick kiss as we strode, our long legs carrying us into the street in a few steps. After rounding a corner, I asked into the comm, “Anyone following us?”

“I don’t see anyone from up here,” Perry said.

Icky came on. “Funboy and I are across the street. No one came out from that place, and no one obviously started after you.”

I turned to Torina. “That synth was packing heavy metal for store security. Did you see that cannon?”

She looked around, doing the math. “If even a few of these shops have things like that hidden away in them—”

I nodded. “Yeah. We’re surrounded by an army.”

23

We met back up with Icky and Funboy.

Funboy now carried a drink with a little umbrella in it, which he sipped through a straw with the delicacy of a nervous dowager on a cruise. I stifled a laugh as Perry broke in from overhead.

“Netty-P’s done. She got her bugs placed and she’s on her way back down from the Castle,” Perry said.

“Roger that. Let’s reconvene back at the Frankie.”

We hadn’t wandered all that far from the Starport, so within the hour all of us were back aboard our workboat. It was cramped, especially with Icky present, but it gave us a private place to check on what Netty-P’s bugs were sending us. Perry remained outside since we could just repeat the data to him while he kept watch from on high.

We saw a great deal of nothing. Corridors, rooms, all of it as tackily luxurious as the Pinnacle Goods shop had been. People came and went, and we caught snippets of conversation, but nothing useful or even particularly interesting appeared on the display. We also had to wait for the feeds to periodically refresh with somewhat grainy imagery, since the bugs were designed to burst-transmit data that was heavily compressed and encrypted.

I glared at the images. “Gripping, and by that I mean it’s virtually worthless. Who are these people? What are they doing? And what are they talking about?”

Everyone just shook their heads. With only snatches of imagery and fragments of conversation, we couldn’t really assemble a coherent picture of anything.

“Sorry, Van. I tried to locate the bugs in the best available places. The upper levels of the Castle were heavily secured, and that’s where all the interesting stuff is probably going on. Maybe I should have tried to access them,” Netty-P said.

I shook my head. “No, you shouldn’t have. You did the right thing by just coming back when you got these planted. And hey, Netty-P, it’s not your fault that—”

“Van, look… right there,” Torina said with urgency.

I caught a glimpse of… something, but I wasn’t sure what until we replayed the imagery. Then it was clear what we’d seen in the background. Or, more to the point, who we’d seen, wheeling by from one side of the image to the other.

It was Helem Gauss. Sure enough, he was here, on Fountain World, and in Water’s Edge Castle.

* * *

“Bet he’s being very careful. No nodes, no jacks, not even any open signals,” Torina said.

Icky was munching on something she bought in the city. It was the size of a manhole cover and looked like a damp bathroom rug, but it smelled like an Italian bakery. After flicking crumbs away with supreme delicacy, she licked her fingers—twice—and gave a massive shrug. “Can’t blame him. If he’s carrying a really nasty virus, he probably doesn’t want to infect his own stuff, no?” she said, around a mouthful of pastry rug.

I exhaled, thinking of the possibilities. “The girl talking with her mouth full is right. It’d be nice to see what would happen if he did infect the network here.”

“Chaos, as systems potentially go down all over the planet?” Perry asked.

“Maybe. But if we need to see what this virus does and figure out ways of dealing with it, this wouldn’t be a bad place to do it. I mean, the only developed part of the planet is around the city, the climate is downright balmy, and the atmosphere is breathable, so no one would be immediately threatened with suffocation or dying due to some temperature extreme. It would be a very different story aboard an orbital or station, like Spindrift or Crossroads,” I replied.

“That’s a good point. If we assume that at some point this virus will be released, then it would make sense for it to happen in a relatively benign environment,” Funboy added.

“Exactly. Which means we need a way to force the issue. And that pretty much means getting into that Castle,” I concluded.

We sifted our options. It would probably be too risky to have Netty-P try to access the place again—a lowly maintenance bot leaving, then returning again, would likely raise suspicions—so she was out.

“I would be willing to go,” Funboy said. “I believe that I can remain inconspicuous.”

I looked him up and down, from his flip-flops to his sun hat. “Let’s… put that in the possible category, shall we?”

“Hey, how about me? I’d like a chance to do more than just sit here and play word games with Netty,” Zeno said over the comm.

Perry and Icky both volunteered, but neither of those would really work either. Perry was not going to pass as a maintenance bot or any other sort of drone—

“The curse of being fabulous,” he said with a sigh.

—and Icky was, well, Icky.

“If we needed someone to beat their way in with a hammer, you’d be top of the list, my dear,” I said, then sat back in the Frankie’s pilot’s seat. “I think it’s going to have to be yours truly—after some suitable disguise work, of course.”

The next question was how to go about getting Gauss connected to the network. Netty-P had done a deep dive into the accessible networks in the Castle, so we had a good view of them. And Guild intel had done a thorough workup on Gauss while he’d been in custody, so we had at least some idea how he worked from an information technology perspective.

We needed a way of bridging the two, connecting Gauss to the Castle’s network against his will, and ideally without him being aware of it. Netty, Netty-P, and Perry put their virtual heads together to assemble the software that would enable the bridging effect, but we still needed a piece of hardware, a substrate on which to run the thing.

“It needs to be something completely disposable—nothing that comes anywhere near our own systems,” I said, then turned to Perry and Netty-P. “And that includes you guys. I’m probably going to send you back up to the Fafnir before we try this.”

“Company sounds good. Bit dull up here,” Zeno said.

We ended up finding an old stand-alone computer unit in a tech shop in the city. It had been stripped out of a ship and replaced with a new upgrade and was just a basic control unit, nothing fancy, but we could configure it as a sort of wireless router, capable of running the software that would try to link Gauss to the network.

Torina raised the most obvious remaining objection.

“Let’s say this works. You manage to get Gauss to infect the Castle’s systems. So the Castle crashes down onto that dam and floods the city.” I opened my mouth, but she raised a finger to preempt me.

“Now you’re going to say, But Torina, I’ve got a cunning plan to deal with that. We’re going to shove the Castle sideways somehow like we discussed before. And I’m going to reply, Okay, sure, but you’re inside that Castle, Van, when it comes crashing down. And you’ll probably come up with some sort of plan to deal with that, picking you up in the Frankie or something, and I’m going to end off by saying that—Van, seriously, this a complicated plan with only dim prospects of success.”

I stared at her. She stared back. Finally, she said, “Well?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. You seemed to be having a perfectly good conversation with me, without me having to say anything.”

“Look, Van—”

I began ticking points off on my fingers. “Yes, I know it’s complicated. But Gauss is a walking weapon right now, and we need to understand what happens if the trigger gets pulled, so we can develop some countermeasures. I’d much rather not let him be the one to decide where and when that happens.”

“I’m not happy about this plan, Van.”

“Honestly, neither am I. But it’s the best we’ve got to capitalize on the opportunity we have here.” I looked back at the display, which was still showing imagery from our bugs. “Now all we need is access to Gauss.”

“Hey, boss. If you ever wanted to dress up as a hot nurse, now is your time to shine—” Perry said over the comm—he was keeping an eye on the Castle—but Netty-P cut him off.

“One of the bugs just went offline,” she said, paused, then went on. “And there goes another.”

I snapped a curse. They must have been discovered, or else some previously dormant security measure was suddenly kicking into—

“Uh, Van? Message for you, I think, on the display.”

I glanced up—straight into the face of Helem Gauss.

He was pale and thin, his eyes huge in a gaunt face that wasn’t more than skin stretched taut over bone. He stared into the bug for a moment, then pulled his mouth back into a grin in a way reminiscent of Funboy but far more horrifying for its cold and utter emptiness. It was the smile of a doll painted onto porcelain.

It was a masquerade. Horribly so.

“I’m sorry, children,” he rasped, his voice the hiss of dead leaves in the wind. “This is me slipping through your grasp yet again. And it will be this way every time you try, because we are simply too many.”

His evil smile filled the display for a moment, then the image winked out.

I slumped back.

“Shit.”

“Van, what do you want to do?” Torina asked.

I sat up again. “Do? Go after him, that’s what we’ll do. Netty-P, get the Frankie’s preflight done as fast as you can, and don’t hesitate to cut a few corners. Zeno, bring the Fafnir—”

“Van, an air car just zipped away from the Castle in a cloud of dust and up yours I’m outta here. It’s heading north, toward—whatever’s to the north,” Perry said.

“A ship, probably. Zeno, Netty, get the Fafnir undocked and stay up in geosynchronous orbit for now. Keep an eye out for anything lifting north of the city. We’ll be lifting here as soon as we recover Perry.”

They acknowledged as Netty-P finished the Frankie’s abbreviated preflight checklist, by which time Perry was back. The airlock was still sealing as we lifted from the Starport, ignoring obviously bullshit demands that we delay our departure from traffic control who were all no doubt in Gauss’s pocket. We were still rising toward orbit when Netty announced the even worse news.

“Van, there’s been a launch from what appears to be a private port north of the city. Or, actually, there have been several launches—eight of them, in fact.”

“What? What are they? Missiles? Are you under attack—?”

“No, not missiles. There are eight essentially identical class 6 cutters lifting. They’re all broadcasting the same transponder data—which is illegal as hell of course, or would be, if we had any jurisdiction—and they’re all departing on different trajectories.”

I slumped back again, this time in final surrender. “Behold, Gauss’s escape plan,” I said, then groaned and rubbed my eyes.

“Have to admit, it’s a good one. And one worthy of an ultra-rich supervillain. Even James Bond would have been impressed,” Perry said.

“Who’s James—?” Icky started, but Perry held up a wing.

“I’ll tell you later.”

* * *

The ships departed the planet like a starburst, in eight completely different directions—of course. When we reached the Fafnir, I was angry and frustrated enough to order Netty to set off after one of them at random but soon gave up. The ship just ignored our demands for it to stop, and we had no justification at all for using force. It hadn’t done anything illegal, and we didn’t have jurisdiction. And for that matter, Gauss had been acquitted, served his time, and paid his fines, so we had no legal justification to try and stop and arrest him anyway.

I watched the class 6 we’d picked accelerate away as we cut our drive.

Torina blew out a sigh. “I have no doubt they’re laughing at us.”

“They are? Hey, that’s gotta be a violation of some sort, laughing at a Peacemaker, doesn’t it? Worth a couple of swings, anyway?” Icky growled.

“If being laughed at was an offense, Icky, then you’d be a walking—” Perry started, but stopped at Icky’s ferocious scowl. “Yeah, never mind.’

“Smart move, bird.”

I shook my head. “We were sloppy back there. We got complacent, so we got sloppy.”

“I disagree.”

I turned to Funboy, who’d ditched the hat and sunglasses but still wore the floral shirt and shorts. He stared back at me.

“Fountain World was a poor choice for a location to confront Gauss. He had clearly established himself there, along with an elaborate but effective escape plan. That said, he had the intent of remaining, at least for a time. Thanks to us, he was there for, what, two days? Perhaps three?” Funboy said.

I nodded. “So what are you suggesting?”

“As a course of action? I’m not suggesting anything, because I have nothing to suggest. However, we did manage to pry Gauss out of what would otherwise have been a safe location for him. We’ve forced him to move, which means that, for the time being, he lacks a safe base.”

“Hah. I’m sure he’s got another eight of them,” Zeno said.

“Perhaps. But it shouldn’t make any difference, because he really had no reason to flee this one. Once he knew that we had compromised him, he could have sat up in that floating Castle and ignored us, and we probably wouldn’t have been able to get anywhere near him.” Funboy blinked. “To put it more succinctly—why did Gauss flee?”

I frowned as I chewed on that. “That’s… a very good question, actually. He really didn’t have any reason to fear us or our half-assed plan to make him infect his own network with that virus—and yes, I know, you’re right, it was a half-assed plan, I admit it,” I said to Torina, who just smiled and nodded. Then she winked, and I was even more enamored with my general policy of honesty.

“He was planning to leave anyway,” Icky said. This time, we all turned to her.

She looked around, back at us. “What? I mean, it makes sense, right? He couldn’t have had all those ships and crews just sitting there with their engines idling in case he ever had to make a break for it. That would’ve cost a fortune, right?”

We looked around and nodded. “Again, a good point. So we might have hastened Gauss’s departure, but he must have been intending to leave, to go—where?”

“Is there any reason we don’t think he’s still going where we originally thought, to Adoration, the Enhancement Empire’s planet? And if so, why don’t we just go through with the original plan and drop that mini nuke on him?” Zeno asked.

But Funboy shook his head. “I don’t believe he’d be welcome there, since the Enhancement Empire has clearly been working against his interests.”

Yet again, we all turned to him. Yet again, he blinked and went on.

“Someone tried to kill him with a pernicious computer virus. Having that developed, making it sophisticated enough to infect the systems embedded in Gauss and not detected until it was too late, and doing it without being detected—that would require considerable resources, and, therefore, money.”

“Well, sure, but Gauss must have lots of rich asshole enemies,” Icky said.

“I’m sure he does. However, only one of them dispatched a team of bumbling influencers to the Munificent, thereby breaking the Seal that had been placed on it that prevented it from being investigated or having any evidence derived from it.”

“Wait—you think that the Enhancement Empire wanted Gauss to lose his trial and end up in prison?” I asked.

Funboy shrugged. “If he was in prison, he’d be in a known, fixed location. And if he wasn’t, as was more likely, it ensured that anything of possible use hidden aboard the Munificent, including the vessel itself, would be denied to him.”

“Huh.” I considered Funboy’s musings for a moment. They held together alright.

“So I think Gauss is heading for Adoration,” Perry suddenly said.

“Okay, this seems to be the time for some revelations. And what makes you think that, bird of Athena?” I asked him.

“While I am incredibly wise, I don’t have those ridiculous skinny owl legs.”

“Owls aren’t skinny,” Torina said.

“It’s all fluff. Those feathers are camo, I tell you. Like the pushup bra of the avian world.” Perry proved his point with a sassy wiggle of one leg.

Icky sat up. “What’s a pushup—”

I broke in. “I promise to explain within three to five years. Honest. Now then, if the Enhancement Empire wants Gauss dead, then he needs to do something about that, because they’ve got the wealth and means to pursue him—until the stars burn out, more or less. But he’s got the proverbial ace up his sleeve.”

“The virus,” Zeno said.

Perry bobbed his head in the affirmative. “Exactly. If the thing is as destructive as it’s made out to be, then all he has to do is plug into their system somewhere and let it loose. That madness would bring the Empire down into a smoldering heap of chaos—and end them as a threat forever.”

“But he won’t get anywhere near them. If they want him dead, and he enters their space, he’ll be dead within minutes. He won’t even get close to Adoration. I mean, it’s not like the guy isn’t well-known across known space these days, and the scumbags who run the Empire would know him on sight,” Zeno replied.

“So he’s got a second ace hidden away, but we can’t see it yet,” Perry said.

Torina sat forward suddenly. “Maybe they won’t see him because they can’t.”

I looked at her and caught her meaning. “Oh. Shit. They’ll see him but won’t recognize him.”

She nodded. “Gauss isn’t going to go in his own body, which has got to be held together with nothing but heroic intervention and arcane tech by now anyway. It’s why he hooked up with Dohlennz. He’s going to get a new body, and then he’s going to Adoration bearing gifts—the very thing they tried to kill him with.”

I exhaled in disgust at the sheer audacity of it all. “Gauss is going to fry their entire empire with the plague they created, and he’ll do it before they even know he’s there. Which means that, among the many questions this raises, the most urgent is a moral one.”

Torina stared at me with fevered urgency because she understood the enormity of her question. “Do we tell them?”

Perry spoke up. “I think we have to, and trust me, it’s not because I’m worried about their survival. For one, there’s the very real risk of this virus of theirs escaping Adoration and spreading, possibly across known space. More practically, though, we do it for the tactical advantage. If they’re scouring their system and planet looking for Gauss—”

“Then their defenses are that much weaker,” I said.

“Just that.”

I stared in thought for a moment. The terrifying picture had cleared a lot, putting Gauss into context with Dohlennz and his sinister thing called Braiding, which probably had something appalling to do with getting Gauss a new body. And it put them in the same frame with the Sorcerers, who were working closely with BeneStar—and, therefore, Gauss—in developing the ID chips, using osmium sourced from wherever they could find it, and at whatever cost in misery that entailed.

There were still blurry bits, of course, like the full scope of the identity theft operation, and what role, if any, groups like Pont Alus Kyr or the mercenaries of Group 41 might be playing. But I came to one horrifying epiphany of my own.

“I know the ultimate goal behind the identity theft scheme, behind the osmium mining and the ID chips,” I said to the air.

Torina stared for a moment. “Okay, and that would be?”

“Gauss wants Dohlennz to make him a new body, one he can install his mind and memories into, in the form of the most fully perfect ID chip that can possibly be made—the one chip that all the others have been leading up to.”

I looked around the cockpit.

“Gauss intends to live forever. He already thinks of himself as a god, and now he intends to become one. For real.”

24

The problem, of course, was that we couldn’t just race off to the Enhancement Empire and start hunting for Gauss. For one thing, it wasn’t likely he’d be ready to make his move on them for some time yet, as he was still in his own decrepit body. For another, the Empire itself probably wouldn’t take too kindly to a Peacemaker nosing around their system.

“Dohlennz must have another laboratory hidden away,” I said as we’d pondered our next move.

Zeno’s whiskers twitched. “Really? I mean, I know Gauss is still rich and powerful, but between the Munificent, Dohlennz’s lab that we found on that moon, and the Castle on Fountain World, how many lairs can one guy realistically have?”

“We may be overestimating Gauss’s preparedness a little here,” Torina agreed.

But I shrugged. “We assume the worst. The question is, what would Dohlennz need in a laboratory? What is this Braiding thing, and what does it require? What do he and Gauss need to craft him a new body?”

“I don’t know, but we do know someone who might, or who at least might be able to offer some insight,” Funboy said, then sighed. “As much as I hate to suggest that we go anywhere near the vast Petri dish that is Dregs, that is.”

“The Body Thief.”

Funboy gave a morose nod—which was the only kind he ever gave, really—and we set course for Dregs.

* * *

“The trick is going to be the timing,” Perry was saying over the comm as Torina, Icky and I approached the Body Thief’s shop on Dregs. “We want to inform the Enhancement Empire about the threat posed to them by Gauss, but not too soon because that’ll give them time to get prepared.”

“It would be in our best interest for them to be scrambling at the last minute to deal with him,” Torina said.

“Absolutely,” I agreed.

I stopped outside the Body Thief’s door and checked both The Drop and the Moonsword. It felt good to be carrying them in their accustomed places on my harness. I hadn’t realized until we came here to Dregs just how naked I’d felt lugging them along in a backpack on Fountain World.

“Well, hopefully our Thief can help us out,” I said, touching the panel beside the door. A voice wafted out of a speaker.

“Peacemaker Tudor, this is an unexpected surprise.”

“For us too. May we come in?”

“I would ask you to check your surroundings first.”

“For what?”

“Anything out of the ordinary.”

“Uh, this is Dregs. Nothing is ever really in the ordinary here.”

The Body Thief let out a chillingly synthesized laugh. “An excellent point. Allow me to be more specific. I am interested in any sign of Trinduk or Sorcerers.”

I nodded. “Ah. Had some trouble with them since we were here last?”

“A threat or two. And probably empty ones. But it never hurts to be careful.”

We looked around and checked with Perry. We saw nothing, and Perry detected nothing after a couple of low passes, so we told the Body Thief as much. The door buzzed, and we entered his little shop of horrors.

I had to remind myself that, notwithstanding his ominous name and gloomy, even more ominous workspace, the Body Thief was purportedly above board. He maintained that the only organic substrate, as he called the various bits and pieces of biological bodies that he worked with, was that specifically donated to him by willing beings—a sort of leaving your body to science thing. He paid people in advance for the right to use their remains in his work, a practice that gave off the distinct whiffs of criminality, but the Guild and the local authorities were both aware of it.

And it was legal. Technically.

Still, it just seemed… off, kind of like the smell of his shop. Or laboratory. Or showroom. It depended on how you saw it and what you were there for.

I outlined why we were there, what we knew, and what we didn’t know but wanted to, as the Body Thief listened with that unsettling synth stillness. We also handed over all the relevant data we’d collected from every source we’d encountered, included Dohlennz’s errant data slate, what we’d found aboard the Munificent, everything we knew about Gauss, and everything we’d managed to get from Fountain World, scant though that was.

“I mean, is this even possible?” I asked him as I finished recounting it all for him. “Could Dohlennz make an entirely new body for him, install one of the ID chips in it with Gauss’s mind aboard it, and make it so that he could live forever?”

“Oh, yes, quite easily. The only missing piece would be lower brain functions, essentially those that control all of the autonomous functions, like respiration, filtering and elimination of biological waste products, that sort of thing. Candidly, I find the entire possibility to be quite… invigorating. The consideration of it, that is.”

“Hey, Perry, you’ve done the waste thing. Sounds like there’s a job opening for you,” Icky said, grinning.

Perry’s voice hummed back out of the comm.

“Silence, you pelt-with-a-tool-belt.”

Icky blew a raspberry, and I gave her a look. Then I asked the obvious question. “The missing piece? What’s the problem with that? Lower brain functions? Couldn’t they just use an AI for that?”

“If the body was mostly inorganic, probably. But I get the impression that Gauss would be unwilling to forgo things like taste, smell, and touch, and those are extremely difficult to replicate using inorganic components only. The result would be, at best, a crude approximation of those things.” The Body Thief glanced down at his own mostly inorganic body. “Trust me, I’m well aware.”

Torina narrowed her eyes. “Gauss wouldn’t be happy with that. He’d want the real deal, particularly in the touch department—and particularly in certain types of touch, if you know what I mean.”

Icky cocked her head. “You mean, like, sexual?”

Torina nodded. “Gauss wants control. He’s not going to have it, not really, unless he is able to… uh, perform. And not just perform but perform well. Well enough that he’s the best lover around.” She gave me an apologetic shrug. “It’s a big part of how guys work, sorry.”

Icky looked at me with open curiosity. “How is Van? You know, in the—"

“Annnnd that’s enough of that,” I said, but I had to agree with Torina’s point. “There are two types of men. And Gauss isn’t the good kind, which means we can extrapolate some of his choices. Torina’s right—stop laughing, Icky, or I’ll show everyone your fifth grade pictures, and yes, you’re adorable with that plastic lizard in your hair—”

“Meanie.”

“I am. At least right now. As to Gauss, he’s not mean, he’s evil and predictable, which means he’ll demand masculine performance out of his new unit, so to speak.”

“Boss, language,” Perry said.

“Agreed. Gotta be careful of our word choice around Icky.”

“Hey, I—”

The Body Thief looked bewildered, which was quite a feat for his kind. “And this crew is feared by criminals, despite your fondness for Richard jokes. Magnificent.”

“We are, thank you, and none of you better dare correct him. So, if Gauss’s new model can do all these, ah, tasks, then—"

“Then it will be organically very complex, far exceeding the capabilities of even the best AI. Only an actual organic mind will be able to provide that sort of functionality. But Gauss’s lower brain functions have probably already been compromised by handling what remains of his own body. In fact, I suspect little remains of them at all, at this point. He’ll need new lower brain functions for his new body.”

I shifted uncomfortably. “And where would he get those?”

“Why, from other organic beings, of course. In his case, they would be humans, since he is human, and he will presumably want the most human body that can be crafted for him.”

“Oh, no. Do you mean—"

“Indeed. At least one, and perhaps several minds would be harnessed and interwoven with his, fulfilling the role of a lower brain in the same way that your own brain works,” the Body Thief said to me.

I stared. “Interwoven?” But inside, I knew. I think we all knew.

“Yes. Many of the processes are complementary. The higher brain may enjoy physical pleasure, but the lower brain must be capable of receiving the nerve impulses related to it, processing them, and then passing them to the higher levels of consciousness. Those would then feed their response back to ensure that, for instance, there’s no need to trigger some reflexive action, but to allow the sensation to continue. It is an iterative process, a constant loop of receiving information, processing it, and feeding back a response.”

I turned to Torina, and we both said it at the same time.

“Braiding.”

I looked back to the Body Thief. “Gauss is going to take one or more individuals and effectively enslave their minds to his, to run his body for him while he calls the shots and gets all the benefits out of it.”

“Essentially, yes. He will have their minds Braided, to use the term, into his.”

“Will they be… aware of it?” Torina asked.

“On some level, almost certainly. It isn’t possible to entirely separate lower brain functions from higher ones.”

“So they’ll be slaves inside Gauss’s mind, and they’ll know it,” I said.

“Essentially… yes.”

A long silence lingered, that Icky finally broke.

“Wow. Just when you thought the guy couldn’t get any less cuddly.”

* * *

As absolutely, viscerally horrifying as that was, it wasn’t the end of the outrages. The Body Thief took some time to examine the data, while we wandered off and took in the sights around his Dregs neighborhood. That lasted a total of however long it took us to walk thirty meters, because Icky marked a Skel getting ready to drive a blade between the ribs of an innocent street vendor.

“Can I, boss?” Icky asked, hammer at the ready.

“Sure.”

She howled—a pane-rattling bellow of primal rage that scared everyone except Funboy—and rushed forward, hammer coming down like an avenging angel of doom.

The Skel responded in two ways. It dropped the long knife and then—

It soiled itself. Right there. In front of everyone.

“Gross,” Icky said, pulling the hammer back as the Skel doubled over in shock and shame.

Funboy looked at me. “She is the cause of limitless opportunities for infection, you know.” He waved grandly with a long arm. “That Skel is filth incarnate, and somehow, she found a way to make things more—”

“Icky?” Torina asked.

Funboy sniffed. “Yes. In this case, her name is the adjective.”

“Hey, big girl,” I called out. “Don’t think there’s any need for you to—”

Clang. Icky’s hammer smashed into the second knife the Skel slashed upward, shattering the blade and his arm in one decisive blow.

“Disregard that command, soldier,” I said amiably, walking up as we cleared away the growing crowd.

A young Nesit stepped forward and kicked the Skel with vicious glee. “That’s what you get for being a shithead, Rawstunn!” he piped in a young, angry voice.

“Friend of the neighborhood?” I asked the Nesit.

“No!”

“Good. Icky, hoist this dirty bastard up, and try not to get any… residue on you. Hey, I see a red hat over there.” I whistled, calling up a local police officer wearing a red hat and sash coded with credentials. “Got a live one for you. Van Tudor, Peacemaker.”

The officer grimaced at the filthy Skel. “I know who you are. Thanks. Sort of. He’s even more disgusting than usual. Who made him piss his pants?”

“I did. Or, my hammer did,” Icky said, grinning.

The officer looked up at her massive bulk. “Um, yeah. That’d do it. I’ll take him from here.”

Torina gave me a pleading look. “Can we go back now? I’ve had enough of the local flavor.”

Funboy leaned in. “As have I. Please, Van. I’m begging you. Let’s go somewhere less… peoply.”

“Done. To the Body Thief,” I said, earning a thankful look from everyone except Perry, who was overhead. In less than two minutes, we were back at his den.

He was waiting with questions about the virus that had been used to infect Gauss.

“This is a profound threat—existential, even. Why haven’t you been more forthcoming about it?” he asked.

I blinked back at him a couple of times. “Uh, because it’s in the notes we gave you? We weren’t trying to hide it from you. It’s all part of the package.”

The Body Thief regarded me with his synthetic gaze, into whose crystalline impassivity I could read nothing. But I got the sense he was searching me closely for some sign of… dissembling? Lying? If so, he shouldn’t find it, because I’d been up-front about giving him everything we knew about Gauss. Why would he think otherwise?

He sat long enough that I was starting to wonder if he’d gone offline or something, but he abruptly shifted slightly with a brief whir and slide of actuators. “You really don’t understand the scale of the threat posed by that virus, as you call it, do you?”

“It’s bad. It’s pernicious. It could be incredibly disruptive. We get that—”

“It is a weapon of mass destruction, as dangerous as the worst sort of biological plague. It could end civilization across known space and likely beyond it, at least in any form we would recognize.”

I glanced at Torina, who was looking profoundly uncomfortable, probably the same way I did. “What makes this virus so bad compared to any number of others that are out there, even as we speak? I mean, that’s why we have firewalls, security countermeasures—”

“Those viruses are software designed to deliver some harmful effect in accordance with their programming. Even the best—or worst, depending on your point of view—of the so-called adaptive varieties are still relatively easy to check once they’ve been detected.”

“And this one isn’t,” Torina said.

“No. It shouldn’t even be called a virus because that implies a relatively simple, infectious agent that, again, operates in accordance with its programming. This is an AI. A sophisticated one. It isn’t merely capable of adapting itself to firewalls and countermeasures, it can also evaluate them, make plans and execute them, then adjust them in real-time. It can reconfigure, rescale, even completely refashion itself to operate on any system it encounters.” The Body Thief paused briefly.

“Functionally, it is an intelligent being. But it is an intelligent being with a singular purpose—to destroy data and information storage and processing systems of any and all types, then replicate itself and do it again.”

The Body Thief leaned toward me. “I understand that you have some background with computer systems, Van.”

“I do, yeah. I was a security consultant dealing with them back on Earth.”

“What was your role?”

I frowned. “People would pay me to break into computer systems—usually their own, as a way of testing their security and finding vulnerabilities that needed to be fixed. And, yeah, sometimes a job came along that let me take down a bad guy a peg or two, an illegal arms merchant, or human trafficker, or something like that.”

“And you were good at it?”

“I… guess so. Probably not the best, but I was up there.”

“So imagine the best. Now, imagine someone even better than that. Now, turn them into a digital agent, give them the ability to completely rewrite their own code to make it conform to any architecture and the ability to replicate themselves—and now make them singularly, malignantly destructive. That is your virus, Van.”

It was my turn to sit and stare at him for a moment as that sank in. When it finally did, when all the awful implications had settled into place, I just shook my head.

“Holy shit.”

* * *

“How do you know all of this?” Icky finally asked. “There wasn’t anywhere near that much detail in the stuff we gave you.”

“I believe I once told you that I still have contacts among the Sorcerers, or what remains of them. It was from them that I received pieces of information that I was able to piece together, about an insidious, malign digital agent far more destructive than any that have come before. It is apparently of alien origin, or is at least based on alien technology. And by alien, I mean very alien, as in well outside the scope of known space, perhaps even this arm of the galaxy—and perhaps even originating outside the galaxy itself, although I find that rather improbable.”

“And terrifying. If something is able to travel to the Milky Way from somewhere else, it means that they’re extremely ancient, extremely sophisticated or, much more likely, both,” Perry put in over the comm.

The Body Thief nodded, once, with a faint whine of servos. “Indeed. In any case, the information you’ve provided filled in a crucial missing piece of the puzzle—where and why this agent is intended to be used. It would appear that whoever deployed it against Gauss believed it would overcome what countermeasures protected him, leaving him vulnerable to any number of ways of dying.”

“Then why didn’t it work? If this thing is so nasty and horrible, why didn’t it off Gauss right away?” Icky asked.

“It appears that Gauss himself was involved in the agent’s initial creation. I am now speculating, but Gauss was known to have a fascination with arcane technologies.”

“That fits, yeah. He made his fortune off the stuff, super-efficient gravity plates he stripped off an ancient alien space hulk,” I said.

“I would suggest, therefore, that Gauss found this agent, studied it, then adapted it for his own purposes. In the course of doing that, he was able to develop countermeasures against it. Or, perhaps he found the countermeasures at the same time he found the agent. In any case, the result is that Helem Gauss contains probably one of the very few, and perhaps the only information processing systems in existence that can counter this agent—at least for now.”

“What do you mean, at least for now?” Torina asked.

“As I said, the picture I have assembled is of an agent that is, for all intents and purposes, an intelligent being with an obsessive, single-minded purpose: to spread. We have to assume, therefore, that it is constantly seeking ways to circumvent the countermeasures Gauss is using to contain it. I have no idea how good those are, or how adaptive they are themselves, but there is at least some chance it will eventually succeed.”

I tipped back my head and groaned. “Great. So Gauss is a walking—er, rolling—time bomb.”

“Can you do anything about this? Or point us at some way of doing something about this ourselves?” Torina asked.

“The surest way to deal with this problem in the short term would be to kill Gauss and thoroughly destroy his body and all of its components,” the Body Thief replied.

I glanced at Torina, who glanced back. We were both thinking about the mini nuke, the SAND, a device tailor-made for turning Gauss and the virus into ionized vapor.

But we had to find Gauss first, something that would likely soon be much harder if he switched bodies courtesy of the sinister and enigmatic Dohlennz. So we needed a fallback, a way of dealing with the virus if it got loose.

And we needed it fast.

“If you had the means of doing it, could you develop an effective countermeasure to this damned thing?” I asked the Body Thief.

“It is… unlikely. My field of expertise, like Dohlennz’s, is the integration of biological and inorganic technologies. I have some facility with the latter, but only enough for my own purposes. It likely wouldn’t be sufficient for a task like this.” The Body Thief tilted its head slightly. “Of course, the issue is that we aren’t even sure of the scope of the problem. For instance, does this agent pose a threat to biological organisms as well?”

“You mean—can it infect us?” Icky asked.

“Yes. Your brain and nervous system are another sort of information processing architecture. The capabilities of this agent are broadly unknown, beyond what I’ve described to you here, so… it may be feasible.”

“Well, shit, this just gets better and better, doesn’t it?” I turned to Torina. “You know, I kinda miss the days of going after smugglers and thieves.”

“You and me both.”

After more discussion, it became clear that the Body Thief remained our best chance for understanding the virus, even if he wasn’t going to be able to do much about it. He’d be our expert in determining how infectious it might be in biological organisms. It was bad enough to think about the end of computing across known space—it would be the end of known space, and cause the deaths of untold millions—but to add that the possibility of the thing infecting us, turning us into its slaves, or just into mindless zombies, added a whole extra layer of horror, and a thick, gooey one at that.

But he needed access to information to work effectively and couldn’t count on his sporadic contacts with the Sorcerers—at least what was left of them—to get it. More critically, he wanted to avoid the Sorcerers as much as possible, which was understandable, since he’d betrayed and turned against them.

But I had an answer to that. I had Netty contact Bester and get him on a secure line with the Body Thief.

“Bester, the big, hairy, and always loveable Chief Archivist of the Peacemaker Guild, meet the Body Thief, the—well, what you see here,” I said.

Bester gave his slow grin. “Actually, Van, we’re acquainted. We’ve had some dealings in the past.”

“Really?”

“I’ve got my own contacts, too, you know. They’re even more important since I don’t work in the field,” Bester replied.

“I have provided Bester with more than a few memories,” the Body Thief said.

I nodded. “Ah. Right. Bester’s price for services rendered. For me, it’s usually treasured things from my youth.” I curled my lip. “Not sure I’d be all that keen on actually giving you a memory of something if it means I don’t have it anymore.”

“And I would never ask you for that. The Body Thief has memories to spare.”

The Body Thief gestured around his workshop, at the bits and pieces of donated organic bodies. “I come into possession of them from time to time. Some are very interesting. I hasten to add that I’m careful to simply eliminate the ones that would cause pain or embarrassment to the memory of one of my donors, or to their loved ones.”

I stared for a moment. “Okay, that’s… creepy, yet noble.”

“Says the guy standing in a room full of body parts,” Icky muttered.

“Anyway, all of which is to say that the Body Thief and I have worked together before, although in a limited way. I gather that this is something bigger?” Bester asked.

I nodded. “You might say that.” I then explained to him what was going on. While I did, Torina stepped away, and I heard her talking quietly to someone on the comm.

Bester blinked at me when I was done. “Van, that is—I’m stunned, frankly. Yes, we may have a thousand bits and pieces of information here in the Archives that would be useful, but finding them and recognizing them is going to be highly time-consuming and involve a lot of effort by my staff. I’m going to have to get constant sign-offs for it, and maybe get my department’s budget increased to handle the extra load. I’m gonna have to go to the Masters for approval for all that.”

“Can you limit it to just Gerhardt and Alic?”

Bester shook his head slowly. “Sorry, Van. Alic’s involved in overseeing my department, but so are two of the other Masters, and Gerhardt ain’t one of them.”

I swore. The last thing I wanted was to let the circle of knowledge get too large on this. I knew from experience that Bester’s people were discreet—it was fundamental to their job of doing research related to ongoing criminal cases—but once this got into the hands of the Masters, all bets were off. I wasn’t confident that Kharsweil, who was still on the lam, didn’t continue to have people inside the Guild feeding him information. And Kharsweil had been in Gauss’s pocket, so we had to assume that he still was.

“What if we source funding for you from outside the Guild?” Torina asked.

“Well, then it would just be a matter of me keeping things balanced inside my shop, doing this as a sort of special project, as long as I fulfill the other demands on our time and resources. We actually do this rather often for… various parties.”

“The GKU, for instance,” I said.

Bester shrugged. “Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies. Anyway, if we’ve got an external funding source, then only one Master would have to sign off.”

“Could it be Alic?” I asked.

“It sure could.”

“Perfect.” I looked at Torina. “Now we just need a source of funding.”

She smiled and turned her data slate toward me. Its display held the image of Dayna Jasskin.

“Did someone mention money?” she asked.

I gave Torina a questioning glance, and she shrugged back at me. “This sounded like it was going to be an expensive proposition, that we’d want to keep off the Guild’s books as much as possible. And, let’s face it, The Quiet Room has good reason to want to see this thing stopped before it gets out of control.”

“Something about all computer systems and networks everywhere going irrevocably offline, and possibly all living organisms being turned into mindless zombies—call me old-fashioned, but that just doesn’t sound very good for business,” Dayna said.

“So… glad to have you aboard, I guess?” I said to her, but she held up her hand.

“There’s one type of check I never write, Van, and that’s a blank one. The Quiet Room will help, but we’ll expect some considerations in return.”

I gave her a suspicious look. “If this has anything to do with keeping a copy of this damned virus to study, or to control and weaponize—”

“Van, Van—do you really think we’re so crass and amoral as to ask for something like that?”

“You’re a bank, Dayna. Crass and amoral is practically written into your charter.”

“Someone had a loan declined, I see.”

“Yeah, what’s up with that, anyway? That whole collateral thing? The only way to get money out of you guys is to prove you don’t need it?” Icky asked.

Dayna smiled. “Well, there’s that, and then there’s the threat of existence-ending infectious agents, and… and that’s about it. Collateral, and the possibility of existential oblivion. Either of those will get you approved.”

“What do you want, Dayna?” I asked.

“Honestly, Van, The Quiet Room is tired of the menace and uncertainty around all of this. Uncertainty isn’t good for business. We want an assurance that everyone associated with this potential plague will be charged with Crimes Against Order. There are certain victims, who we both know, that will accept nothing else. If you’re willing to commit to that, then I’ll let them all know in due course. “

“What victims?” I asked.

“Does it matter right now?”

I could tell she was going to continue being evasive. Fine.

“I guess not. Anyway—yes, absolutely. I’ll charge my own mother with Crimes Against Order if it turns out she’s implicated,” I said, then gave Dayna a narrow-eyed look. “She’s not implicated, is she?”

Dayna shrugged. “Not as far as I know. But anything is possible, right?”

I sighed. “Unfortunately, it is.”

25

While Bester and the Body Thief worked feverishly to stave off galactic disaster, we resumed our search for Gauss. The trouble was that we had scant leads, and by scant, I meant no leads at all. We presumed he’d eventually be heading to the Enhancement Empire, but we also presumed he wouldn’t do it unless and until he’d switched bodies, courtesy our very own Doctor Frankenstein, Dohlennz.

“What I don’t get is why the Empire tried to kill Gauss with his own virus. They must have known that he’d have countermeasures to it,” Zeno said as we broke orbit from Dregs.

“Not necessarily,” Perry replied. “He may very well have lied to them about that, or otherwise kept them in the dark about whatever measures he had to stop it.”

“Why?”

Perry lifted his wings. “Lack of trust? It’s a much scarier doomsday weapon if everyone believes it can’t be stopped.”

“Okay, but that just means it doesn’t make sense in a different way,” Icky put in.

“How so?” I asked her.

“Well, if they didn’t know this virus could be stopped, then why use it? Aren’t they just risking wiping, well, everything out? Like Dayna said, that’d be bad for business—I mean, not too many people are going to be buying beauty products and age-extenders if they can’t, you know, get food or power because everything has gone offline.”

“Again, they may not have known just how infectious it was designed to be. They would have only known what Gauss allowed them to know. If they thought it was a one-shot deal, infect him, he dies, and it’s done, then it would have seemed to them like the perfect weapon for an assassination, right?” I asked.

“I guess. Which means that Gauss ultimately screwed himself by not telling them what this was and it was capable of.”

I had to agree. “Yeah, it wouldn’t be the first time someone got hoist with their own petard because they didn’t trust their subordinates or associates, and kept vital information from them.”

“Which is all very well and fine, but it doesn’t bring us any closer to figuring out where he is now,” Zeno said.

“It’s a pity we can’t figure out how to track Dohlennz, because Gauss is probably with him,” Torina added.

That gave me an idea. “The Body Thief was familiar with Dohlennz. Not enough to suggest where he might be, but he knew who and what he was.”

Torina shrugged. “Not surprising. It’s a specialized field, so there probably aren’t too many people involved in it, and they all likely have at least a passing familiarity with one another.”

“Exactly. So who else do we know who’s involved in that field?”

“Hoshi Onwyn,” Perry said.

“That’s one. I can think of another, though,” I said.

I got nothing but blank looks in return.

“How many of you remember Jeanette Ruiz-Rocher?”

* * *

Through 2002, Jeanette Ruiz-Rocher had been an occasional fixture in the news cycle back on Earth. The COO of a large, east-coast American biopharmaceutical firm, she’d been investigated for a laundry list of offenses including fraud, embezzlement, bribery of public officials, and just for fun, tax evasion. Her shenanigans caused her company’s shares to tank, which had had a ripple effect across the entire sector, since she had worked at two other major biotech firms and previously been on the board of two more. Even the most rabid capitalist types had to admit that the case against her seemed like a slam dunk, and she’d been a day or two away from being indicted in a federal court on a dozen charges.

And then she disappeared.

Like a vapor in the wind. Gone. No one knew where or how. There’d been no records of her even trying to leave the country, no sightings of her, nothing. Speculation ran rampant. Some claimed she’d been smuggled out of the US to spend her remaining days on some beach with sun and umbrella drinks and no extradition treaties. Others said she’d been checked into the same digs as Jimmy Hoffa because she knew too much and might decide to start turning evidence for a lighter sentence.

In any case, she had apparently vanished from the face of the Earth—which was true. That’s exactly what she’d done. The ones who claimed she’d been abducted by aliens ironically got closest to the truth, except she hadn’t been abducted. Rather, she’d been offered a ride off Earth by an opportunistic Yonnox named Kuthrix, who’d seen potential in Ms. Ruiz-Rocher’s particular brand of malfeasance. It said a lot about her that when an alien from another world had appeared and offered to take her away, she’d said yes, virtually on the spot. You had to admire that sort of intellectual flexibility.

And guts. I couldn’t deny she had guts.

We chased her for a time, tracking her and Kuthrix in connection with the identity theft case in its early days. Given her dual background in biotech and being a bad guy, she was implicated in the case, but the duo had eluded us. And then we moved on to other things, and apparently so did Ms. Ruiz-Rocher, leaving the case open until she was swept up in a major sting led by none other than Alic—an accomplishment that had helped elevate him to the Master’s Table in the Guild.

“Boss?” Netty asked, breaking my reverie. I emerged from my moment to see the crew looking at me with an expectant air.

“Right. Sorry. Netty, take us to The Hole. We’re going to visit an old friend.”

“Done. Speed?” Netty asked.

“Like we print our own money.”

Netty laughed. “Setting drive for government speed.”

“I see you understand my plans. Perry, got a favor to ask. Kuthrix is dead, but our old pal Jeanette Ruiz-Rocher might speak to you.”

“Ahh. I wondered when that bastion of evil would show up in our lives. And of course, boss. I’ll turn my charm up to eleven,” Perry said.

“How do you know if she knows anything about Dohlennz and Gauss, though?” Icky asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t. But we’ve exhausted all our other leads, and I’d rather not wait until Gauss makes his move to make ours, because by then it might be too late. I mean, if you’ve got a better idea, I’m all ears.”

The others glanced at one another, then returned headshakes and shrugs.

“The Hole it is, then. And put your foot on the gas—well beyond government speed. The more I think about this, the more I realize we’re working against the clock,” I said.

Netty kicked the drive up eighteen percent, as our exhaust specs pushed red on the primary screens. “Pouring it on, Van. Fuel use is still optimized.”

Torina looked up from her display, eyes narrowed in anger. “She’ll know something. She’s one of them.”

“One of what?” Icky asked.

Torina was slow to answer, but when she did, it was in a tone of utter desolation. “A war criminal.”

* * *

According to her Earthly bio, Jeanette Ruiz-Rocher had been born in 1960, which would make her sixty-two years old. The woman facing me didn’t look any older than Torina.

I decided to open with that. “Ms. Ruiz-Rocher, I’d say it’s a pleasure, but it’s not. You’re looking well, though, for a woman who could have voted for Ronald Reagan.”

She smiled. “I know that’s the furthest thing from a compliment, Peacemaker Tudor, but I’ll take it as one.” She glanced around the barren interview room. “You don’t get many in a place like this.”

“There’s a good reason for that. It’s prison. It’s not supposed to be cozy.”

Ruiz-Rocher leaned back in her chair, one of three pieces of furniture in the room. The others were the chair I sat in and the table between us. The only other thing in the room was Perry, who perched at one end of the table.

“I assume you came here to see me for reasons other than pointing out my current predicament. Or is that it? I managed to slip through your fingers, so you’ve come to vicariously gloat?”

I sighed. “You know what, Ms. Ruiz-Rocher? I don’t want to dance with you. You’re too old to be my partner,” I said, and caught a flicker of irritation. Torina, watching via remote, spoke in my ear.

Told you she’d be sensitive about her age. She’s been trying to outrun the calendar ever since she left Earth.

“Let’s cut through all the crap and get right to it, shall we?” I said. “I’m looking for information on a piece of shit named Dohlennz, and I think you might have it.”

I watched her closely as I spoke. Ruiz-Rocher was a supremely confident and self-possessed person—she had to be to pull off the stuff she’d managed—so I shouldn’t have seen any change in her poker face. But as Perry had suggested, reminding her about the one thing she was desperate to forget, her true age, had thrown her off-balance just enough. I saw the glimmer of recognition in her eyes at the name Dohlennz, then it vanished, smoothed away into a bland expression of mild indifference.

But she was sharp enough to know that I’d seen it, so she shrugged. “Dohlennz. Hmm. I recognize the name—oh, yes. I believe I met the man once, years ago, not long after I left Earth.”

“And you haven’t met him since.”

“It’s a big galaxy, Peacemaker.”

I turned to Perry. “What do you think? Is she going for a waltz or a square dance?”

“Macarena.”

“She—Macarena?”

“Sure. Who doesn’t love the Macarena? Dale a tu cuerpo alegría, Macarena—”

“Anyway, Ms. Ruiz-Rocher, I said no dancing,” I snapped, cutting Perry off before he started sticking his wings behind his head and gyrating. “I just want to know what you know about Dohlennz, and particularly where might we be able to find him when he’s trying not to be found.”

Ruiz-Rocher gave me a cool, appraising look, then smiled. “You know, Peacemaker, one of the many useful talents I honed over the years was the ability to recognize when someone really wanted something, more than they were letting on. Recognizing that put me into a position that I like to call competitive advantage.”

I nodded. “I do really want to know this, Ms. Ruiz-Rocher. A great many lives depend on us finding out.”

“Is one of those lives mine?”

I shook my head. “Okay—potentially, yes, it is. Dohlennz is implicated in something—”

Van, you’re playing right into her hands! Perry said, almost loud enough to make me wince.

“—with what might be apocalyptic consequences.”

Ouch, that’s gonna hurt!

She grinned. “Really? Well, then, I think my price just went up—”

I slammed my chair back and leaned on the table, letting my eyes bore into hers. “Let me try this again. Apocalyptic consequences. I mean that literally—as in the end of all things, at least as we understand them. So tell me, Ms. Ruiz-Rocher—what good will extending your life the way you have do you when there’s no power, no heat, and no food in here, or anywhere else? Because I can guarantee you that the good residents of The Hole are going to be last on the list for rescue and relief when it all goes dark.”

My impassioned rant managed to put a crack in her smug armor, probably because I wasn’t lying about any of it. A fugitive gleam of uncertainty clouded her face before she was able to wipe it away. Even then, a glimmer of doubt remained, etched in the features of a woman who used to get what she wanted.

Used to.

“Well, then, Peacemaker, if those are the stakes, then what I want is obvious, isn’t it? I want out of here,” she said, gesturing around.

“I don’t have the power nor, frankly, the desire to let you go, Ms. Ruiz-Rocher. You’re not in here for unpaid traffic tickets.”

“I guess I was mistaken, then, in thinking that you really wanted what I know.”

I straightened and shrugged. “Fine. Hope you like your cell, though, because when the lights go out, it’s going to be the last thing you see,” I said, and turned to Perry to get him to summon the guard bot to take her back to her cell. Again, I wasn’t bluffing. I didn’t have the time for or interest in dealing with her bullshit. And while I currently had no other leads, I did have very good people working on finding some.

And she knew it. “Suppose we compromise, Peacemaker?” she said, cutting me off.

I turned to her. “I’ve got other places to be, Ms. Ruiz-Rocher, so please make this quick.”

“I want out of here. I’ll stay incarcerated and pay off my debt to society, but I want to do it somewhere less… austere. And perhaps higher up the priority list for rescue, if everything really does go to shit the way you seem to believe it will.”

I looked at Perry. “Change of venue for custody? Yeah, it’s doable.”

I sat back down. “Fine. I’ll arrange for you to get moved to somewhere a little more palatial, if what you tell me is worthwhile—oh, and true, of course.”

Ruiz-Rocher smiled. “Oh, I think you’ll find what I know about our good friend Dohlennz worthwhile. I didn’t trust the man even a little bit. And when I don’t trust someone, I make sure to get to know them really well.”

* * *

“Well, I guess I’d better get the Warden at The Hole to go through with transferring Ms. Ruiz-Rocher to somewhere more upscale,” I said as I watched the tactical overlay. Sure enough, in this remote system—a rogue red dwarf tearing like mad through the galactic arm, kicked out of wherever it had originated by some gravitational cataclysm—we’d detected the signature of a fusion reactor. There was only one place it could have come from, a single rocky dwarf planet orbiting the lonely, wayward star.

“Fun fact—in another two million years and change, this star will likely fall into orbit around Epsilon Eridani, and poof—we’ll suddenly have a new binary star system,” Netty said.

“Thanks, Netty. Make sure to set a reminder, oh, say, a thousand years ahead of time.” I glanced at Torina. “Wouldn’t wanna miss it.”

“On a more serious note, Van, there’s a ship departing the dwarf planet. It’s heading directly away from us—”

I snapped out a string of curses that would have made a longshoreman click his tongue in disapproval.

“I am sick of that bastard Gauss somehow being a step ahead of us!” I grated, ending my rant.

“Feel better now?” Perry asked.

“No. Netty, you’re going to tell me there’s no chance of us catching up to that ship, aren’t you?”

“No—because A, I don’t want you to yell at me—and B, I think you already know that.”

“The worst part is, we still have to check out that dwarf planet, and yet another in Dohlennz’s apparently unending series of secret laboratories,” Zeno said.

“It doesn’t hurt to have someone like Gauss bankrolling you,” Icky put in.

I glanced at Zeno, and she shrugged. “We don’t know that Gauss is aboard that ship that just took off, do we? It might be a ruse.”

I sighed. “I hate that you’re right. Okay, Netty, plot us a course to Dohlennz’s hideaway. And while you’re at it, record every scrap of data about that fleeing ship that you can.”

“At this distance, it won’t be—” she started, but paused when she must have recognized the outraged frustration in my expression, then went on, “Will do, boss. Every scrap.”

It took us nearly four hours to make planetfall. By then, the reactor signature had died away. Again, I was sure that Gauss and Dohlennz would have preferred to scuttle the place by blowing the reactor, but it was extremely hard to make them explode by design. So, we’d arrived sooner than they’d expected, forcing them to just pack up and flee. This time, we found more than just an empty laboratory full of horrific experiments and mutilated remains.

We found Helem Gauss.

I knelt beside the wizened corpse, still sitting in the throne-like conveyance that had wheeled him around. Funboy was already wielding his medical scanner.

“I’m assuming he’s dead,” I said.

“Well, considering the atmosphere has been evacuated and we’re in a vacuum, and the ambient temperature is now minus eighty-one degrees Celsius—yes, he’s dead.”

I scowled. “Except, of course, he’s not,” I said, standing. “Or, at least, it seems too good to be true that he is.”

“Several of the inorganic components that were recorded on Gauss’s baseline scans when he was taken into custody are missing,” Funboy said, peering up at me through his visor. “They’ve been removed.”

“And incorporated into his new body, no doubt.”

“A reasonable assumption.”

“I suppose it’s too much to hope that whatever contained the virus wasn’t among them.”

Funboy shrugged inside his suit. “I have no idea. That level of detailed information was never shared with us. But, if you want me to speculate, Van, what do you suppose my answer would be?”

I nodded. “Yeah, mine too.”

“Van, you need to come and look at this,” Torina said, cutting in. I turned and saw that she, Icky, and Netty-P had pushed on farther into the lab, into the next compartment. Something in her tone made it clear that I wasn’t going to like what I was about to see, so I braced myself.

It was a good thing, too.

* * *

In my early teens, when Gramps had decided that I’d finally made the transition from kid to young adult, he removed some of the restrictions he’d leveled on me. One of them was scary movies and TV shows. The most frightening ones he’d let me watch until that point were things like Goosebumps or The Addams Family. When I hit fourteen, though, he started to relax the grandparental censorship, and I went on a horror movie binge—A Nightmare on Elm Street, Hellraiser, Dawn of the Dead, and a slew of others in varying states of gore and chaos.

None of them hit me as hard as John Carpenter’s The Thing.

The nightmarish creature effects and body horror, which give me the shivers even today, haunted me for days afterward and pushed me into a goofy comedy movie kick instead.

I remembered exactly how I cringed and gaped at The Thing the first time I watched it. It was hard not to do that now. In fact, it was many times harder, because this wasn’t painted latex and practical effects. This was real.

We found parts of… three or four bodies strewn about the room on gleaming metal tables and racks, amid machines sprouting tubes and cables and data tethers. More pieces hung in tanks of murky fluids. With the power off, everything was slowly freezing, some fluids congealing, others, like spatters of blood or various liquids, crystallizing to slush and ice. I saw icicles of some brownish sludge hanging beneath a table, one nearly reaching to the floor in a grim, unappealing finger that glistened like poisonous fruit.

Our suit lamps illuminated snapshots of horror at us as we played them around. I saw a human hand sitting on a table amid a slew of surgical instruments and bloody sponges. A tentacle of some sort—or maybe it was an internal organ, I didn’t bother finding out which—hung draped over the edge of an octagonal tank. Other things, pale and lumpy, were locked within the ice inside it. Torina found what seemed to be part of a nervous system, meticulously laid out on a table, branching threads of nerve fibers splayed out like the roots of some plant. Parts of it were missing.

Parts of it were—cooked. Or seared by a charge. Maybe both.

“I think we now know what Braiding entails,” Perry said, his tone as somber as the gloom.

I shook my head. “I’ve seen enough. Let’s—”

A hoarse shout cut me off. We spun around, weapons ready, to see Icky slamming her hammer down on a shallow tank, like a sink. She struck it again and again, her feet braced under a nearby table to stop the recoil of her swings bouncing her away in the low gravity.

“Icky! What is it!” I shouted, moving toward her.

She stopped in mid-swing and lowered her hammer. “It was—” I heard her take a breath and turn her back on her little vignette of destruction.

“It was Wu’tzur,” she said to me as she shuffled past. That was all she said.

I looked toward the sink she’d been beating upon but didn’t go any closer or look into it. I just turned and led my crew out of there.

Sometimes, the better part of valor was to try and forget.

* * *

Again, we were only able to retrieve scant information from Dohlennz’s lab, the second we’d found of—who knew how many. But Perry and Netty-P were able to scavenge some data, both of them gamely volunteering to remain and scour the facility so we didn’t have to. We contacted the Body Thief, a fuel-consuming twist comm given the distance, sent the data to him, and asked him to review it. We then made our way to Anvil Dark, because we’d be effectively out of fuel after this next twist, and I didn’t want to plunge into any of the shit that likely awaited us at Adoration, the Enhancement Empire’s home system, with dry tanks. I also wanted to pick up the SAND and load it into the Fafnir’s magazine so it was ready to shoot.

“I do not have the details, of course,” the Body Thief said over the comm. “But from the totality of the data you’ve shared with me, I have been able to infer some broad assumptions about this so-called Braiding.”

I nodded at his image on the Fafnir’s galley display. “I really don’t want to know them, but I guess I’ll just have to suck it up.”

“Suck it up?”

“Uh—yes. Sorry, it's a human expression, meaning that I’ll just have to accept something whether I like it or not.”

“Suck it up. Interesting. With your permission, I’ll incorporate that phrase into my lexicon.”

I smiled. “You don’t really need my permission.”

“In other words, if I do, you’ll just have to suck it up. Did I use that correctly?”

“You sure did,” I said, trying not to get exasperated about this sidetrack into Earthly slang. “Anyway—”

“Yes. Braiding. It is an abhorrent process, by which several beings are combined into one. They are combined physically, portions of their bodies being harvested and merged into a new body. And they are combined mentally, creating the lower-order brain functionality we discussed before.”

Someone swore softly. I think it was me.

“Are they—do they remain aware of what’s happening to them?” Torina asked softly.

“After a fashion, it’s likely they do, yes. Of course, the resulting merged personality would not be even remotely sane, and is largely isolated from the higher brain functions that represent consciousness or awareness. But there would be some, so… unfortunately, I would have to say yes.”

“Damn.”

“Based on the data and images we sent you, can you give us any idea—and I don’t even want to ask this—what Gauss looks like now? How we could possibly recognize him?” I asked.

The Body Thief slowly tilted his head, then finally shook it. “Given that at least four, and perhaps as many as six different beings were merged to form his new body, the possible permutations are simply too many. If he chooses to remain reasonably humanoid, the possibilities are far fewer. But if he doesn’t care how he appears, then no, there’s no way to realistically say beyond—well, based on carbon biochemistry and the general DNA genetics that broadly apply to most known races.”

“So anything from a grasshopper to Paul McCartney. Great.”

“Paul McCartney? Really?” Perry put in.

I glanced at him. “Don’t dis The Beatles.”

“He was better in Wings.”

“No he wasn’t.”

“Hey, birds eat beetles, but birds have wings, so he was clearly better in Wings—”

“Perry, we are not having this argument again,” I said, making a slashing gesture and turning back to the Body Thief.

“Is there anything you can tell us? Anything that might help us recognize him when we see him?” I asked.

“One thing, perhaps.”

“Which is?”

“He will be monstrous. And that is almost certainly by design.”

26

I wasn’t sure what I was expecting when we twisted in to the Adoration system. A fleet of ships, maybe, that would drive us away if we couldn’t convince the Enhancement Empire that Gauss was a far greater threat than we were. We’d rendezvoused with the Iowa at Anvil Dark, though, so we at least had her in company. We’d also put out the word to our trusted Peacemaker allies who were available, along with messages to both Valint and my mother, asking them to join us at Adoration as soon as they possibly could.

And our Conoku hadn’t been idle. They’d been putting the Iowa and themselves through their paces, honing their skills while learning just what the limits of the big old battlecruiser were. Cantullin almost shivered with excitement when we talked to her over the comm prior to twisting to Adoration.

“We can do super high-g turns and we’ve learned how to slew her through three axes all at once and we’ve worked about a zillion new attack and evasive patterns and we’ve got our gunnery hit rate up to nearly eighty-five percent and—”

“Cantullin.”

“—we can make her bank even better and—ooh, we’ve also—”

“Cantullin!”

She stopped, her beady black eyes staring at me. “Oh. Uh, sorry, Captain Van, we just—”

“Are enthusiastic, I know. Look, Netty has synchronized with Betty,” I said, referring to the second instance of Netty running aboard the Iowa—meaning there were now three versions of her. “They, or she, or… whatever the right way to put it is, they’re working out joint maneuvers that the Fafnir and Iowa will use to complement each other. Make sure you pay attention to her, and do not just run off on your own looking for a fight.”

“Understood, Captain Van—!”

“No, Cantullin. I’m serious about this. If you don’t conform to the plan, I will not be happy, and I may be looking for another captain for the Iowa. I’m not saying to not use your initiative—absolutely, yes, do that. But you are not flying alone here. You’re part of a team. Your initiative has to contribute to the performance and safety of both ships, not just yours. Is that clear?”

Some of her ebullience faded, and she suddenly ceased to be an excited kid, instead becoming the intelligent adult I knew she would be.

“Understood. You can count on us, Van.”

“Thank you. I know I can.”

So here we were, the Fafnir and the Iowa, layered with grav-plating that made them two of the most high-performance ships for their mass in known space, sporting fearsome firepower and seasoned crews determined to do whatever was necessary to stop a potentially apocalyptic catastrophe. And confronting us was—

An advertising drone.

The AI-controlled ship, just a little larger than the Frankie, made a beeline toward us as soon as we arrived in the system, flinging a barrage of comm traffic ahead of it.

“Are you sick and tired of looking and feeling sick and tired? I know I was, which is why I tried the Enhanced Rejuvenation Therapy, a combination of clinical procedures and home beauty care products that will melt years off of you—”

Torina curled a contemptuous look at the preternaturally exquisite woman flogging the ad. “The only real thing about her is her insincere bullshit. I mean, look at the size of those things!”

“I’m offended by her sultry Venus of Willendorf presence. It’s tasteless,” I said with a dignified nod toward Torina.

“It’s steatopygia, and it’s a genetic disposition. To appreciate such things among humans, I mean,” Perry said. When Torina shot him a look, he shrugged his wings. “Sorry boss. Tried to back you up, but that’s a lotta woman onscreen.”

“Good effort. Maybe next time,” I said with a wink.

Netty changed the comm channel, flicking to a man reminiscent of Ricardo Montalban during his rich Corinthian leather phase. “Now you too can enjoy the full range of masculine scents that were previously only available through special commissions for the likes of royalty and the ultra-wealthy—”

“Wow, human-centric much? Where’s the Wu’tzur ads?” Icky grouched.

Netty flicked the channel. “Here you go.”

We stared at the image of a Wu’tzur female pushing hair-care products—as in all hair, body included. Perry shook his head.

“Kind of a cross between the East German female Olympic weight-lifting team and a Cocker Spaniel.”

I had Netty shut it off. “Is that all there is?” I asked her.

“Oh, no, there’s lots more. Nanotech-enabled makeup, skin-, hair-, tendril-, frond- and tentacle-care products, chitin polish, a whole slew of colognes and perfumes, some of them biochemically active, whatever that means—”

Perry gave a tongue click. “Nothing for us AIs? Wax, maybe? Touch-up paint? Perhaps some pinstriping?”

“Sorry, bird.”

“It’s a flesh-centric universe, ain’t it?”

“Perry, please—and I mean this in the nicest possible way—shut your beak,” I said. “Netty, is there anything but advertising being directed at us?”

“Nope. And I’ve tried to raise the Enhancement Empire themselves on the comm, but it just goes to their message vault. I suspect they’re stonewalling us.”

“How about the ship that fled from Dohlennz’s lab when we showed up? Any sign of it?”

“None that I can detect, although if it landed on Adoration or had otherwise powered down, it wouldn’t be detectable anyway.”

“Maybe Gauss just isn’t here—at least, not yet, anyway,” Torina said.

“Or maybe Gauss changed ships,” Zeno added.

I sighed in exasperation. “Yeah, maybe lots of things. Netty, please mute all that advertising bullshit and open a broadcast channel—oh, and route it through the Iowa. She’s got a bigger and more powerful comm than the Fafnir, and I don’t want this to go unheard.”

“You’re on whenever you’re ready,” she said.

“This is Peacemaker Van Tudor. I’m warning you that you’re facing a serious threat from Helem Gauss. We have reason to believe that he’s managed to alter his body to make himself unrecognizable and is now either on his way here, or is already here, and intends to infiltrate and infect your networks with that damned virus you stuck into him.”

Silence.

“Look, I’m not here because I’m after you and your precious Enhancement Empire. Sell all the scam products you want that prey upon low self-esteem. I don’t give a shit about that. I just want to stop Gauss—”

“Nice try, Peacemaker, but we know that Gauss is dead,” a voice said, flat and almost sounding bored.

“What? No, he’s not, he’s very much alive—”

“Sorry, we’ve seen the proof. It was delivered to us by… a reliable source. So we have no reason to doubt it.”

“A reliable source? Who the hell—” I started, but stopped, as several thoughts began to coalesce.

Gauss had run BeneStar. The Enhancement Empire had been a subsidiary of BeneStar. Gauss was connected with Dohlennz, who was a specialist in bioenhancement. That meant that Dohlennz was connected to the Enhancement Empire as well, and likely had done work for them.

Dohlennz. He was their reliable source. He’d brought them proof of Gauss’s death, probably in the form of bits and pieces of his old body—

“Dohlennz is lying to you!” I snapped. “He’s setting you up! Gauss has been bankrolling him for—”

“Goodbye, Peacemaker. Oh, and don’t make any attempt to approach Adoration, because that will be considered a hostile act and treated accordingly.”

The channel closed.

“Shit!”

“Could they be telling the truth?” Zeno asked.

“They almost certainly are telling the truth—or, at least, the truth as they believe it,” Funboy replied.

Torina nodded. “They’ve probably been working with Dohlennz for a long time—he’s where some of their treatments have come from. Given that, it’s not surprising they’d believe him over you, the man who effectively brought down BeneStar,” she said to me.

“They don’t want to let you anywhere near their planet because they’ve got lots to hide,” Icky said.

Funboy spoke up. “Which means that, from their perspective, if they genuinely believe Gauss is dead, then we are by far the biggest threat facing them.”

“Could it be true, though? Could Gauss maybe actually be dead? Maybe the virus finally got him, or Dohlennz’s Braiding shit didn’t work and Gauss died on the table?” Zeno asked.

Perry swiveled his head toward her. “Are you willing to bet the integrity of computers and networks all across known space on that?”

I shook my head. “We have to assume that Gauss is still alive, and that Dohlennz has traded on his credibility with the Enhancement Empire to double-cross them. And—frankly, yeah, that’s what I believe. Gauss has been funding Dohlennz’s torture chambers and the vile, so-called research he’s been conducting in them. Those two are in cahoots for sure.”

“So what do you want to do?” Torina asked.

I glanced at her, then turned to the instruments. “Netty, any word on our reinforcements? Lunzy, Lucky, or Gerhardt? Valint or my mother?”

“No response from Gerhardt or Lunzy. Lucky and Dugrop’che are en route, both about an hour away from twisting in. No response from Valint, but your mother is on her way, about four hours out.”

I shook my head. “We can’t wait. Netty, give us and the Iowa a course, best possible time to Adoration, and light the drives. And Torina?”

She looked at me, and I pointed at the comm, which was still showing a bunch of channels saturated with advertising from the drone. “Shut that thing up, would you?”

She smiled and powered up the lasers. “With great pleasure.”

Perry bobbed his head in approval.

“Now that’s what I call an ad-blocker.”

* * *

An hour out from Adoration, we received an unexpected comm call from Lunzy. The puzzling part was that it wasn’t a twist comm, but a comm beam originating somewhere ahead of us

“Lunzy, where the hell are you?” I asked.

She grinned. “About forty-five minutes in front of you.”

I looked at the overlay. I saw all the things I’d been watching for the past few hours but no sign of the Foregone Conclusion, her ship.

“Okay, let me rephrase that. Where the hell are you?”

This time, she laughed. “I’m aboard the Object 6. I’ve been here for the past three days, staking the place out, per Gerhardt’s instructions.”

“Uh, no you’re not. There’s not a hint of the Object 6 on our scanners.”

“Nor should there be. She’s been equipped with the bleeding edge in stealth tech. It was, in fact, derived from a satellite you yourself retrieved from orbit around Ajax when you returned some stolen cultural artifacts to them.”

“Oh. Yeah. Right. That was the satellite that had the organic, uh, components included in it,” I said, thinking back. We’d taken the satellite to Zeno, which was how we first hooked up with her, and subsequently to Pont Alus Kyr, to try and figure out what the integrated organic stuff was. That, and its obvious connection to our Crimes Against Order case, had kind of crowded out our interest in the stealth tech, which we’d just handed over to the Guild.

“Yup. The GKU was able to reverse-engineer the stealth system, then apply it to the Object 6 as a test bed.”

“Well, it works. We don’t see you at all.”

“Kind of the point. The trouble is that the system is incredibly power hungry, and also very finicky. I think this one’s got maybe a couple of hours of life left in it, then it’ll have to be completely refurbished—which meant I was about to extract from here when you showed up. Things get interesting when Van Tudor is involved, so I figured I’d stick around a while and see what happened.”

I filled Lunzy in on what had transpired to bring us here. “So the bottom line is that we think Gauss is either down on Adoration, or is at the very least en route here.”

Lunzy was looking at something off the display. “Yeah, Netty just sent me the signature data from the ship that ran from you in that red dwarf system, the one you think might be carrying Gauss.” She nodded and looked back at me.

“And there’s a match. That ship entered the system and descended to the surface about three hours ago. Damn. If I’d known it was carrying Gauss, I’d have just blown it and him to bits and saved everyone a whole lot of trouble. For obvious reasons, though, I’ve been on comms blackout, so I didn’t even see the bulletin you put out to be on the lookout for it.”

“Hey, you wanted interesting, I’m delivering,” I said, but it wasn’t what I was thinking. It wasn’t Lunzy’s fault, but I cursed the way information in the Guild was often compartmentalized to the point that the people who needed it didn’t have it. We should have been informed that Lunzy was here on a stakeout, given our obvious interest in the case. But some drone—organic or AI—had decided that we didn’t need to know, so we didn’t. And yes, it meant a huge missed opportunity to stop Gauss dead in his tracks, and the existential threat he posed with him.

“We have to assume that Gauss is on the surface,” I went on. “Do we have any idea where?”

“I know where he landed—I’m sending that data to you now. But again, that was three hours ago. And Adoration is an advanced planet, with maglev tube trains and lots of atmospheric shuttles.”

“So he could be almost anywhere on the planet.”

“Certainly this near hemisphere, yeah. And we could probably even narrow that down to the largest continent, which holds about eighty-five percent of the population, but that’s still about the size of, uh—oh, what’s that one on Earth, where everything is always trying to kill you?”

“Australia?”

“That’s the one.”

I sighed. “Yeah, that doesn’t help much. Australia is enormous.”

I sat back. The SAND relied on knowing Gauss’s exact location. It would vaporize him and everything about ten meters around him, ensuring a kill—but only if it landed right on top of him.

Which again raised the issue of collateral damage. Ten meters was the size of the SAND’s fireball, but the effects of the blast—radiant heat, a burst of radiation, and the shock wave—would propagate several hundred meters beyond that. A lot of innocent people could be hurt or killed. Perry was confident that we had a reasonable case under interstellar law to use lethal force against Gauss, given the magnitude of the threat he posed to—well, everyone and everything. Extrapolating from that, it could likewise be argued that the resulting collateral death and destruction would be worth it to stop the cataclysmically far worse impact of Gauss releasing that damned virus into the wild, but still. I’d shed no tears for Gauss, but innocent bystanders?

It wasn’t a decision I was looking forward to having to make.

And… maybe we didn’t have to.

“Lunzy, how long will that stealth system of yours keep working?”

“Three hours, then after that its reliability will start to degrade pretty fast. Why?”

“Because I’ve got a brilliant idea.”

Perry looked at Torina.

“Uh-oh.”

* * *

The most difficult part of the plan to sell was Torina’s role in it.

“I need you to stay up here, aboard the Fafnir. You’ve got to command both her and the Iowa, and be ready to fire the SAND. I think you’re the best person to do that,” I said to her.

“Van, you’re planning to go down to the surface of what we have to assume is a hostile planet and hunt Gauss, who’s in who-knows-what kind of form. He could be a ten foot tall monster with platinum fangs for all we know. I should be there with you. Zeno can take care of things up here.”

“Do you really think Gauss is going to be some horrifying creature? He’s trying to infiltrate the planet, and unless a lot of ten foot tall monsters come looking for beauty products—”

“Icky aside,” Perry inserted.

I shot him a glare. “He’s not going to really fit in, is he?”

“Van—”

“And as for running things up here, sure Zeno could do it—but you’re my Second, which gives you a weight of authority that, as far as the Guild is concerned, she just doesn’t have.” I glanced around, making sure none of the others were nearby. Aside from Perry, they weren’t, being aft preparing to board the Frankie and transit to the Object 6.

“Torina, the bottom line is that I need someone up here I trust to use their judgment and initiative, and make the hard decisions that might need to be made. Yes, I trust Zeno to do that. But I trust you most of all.”

She hadn’t been happy, but she’d finally accepted it. I headed aft with the others, but Torina grabbed me. She glanced at Perry.

“Make yourself scarce, bird. Go board the Frankie or something.”

“Oh, one for the road, huh? But right here, in the galley? This is where we eat.”

“Perry—”

“Okay, okay, I’m going,” he said, but he paused before launching himself aft. “I don’t expect it’ll take more than a couple of minutes anyway—”

I threw a packet of noodles at him as he left. Then Torina grabbed me, and we kissed like it was the end of the world.

Which, unfortunately, it might very well be.

27

Icky puffed the Frankie’s thrusters, gently ejecting her from the Fafnir. Torina then moved her away, radiating the active scanners like mad as she accompanied the Iowa toward Adoration.

Once she was clear, we finished our transit to the Object 6 with a few more puffs of thrusters, and then used the workboat’s grav-plating to manipulate the gravitational effects of Adoration and its star to maneuver. With everything else powered down, including life support because we were in our suits, the Frankie presented a miniscule scanner target, which we hoped would prevent her from being detected.

“Unless they happen to be running some sort of detailed gravimetric scan on this very part of space, the chances of the bad guys seeing us are—well, it’s going to be like trying to pick out a particular speck of dust in a school stadium, let’s put it that way,” Icky said. Her voice rang with a confidence I wish I felt.

Lunzy greeted us as we clambered aboard the Object 6. We’d brought everyone except Torina, including Netty-P. That was because she had a very specific, not to mention pivotal role to play in finding Gauss. Appropriate to her form- sort of—she was going to be our bloodhound.

Funboy explained it to Lunzy as she got the Object 6 underway.

“We know that Gauss is occupying a body that comprises four combined individuals, each of which had, of course, their own DNA profile. Using data about those profiles we collected from Dohlennz’s lab, and with help from the Body Thief, we’ve created a probable combined DNA profile which is going to be wholly unlike any other.”

“And you intend to, what, follow his trail?” Lunzy asked.

“Yes. Gauss will, like everyone else, be shedding biological material—” Funboy paused. “A truly horrifying thought, really.”

“Funboy, let’s stick to the script, shall we?” I said.

He sighed. “Anyway, assuming he’s not hermetically sealed into a suit, he will leave a trail of biological material wherever he goes. We have no instruments capable of discriminating one such trail from another, however, meaning that in a populated area such as our destination, the signal-to-noise ratio will be very small—below our normal detection limits.”

“But Gauss’s profile is different,” Lunzy said, adjusting the Object 6’s course toward an atmospheric insertion on the far side of Adoration.

“Very. So much so that the instruments we have attached to Netty-P should be able to detect it relatively easily.”

I glanced at Netty-P. She had a medical scanner loaded with Gauss’s supposed DNA profile literally taped to one of her limbs, with a data tether leading up into her central core. The whole rig had been cobbled together in less than fifteen minutes.

“Okay, that’s very clever. What’s your fallback if it doesn’t work?” Lunzy asked.

“Well, Torina’s still trying to convince the Enhancement Empire that the threat is real. If she can, then she’ll reveal that we’re down there looking for Gauss and try to get them to help us.”

“And if she can’t?”

“Then we’ll wander aimlessly around a continent the size of Australia looking for one particular guy.” I shrugged. “It’s not much of a plan B, I realize, but it’s all we’ve got.”

“You’d think so, but it turns out that’s not quite true,” Netty-P said.

We turned to her, and I gave her a quizzical look. “What do you mean?”

“Netty informs me that the Fafnir is receiving a message via comm beam,” she replied.

Lunzy tilted her head, puzzled. “I thought you were Netty.”

“I am.”

“But you just said Netty is talking to you.”

“She is.”

“But—”

“Abbot, meet Costello,” Perry said.

I gave him a quelling look. “Lunzy, they’re both Netty. I’ll explain the details later.” I looked at Netty-P. “A comm beam from where?”

“The surface of Adoration.”

“We’re receiving a comm beam message from the surface?”

“I… just said that.”

“Yeah, I know—” I shook my head. Was it just me, or was Netty-P a little harder to deal with than the original?

“From who on the surface?” I asked.

“It’s from Denocus. Remember him?”

I stared blankly for a moment, then it hit me. Denocus had been sent to Earth in the form of a synth, to ambush us, and Icky in particular, over debts owed by her dead mother to some criminals. Instead, we arrested him and brought him back to Anvil Dark, where Gabriella Santorini had insisted that, given a new body, we could use him as an agent planted inside—

I sat up.

Inside the Enhancement Empire.

“Put him on,” I said.

Netty relayed the comm message to us via another comm beam, one that she targeted on Object 6 via nav data provided to her by Netty-P. This was necessary because Netty couldn’t actually see the Object 6 through its stealth system, and the result was a signal that kept fading and strengthening, over and over, as she tried to maintain the links. The image that appeared was that of a synth, albeit a considerably different one than we’d arrested back on Earth, in Des Moines, Iowa.

“Hello, Van,” it said.

It sounded like Denocus, but there was too much at stake for me to simply take this at face value.

“Sorry, Denocus, but I need to know it’s really you. What was the name of the lawyer you used back in Cedar Rapids?”

“John J. Johnson—and it was Des Moines, not Cedar Rapids,” the synth replied, then shaped its mouth into a smile. “Clever, by the way.”

“Thank you. The office where we met you—what floor was it on?”

“The third.”

“What color is the paint in the kitchen of my farmhouse?’

“Pale yellow—which goes with either the kind of avocado appliances or the red kitchen chairs, but not both at once. Seriously, Van, pick a décor and go with it.”

I smiled. “Denocus, I’m glad to see you. Do you know what’s going on?”

“An uproar. Your arrival has thrown things into chaos around here. The Triumvirate were supposed to have a meeting with the department heads later today, but that was abruptly canceled, along with another dozen or so meetings as a result. And there’s security all over, all sort of hurrying from place to place and looking grim. This started right after you arrived, so I gather they’re related?”

“No doubt,” I said, and filled him in on the details, but omitting any reference to Object 6 and imminent arrival on Adoration aboard her. I hadn’t been in the Army long back home, but long enough to understand the importance of operational security and need to know. And Denocus didn’t need to know we weren’t on the Fafnir.

“So Gauss is on his way here?” Denocus asked.

“Actually, he’s probably already there, somewhere on the surface. I don’t suppose you can think of any way to help us track him?” I asked, hopeful, but not especially confident. But Denocus nodded.

“Actually, I think I can.”

* * *

The Enhancement Empire hadn’t got to where it was without being careful—and by careful, the security measures described by Denocus actually meant downright paranoid. One of them was to maintain a distinct internal data net, one physically isolated from the broader world-net used across Adoration by the general population. It would be analogous to me maintaining my own little local area network in my house, with no connection between it and the internet.

And that gave us a chance. Gauss’s virus was many things, but it wasn’t magical. It couldn’t just somehow beam itself through the air to infect a distant network. Gauss had to connect to that network to inject it, and there was no way for him to do that from just anywhere on the surface.

“And if he infects the public world net, sure, he’ll bring it down, and immediately risk the virus spreading off-world. But as soon as that starts to happen, you can bet the Enhancement Empire will lock down any and all potential access to their internal net,” I said.

“It could, in fact, remain one of the few operational data nets in known space if the virus runs rampant. Ironically, it could put the Enhancement Empire into a stronger position than it is now—and I doubt that’s Gauss’s plan here,” Perry put in.

I nodded, then turned to the rest of the group. “Now, Denocus has managed to work his way into the Empire’s Corporate Security Department, thanks to him uncovering no fewer than three instances of mid-level corruption. The amount of money they were costing the Empire was peanuts from their perspective—a few hundred thousand bonds every standard month—but it added up.”

“It was all probably hidden in rounding errors on far bigger transactions,” Netty-P said.

“Exactly. But Gabriella says the GKU has someone even deeper inside the Empire, or did, anyway, and that source was able to point Denocus at the scams. He then used his background as a private investigator to invent plausible ways that he uncovered them on his own and, poof, suddenly we have a new up-and-comer in Corporate Security.”

Zeno gave a thin smile. “That’s because he was singing the song they wanted to hear—the one about money.”

“So how is this going to help us?” Icky asked. “Does Denocus somehow have a way of tracking Gauss?”

I shook my head. “No. But since Gauss can’t infect the Empire’s internal network without physical access to it, he needs to physically get to it. According to Denocus, the closest access point would be a branch departmental office complex located in a town about a hundred klicks away from the starport where Lunzy recorded him as landing. We have to assume that that’s where he’ll be going.”

“A hundred klicks? Why didn’t he land somewhere that would have brought him closer? I mean, that’s a long way to go,” Icky said.

“Because anywhere closer would almost certainly be a lot busier, and, therefore, a lot riskier. Gauss probably figured that this would give him the best combination of ease of access at the lowest possible risk.”

Lunzy interrupted from the cockpit. “We’ve completed our atmospheric insertion. Not sure if we were detected, but I’d be surprised if we weren’t. We’d have left a hell of a trail of ionized atmosphere behind us as we decelerated, and there ain’t no way a stealth system can cover up that.”

“Got it, Lunzy. Just see if you can get us to the landing zone we discussed, and we’ll do the rest,” I said. Icky, Zeno, and Funboy all started doing last-minute checks of their b-suits, weapons, and other equipment. We’d all layered on the various bits and pieces of armor that Linulla had made for us, or that we’d otherwise obtained. Once we were on the ground, we wouldn’t advertise ourselves, but we weren’t going to try to hide or be sneaky. We just didn’t have time for it.

Sometimes, they had to see the hammer falling.

And they would see us in brilliant color, thanks to the trail of atmospheric-entry plasma Lunzy had mentioned—meaning that our covert status would be long gone. We’d done our insertion over the uninhabited far side of Adoration, an entire hemisphere that was virtually all ocean, aside from a few island archipelagos. But it was too much to hope that we’d gone entirely undetected, and sure enough, Lunzy reported active scanners hammering away at us as we approached.

As Lunzy had said, once we were inside the atmosphere, the stealth system wouldn’t be able to conceal things like our wake turbulence. And the displacement system, the one that stopped lower-tech planets like Earth from detecting ships like Object 6 and the Fafnir, didn’t apply here—the standard surveillance tech of known space would see right through it.

“Van, we’re getting challenges from ground stations on the coast ahead of us. They know we’re coming,” Lunzy said over the intercom.

“Don’t suppose they’re greeting us with open arms as saviors, are they?”

“Not exactly. They’ve given us an island location off to our current ten o’clock to land and surrender ourselves.”

“Let’s not do that.”

“Wasn’t intending to. But we are being illuminated by some air-defense scanners.”

I glanced at the others. “Showtime, folks.” Back to Lunzy. “How long until we reach our destination?”

“Assuming we make it in one piece, about twenty minutes.”

“Got it.” I turned to Netty-P. “Okay, friend, tell your other half what’s going on—”

“I already have,” she cut in. “Torina has the Fafnir and the Iowa on station overhead, tracking us to give covering fire.”

“Superb. Make sure they remember it’s not an orbital bombardment, though. I don’t want any innocent people being hurt by stray fire. That especially goes for the Iowa—have Torina make sure the Conoku don’t—well, be themselves and get carried away.”

“Done and done.”

“Van, those air-defense scanners have switched from surveillance to fire-control mode,” Lunzy said.

I looked at the others.

“Here we go.”

* * *

The Object 6 rocked under the concussive shock wave of another nearby detonation. Shrapnel clacked against her armor. I wasn’t used to fighting inside an atmosphere, to all the drama of detonating warheads that was absent in space. In the void, there were no shock waves, no flat booms of explosions banging against the hull. All we could do, though, was hang on and trust to Lunzy’s flying, our fire support far overhead, and the stealth system.

The latter was proving particularly valuable. The fire-control systems directing the ground defenses weren’t really intended for use at ranges measured in tens or hundreds of klicks. Rather, they were meant to reach into near-planetary space and defend Adoration from attack originating out there. They’d been optimized for that, so their resolution up close and personal was poor at best. Combine that with the fact they could still only see the turbulent wake left by the otherwise invisible Object 6, and try to target its origin, and their shooting was trash.

Add the incoming fire from the Fafnir and the Iowa, which were trying to surgically take out the planetary defense installations, and so far, the Object 6 had only taken minor damage.

“Five minutes out,” Lunzy announced.

I watched the display with paranoid interest, showing the rolling, pastoral landscape looming ahead—and scrolling beneath—and the scenery included small towns and outposts, which buoyed my decision about our entry point and offensive plan. I’d worried that the Empire might be desperate enough to stop us that they might try firing a nuke. Nukes were a dicey call no matter where, but in space, a nuke produced only a brief flash of intense, radiant infrared and a blast of ionizing radiation, both of which diminished rapidly from the detonation point thanks to the inexorable math of the inverse-square law.

Ships were hardened against both infrared and radiation, so unless the weapons detonated really close or were extremely high-yield, they just weren’t as big a danger as more mundane weapons like lasers and conventional missiles.

Inside an atmosphere, though, a nuke created a far larger fireball, as the air absorbed the x-rays produced when it detonated, as well as a hell of a shock wave. A nuke could literally slam the Object 6 into the ground if it detonated close enough, and that would be a very bad thing.

Nukes were, in a word, apocalyptic.

But the Empire had apparently decided that they weren’t keen on flashing a slew of their own people, a fact I noted aloud, as much to reassure myself as anyone else. Everyone else just nodded and, like me, sat in stony silence as we flew through a storm of incoming fire, the ship bucking and rocking and slewing around, jerking us against our harnesses. I knew what they were thinking, because it was what I was thinking, too. The tension around us was a physical thing, grinding my nerves with a relentless beat of kinetic and potential violence.

A direct hit, or even a near miss from a conventional missile would have much the same outcome for us that a nuke would.

Dead was, after all, dead.

“Remember how I’ve said I hate that last little while, when we’re closing with some bad guys for a space battle? How we just sit there and watch the range tick down?” Icky said.

I nodded. “I do—”

A shock wave walloped the Object 6, slamming us all hard against our seats and harnesses and making the hull ring like a drum.

Icky shook her head and sighed. “Yeah, suddenly it doesn’t seem quite so bad.”

“One minute,” Lunzy called out.

I looked back at the display in time to see a searing pulse of light streak down from the top of the image and slam into something on the ground—a bank of point-defense rail guns spewing tracers in our general direction. It had been a mass-driver shot from either the Fafnir or the Iowa, and it was right on target. When the flash died, I briefly caught a blackened crater through a haze of dust and smoke. Chunks of debris were still soaring into the air above it, then it scrolled out of view.

Ahead was the Enhancement Empire’s branch facility, a sleek, towering building nearly a kilometer tall, surrounded by a cluster of smaller ones. Broad balconies extended from it, many of them opulent gardens, some with ponds and even waterfalls and fountains. Tall, narrow trees with leaves of maroon and gold rose from manicured lawns. The whole edifice stood on the edge of a sprawling body of sun-sparkled water about two-thirds the size of Lake Ontario back on Earth.

Denocus had been able to provide us with the layout of the place. The actual business portion—and, therefore, access to the Enhancement Empire’s internal data net—occupied the top two hundred meters of the soaring tower. The remainder was mostly residential, commercial, and recreational space, housing the people who worked at the top as well as those who supported them. It meant we could ignore the bottom eight hundred meters or, but that still left nearly fifty stories of space to search.

The Object 6 shuddered as Lunzy slowed her, using her thrusters to drop us toward one of the broad terraces extending from the flank of the tower, about a hundred and fifty meters from the top. I saw figures scrambling around as we dropped the last few hundred meters. The incoming fire had stopped, so I unsnapped my harness and headed for the airlock.

“That’s something, anyway,” Perry said, as he and the others followed me.

I glanced back at him. “What’s that?”

“We’ve sounded the alarm bells across Adoration. Hopefully, that’s made the Empire lock everything down—which could make things as difficult for Gauss as it does for us.”

“Good point.”

“That was your intent all along, of course, wasn’t it, boss?” Perry said, his tone gloriously bland.

I smiled at him as I stopped at the airlock. “All part of the plan, bird.”

His beak dropped. “Naturally.”

* * *

The airlock cycled open, and I stepped out—

And plunged into water up to my chest.

“Shit—Lunzy, you dropped us into a pond!”

Funboy jumped in after me. Being much shorter, I could only see the top of his helmet.

His voice hummed in my helmet’s headset. “Oh, dear. There are aquatic creatures in here,” he said as we both moved aside to let Icky jump down, followed by Netty-P. Perry launched himself into the air and began circling overhead. Zeno held her position in the open airlock, her BAG at the ready, prepared to give us covering fire. I wasn’t sure if Lunzy had deactivated the Object 6’s stealth system, or if it had just given up the ghost, but she loomed over us, a sleek, menacing shape, her thrusters roaring to hold her in position.

“One of these creatures has taken an inordinate interest in me,” Funboy said. “And there are numerous particles in this water. They are probably excrement, and perhaps even other secretions from these—”

Icky abruptly reached down, grabbed Funboy, and lifted him out of the water, then plunked him on her shoulder and held him there with one beefy arm.

“Better, princess? Now the big, bad fishy-wishies can’t get you, and neither can their poop or—”

“Reproductive effluent.”

“Yeah, that too.”

“Yes, this is much better. Now, onward, my faithful steed!” Funboy said.

Icky immediately headed right, lumbering out of the pond and toward the railing of the balcony where it was located, the Surtsi still perched on her shoulder.

“Hey, you know what? We’re, like, hundreds of meters above the ground? And—oh, I think my arm’s getting tired!” she said.

“I’m sorry, comms must have been garbled. Onward, my faithful social and intellectual equal.”

“Eh?”

“Superior. I meant superior,” Funboy hastily replied as she neared the edge.

“That’s better.”

I climbed out of the pond, The Drop raised and ready. “If you two are done goofing off, how about we go and save the universe, huh?”

28

Once we were firmly established around the entrance to the tower, Zeno leapt into the water and joined us, while Lunzy backed the Object 6 away and released the Frankie. Netty flew the workboat back onto the balcony, which was more than strong enough to hold her weight. She would be our emergency ride out, while Lunzy, covered by fire from the Fafnir and the Iowa, returned to orbit and relative safety. The commingled whine of the Object 6’s gravity polarizers and the roar of her thrusters faded as she rose, leaving just the sound of the wind and the soft chuckle of a fountain.

I turned toward the door, wincing and ducking again as the staccato crack of an automatic weapon slashed the stillness. Looking back, I saw tracers reaching up toward the Object 6 from a point-defense battery that either hadn’t wanted to fire earlier, or hadn’t been able to. Flashes rippled across the ship as the rounds struck her armor, spalling off fragments. I expected Lunzy to react, but before she could, another streak of light ripped down from the heavens and struck the battery, destroying it in a searing pulse of light. The heavy WHUMP of the shock wave hit us a few seconds later.

“Either the Fafnir or the Iowa are really on the ball up there,” Zeno said.

“Damn right they are,” I said, then turned back to the entrance. It was broad and tall, probably three meters on a side. I glanced at the others, making sure they were all ready, and got affirmative responses from everyone.

“Netty-P, any signs of Gauss’s mutated DNA?” I asked.

“None yet.”

“Okay, let’s go. And everyone cross their fingers that Gauss is in there somewhere. Your toes, too.”

“I’m anatomically unable to cross my toes,” Funboy said.

“Ah. Well, do your best.”

I signaled to Icky. She and I went in first, with Netty-P close behind. Funboy followed a few meters back, with Zeno bringing up the rear. Perry was a free agent, going where he thought he could do the most good. Right now, that was outside, keeping watch on the balcony we’d landed on to make sure no one else tried to land there and come up behind us.

We entered a soaring atrium-like vestibule at least twenty meters across, with another fountain flinging geysers and jets of water high enough to nearly touch the ceiling. A riot of flowering plants surrounded it. I could see at least five levels above us, each opening onto a circular gallery that ringed the atrium at successively higher floors. Another wide entrance yawned across the atrium, and there were broad, spiral stairs to the left.

To the right, there was an elevator sporting a door covered in filigree and trim so gaudy it made me wince.

“Denocus was pretty clear that the offices with the most likely access to the Empire’s internal net would be up,” I said, glancing at the elevator and rejecting it at once. It was too easy to get trapped, just by having the power switched off.

“Stairs,” I said, turning left and hurrying that way.

We started up the stairs and followed them around the broad, sweeping curve of the atrium’s inner wall. Big windows let us look out across Adoration, the rolling, pastoral scene marred by columns of dust and smoke marking the graves of planetary defense systems. Several air cars buzzed around the tower, a couple with strobing red lights—probably the local police. They seemed content to keep their distance for now.

“They’re probably awaiting reinforcements,” Zeno said, seeing what I was looking at.

I nodded. “Yeah, I’m sure that the security forces swung into gear to protect… head office, I guess, plus whatever other installations were considered vital. They probably didn’t expect this place to be our target—”

Torina cut in. “Van, I’ve been trying to negotiate with the Empire’s reps. They’ve agreed to lock down their internal network, but that’s it. They want you to surrender yourself immediately, and say they’ll take over securing their own facilities, thank you very much.”

“Did you tell them to go pound sand up their—” Icky started, but I cut in.

“They’re hedging their bets,” I said, peering up the stairs at the next level. “But based on what Viktor told us about this virus, it won’t do a damned bit of good unless they completely power their net down and leave it that way.”

“They insist that’s not necessary, that it would disrupt their planetary comms, that their own security measures are the top of the line and can’t be breached, blah, blah.”

“Shit. They don’t realize what they’re dealing with. Torina, you’ve got to get through to them—”

“That’s my goal, Van. It’s like trying to talk to the beautician behind the counter at a cosmetics shop. They say they can take care of this but won’t take us seriously until they’re convinced we’re not the real threat.”

“And to do that, we have to give ourselves up to them.”

“Afraid so.”

I cursed as I continued up the stairs, The Drop ready, its beamer set to the maximum safe stun setting. As long as we kept up our armed infiltration of their facility, the Empire would focus on us as the problem, which meant they simply wouldn’t take the threat of Gauss seriously. But if we did give in and surrender, we had no assurance they actually would do anything about Gauss—that is, if they even could—until it was too late.

I climbed a few more steps, trying to both think through the implications while keeping myself situationally aware. It was a case of damned if we do, damned if we don’t—

No. It wasn’t. It was damned if we don’t surrender to them, but even more damned if we do. We couldn’t rely on the Empire to stop Gauss. We had to do that ourselves—or at least make our best effort to do so.

“Torina, keep working on them. But we’re not going to hand ourselves over, sorry. As long as we’ve got a chance to stop Gauss, we have to take it.”

“Actually, that’s what I’ve already told them.”

I smiled. “You know me so well.”

“Kinda my job, dear,” she said. “And my calling.”

* * *

We finally hit resistance eight levels up from where we’d started. A half-dozen security personnel—I think—were gathered at the top of the stairs. I only thought they were security because they were decked out in uniforms that explained the elevator door’s aesthetic. Peaked forage caps, braids, spiffy tunics decked out with medals, braids, boots so polished you could shave in them—

And more braids.

“Was there a sale on braiding?” I asked.

“Guess someone had a coupon for braiding by the yard,” Perry muttered.

“Subtle, if you love clowns,” I agreed.

I saw two humans, a Nesit, a Gajur and an actual gray alien of Earthly UFO fame—complete with the big head and eyes. Together, they were absurd. But the rifles they held were anything but ornamental.

“Alright—uh—so, look. You guys have to surrender,” one of them called out as we rounded the still spiraling stairs and into their view.

I raised The Drop. “We really don’t want to hurt anyone—”

A sudden burst of slug fire cut me off. Rounds snapped past me. One struck Icky and glanced off her bulky shoulder pauldron, another hit my arm hard enough to sting through the b-suit, and one clacked off my helmet and—

And, unbelievably, ricocheted back with enough force to punch a wound into one of the Empire security guards, a Nesit, toppling him backward with a shrill cry of pain.

“I’m sorry!” the shooter, the gray alien, shouted as he dropped his weapon with a clatter. I cursed and raced up the stairs, The Drop leveled. Icky charged alongside me, growling with feral heat.

I sensed they were about to either break and run, or start shooting wildly, which could easily mean wounding or killing themselves as much as us. So I angled right, cutting Icky off, while shouting, “Freeze. And I mean freeze. Not a twitch. You get me? Any motion and we ventilate those drama department costumes you’re wearing.”

They wavered but didn’t actually flee. Instead, they lowered their weapons, staring dumbly while the Nesit writhed on the floor, whimpering and wailing.

I snorted in disgust. “The weapons, you shitheads. Drop them.”

They glanced around, then did, their weapons rattling to the ground. Icky pushed past me and snatched at something I’d only just seen hovering behind the group.

It was a camera drone.

I grabbed the nearest one, a human, then yanked him toward me with one of his pristine velvet lapels and stuck the muzzle of The Drop into his face. He looked like he might piss his pants—or, and this was not an appealing thought, that he already had.

“What the hell is going on here? Who are you guys?” I snapped.

He peered into my helmet, gasping and shaking his head. “Security—”

“Bullshit!”

“We… we are! But not the—you know, the fighting type—”

“That’s the only type,” Zeno snapped as she pushed by me and took up a fire position with her BAG to cover the stairs that continued up.

“What do you mean not the fighting—” I started, then I glanced at the camera drone, which Icky had grabbed, then I tugged and pulled against her iron grip, its gravity polarizer whining piteously. I swung my gaze back over the absurd uniforms, then groaned.

“Oh, for… more bullshit cosplayers.”

“I… don’t know what that is—” the man started, but I jabbed a finger at the drone, still desperately trying to pull away from Icky.

“What is that?”

“Our imager—”

“No shit. Why is it here?”

“Because… well, we’re live. This is… Security Theatre.”

“I’ll say it is,” Perry said, landing on the railing of the stairs a few meters back.

The man licked his lips. “We’re the top-rated show in our slot, and with everything happening, our producers wanted to… to, you know, go live.”

“So your friend”—I gestured at the fallen Nesit, who now had Funboy attending to him—“was just shot on live TV?”

“What’s TV?”

I stilled myself with a will. “Your show. He was just shot on your dumbass show. What if this had gone sideways and turned into a real firefight? You’d have people, what, dying, blood being spilled, in front of a live audience?”

“Great for ratings,” Perry said. “Y’know. Dirty laundry and all that.”

Icky yanked the drone around so its imager pointed at her face from a few centimeters away. “Wait, you mean I’m being broadcast? For real?” She bared her teeth behind her helmet. “Hey, all you voyeuristic assholes out there, I’m Icky.” She smiled again, even wider. “I’ve never felt prettier.”

She pushed the camera out to arm’s length in two hands, spun her hammer in a third, and scratched at an armpit with the fourth. “We gonna crush these morons or what, Van? My hammer’s getting itchy, and I hate to disappoint our fans.”

I kicked the dropped weapons into a pile, then turned to Icky. “I was going to tell you to just smash that thing—but, you know what? I’ve got a better idea. Icky, yank out its gravity doohickey or disable it or whatever, then bring that thing with us. They want a show? We’ll give them a friggin’ show.”

* * *

Funboy declared the wounded Nesit fit to walk, so we sent the faux security troops downstairs without their weapons, but with a promise that we wouldn’t hesitate to gun them down if they tried anything stupid, like trying to come back up after us. As for their slug rifles, we each slung one, while Icky took two. As we prepared to move out and resume our way up, though, Netty-P spoke up. She’d been scouting the stairs, as well as the entrance off of them that opened onto the current level of the tower.

“Van, I’ve got a hit,” she said.

“A hit—what, you mean Gauss?”

“Yup. He was here, or at least someone with a DNA profile that’s a ninety percent match for the theoretical one Viktor sketched out was. The reading just spiked when I poked my proverbial nose into this corridor.

I glanced up the stairs, which would keep winding their way up another thirty-eight floors or so, then turned to the exit from them onto this floor and nodded. “Okay, then. Let’s see if we can track our bad guy from here now that we’ve got the trail. Netty-P, please take the lead. We’ll be right behind you.”

She uttered a sudden, hoarse, barking howl I recognized as the baying of a bloodhound on the hunt. We all winced, and I waved a hand at her. “Uh, Netty-P? Is that really necessary?”

“Sorry, I just thought it was appropriate,” she said, then loped off, following Gauss’s DNA trail.

* * *

We continued ascending the tower, but this time from level to level inside a complex of corridors, offices, boardrooms, and smaller atriums. Gauss’s trail waxed and waned as we progressed. Netty lost it a few times and had to hunt around a bit before finding it again. Fortunately, the skin cells and other organic material he was shedding that contained his mutated DNA were pretty durable, so Netty-P would be able to detect them for days before they degraded, and in extremely small concentrations at that. In a way, she really was a bloodhound.

I glanced into each room we passed. All were empty of staff, with evidence of a hasty evacuation—implements scattered on desks and sometimes on the floor, items of clothing still hanging from racks, chairs intended for various anatomies shoved back or even knocked over, and in a few cases, partly eaten food still out.

Icky peered mournfully at something that looked like a partly eaten cupcake. “Hey, Van, if they’re not going to eat that—”

“No.”

“But it’s just gonna dry out—”

“No! Let’s go!”

She sighed and fell back into formation.

“The lack of any organized opposition is concerning,” Funboy said.

“What about those guys back on the stairs?” Icky asked.

“They inflicted only one wound, on themselves. We were more at risk of a slip and fall on the stairs than we were from them. But no resistance whatsoever since then suggests that—”

“They’re organizing something substantial ahead of us somewhere,” I said.

“Exactly.”

Netty-P cut in. “According to the building schematics provided by Denocus, there is another large atrium five levels up, which extends the height of the topmost five levels. It stands to reason that the offices and other facilities of senior management would be up there. That would also be a logical place to attempt to block us, because defenders in the upper levels will have fields of fire down onto the lowermost.”

“What I don’t get is why, if Gauss just wants to infect their net with that virus, he didn’t do it down here at one of the terminals in these offices. I mean, we’ve passed dozens of them,” Zeno said.

“If you look at them, you will notice that they are all powered down, probably as an emergency security precaution,” Funboy replied. “The virus may be pernicious, but its existence and actions still rely on electrical power.”

“Ah. Yeah, good point. But then won’t all the terminals up above be powered off, too?”

“Perhaps. But based on Gauss’s trail, he seems determined to reach the upper part of this complex. And since this ultimately was one of his subsidiary corporations, we have to assume that he knows things that we don’t.”

“Which means that he’s got a reason for getting up into those top floors,” I said, then turned to Netty-P. “Is there any way we can bypass that atrium up above where we expect they’re going to make their stand?”

“There is a service elevator, but it’s likely powered down like all of the others we’ve encountered.”

I glanced around us at rows of silent, dim cubicles—looking at them but not really seeing them. I was turning over ways of approaching this that didn’t involve a firefight in a five story atrium. Not only could it get a lot of people hurt and killed—including us—it could end up being a protracted, time-consuming affair. And time was something we simply didn’t have. Gauss could be sticking some implanted data probe into a functioning terminal right now. We needed to get up there, and do it fast, and while avoiding as much opposition as we could—

I glanced at Icky, standing with her hammer in one massive hand, slung on her shoulder, the other still holding the camera drone propped on her other shoulder.

“Is that thing still transmitting?”

“As far as I know. All it would be seeing is what’s behind me, though,” she replied.

“You mean me? I’ve been on camera this whole time?” Funboy asked, his tone outraged—or, outraged for him, that is, which meant he spoke a little louder than normal.

“Yeah, hope you weren’t doing anything embarrassing back there.”

“That would make for pretty boring viewing for sure,” Perry said, soaring over the sprawl of empty cubicles and landing on a partition between two nearby. “Especially since they can’t hear you guys, with your suits and helmets on.”

I narrowed my eyes on it. “No, they can’t, can they?”

“Eh, they’ll probably just edit it later. I doubt this is going out live anymore,” Zeno said.

“No, but they can still use that thing to track us, can’t they?”

“Oh. Shit, yeah, they can. They can just follow us along with the image feed, if nothing else.” Zeno looked at me, shifting her BAG to a more comfortable grip. “Why did we bring that thing along with us again?”

“Well, I’d like to say for some cunning reason, but honestly, I just had some vague idea about exposing what’s going on here to the universe,” I replied.

Perry gave me a stare. “Really, Van? That was your plan for it? Like they were going to let anything incriminating get out—”

“Yeah, I know, that was a dumb idea. But I’ve got a much better one that can make use of our voyeuristic eye on Icky’s shoulder.”

“Uh-oh. I sense yet another brilliant Tudor plan taking shape,” Perry said.

“You bet you do.” I turned to Icky. “My dear, how would you like to go for a climb?”

29

“Remember, Icky, keep the imager on that thing pointed up, not down. We want anyone monitoring its feed to see what’s ahead of you, not behind,” I said.

Icky nimbly clambered up onto the top of the powerless service elevator car. About thirty meters of shaft soared above her, dwindling into perspective. I don’t have a particular problem with heights, but the thought of climbing that made me a little queasy. Wu’tzur, though, seemed to have climbing hard-coded into them, making a five or six story climb straight up no big thing.

“Okay, boss, see you up top,” she called down.

“Don’t climb too fast, big girl. We want to give them time to figure out what we’re doing and react accordingly. And be careful when you get up there—you might end up facing a lot of opposition.”

“A target-enriched environment, I like to call it,” she said, then stuck out three arms and two feet and began to climb the shaft. She moved like a kid on a jungle gym.

I turned to the others. “Okay, back to Gauss’s trail on the stairs—and let’s move fast. I can’t help thinking the clock has almost run out.”

We hurried back the way we’d come, heading for the stairs that would take us up to the atrium where we expected any security forces in the building, or any that had managed to enter since we arrived, would make a stand. There may have been a few of the latter, since Torina had observed air cars shuttling to and from the upper reaches of the tower. They were probably carrying away fleeing staff and executives, and some may have dead-headed back, but they might also have brought reinforcements.

We wound our cautious way upward, checking in with Icky to track her progress. She reached the top of the shaft while we were still a floor and a half below the atrium, and now worked on getting the doors open. I had a sudden image of her clinging to the inside of the elevator shaft with nothing but a twenty-plus meter drop beneath her feet, while she fiddled with the doors and trying to open them, while also hanging onto the stupid camera bot. My gut tightened a little.

Definitely better her than me.

We reached the top of the last flight of stairs. A short corridor led to the atrium, which opened up ahead of us, about five meters away. I saw polished faux-stone floor, more brightly flowered shrubs, and, bubbling up beyond them, another of the many fountains.

I looked at Netty-P, and she raised a manipulator in a not-bad approximation of a thumbs-up.

“Gauss went thataway,” she said, gesturing toward the atrium.

“Okay, Icky, we’re ready.”

“Got it. Opening the doors now—”

A brief pause on the comm, then a rattle of gunfire, punctuated by Icky cursing.

“Icky! Are you—”

“Pinned down inside this shaft? Yeah. But the bad guys are definitely here—”

A loud crack interrupted her words. “And now they’re throwing stun grenades. Wearing the b-suit and helmet was a good idea—shit—!”

“Icky!”

“You know what, Van—screw this, I’m not just gonna sit here and be shot at.”

“Icky, don’t—”

A wild bellow cut me off, repeated over shouts, gunshots, and the ruckus of close combat.

I swore. “Let’s go!” I snapped, and we hurried toward the atrium. I stopped inside the entrance and looked around, and then up.

I saw no one, heard only the splashing of water. The plan had worked. The security contingent had been accessing the image feed from the drone, and saw us climbing up the service elevator shaft. And, sure enough, they’d shifted their attention that way, leaving the atrium open.

But it also meant that Icky was facing most, or even all of the security contingent alone.

I cursed again and jogged into the open, heading for the stairs that, as they did in the atrium below, swept around the inside, up toward the pinnacle of the tower, and, I hoped, Helem Gauss.

* * *

Icky kind of forced our hand. We were able to move up through the atrium unimpeded, but at its topmost floor—one floor down from the penthouse suite of offices, which we now assumed was Gauss’s destination—a melee raged. Icky bellowed and roared, swinging her hammer in wide-sweeping arcs, while uniformed figures tried to rush her, or fired at her. Most, I saw, were using non-lethal weapons, taser-like devices and shock rounds, similar to bean-bag rounds but delivering a stunning charge when they struck. They’d have taken her down long ago if it hadn’t been for her b-suit, which had been designed to shrug off the effects of such weapons.

I allowed myself a flicker of relief that I’d insisted on getting an oversized, four-armed, custom-fitted b-suit for her despite the protests of the Guild Quartermaster and the cost. There were only a handful of Wu’tzur in the Guild, though, so b-suits had to be made special-order for them.

But the security guards—and these were actual security guards, in body armor and helmets—had started to get desperate to take down the towering whirlwind of steel and rage that was Icky, and they’d drawn actual sidearms, slug pistols and shotguns. Icky had been wounded a few times, based on bloody holes punched through her b-suit, and I saw another fire at her. I raised The Drop, but before I could line up and shoot, a burst of automatic fire slammed into the guard, dropping him.

I glanced back to see Netty-P still wielding one of the auto guns we’d retrieved from the fancy, made-up security guards downstairs.

“Oh. I shot him,” she said.

I nodded, but before either of us could speak, the rearmost guards turned in alarm to face us.

So we charged.

I drew the Moonsword in my off hand and brandished it as I snapped out stun shots from The Drop. Perry swept overhead, aiming himself at a guard’s face. The man winced and ducked and Perry deftly snatched the gun from his hand and flew off with it. I saw Funboy jog into battle with the same casual hurry of someone heading for the door after a knock. A guard, a Gajur, shouted something and swung a shock baton at him, but he almost offhandedly blocked it with his gun-knife-club combo, then drove out his other hand, punching the guard under his arm. He gasped, his fingers snapped reflexively open, and he dropped the baton, then his arm flopped to his side, apparently paralyzed.

I stunned a guard about to swing at Icky with another shock baton. Too late, I caught one in the corner of my eye raising his shotgun and firing. A round slammed into my shoulder. I yelped at the dull burst of pain from the hit. It must have been a slug, the heavy impact mimicking what Funboy had just done to the Gajur and making me drop the Moonsword. The guard lined up a second shot, but his head abruptly flew apart, spattering everyone and everything downrange of him with gore.

I glanced back and saw Zeno with her BAG leveled. She’d fired a frangible round, which had disintegrated on impact with the guard’s head, which had likewise disintegrated as a result. I think I muttered a quick thanks to her, then lunged for the Moonsword, only to find a guard already snatching it up.

Oh, shit. I knew what that blade was capable of, and I did not want to face it—

The guard, a human, grinned at me and hefted the blade. I stepped back, and he stepped forward. I snapped out a shot from The Drop, but it smacked into his armor, staggering him briefly with a wince.

My eyes flicked up and behind him. His grin just widened, becoming more feral. He’d seen through my trick—which was unfortunate for him, because it wasn’t a trick at all. In turning to face me, he’d put his back to Icky, who suddenly loomed behind him, hammer raised on high.

I just shrugged. That made him hesitate, his grin faltering, and then vanishing completely along with his head as Icky’s blow came down, bursting his skull like a ripe melon.

I grabbed the Moonsword as he toppled. “I’ll take that, thanks,” I said, then I spun around, taking in the situation.

Several of the guards were down to stay. Most of the rest had fled, showing excellent judgment. A stubborn few had planted themselves between us and the bottom of a spiral staircase up, determined to prevent us from reaching the penthouse. I didn’t want to kill them, but—

A shot cracked and one, a human, fell with a chunk blasted out of his neck. Another shot tore through the air, ventilating an unfortunate Nesit in a spectacular loop of bright fluids. I glanced at Zeno, about to tell her to cease fire so we could just convince these assholes to give up—but she didn’t have her BAG raised or ready. Funboy was turning away from dispatching another guard, while Netty-P had a massive reception desk of polished stone and wood in her way. Perry and Icky didn’t have guns. So who was shooting—?

A figure suddenly scuttled out of a doorway off to our right, near the bottom of the stairs. I say scuttled because that’s exactly how it moved—it scuttled.

It was a misshapen, multi-limbed monstrosity, a horrific fusion of flesh and alloy, bone and composites, organic biology and inorganic tech. I caught a glimpse of a face, human in general shape but soulless and haunting. It stared at me with a gaze devoid of life—

And smiled. My blood went cooler by a few degrees at the sheer wrongness of that face.

Then my combat instincts surged back into play as I raised The Drop and opened fire, shouting, “It’s Gauss!”

Icky looked, froze, and then came to life with a horrified bellow. “What is he?”

The same instant of frozen horror engulfed the rest of my crew—and then vanished under the onslaught of their courage and training.

Zeno spoke, cool and distant. “Dead, when I hit him.” She followed that pronouncement by charging after Gauss and firing her BAG from the hip, Icky racing after her. Funboy wisely decided to keep shooting at the remaining security guards, although only two or three remained. Gauss had blithely gunned down the ones that blocked his way to the stairs, and the few stalwart types still there nearly had the fight knocked out of them.

I could feel it.

“They’re full o’ quit!” I growled, punching a round through the meaty chest of a guard whose howl of pain was cut short by two rounds from Funboy.

“Gauss—” I called, but he was already racing up the stairs in a motion so alien as to challenge my eyesight. My crew concentrated their fire on his scuttling, jerking form, leaving the remaining guards a chance to counterfire.

Icky and Zeno crabbed forward in their own way, their advance slowed by the sheer volume of fire raining down.

I howled in rage at the lost time and opportunity—something feral, no words—then realized I was rushing that way, too, when a guard’s bullet smacked into the side of my helmet with a brilliant flash of light. His second shot hit my left leg below the knee. I turned, aimed, and fired, blowing the man’s head apart. As pieces of his skull slid obscenely down the wall, the remaining holdouts abruptly gave up, dropping their weapons.

“Funboy, Perry, cover our rear!” I shouted, charging for the stairs—or trying, but my left leg flailed and flopped. Glancing down, I saw why. The guard’s slug had taken a chunk out of my left calf. As soon as I realized it, pain rippled up my leg like a string of firecrackers, and I nearly pitched face-first into a desk. Instead, I clawed my way around it, uttering a continuous string of curses.

“Boss?” Perry asked.

“Mostly pissed.” I hissed in pain. “Lost a little weight with that one, dammit.”

“Anger looks good on you. Covering,” he said, hopping up and away to gain height and velocity.

Zeno was already starting up the stairs, Icky right behind her. I saw Gauss reach the top, but although he just kept going, his nightmare physiology allowed him to also see and shoot behind him as he ran. Projectiles snapped past Zeno and Icky, punching holes into the floor that briefly glowed with fearsome kinetic energy gone thermal. Whatever he was shooting, it wasn’t a regular slugger. It fired angry.

His next shot proved that, taking Icky somewhere in her lower abdomen and punching completely through in a mist of blood. She ran up another couple of steps anyway, then clambered two more, before she stopped, flopped against the railing, and knelt on a stair.

Icky looked at me, her eyes wild with pain. “Van?” That single word tore into me like a saber, sending a frisson of rage and terror, braided in my very core.

“Funboy—Icky!” I gasped, finally bumbling my way to the stairs, teeth gritted against the pain flashing up and down my leg with each awkward step. I climbed, pushing around Icky, forcing myself to keep going and just leave her to Funboy, muttering something encouraging to her, then pushing on and gaping up toward the top like it was the summit of Everest the whole while. Gauss had disappeared. I saw Zeno at the top, still hammering out shots from her BAG, still at the hip, then she disappeared too.

A thought finally shouldered its way through the swirl of pain and frustration in my head. That was Gauss. Shit. We couldn’t use tech around Gauss.

“Everyone—it’s Gauss—switch to analog—”

“Already done, Van,” Perry said. “I gave the order as soon as you said it was him.”

I heaved myself up the stairs. “Never heard—” I groaned, leaning on the railing and looking down the stairs. Funboy was tending to Icky. Netty-P was coming up the stairs, but she was nothing but tech, just like Perry, and we’d wanted to keep them as far away from Gauss as possible. They’d have both shut themselves down to data inputs, which meant they were limited to what they could see and hear, like the rest of us.

I resumed climbing. I drove myself as hard as I could, practically hopping on my good foot, finally reaching the top. I found myself in a truly palatial room, the foyer to equally palatial offices and a sumptuous board room. I grimly ignored the splendor and focused on Gauss and Zeno. He’d rushed through massive glass doors onto a balcony garden, where an air car waited. Zeno was still on her feet, tearing after him while frantically reloading her BAG.

I raised The Drop in a desperate throw to take down Gauss in a literal longshot, firing a round that slammed into the glass and cracked it but didn’t penetrate. It was armored against shots—of course.

“You miserable prick,” I spat, then thrashed along after Zeno anyway, gasping, groaning against the now continuous incendiary flare of pain in my leg. I finally reached the door to the balcony and saw Gauss get in the air car. I saw Zeno finally get her BAG back in action, fire a couple of shots at the vehicle as it started to lift—and then throw her BAG aside, and herself onto the exterior of the air car. It rose and side-slipped away from the balcony, then soared out of sight, Zeno still clinging to it.

And that was that. Gauss and Zeno were gone.

* * *

I stumbled onto the balcony, then fell to my knees. I could see the air car sailing away, traversing the length of the lake that sprawled off away from the tower. It dove beneath the forested hills lining either side of the lake, probably to inhibit detection by anything ground-based.

I sucked in a breath. “Zeno!” My body went into open revolt at the effort of my call, and I spat blood from an unseen cut in my mouth. That was new. Or old. I couldn’t tell.

I tried again as a sick fury climbed within me. “Zeno?”

No answer. She’d fallen off. Fallen off and plunged to her death. A disaster. This had been a complete disaster—

“Hey, Van. Guess where I am?”

Zeno’s voice was underlain by a steady thunder, the co-mingled racket of the air car’s drive and its slipstream.

“Zeno—what the hell—were you thinking—?”

“We’ve got to stop—stop Gauss!”

“Zeno—” I started, then just knelt there, my mouth hanging open on a word that wouldn’t come. What could I say? What could I do?

Perry landed beside me. “You look like shit.”

I turned to unleash some profanity on him, but he preempted me.

“The virus is loose, Van. Gauss managed to access a terminal and release it. It’s tearing through the building’s systems. Probably beyond them, too, by now, since the Empire never shut down their net.”

I just stared.

Disaster.

No. No. Don’t do this, Tudor. Do not give up.

“Perry—you have to go—go after Gauss.”

He glanced that way. “I can, but I’ll never catch him. I’m not as fast as a speeding air car, sorry.”

I sucked in a shuddering breath that tasted of desperate fear. “We have—to stop him—”

“Van, we can,” Zeno assured me, her voice taut with strain. She must be desperately clinging to the air car, fighting to keep from falling off. Fortunately, the things were specifically designed to not engage in wild maneuvers—they were meant to get people who weren’t pilots safely from one place to another.

I opened my mouth, but Zeno cut me off. “Torina!”

“I’m here,” she said.

“Can you—and Netty—see my comm signal?”

“We can. Netty’s plotted a descent, but it’s going to take too long—”

“The Frankie,” I blurted, turning to Perry. “Call the Frankie, it can catch them.”

“To call her, we’d have to open a data link to bring her here,” Netty-P said, loping up to join us on the balcony.

I looked from one to the other. The virus was loose, so if either of them opened a link that carried data—

“Go get—” I winced. “Get her, Perry.”

“On my way,” he said, flinging himself into the air. It wouldn’t take him long to fly to the Frankie, get aboard, power her up, fly her back here—

“Torina, if you can see my—my signal—fire the SAND at—it!” Zeno said, and we all went silent.

Torina recovered first. “Zeno, I—can’t. I won’t.”

“We have—to stop Gauss. He can’t l-leave the planet. Fire it!

“Zeno, we can’t,” I said, shoving my pain aside like I was body-checking a linebacker. “We aren’t set up—!”

“Doesn’t matter! The firing solution—didn’t count on having an active—signal right on the target! Do it! Not sure I can—can hold on much longer—!”

I glanced at Netty-P.

“She’s right. Our original firing plan for the SAND didn’t assume we’d have an active signal radiating from the target, because—well, how likely was that? But here we are. The SAND can be fired in seek mode and home on Zeno’s signal.”

“She’ll—she’ll die.”

“I know. Zeno does, too.”

“Van—please! Your grandfather—spared me for a reason. Always wondered why—I was nothing—special. But he did—and this is it. We can stop—Gauss.”

I just knelt there, sucking in breaths and ignoring the pain. The physical pain, anyway.

“Not like this, Zeno,” I said. My heart filled with the desolation of necessity, and I hated the universe. And myself. “Not now. Not like this.”

“Van, don’t you dare,” Torina put in. “We’ll just blow Gauss out of the sky when he tries to leave the planet.”

“Don’t you think—he’s thought of that? He’s got—a way. To escape. Van, I can’t—hold on.”

A sudden memory bubbled up. We’d been trying to rescue Gabriella Santorini, and I almost choked because I’d become afraid of losing anyone from my crew. My nerve had started to fail. Torina had pulled me aside and laid it out, the hard, bitter truth.

Yes, you did almost lose me. And you almost lost Icky—twice, in fact, counting the time she was shot on Null Word. For that matter, you’ve almost lost the whole lot of us, yourself included. It’s kind of the nature of the job, Van.

But another memory followed hard on the heels of that one—me kneeling in front of Rolis, the stolen personality who’d for a time been part of the Fafnir’s crew. We’d faced certain death at the hands of a relentless alien killing machine, but he’d found a way to save us—at the cost of his own life.

I opened my mouth but closed it again. I knelt and put both hands on Waldo—on Rolis.

“I—don’t know what else to say,” I said. I tried to stop my voice from breaking, but failed pretty miserably.

“How about goodbye?”

I drew a breath. I had to work at it. “Netty, transfer the SAND’s firing authority to my voice command.”

“Done.”

“Van, you can’t do this—!” Torina said, but I just shook my head.

“We’re all adults here, Torina. And we’ve made our own choices.”

They were her words, spoken to me when we’d been trying to save Gabriella and I’d almost given up. And she knew it.

I drew another breath. An even harder one.

Something touched my shoulder. It was one of Netty-P’s manipulators, resting on me like a reassuring hand.

“Netty—fire.”

* * *

“On the way. The missile is tracking,” Netty said.

A long silence followed, finally broken by Zeno.

“Thank you, Van.”

I let out a bitter breath. “For what?”

“For—everything. For—treating me with respect. Like Mark did.”

“Zeno, I—”

“Only have—one regret.”

“What?”

“You and me. I never let on, but—” A pause. “No hope, I know. You and Torina—I’m so happy for you.”

“Really?”

“Stupid, I know.”

“No. No, not stupid. Zeno, you’re—”

“Don’t, Van. Don’t lie. We’d never have—and that’s okay. I mean, girl can dream, righ—”

A miniature sun abruptly flashed into being far down the lake, flaring painfully bright, then fading. A few seconds later, the shock wave hit us with a whump, then it faded, too, leaving only the fitful wind blowing across the balcony.

30

I stopped on the stairs and leaned on the railing. I was tired. Tired in body, mind and soul. I just wanted to rest.

But I couldn’t. Gauss might be dead, but in some ways, the work had only begun.

“How is she?” I asked Funboy, who was still laboring over Icky.

“Stable. She’s out. I had to use a paralytic to slow her body functions, to minimize the bleeding until we can evacuate her.” He peered up at me. “So, no, she doesn’t know.”

“I—”

Funboy stood and climbed up the stairs to join me. “Let me see your leg.”

I slumped down on the stairs and Funboy immediately fussed over my wound, which was bloody and painful, a chunk of meat blown out of the back of my calf about as big as three of my fingers. The b-suit’s self-sealing feature had mostly plugged it, so he just applied some first-aid spray, then a self-tightening bandage. I winced as it pulled itself taut.

“I’m sorry, Van,” Funboy said.

“That’s okay. Just… stings—”

“No. I mean—” He looked up at me. “I’m sorry.”

I just shook my head.

“Gauss is finally dead,” he said.

I stared at Icky. What was she going to say? What was she going to do? Would she hate me?

“So is Zeno.”

“Yes, she is.”

I stared at him. He just stared back, blinking.

I nodded.

Netty-P came down the stairs. “Perry just landed the Frankie on the balcony,” she said.

I sighed a heart-weary sigh. “Yeah, let’s—” I started, but stopped when I saw the door through which Gauss had appeared. He hadn’t been near an elevator or stairs. So where had he been? Deploying the virus, probably. But—had that been all?

I stood. “Netty-P, are you strong enough by yourself to get Icky to the Frankie?”

She answered by moving into position, extending her manipulators, and sliding them under Icky’s inert bulk, then lifting with a whine of servos. “I’ll manage,” she said.

I nodded and glanced at Funboy. “Come with me. I want to check something out.”

I hobbled down the stairs, Funboy at my side. We crossed to the door through which Gauss had appeared, noting it was an armored affair with a biometric lock and a sign proclaiming RESTRICTED AREA – AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

I hefted The Drop and entered.

A short hallway led to another door, with yet another on the left. Both stood open. The one on the right opened into an office, one of whose wall was a clear partition looking in on the room accessed by the second door. I peered through it and cursed.

It was a laboratory. And it had been used for Braiding.

Funboy looked at the terminal. It was operating and unsecured but showed only a message saying System Offline, Contact InfoMin For Assistance.

Funboy pointed at an open data port on the terminal. “This is where Gauss injected the virus. And that explains something.”

I glanced at him.

“Dohlennz was working with the Enhancement Empire at the same time he was working for Gauss. This was likely his laboratory, probably so he could work on some sort of age-regeneration therapy based on Braiding. It would have been worth a fortune to the Empire.”

“It would have needed… bodies. Minds. It would have needed people.”

Funboy gave his slow shrug. “I doubt they cared. And neither would those rich enough to afford it.” He sighed. “But Dohlennz double-crossed them. And that’s what this explains. Gauss needed physical access to the Empire’s net, but even if he got it, there was one thing he didn’t have—one simple thing that would have stopped him.”

“A password.”

“Exactly. Even with their net running, Gauss couldn’t access it if they simply eliminated his access. He needed to get a toehold in their net to release the virus. Dohlennz left this terminal active to give Gauss the means to infect their system.”

“And now it’s spreading across the planet. Shit. Adoration needs to be quarantined, now. Torina?”

Nothing.

She wasn’t talking. To me, anyway.

I swore and hobbled back into the lobby, where the firefight with the guards had raged. As soon as I had, Torina came on the comm.

“Van, where are you?”

“Oh.” I glanced back. Of course. Dohlennz’s little horror fest was shielded. “I’m here.”

“Van, Gerhardt just showed up. He’s got GKU, Schegith, a few others with him.”

I nodded and sat on the edge of a desk. “Put him through.”

“Tudor, what’s going on?”

I told him.

* * *

We lifted the Frankie and did a low pass over the site of the SAND detonation—because. There was nothing to see, though. Aside from a residual pall of radioactive water vapor hanging over the lake, there was nothing to indicate that a nuclear bomb had detonated here just a short while ago. And there was certainly no debris.

I glanced off to either shoreline, a couple of klicks in either direction. Maybe some leaves had been blown off trees, but that was it. The SAND had done what it was intended to do, vaporizing everything in a small space, but not resulting in widespread damage, or even inflicting any collateral injuries. It had, from that narrow perspective, been a perfect op, resulting in the neat, surgical execution of Helem Gauss.

And Zeno.

And, of course, broaden the perspective a little, and it was anything but perfect. I’d lost a crew member, and had another badly wounded. The virus was loose on Adoration, turning the planet into a humanitarian catastrophe in waiting.

But there was something worse, if such a thing was possible.

“Three ships twisted away from this system, presumably being in contact with Adoration traffic control the whole time. We have to assume they’re infected as well. I’ve dispatched ships to intercept them, but if even one of them establishes a datalink with traffic control at, say, Tau Ceti or Eridani—” Gerhardt left the rest unsaid.

I nodded as we climbed back to orbit. Netty, Perry, and Netty-P were busy scouring the Frankie, themselves, and even our suits, comms, and data pads for any hint they might be infected, but they’d found nothing. Our precautions, switching to analog-only comms and isolating ourselves from any data sources on the surface seemed to have worked.

But for how long? If the virus was spreading across known space, how long until it circled back to us?

Gerhardt gave me a barren grin. “We do have one bit of good news. I have declared a Writ of Quarantine on Adoration, which empowers us to destroy any ship that attempts to leave. To that end, we’ve stopped a number of ships, including a super yacht called the Inner Beauty.”

“Can you elaborate?” I asked, my voice rough with exhaustion and loss.

“It is the personal yacht of the Triumvirate, the three corporate leaders of the Enhancement Empire. They’re aboard it. Moreover, they’ve resorted to analog-only comms and digitally isolated themselves, meaning that they are aware of what has been unleashed. So their ship, at least, is free of the virus. We boarded it and took them into custody. Meet me there.”

I was going to ask him why, what was the point—but the expression on Gerhardt’s face told me. He knew what these utterly amoral, brutally toxic narcissists had cost me and my crew, and may now cost the people of known space and beyond.

He wanted me to be there for their reckoning.

“On our way,” I said as we started our final approach to the Fafnir. Gerhardt’s face flicked away as the link closed, but I saw something I’d never noticed in his face.

Anticipation.

* * *

I wasn’t sure how Torina was going to greet me. Or if she was going to greet me at all. But she did, at the airlock as I climbed out of the Frankie. Without hesitating, she took me in her arms and just held me, her arms a warm, reassuring circle around me that helped push the desperate loss away.

Not forever, but for the moment, and that was good enough.

Funboy, Netty-P, and Perry gathered around us, saying nothing as they stood in companionable silence, their presence a balm for our collective loss.

I finally pulled back, wiping my eyes and looking around.

“Family first. Then justice,” I said. “Thanks.”

To my surprise, Funboy stepped forward and looped an arm awkwardly over my shoulder, then moved it twice. “Um. So, ahh—there, there.”

Then he followed that emotional outburst with an attempted smile.

I stifled a laugh at the sheer discomfort of his attempt, but damn if I didn’t appreciate it. “Thank you. Truly. Okay. We’ve got work to do. Let’s get Icky into the auto doc. Netty, set course to rendezvous with Gerhardt.”

Nobody moved.

I sighed. “Duty calls. Again.”

Everyone began to move, but only Funboy spoke. “It’s our theme song. And it fits.”

* * *

Several ships were clustered around the Inner Beauty—Gerhardt’s, Object 6, Valint’s Stormshadow, a ship of obviously Schegith origin, and a nondescript yacht I didn’t recognize. The Iowa, the GKU ships that had accompanied Valint and several other Peacemakers, including Dugrop’che, were elsewhere in the system, enforcing the quarantine.

The Iowa. I’d told Cantullin about Zeno, and she went cold and hard in a way that seemed utterly out of place in the rambunctious, excitable alien. She told me she’d inform the rest of the Iowa’s crew.

“And then, Captain Van, we want to kill something,” she said, her voice all flat menace. It gave me a genuine chill.

“You’ll get your chance. But not until it’s a legitimate act. Is that clear? Because I want it to be more clear than anything else I’ve ever told you,” I said.

A long pause.

“Cantullin, I need you to do this.”

“I know, Captain Van. You can count on me.”

“I’ve said it before. I know I can.”

We crossed to the Inner Beauty on the Frankie, and were met by Gerhardt at the airlock. He put his hand on my shoulder, and it was a bit more natural than Funboy’s attempt at emotion.

“I’m sorry for the loss of your crewmember, Tudor. She will be remembered as a hero of the Guild, I promise you that.”

Valint stepped forward. “I think this is the part where… I hug you,” she said. “However, I—” She hesitated, then said, “To hell with it,” and stepped forward to embrace me. It lasted only a moment, then she stepped back.

“It is never easy to lose anyone,” she said.

Our eyes met, and I nodded gravely. In her face I saw something new—respect. It was fleeting but present, and it eroded our boundaries a bit more. That was, I decided, a good thing.

I was shocked to see both Schegith herself aboard, as well as Retta, of all people. When I asked why, Schegith’s reply was simple and straightforward.

“This one came to assist in ending the threat posed by Gauss. Unfortunately, this one failed.”

“Et moi, I am also here to assist,” Retta said.

I couldn’t help a bemused smile. “Retta, you’re… a restaurateur.”

“Not always. I was a field agent at one time,” she replied, balancing deftly atop her ball and brandishing a vicious rifle. “For this, for the things happening now, it is time for me to be such a person once more.”

Gerhardt led us back through the luxurious, gilt-highlighted interior of the Inner Beauty to its main cabin. Three figures sat there, under the hard scrutiny of a half-dozen GKU soldiers. Each of them looked ready to start shooting.

I turned my attention to the Triumvirate, a trio of nearly identical synths whose flesh, where it existed, was smooth and unblemished, their alloy components edged with gold and filigree—silver, maybe, or platinum given their obsession with status. At select junctures on their bodies were small badges, bedecked with gemstones and ornate enamel inlays. At one time, they’d been human—clones, actually, two apparently having served in the military, the third a deeply ironic specialist in corporate ethics.

But that had been a long time ago, before the surgeries. And the Braiding.

One of them spoke up in a bored, elitist tone. “You will grant us access to legal counsel, as is our right, you overblown—”

A bullet shattered his head, spraying the wall—and cushions—with vivid gore.

I blinked and turned to her. “Retta—”

“I thought he was reaching for a weapon, yes?”

I turned to Gerhardt. His face was stone.

“Tragic,” Gerhardt tutted. “I am, as you’re aware, a passionate upholder of the law, Tudor. But the laws, as they stand, never contemplated the enormity of the crimes perpetrated today. Even the most liberal application of Crimes Against Order doesn’t suffice. For that reason”—he took off his Master’s sash, folded it neatly, and tucked it into his belt—“we are here not as Peacemakers, but as the GKU. It offends me to my core, offends everything I believe, but this is no longer about law. This is about restoring order. And that means doing the things that need to be done, no matter what the cost.”

The two surviving members of the Triumvirate began to chatter, uttering a string of threats, curses, invective and pleas for mercy, tripping over one another in their haste to both demand and beg for their own safety. In the midst of it all, Netty-P abruptly strode forward and stopped in front of one of them. They both went silent.

“It is clear that the two of you are effectively separate manifestations of the same personality. That is something with which I’m familiar,” she said.

They looked at her, cringing halfway between rage and terror. “So?” one of them said.

“So, it means that since both of you know everything the other does, and you have no unique experiences of value since leaving Adoration, we only need one of you alive.”

“You—no. No, wait—!”

“Thus, I have three things left to say to you. One, during the course of infiltrating your facility in what turned out to be a fruitless attempt to stop the catastrophe you set in motion, I killed a man. Two, the virus you have unleashed threatens untold lives, and that particularly includes those of AIs such as myself, our ship’s AI, Netty, my progenitor, and my colleague Perry—and that is unforgivable. And three, your actions led to the death of Zeno, our crewmate and friend. Perry, please choose left or right. That is the one I am going to kill.”

“Alright,” Perry said—and that was all.

Time passed. The two synths begged piteously. I opened my mouth and looked at the others, and saw not even a flicker of mercy. Searching myself, I realized I had none, either. So I just closed my mouth again.

“Right,” Perry finally said.

“Her name was Zenophir, and she was a mother who lost her daughter, and now her mothers and fathers have lost her,” Netty-P said, then raised the auto gun she’d scavenged on the surface and put three rounds into the head of the synth on the right.

She did not miss.

Then she turned and loped away without a backward glance. The remaining synth looked down at its dead companions, then spun a vicious glare on Gerhardt.

“And you claim to have the moral high ground,” he hissed, finding a reserve of will that surprised me, but only for a moment.

Gerhardt shrugged. “I know I can see a long way, out to the limits of the monstrous things you’ve done, and hints and suggestions of the pain and suffering beyond that. It reaches the plateau of morality I choose to abide on, although I admit that it’s not my natural habitat, so to speak.”

“It also happens to represent justice, while also satisfying the mob’s thirst for revenge. That makes it a rare trifecta,” Valint added with more than a little glee.

Schegith slid her bulk toward the remaining synth. He tried to back away but collided with the slug carbine of a stone-faced GKU trooper.

When Schegith spoke, her voice was smooth and silky in a way that made my guts go to water. I will not, until the day I die, forget the way it made me shiver.

“You are ultimately responsible for the terrible things done to this one’s race. Near extinction, prevented only by the efforts of a brave and true man and his crew, one of whom died today and whose death is upon you. This one has been waiting for this moment for a very long time,” she said, her long tongue slithering across her fangs.

“This one wants the things within you. The things you call your secrets. The Braiding. The stolen personalities. The things you know about the virus. All of it. And you might think you can hold onto these things, bargain with them for your life, but you will not.” Unbelievably, Schegith licked the synth’s face with that writhing, sinuous tongue. The rest of us stared in horrified fascination.

“You will not, though. You will give these things freely, to this one.”

“I—you can’t do this! Please—this is a monster, you can’t do this—!”

“The only monster present is you,” Funboy said, stepping forward. “Oh—and me,” he added, then pulled the synth down and whispered something to him.

The synth wailed and collapsed into a heap of sniveling terror.

Funboy looked up and around at us, blinking. “I believe the subject is now in a receptive state, thanks to this rendition of bad cop, worst cop.” He turned to Schegith. “Shall we begin the interrogation?”

Schegith nodded. “Yes. Time is short, and there is much this one needs to know.”

She flicked her tongue and loomed over the weeping synth.

“Much.”

EPILOGUE

“Gauss was many things, but he wasn’t suicidal. He would have burned the galaxy, but not himself. Somewhere out there, Gauss had a fallback, a safe place hardened against the virus,” I said, staring out of the portal at the unchanging stars.

Behind me, on the Wall of Remembrance, we had just finished dedicating a plaque to Zeno. True to Gerhardt’s word, it had been set onto a plinth all on its own, alongside the greater monument of Remembrance. Not a single Peacemaker had even raised an eyebrow at that, instead crowding around me after the ceremony to offer their condolences and all reinforce the same point—thanks to Zeno, Gauss hadn’t escaped. Because if he had, the magnitude of the problem we’d now be facing would be many, many times greater.

“No, he wasn’t suicidal. He just hadn’t counted on the bravery of a middle-aged P’nosk,” Torina replied, watching as the assembly, which included Gerhardt, Alic, Lunzy, and all the other Peacemakers I’d come to know and trust, broke up. Some of them looked our way but just quietly gave us our space.

Perry bobbed his head. “You’re right, Van. Somewhere out there is Gauss’s fail-safe, and in it, the means of stopping the Calamity. We’ve just gotta find it.”

The Calamity. That’s what it was being called, the digital plague inexorably spreading across known space. Already, humanitarian disasters were unfolding across several worlds, as whole planetary populations lost the ability to communicate, to travel, to power their lives and homes—in some cases, to eat. Quarantine measures had helped slow the spread, and might even stop it, but enormous damage had already been done. Moreover, those same measures represented a fundamental change to the way known space worked. All tech, even the lowliest data slate, was now suspect and had to be assumed infected until proven it wasn’t.

Only the Schegith were immune. Their tech was very different from that used across known space, and might actually share its origins with that of the alien virus itself. It was one line of frantic attack on the problem, but even the Schegith themselves were unsure of the connection. Still, they were an island of stability in a galaxy steadily falling into chaos, one that might prove crucial in the coming days.

And, ironically, so was Earth. Our terrestrial computers and networks simply weren’t powerful enough to allow the virus to function. My homeworld didn’t realize it yet, but it was on a course to become a bastion of nascent advanced technology if this virus couldn’t be stopped.

“I wish Gauss had lived, you know,” I said. “So that we could make him face what he’s done, and keep facing it. Hell, make him face it forever.” I glanced at Torina. “Is that cruel?”

“No. He’s hurt millions, Van, and stands to hurt billions more. That he just ceased to exist, no pain, no suffering—"

I sighed. “If I ever seem to enjoy this too much, pull me back, will you?”

She nodded. “Promise, if you make the same promise to me.”

My comm chimed. It was Funboy.

“I just thought I’d stop by the infirmary. Icky’s awake, Van.”

I looked at Torina. “I don’t want to do this—tell her.”

“You won’t. We will,” she said, taking my hand.

Perry nodded. “I’ve let Netty-P know as well. We’ll all be there, Van.”

“Thanks, guys.”

“And then, you know what? Despite the world ending, I think we need some time off,” Perry went on.

Torina nodded. “There are a lot of good people trying very hard to save it. I think we can take a few days before we join them. I think we’ve earned them.”

I looked at him as we started to walk, only looking away to glance once more at Zeno’s memorial. “To where?”

“Where else? To the place that is, ironically, suddenly one of the safest in the galaxy, good ole’ Earth.”

I looked at Torina. “It is October in Iowa. How do you feel about hayrides and apples?”

“Allergic to the first, and deeply suspicious of the latter,” Funboy said, still on the comm.

I smiled. “I wasn’t talking to you, Eeyore. I was talking to my sweetie.”

“Oh, well, in that case, Van, if I’m flying light-years to have a basic girl fall celebration, I expect someone to buy me a pumpkin spice latte,” Perry said. “Peppermint if it’s after December first. Them’s the rules.”

“Bird?”

“Yo.”

“You are many things, but you are not my sweetie. And you don’t drink, like, anything.”

“It’s the thought that counts.”

Buoyed by the presence of my crew, my friends—my family—I carried on to tell Icky about Zeno, and then—

And then, to do whatever needed to be done.

* * *

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Van will return in SONG OF DARKNESS, available on Amazon.

GLOSSARY

Anvil Dark: The beating heart of the Peacemaker organization, Anvil Dark is a large orbital platform located in the Gamma Crucis system, some ninety lightyears from Earth. Anvil Dark, some nine hundred seventy years old, remains in a Lagrange point around Mesaribe, remaining in permanent darkness. Anvil Dark has legal, military, medical, and supply resources for Peacemakers, their assistants, and guests.

Cloaks: Local organized criminal element, the Cloaks hold sway in only one place: Spindrift. A loose guild of thugs, extortionists, and muscle, the Cloaks fill a need for some legal control on Spindrift, though they do so only because Peacemakers and other authorities see them as a necessary evil. When confronted away from Spindrift, Cloaks are given no rights, quarter, or considerations for their position. (See: Spindrift)

Dragonet: A Base Four Combat ship, the Dragonet is a modified platform intended for the prosecution of Peacemaker policy. This includes but is not limited to ship-to-ship combat, surveillance, and planetary operations as well. The Dragonet is fast, lightly armored, and carries both point defense and ranged weapons, and features a frame that can be upgraded to the status of a small corvette (Class Nine).

Moonsword: Although the weapon is in the shape of a medium sword, the material is anything but simple metal. The Moonsword is a generational armament, capable of upgrades that augment its ability to interrupt communications, scan for data, and act as a blunt-force weapon that can split all but the toughest of ship’s hulls. See: Starsmith

Peacemaker: Also known as a Galactic Knight, Peacemakers are an elite force of law enforcement who have existed for more than three centuries. Both hereditary and open to recruitment, the guild is a meritocracy, but subject to political machinations and corruption, albeit not on the scale of other galactic military forces. Peacemakers have a legal code, proscribed methods, a reward and bounty scale, and a well-earned reputation as fierce, competent fighters. Any race may be a Peacemaker, but the candidates must pass rigorous testing and training.

Perry: An artificial intelligence, bound to Van (after service to his grandfather), Perry is a fully-sapient combat operative in the shape of a large, black avian. With the ability to hack computer systems and engage in physical combat, Perry is also a living repository of galactic knowledge in topics from law to battle strategies. He is also a wiseass.

Salt Thieves: Originally actual thieves who stole salt, this is a three-hundred-year-old guild of assassins known for their ruthless behavior, piracy, and tendency to kill. Members are identified by a complex, distinct system of braids in their hair. These braids are often cut and taken as prizes, especially by Peacemakers.

Spindrift: At nine hundred thirty years old, Spindrift is one of the most venerable space stations in the galactic arm. It is also the least reputable, having served as a place of criminal enterprise for nearly all of its existence due to a troublesome location. Orbiting Sirius, Spindrift was nearly depopulated by stellar radiation in the third year as a spaceborne habitat. When order collapsed, criminals moved in, cycling in and out every twelve point four years as coronal ejections rom Sirius made the station uninhabitable. Spindrift is known for medical treatments and technology that are quasi-legal at best, as well as weapons, stolen goods, and a strange array of archaeological items, all illegally looted. Spindrift has a population of thirty thousand beings at any time.

Starsmith: A place, a guild, and a single being, the Starsmith is primarily a weapons expert of unsurpassed skill. The current Starsmith is a Conoku (named Linulla), a crablike race known for their dexterity, skill in metallurgy and combat enhancements, and sense of humor.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

J. N. Chaney is a USA Today Bestselling author and has a Master's of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. He fancies himself quite the Super Mario Bros. fan. When he isn’t writing or gaming, you can find him online at www.jnchaney.com.

He migrates often, but was last seen in Las Vegas, NV. Any sightings should be reported, as they are rare.

* * *

Terry Maggert is left-handed, likes dragons, coffee, waffles, running, and giraffes; order unimportant. He’s also half of author Daniel Pierce, and half of the humor team at Cledus du Drizzle.

With thirty-one titles, he has something to thrill, entertain, or make you cringe in horror. Guaranteed.

Note: He doesn’t sleep. But you sort of guessed that already.