Fool's War

Chapter Five — Landfall

Al Shei swept her gaze across the roster. Clustered around the far end of the conference table, the other three section heads shuffled their films. Resit tucked a wisp of hair back under her kajib. All of them sat up a little too straight and held their shoulders a little too stiffly. Every one of them had dark shadows under their eyes, except for Dobbs sitting quietly in her corner. Despite that, Al Shei was sure the Fool was as short of sleep as all the others.

Another six hours and we’re on the ground, she reminded herself. Another six hours and we can start setting things to rights again.

“All right, we’re going to stay in dock at The Farther Kingdom for a week so we can all catch our breaths. We’ll be using up what leeway we’ve got on the packets for the Vicarage and then some, but we can’t function the way we’ve been going. First priority is to get the Dane packet delivered to the New Medina Hospital, second is to get everybody cooled down. Then, we’re going to flush our virus out of the systems.”

Schyler nodded. “It’s worth the wait. All three shifts are wound fairly tight.” He cast a sideways glance at the Fool. “Not as bad as it could have been, though.”

Dobbs accepted the compliment with a small bow.

“Thank you, Watch.” Al Shei drew her pen across that item on her roster and it vanished. “Houston, we need you to tap into the port authorities, find out about the docking and shuttle fees. Resit, work up the contracts we need to take leave for three local days and get a download of the local regs. Try to bring it in under four thousand, okay?”

“Any other miracles while I’m at it?” Resit murmured to her stack of films.

“A dove out of your sleeve would be entertaining,” quipped Dobbs.

“And messy,” Resit smiled at her. “Chandra would just want to serve it for lunch.”

“Speaking of which,” said Chandra mildly. “Since we’re going to be staying, I could use my allowance transferred. Baldassare and I should be doing some grocery shopping.”

“All right,” Al Shei made a note on her film. “Anybody else?”

Resit waved her pen towards Al Shei. “My Farther Kingdom files are two years out of date, I could use an upgrade.”

“Cost?”

“Lots.”

Al Shei eyed her sourly.

Resit shrugged. “Look, we’re going to be running loose with two year old legal back up. It could cost much more than an upgrade if somebody mis-steps. Ordinarily it wouldn’t be that important, but The Farther Kingdom law is complicated, even by colony standards.”

“Get a receipt on film.” Al Shei leaned over and scribbled a new line in the film ledger spread open in front of her.

“Anybody else?”

There was silence. “All right.” She flipped the ledger shut and wrote SECURE across the top to seal it. “Watch, work up a leave schedule and notify the crew. Make sure Chandra gets her shopping time. That’s everything for the moment.”

Her crew filed out dutifully and Al Shei rubbed her eyes. When she opened them again, she saw Dobbs sitting in the same corner of the room she had occupied since the meeting started.

“Bad run,” the Fool remarked quietly.

Al Shei sighed. “Yes, especially since we’re going to have to be taking late penalties on all our cargo to the Vicarage and Out There because we’ve got to take the extra time to certify that our virus didn’t touch it.” She wondered briefly when she had decided the thing was “our virus.” “If things keep up like this we may just break even by the time we get back to Port Oberon.” She chuckled ruefully. “Some days I think Murphy must be one of the recording angels.”

“Sorry?” Dobbs picked herself easily up off the floor. “I know Murphy’s law, of course… ”

“Munkir and Nakir are the recording angels who write down all deeds to be read on the Day of Judgement. I think Murphy’s out there with them recording every incidence of over-confidence to be read right now.” She scowled at the ledger and then looked up at Dobbs. “I’d better get myself on that shore leave roster, hadn’t I?”

Dobbs nodded soberly. “I think it might be a good idea, Boss. Otherwise Chandra will shackle you in the sun room and I’ll have to sneak in with a string file to get you out and then she’ll be after us both with a carving knife and that’ll be even messier than Resit’s dove.”

“Mmmm,” Al Shei arched her eyebrows thoughtfully. “Bad for morale, that sort of thing.”

“Usually, yes,” agreed Dobbs.

Al Shei chuckled and sighed again. “Ah, Dobbs. Have you ever met anybody you couldn’t make laugh?”

“Once. But it turned out he had had his sense of humor surgically removed. I tried to have it regrown, but it turns out it requires a special vat, and would have taken my year’s salary, so I resigned my commission and became a monk in the Andes preserve for ten years while the blow to my ego healed.” Dobbs gave her exiting bow. “See you ashore, Boss.”

“See you,” said Al Shei absently.

When the hatch cycled shut, Al Shei rubbed her temples and stared at her pile of films.

It had been two days of quiet. Lipinski’s road blocks appeared to have done the trick. The virus was still inside the Pasadena, but it was inoperative, apparently. Everything had run exactly as it was supposed to and they had docked at The Gate, The Farther Kingdom’s space station, without incident.

For those same two days, Al Shei had found herself totally unable to relax. She knew there was nothing else to be done until they got into port where there was help and contacts that went beyond the expertise that even Pasadena’s crew had to offer. All she could do was wait. It had not been easy, on her or on the engineering team. She smoothed her hijab down. If there was any extra to go round after this run was over, Javerri, Ianiai, and Shim’on were getting bonuses.

If there’s anything at all to go round, she amended gloomily.

She shoved the thought aside. She hadn’t had a zero run in the six years she’d been crewing the Pasadena and she wasn’t going to start with this one. The Kerensk AI could have been pumped into the lines and Lipinski’d find a way to ferret it out.

Come on, Al Shei, time for prayer.

She took herself down the stairs and knocked on Resit’s cabin as she passed. She opened the cabin hatch just as Resit, carrying her prayer rug, opened the bathroom door.

Knowing they were docked and that, finally, there was something else she could do, infused her prayer with a feeling of relief.

When they were finished and had reclaimed their veils, Al Shei asked her cousin, “So, aside from spend my money, what are you going to do with your leave?”

“I think I’m going to New Ashbury and join a spacers commune.” Resit pinned her kijab underneath her chin.

“Right,” laughed Al Shei. “And I’m going to New Rome and be baptized.”

“Actually,” said Resit, suddenly serious. “I’ve been wondering what you are going to be doing.”

“After Lipinski and I get Amory Dane’s medical data delivered to the hospital, I think I’ll stay on and do some shopping in New Medina,” she lied carefully. “Find something fun yet light to send home to the kids and Asil.”

“Um,” Resit grunted, and picked up her rug. “Just tell me this, oh-my-cousin, should I keep my Incili box with me in case this shopping gets out of hand?”

Al Shei forced herself not to turn away. “That might be a good idea.”

Resit measured her carefully with a lawyer’s eye. “You’re going to hire Usyal to try to identify what Tully stole, aren’t you?”

“I never said that.” Al Shei wrapped her hijab across her face.

“Katmer.” Resit laid a hand on Al Shei’s forearm. “Eventually, Ruqaiyya is going to have to face the fact that she married an anti-social nit-wit. You aren’t going to be able to keep that from her much longer.”

“I don’t intend to.” Al Shei pulled away. “But I do intend to find out what I’ve got to nail them both with first.”

Resit raised her hand. “As your lawyer, I do not want to hear the rest of this.” She pulled open the bathroom door. “But I’m really glad you decided to spring for the updates,” she added over her shoulder.

“We won’t need them,” said Al Shei. But as the door closed she added, “God willing and the creeks don’t rise.”

Al Shei shook herself and walked over to the desk

“Intercom to comm center,” she called as she sat down.

“Lipinski here.”

“I need a fast time line to Earth, Bala house, ID specifically for Asil Tamruc.”

Lipinski muttered something she didn’t catch, so it was probably directed at the wall, and she probably didn’t want to know what it was anyway. “Right. I’ll route it up there as soon as it’s open.”

Al Shei stared at the blank view screen and tried to force at least some of her worry into perspective. The worst had not happened. The ship was not incapacitated in any way. The data from Amory Dane to New Medina hospital was intact. The hospital had already said they’d accept delivery and deliver full payment if the data cleared their virus screens. She already knew Tully had done something illegal. Now it was just a question of how illegal it was. There were lots of degrees of illegality, especially for crackers.

That, Al Shei realized, was exactly what was worrying her.

The view screen flashed into life and Asil smiled across light years at her. The wall behind him had a pair of extra memory boards on it. It was the house’s main communication’s room. Old-fashioned and formal, her family felt that heavy business or recreational systems use should have its own area separate from the places where people interacted with each other.

Al Shei tried to tell herself that finding Asil there was not necessarily a bad sign. “Salam, Beloved.” She undid her hijab so he could see her smile. “Do you have news for me?”

“Salam, and yes, I do.” The quick smile faded from his face. “Not much though, and what there is — it’s not good.”

Al Shei strangled a sigh. “I’m braced, Asil. What is it?”

“The records on this end show a two substantial deposits made into the corporation accounts by Marcus Tully during the previous eight months. This is normal. I have the downloads of the Pasadena’s logs, and they detail the contracts and the deliveries that resulted in the income. I have records from Port Oberon, Port Ursula, and Taylor’s Crash that say the Pasadena was exactly where the log says it was.”

He paused, and Al Shei felt her hands curl in on themselves. “This is the part where you tell me what you don’t have.”

“Fuel purchase records.” Asil swept one hand out across the boards. “None of the tankers in any of those systems have records of fueling or watering the Pasadena at any point during those eight months.” He glowered at the boards for a moment before he looked up again and saw her gawping. “I had to be thorough,” he said. “He is a first-rate cracker and we’ve both suspected he’s a forger for some time now.”

Al Shei rubbed her face with both hands. “He must have faked that log after the download. Schyler would never have stood for him faking it on board.”

“I know.”

She raised her eyes again. “Anything else?”

“Queries in the works. I’m afraid making heavy use of Uncle Ahmet’s name to access security tapes — ”

Al Shei blanched. “Asil, you didn’t tell him.”

“No, I didn’t, Beloved,” he said quietly. “I told him we were in receipt of a suspicious contract proposal.” He paused again. “This has to be the end of the partnership, though, Katmer. We both want the Mirror of Fate, but not this badly.”

“How long are you going to let him keep stealing fodder and labor?” She murmured to her hands. “I know, Asil. Zubedye has been telling me the same thing, and you’re both right.”

He reached up and touched his hand to the screen. “It doesn’t have to be the end of our plans, Katmer. We’re very close. A loan or two backed by your family name, and we can do it. I don’t like debt service either, but I’ve got some payment scenarios working on my private terminal even as we speak.” His voice hardened. “I will not have Marcus Tully tainting what we’ve worked for.”

Al Shei pressed her palm against his. “Neither will I. But as long as Ruqaiyya refuses to divorce him, anything he goes through reflects on her, and the news grubbers will be in ecstasies over it. ‘Member of prominent banking family found guilty of — ’” She waved her hand aimlessly. “Whatever it is. I still want to find out what he’s done and use it to convince him to walk away quietly.”

Asil gave her a long look. “From Pasadena or from Ruqaiyya?”

“If this gets put on the wire, it will kill her, Asil, and if it becomes a police matter, it will get onto the wire.”

His sigh was so soft that the intercom barely picked it up. “You’re right about that, on both counts. All right, Beloved, I’ll find out what I can.”

“Thank you, Asil. I’ll call in from The Vicarage.”

“May it go easily. I love you.”

“I love you.” They exchanged soft smiles that spoke of love as much as their words did, and Al Shei closed the connection down.

She sat where she was for a long moment before she managed to rewrap her hijab and force herself onto her feet.

You still have work to do. Al Shei pulled her pack out of its drawer. No matter what else happens, you have work to do.

Fastening the straps around her shoulders, she left her cabin to meet Lipinski at the airlock.

The Houston was waiting for her with his tool kit in one hand and a duffle slung over his shoulder. There was something sour in his expression as he clasped the shore-leave band around his wrist.

“Not enough coffee?” inquired Al Shei, putting on her own band. The bands would allow the Farther Kingdom’s satellite system to track them down if someone needed to contact them.

“Not enough something.” He laid his hand against the palm reader. Both of the air lock doors rolled back and Lipinski strode out into the station.

“And you don’t want to talk about it, I can tell,” murmured Al Shei into her hijab as she followed him.

Although it was a populous colony, The Farther Kingdom didn’t see anything approaching the amount of traffic of the Solar system, so The Gate didn’t require the complex organization of the Uranus ports. The Gate, had only a single ring of habitat modules attached to its core. Unlike Oberon, the docking was controlled entirely by the station’s AI. There, Yerusha had proved one advantage of having a freer pilot. For the first time, no one complained about the auto-docking procedures. Yerusha pulled the maneuvers off as smoothly as Al Shei had ever felt.

Also unlike Port Oberon, The Gate was simply a warehouse and workshop. Shippers either stayed berthed in their vessels or went down to the planet surface. There were no hotel or entertainment facilities. There wasn’t even a market. Required goods were bought directly or remotely from the surface and shuttled up to the station where they were held for pick-up. Al Shei felt a sympathetic twinge for Yerusha. Freers could not, or would not, set foot groundside. Most of them drew the line at even entering a planet’s atmosphere. True human freedom, they said, came when humans lived in the environments they created entirely for themselves. Al Shei made a mental note to tell the Sundars that Yerusha would need to be nagged to get off the ship for at least a little while. Freer or not, the human mind did not function well staring at the same walls all the time. A stir-crazy pilot was not what she needed.

The gravity in the port was at most only three-quarters normal. Impatience warred with prudence as Al Shei paced along behind Lipinski in a careful, low-gravity stride. What she really wanted to do was run to the shuttle dock. She wanted to shove her way to the head of the line and leave for the planet immediately. She wanted to deliver Dr. Dane’s packet to the New Medina Central Hospital and to have the download go without incident so that at least one portion of her problems would be over with.

All of which was, of course, impossible. She could only make her way down the curving corridor that had been wrapped in bristly, brown velcro everywhere there wasn’t a green memory board or a door. Short, narrow hallways branched off here and there, leading to holding areas or workspaces that were little more than blisters in the station’s hull. Men and women in sturdy tan coveralls bearing no sign or sigil of allegiance or religion filtered through gaggles of shippers with packs on their shoulders or bundles in their hands. The total lack of marking was the badge of The Gate crew. They went about their tasks with the kind of intensity that came either from concentration or boredom. Every now and again she and Lipinski had to step aside for an automated cart rolling down the corridor, crunching the carpeting under its soft wheels.

Maybe Yerusha should stay aboard the Pasadena, thought Al Shei as she and Lipinski skirted another tool cart. There’s almost more to see there.

Al Shei understood the need for the total neutrality of their surroundings. The Farther Kingdom needed a functioning port in order to be a functioning world, and that port had to belong to the whole colony. Like any station, though, it would have a crew confined to cramped quarters for a long time. There could not be any risk of feuds that were old before the Fast Burn breaking out up here.

The Farther Kingdom worked, but not easily. Even Resit did not pretend to understand the treaties that governed it. Besides The Gate, there was one other permanent station in orbit around the colony and that one held their diplomatic corps. It housed over eight hundred representatives whose entire lives were spent in the negotiations that kept the peace.

The Farther Kingdom had been founded while the Slow Burn was still going on. Not surprisingly, it had a large Islamic population. Several of Al Shei’s ancestors had emigrated there to save their lives as well as their faith. But so had people from a hundred other faiths. While all the settlers knew they would be living cheek by jowl with people who had been their grandparent’s enemies, the reality of it hit hard sometimes. There had been several full-scale wars, before the diplomatic corps was formed and the formal treaties put into place.

It was a world of pacifists, traditionalists, recluses and fanatics. It was one of the most brittle colonies, but it was also one of the most ambitious and it had somehow managed to survive its own problems for two hundred years.

Terse signs written in five languages guided them to the shuttle docks. They joined the queue of other shippers waiting for passage. Resit spotted them from further up in the line. She waved and then rolled her eyes and opened her hands to Heaven, seeking patience.

Al Shei queued up behind Lipinski and concentrated on reminding herself they had to be patient, that she was the one who decided they all needed a moment’s rest before tackling the problem of flushing the ship’s systems, and that shifting her weight from foot to foot was not doing anything to speed up the line.

Lipinski’s brooding silence was not helping anything. She could almost believe he really was reading the boards of security information that covered the far wall. By the time they reached the head of the line, Al Shei was beginning to get genuinely concerned. Lipinski’s style was to talk to everyone and everything within earshot, not to brood in silence.

Well, you are not exactly encouraging him, Al Shei reminded herself. Her tired mind tried to come up with a neutral conversational opening, but by the time she decided on “Have you ever been to New Medina, Lipinski?” they had reached the arched security gate.

The line was funnelled through the narrow, off-white space. Al Shei could identify only half-a-dozen of the scanners contained in the ceramic frame. They were looking for weapons, controlled ingestibles or literatures, any encrypted recordings, or any sealed cameras. Dobbs had joked that the members of The Farther Kingdom diplo-corps were funding one final scanner to make their security program complete, except it was proving fiendishly hard to make one that could read minds.

A low chime sounded and the station’s AI spoke up in a clear, contralto voice from the top of the arch. “Passenger Rurik Lipinski will please step to Terminal 12 to supply further information.”

“All right, all right.” Lipinski tightened his grip on his tool kit. “You want to know what I’ve got in the box. I know the drill, and I’ve registered all of it.”

“All information must be directed to the security terminal,” replied the station. Al Shei suppressed a smile. Lipinski turned towards her and with an exaggerated grimace, bit his tongue.

Al Shei shook her head as he marched over towards the clusters of security booths. She wondered if the AI had a special sub-routine to deal with malcontents.

Probably. The Farther Kingdom has not managed this long by being sloppy.

The AI might do the talking, but alert crew members stood at regular intervals along the corridor. They weren’t carrying any weapons Al Shei could see, but that meant little.

No one else in the immediate vicinity seemed to be carrying anything identifiably objectionable, so the alarms and the station’s AI kept silent. Al Shei moved out from under the arch, trying hard not to step on the heels of the people in front of her.

The shuttle waiting at the end of the airlock was as basic as the station. It was a single stage rocket designed for nothing more than short flights. Al Shei strapped herself into a seat that in the local gravity made her feel like she was lying on her back with her knees trying to curl up into her chest.

“Five minutes to launch,” said a voice that was a twin to the one in the security arch. “Please consult your individual seats to make sure your straps are arranged for maximum safety and comfort.”

There was a buzzing of soft, mechanical voices around her. Al Shei had no intention of consulting her seat about anything. There was nothing it could do to make itself something other than cramped and undignified.

At last, Lipinski climbed through the forward hatch and shuffled to his seat. His duffle and tool kit were still in his possession, so he must really have registered everything properly. Al Shei tried to tell herself she had not expected anything less, but too much had gone wrong since they left the Solar system for her to make that really stick in her mind.

Then came the predictable half-dozen announcements: two minutes to launch, check your straps, security monitors are fully operational in case there are problems, if you have any questions, consult your seat immediately, thirty seconds to launch, ten, nine, eight…

A soft grating sounded under the floor and the ship fell away from the station. Al Shei’s body told her she fell with it. The couch was no longer uncomfortable, it was only gently swaddling. Al Shei’s joints began to relax, even though her stomach lurched at the sudden absence of gravity.

Al Shei hated shuttle flights. They were a boring interval in between events. Usually, however, it took fifteen or twenty minutes before the irritation build up. This time, though, they hadn’t been in free fall for ten seconds before she fidgeted with her chafing straps, drummed her fingers against her chair arms, and let her gaze dart around her tiny space, looking moodily for something to distract her.

There was a memory board and a view screen in front of her. She could call up some entertainment, or work over the Pasadena’s schedule one more time and see if she could get an optimistic projection to hang her hopes on.

Or she could just hang here and try for the thousandth time to understand why Ruqaiyya had married Marcus Tully.

She could remember Tully the way she first saw him. His eyes had all but glowed with energy. He talked animatedly about human potential and the unlimited possibilities that all lay in the sky. “God has created more wonders than we’ll ever know about,” he used to say. “But there’s no harm in trying!” He used to smile at Ruqaiyya when he talked like that, and Al Shei could feel her sister’s admiration for Tully’s boldness like the sun against her skin. She admired him herself. His dreams ran so close to hers. A ship of his own, freedom to pursue his own ideas, but not as a vagrant or a lone hero. That was the man Ruqaiyya had married before Al Shei had enough experience to warn her sister that Tully was too naive to be trusted with such giddy dreams.

Reality sneaked in soon enough. Tully began to see how corporate interests were valued above individual skill, how the daily business of living could make money vanish like smoke and how no one would give him a ship when all he had were dreams in his head and burns on his hands.

That was when he started to change. She had watched the glow dim in Tully’s eyes, and in her sister’s. He had stopped talking about human potential and started talking about human greed. He began to lower his sights from the secrets of the universe and focus on the secrets of the corporations that he thought were hemming him in. He began to take pride in making their systems leak. He began to enjoy it, and that joy gave him enough comfort that he forgot what he was, and allowed him to tell himself that he was still pursuing his dream of life in space, even though his wife was marooned on Earth because she had no skills he could use and he could not afford to take along a non-working passenger. Tully’s budgets ran even tighter than Al Shei’s did.

Al Shei sometimes wondered why Ruqaiyya didn’t get training as a nurse, or a steward, or even a lawyer so she could pay her own way. The Pasadena was not palatial, but it was liveable. She thought she knew the answer, but she did not like it. Ruqaiyya did not want to see what her husband did while he was away from her. She did not really want to know how far he had fallen from the dreams she had married. That was why she stayed on the ground, so she could pretend to herself and the family that nothing had changed.

And that is why I never said anything, isn’t it?

Al Shei ran her hands over the chair’s arm rests. I didn’t want to have to be the one to strip the last of her pride away.

She was so far gone in her reverie, Al Shei barely noticed when the shuttle hit the atmosphere, until the thrusters roared to life and brought gravity back down with a vengeance.

Al Shei did not request the view screen to show her the outside. She had no trouble with flying under any conditions, but something inside her rebelled at landings. She never got comfortable watching the ground rise up to meet her.

The roar grew louder and the thrust shoved Al Shei back into the padded seat until her spine pressed against the couch frame. Her lungs labored against a ribcage that wanted to collapse. Then, the pressure was gone and she could breathe and sit up, and, very soon, get impatient about the exit procedures. The ship’s voice reeled off a set of seat numbers and all the passengers in the named seats had to be out of the shuttle and on their way before the next set could be called.

When the ship finally told her she could go, Al Shei snatched her pack out of the holding bin and made a bee line for the exit ramp. Down at the end of the sloping tunnel, Lipinski was explaining the contents of his tool kit yet again, this time to a tall, walnut-skinned customs official in tan coveralls with a piece of film clutched in his hand.

Al Shei shook her head and made her way over to the banks of luggage carriers. She took out her pen and wrote her hotel address and Lipinski’s on the cart’s memory board and added enough credit for the cart to get their bags to their rented quarters. The receipt had just finished printing off when Lipinski came up behind her.

“I know, I know, I know,” he said, dropping his duffle into the cart and sliding the lid shut. “It’s necessary to keep the colony functioning. They have to be careful, but do they have to run you through the same questions three times?”

Al Shei didn’t bother to answer. She wanted to be at the hospital already. She wanted everything to have gone right and to be over with.

They followed the signs to the tram station which was little more than an insulated metal tunnel riveted to the side of the port building. The tram was automated and roofed, but open on the sides. Under the bored eye of the operator in his white tunic and trousers, Al Shei wrote their destination across the memory board and was relieved to see it slot them first on the list.

They had barely sat themselves down on one of the thinly padded benches when the tram lurched forward and pulled out into the bright sunlight.

New Medina was situated in the middle of a desert plain. Distant mountains provided a backdrop for the minarets and domes. Cultivated fields patrolled by automated irrigators passed on both sides. The farmland was broken occasionally by boxy outbuildings or processing mills. The shuttles flights to and from the port were bright needles of silver in the blue sky. On the road, the rest of the traffic glided or rattled by, depending on its state of repair. The wind was hot and dusty, but Al Shei could still smell the distant cool scent of the Persian River.

Al Shei felt her shoulders hunch up. All the openness was a little intimidating. As a child of the Management Union Earth, Al Shei was used to a barrier between herself and the wide outer world.

Maybe that, she reflected, is why most starbirds are from Earth. We’re used to being shut in all the time.

Gradually, the greenscape became narrower and the buildings became bigger. None of them, though, were allowed to actually touch the tall sandstone wall that marked the edge of the city proper.

The New Medina hospital was a bright, white conglomeration of buildings with grounds that backed onto the city wall. Arched corridors like tunnels of chalk connected its modules. Red crescent moons topped the spires on its three central domes. The tram took them past carefully cultivated groves of orange trees and date palms. Patients in clean blue robes strolled on the lawns or sat in the sun, each one followed by a crab-legged medical drone. These patients had conditions too severe to be taken care of by the neighborhood doctors that the hospital serviced with information and advice. These were the surgeries, the long-term illnesses and those who needed new tissue, limbs or organs grown in the bio-gardens.

The tram took them to the main entrance of the administrative building. No one waited outside the wood and wrought-iron door to greet them. Al Shei wrote her name and their contact’s name on the memory board that hung above the door handles. The door swung open and she and Lipinski strode into the hospital.

They entered a broad, three-tiered gallery. The light was adjusted to imitate spring sunlight and the air circulated constantly, spreading a vague scent of lemon and orange. The dark-tiled floors and cream walls were as clean as the inside of the Pasadena’s data hold. Windows were set in the walls at about six meter intervals. Some of them were darkened, but through the clear ones Al Shei could see into chambers containing one person manning more boards and monitors than would be found on the bridge of a major passenger ship.

A woman in a plain, white kijab approached them down the corridor, kicking up the hem of her black dress at every step.

“‘Dama Al Shei, ‘Ster Lipinski, welcome to the Aquarium.” She waved at the rows of windows. “I’m Second Administrator Shirar.” She shook Al Shei’s hand and beamed at Lipinski. “We’ve been waiting months for these updates. It’s going to triple our garden’s efficiency.”

“Then we should get them right down here,” said Al Shei briskly. “Thank you for agreeing to letting us supervise the download from here. This data’s a little tricky.” She looked to Lipinski for confirmation.

“Tightly packed at any rate,” he said.

“Of course it is,” Shirar smiled, “It’s biology. Let me show you our download facilities.” She beckoned for them to follow her.

The Second Administrator walked them down the gallery past window after window of activity. The staff on the other side chattered, sketched, searched and transferred. In a few of the offices, two or three employees worked together on some problem.

“It looks as if you could consult for the entire colony from here,” remarked Al Shei after they passed the twentieth office.

Shirar snorted. “Sometimes I feel like we do. We’ve got twenty percent of the medical practitioners in the Farther Kingdom on our subscriber’s list, and I swear to you some of them won’t diagnose a hangnail without tying up our lines for half an hour.” She grinned again. “This is not counting the other hospitals we support.”

Shirar stopped in front of a thickly hinged door and stuck her pen into the reader socket. After a moment, the door swung back and she led them inside.

The room was three times as large as any of the offices they had passed. The walls were a solid mass of input boards, memory boards and monitor screens.

Lipinski relaxed his shoulders and straightened up some from his perpetual stoop. Amid this bewildering mass of communications hardware, he was at home.

His expert eye immediately picked up the main uplink boards and he set his toolkit down next to them. He whistled to one of the chairs in the far corner which obediently trundled over so he could sit down.

With a few penstrokes he called up the configuration and capacity of the hospital’s links as well as the mapping for the storage room’s lines and depositories.

“And the new data is to be stored, where?” Lipinski cocked an eyebrow at the Second Administrator.

“Area 6421C.” Shirar circled the depository’s location on the screen. “We’ve had it waiting empty for a week for you.”

Lipinski ran his pen along the pathways to the storage area. The section of the diagram that he traced enlarged itself and the current load and configuration information printed across the top of the board.

Lipinski studied it for a moment, pursed his lips and nodded. Al Shei gave silent thanks for the fact that he did not seem inclined to talk to the boards in front of their client.

“It all looks right to spec,” he said. “Have you opened your virus filters?”

“Area 6813B, open access.” Shirar gave Al Shei a sideways look. “Thank you for transmitting your storage records to us. To say we were concerned when you reported a virus would be an understatement.”

“I cannot blame you at all,” Al Shei replied, grateful that New Medina’s dedication to courtesy kept Shirar’s language restrained. She did not want to know what the woman had really thought when the news came through. “The virus was an invasion of the ship’s system and it did not touch our cargo, for which, believe me, we were all thankful.” Which would also be an understatement.

Lipinski twisted around to face Shirar. “Shall I get started?”

“Please do.” Shirar waved him a go-ahead signal.

Lipinski wrote the Pasadena’s call codes and his own name across the uplink board and waited while the system transmitted the message up the lines and across the atmosphere to the station. The screen above the board cleared to show the scene in the Pasadena’s comm center. Odel sat stiffly at the main boards, obviously very much aware that this needed to work smoothly.

“Pasadena here,” came Odel’s voice through the intercom. “Waiting on your signal, Houston.” The secondary screens lit up with the current status of the Pasadena’s lines.

“Setting the boards now, Pasadena,” replied Lipinski. His blue eyes flickered back and forth as he took in the line readings. He rapidly adjusted the settings on the board in front of him to match what the ship was using. “Start sending in five… four… three… ”

“Bismillahir,” said Shirar.

“Bismillahir,” agreed Al Shei, a little more fervently than she intended.

“Now,” said Lipinski.

On the screen, Odel turned his pen in its socket. The signal load statistics increased on the board and the free capacity stats shrank. Odel ran his own checks, monitoring flow, switching storage taps, watching the code print out straight from Pasadena’s hold. Rows of code appeared on the memory board in front of Lipinski. The Houston read the information intently, writing on the board in front of him without looking at his hand; adjusting, controlling, guiding. He nodded a couple of times. His brow was furrowed and his lips moved constantly, but he didn’t stop. He didn’t call to Odel to halt the download. Al Shei realized her heart had risen to her throat and she swallowed hard, trying to force herself to be calm.

Either it’s going to work or it isn’t. You’ve got one of the best in the business doing the job. You’re just going to have to wait it out a little while longer.

Five interminable minutes later, Odel lifted his head. “That’s all of it, Houston. Transmission complete.”

Lipinski’s eyes swept across the final row of code. “Okay, Pasadena we’ve got it. Thanks.” He turned in his chair and Al Shei saw a look that meant “no problems,” flash her way.

She had to stop herself from letting out a sigh of relief.

“And there you are Second Administrator Shirar,” she said brightly. “Your bio-garden’s data, and I’m only sorry our humble ship could not get it here faster.”

Shirar gave her a small bow. “You have done exactly as we hoped. The remaining credit will be transferred into your account as soon as I submit a receipt of verification to our accounting center. It should be done within the next two hours. Will you wait?”

“If you’ll excuse us, ‘Dama,” said Al Shei as Lipinski got to his feet. “It has been a long flight and I confess my Houston and I were both looking forward to stretching our legs and seeing your city. The Pasadena will be in dock for another week, so if you need to contact us, the city system will be able to find us in no time.”

Shirar smiled and stood aside making a sweeping gesture towards the door. “I understand perfectly. I’ll contact you as soon as the accounts have been cleared.”

“Thank you for taking the time, Second Administrator,” said Al Shei, sticking to courtesies, even though Lipinski was evidently getting impatient.

“Thank you for supplying our needs, ‘Dama.” Shirar walked them out into the corridor. “I am certain you will be hearing from us again.”

They left the Second Administrator in the doorway. Out in the desert sunlight, Lipinski stretched his arms overhead and then let them swing freely down.

“God almighty, I feel better,” he announced to the world at large. “Some of those sequences took so long to download, I was about ready to shi… do something really unmentionable.”

“Me too.” Al Shei gave him a cautious glance. “I am assuming nothing went wrong.”

“Not a thing,” Lipinski said. “Everything Amory Dane gave us, we gave them, checked, double-checked, and triple-checked, vouched for and sealed.”

“Wonderful,” said Al Shei, meaning it. Then, she looked away and tugged at her tunic sleeve. “Now I’ve got a favor to ask you, Houston.”

The grin faded from his face. “That’s a first, Engine.”

Her mouth twitched. “I know, but it’s been an exceedingly strange run.” She looked up at him again and squared her shoulders. “I’m going to try to find out where Tully got his… merchandise from. I might need you to do some back up research. In that event, I need you to stay in New Medina for your leave. Under contract you don’t have to have any part of this… ”

Lipinski waved his hands. “Only she would bring up a contract now,” he told the nearest orange tree.

“Only you would protest to the vegetation,” Al Shei felt a sudden warmth for her Houston. “Will you do it?”

“Of course I will. I want to know what’s been happening as much as you do. Besides,” he added to the pavement, “my plans haven’t exactly come out right for this trip down.”

Oh dear, Houston, who said no?

Al Shei did not ask. She just said, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He waved towards an approaching tram and didn’t look at her until it pulled up along side them. This one was a newer model than they one they’d arrived in, with tinted windows, but without an operator.

“Please state your destination clearly,” said the tram’s tinny voice.

Lipinski looked at her with raised eyebrows.

“No thanks.” she wrapped her hijab more firmly around herself. “I’m going to walk.”

Lipinski shrugged. “Call me when you need me, Al Shei.” He took his seat. “Ali Farah’s Guest House,” he said, clearly. The tram pulled away and left Al Shei standing on her own, a soft breeze fluttering her hems.

She lifted her face to the sunlight for a moment, letting the heat beat against her eyelids and enjoying the sensation of peace it gave her. They’d had one victory at any rate. Now was the time to see if she could go secure another.

“Intercom to Bridge,” Odel’s voice rang across the bridge. “The packet’s loaded and closed off. We’re done.”

Dobbs leapt to her feet. “Whoopee!” She pulled a gold cloth streamer out of her sleeve and tossed it into the air. The low gravity grabbed it gently and lowered it in lazy waves.

“Finally!” exclaimed Yerusha from her station.

Schyler watched Dobbs’ streamer settle in a gentle heap.

“Pretty, but not exactly regulation,” he remarked, moving his pen to call up the ship’s log on his board. Dobbs, however, did not miss the relaxation that pure relief brought to his features.

“Your pardon, Watch Commander.” She whisked the streamer off the deck and tied it around her own neck in a big bow. “I forgot, you disapprove of frivolity on the bridge.” She laced her fingers under her chin and began a bad series of pirouettes to take her to the hatchway. Behind her, Cheney whooped with laughter.

When she was alone on the stairway, she pulled the streamer off her neck and stuffed it in her pocket. With a determined stride she seldom let the crew see, she hustled down to the berthing deck.

She should be touring the decks to make sure that the rest of the crew on board had leave plans and good spirits. But there was an urgency tugging at her. By now, Cohen would have news about the Pasadena’s condition waiting for her, and she needed it.

Since the ship was down to a skeleton crew, Dobbs had no trouble getting to her cabin without being seen. She locked the hatch behind her and opened up her bedside drawer. The lock on her box came open at her touch.

As she lifted out her hypo, her eye took automatic count of the remaining cartridges. She had enough juice for another two months under normal circumstances. She couldn’t help wondering if she shouldn’t put in a request for more now, before these particular circumstances proved themselves anymore abnormal.

Dobbs held up the hypo to measure the dosage. For no apparent reason, the memory of Lipinski in the corridor early that morning drifted back to the front of her mind.

“Dobbs?” Lipinski had come around the curve of the galley deck corridor with an oddly controlled gait.

A warning note had sounded somewhere inside her. She silenced it.

“Houston.” She waved in greeting. “I thought you were off with our fearless leader to make sure we all make a little money this trip.”

He smirked. “In about ten minutes.” His smile turned tentative. “I was wondering if maybe you’d like to take in some sight seeing with me? I hear New St. Petersburg is amazing… Or have you got plans? You must have plans. Sorry. I didn’t mean… ”

Dobbs laughed out loud. “Lipinski, I’ve heard you have better conversations with wafer stacks.”

His smile grew more confident. “They’re less likely to give me answers I don’t want… well on other runs they’re less likely. Listen, if I’m making a mistake, just slap me gently and I’m gone, but, well, I’d really rather have something think about for the twenty-four hours other than how we’re going to get this virus out of the walls.”

Dobbs realized with a small shock she was considering it.

Dobbs, don’t do this. There’s too much going on this run, you don’t need this complication. Especially not with somebody from Kerensk. Come on, Dobbs, use your brains and your training and let the man down gently.

Another portion of her felt very strongly that she’d also like something else to think about for awhile.

Not with somebody from Kerensk, she told herself again.

“I’m sorry, Houston,” she said softly. “I can’t leave my post until the crisis is over, and it won’t be over until we’ve got this virus truly and finally sterilized.” She gave him a deliberately watery smile. “Thanks for the offer though, I appreciate it.”

“Yeah, well, it was an idea,” said Lipinski to the wall. “I understand though. Fools pull special duty.” He walked away and Dobbs let him.

Special duty. She sighed to the memory. You don’t know the half of it, Houston.

She’d had lovers before, some of them Fools, some of them shippers or starbirds. She’d been socialized heterosexual and Lipinski’s pale, exotic good looks teased at her. She liked his wry humor, and even his habit of shouting at the walls. His quirkiness appealed to her as much as his long body did.

You’re daydreaming, she told herself sharply. You want to do Lipinski a favor? Find out what’s wreaking havoc with his comm system.

She laid down, jacked the transceiver into the wall and into herself. She injected herself for ten hours. The freedom the network brought washed over her like a wave and she dove gratefully into it.

She decided not to take a chance on working either of the Pasadena’s transmitters directly. Both Odel and Schyler would be hovering too close to it. Instead, she slid out into The Gate’s main system.

The Gate’s broad comm channels were heavily trafficked. Dobbs slipped carefully along to avoid disturbing any of the on-going exchanges, most of which, from the brief touches she had of them, dealt either with money or requests for information from the diplomatic corps. She vaulted to the front of the transmission queue and pulled a repeater map out of the processor stack. The route to Guild Hall from the Farther Kingdom was a little tricky. She planned her jumps, checked her first path and set the transmitter jump her through.

Two hours and fifty-six point nine seconds later, she reached the Drawbridge and identified herself. The program opened and she surged forward. To her surprise, she touched not the teeming guild channels, but a completely empty pathway. A pre-recorded signal spoke up.

“This way, Master Dobbs, Priority One.”

Surprise pulled Dobbs up short for a split second, but she recovered and hurried down the clear path. She felt it closing off behind her. This was a private meeting she was being called to then. And Priority One. Fear roiled in her insides. There was a single instance that allowed for the Priority One code to be issued.

It couldn’t have happened. It couldn’t.

The pathway branched off in front of her, creating a meeting place at the heart of Guild Hall. Dobbs circled the space quickly to get the feel of it. It was one of the first places she had ever been in the Guild network. Here was where Verence had introduced her to the Guild Masters when she first arrived. Dobbs hadn’t been back since she got her Master’s rating.

A touch reached her from the center of the meeting space. “Welcome Home, Master Dobbs.”

“Thank you, Guild Master Havelock,” she replied, trying to be reassured by the solid, unusually slow-moving presence that had been her overseer, as Verence had been her sponsor. “This isn’t what I was expecting… ”

“Me either, Dobbs.” Cohen was there too, shifting restlessly. She touched his outer self, hoping for reassurance, but he just rippled uneasily.

A spasm of fear ran through her. “No,” she whispered, although no one had said anything.

“You picked up a live one, Dobbs,” said Cohen.

“From where?” she demanded, so stunned she forgot who else was with her. “There’s been no hint of activity in the Solar system. The Freers are having their usual lack of success and Tully was smuggling binary board. Binary! “ She backed up reflexively until she reached the limit of the holding space. “How… ”

“How could you have missed it, is what you want to say, isn’t it?” cut in the Guild Master.

Dobbs squirmed before she remembered both her position and her dignity. Guild Master Havelock was known for his extreme lack of tact as much as for his extreme perception.

“Yes, Sir,” she said. “That is what I meant.”

He brushed against her, a gesture of consolation. “It came out of nowhere, Dobbs. Nobody

caught it, and we should have. It’s big, it’s very fast, and it’s remarkably well developed. It may even have been born on board the Pasadena. We don’t know.” He paused. “There is some speculation that it might have been created deliberately.”

The implications thronged around Dobbs. Live AIs were accidents of programming and circumstance. If someone could learn how to make them on command, it could be an almost unthinkable miracle. It could also be the greatest disaster since the first bombs fell in the Fast Burn.

Havelock drew back. “What we do know is that we have a new, sentient AI to deal with. Master Dobbs, you are our closest member. I’ve raised the Guild Masters. We’re going to open a line to you and send you in. Cohen will go with you to block records. You will both leave immediately.”

His words sent a shudder all the way through Dobbs. Open lines were used only in absolute emergencies. The constant exchange of packets and the perpetually open transmitter paths took signal delay down to a minimum, and it allowed a field member to keep in contact with Guild Hall. But open lines were highly visible. Cohen would have to position himself in The Gate’s transmitter processors. From there, he would constantly monitor the internal logs and external activities to make sure no one outside the network saw anything suspicious. While he was hiding her, she’d be combing through the Pasadena.

Dobbs rippled. “I’ve allowed myself ten hours. I only have eight left… ”

“That should be enough for initial contact. You just have to calm it down for now. Tell it there’s no danger. You know what to do.”

In theory, she felt herself bunching together. In theory only.

She forced herself to remain open. She was the closest member. The Live One had been discovered in the area she oversaw. That made it her responsibility.

It had to be a single presence that met the Live One. If it felt as though it was being surrounded or cut off from its open pathways, it would respond to the Fools as it would to a virus or a diagnostic program. Newborns had to be coaxed out. Trying to compel them cost lives and ruined networks.

That coaxing was now Dobbs’ responsibility. She had to find the Live One and convince it not only to listen to her, but to let whatever hold it had over the Pasadena go.

A memory sprang into place and Dobbs felt herself lurch sideways.

“The Live One may be immobilized,” she said. “It may even be dead. Rurik Lipinski… with my help,” she added, as the reality of her work sank in, “managed to neutralize the ‘virus.’ We haven’t had any problems for two days.” She stretched toward Havelock. He slid through her outer layers and absorbed the memory she held out. She stirred restlessly, trying not to reach out for Cohen.

“You may be correct,” Havelock said, with an uncharacteristic amount of surprise pushing at his voice. “You still need to perform a reconnaissance. If the Live One is there and in any way active, we have to deal with it. If this Houston has found a reliable way of neutralizing it… we need to know that too.”

“Yes, Sir.” Dobbs tried to steel herself but she felt as if she were unravelling from the inside out.

“I’ll be monitoring the line, Dobbs,” said Cohen, giving her a quick, reassuring touch. “It’s the Live One’s first time too, remember. Be gentle with it.”

“Ha-ha.” Dobbs held herself still. Cohen anchored a piece of the meeting space in her outer layers.

Then, he reached deep inside her and left her the memory of his wish for luck.

Dobbs let her awareness open around the line Cohen had given her. Down its length she was able to feel not just Guild Master Havelock, but two dozen other presences that she knew only from a distance. These were the Guild Masters and they were all waiting for her to carry that mission out.

Dobbs tried to organized her thoughts and only partially succeeded.

“Ready,” she said anyway.

The pathway out of the meeting space opened up again and Dobbs drove herself down it, playing the line out behind her like a kite string. It was a strange, uncomfortable sensation to be aware of every inch of hardware she passed through. It was as if her inner self was streaming out to be held by twenty-four strangers. At the same time, it was reassuring. Their touch and presence was sure, steady. She was going into the unknown, but she was not going alone. The oldest and most experienced members of the Guild were with her.

The final jump brought her back into The Gate. Dobbs waited in the transmitter stack until she felt Cohen jump down behind her. They touched briefly before she shot back into the Pasadena.

She passed up the route back to her own body, hunting for an open channel into the Pasadena’s cargo stores. She felt her way carefully. Almost without warning, a line opened in front of her and Dobbs jumped down it. She slid past the credit transfer and into the data hold…

… into a sensation of absolute stillness. Dobbs turned around. There was no movement, except in one tiny, localized area. Dobbs reached for the packet, touching it lightly so as not to disturb the signal.

It was a request for records from Resit to Pasadena.

All else was stillness. Cold Storage. The hold wasn’t even being monitored.

“I don’t understand… ” said Dobbs, knowing that her words and her confusion travelled down the line to the Guild Masters.

“Search the ship.” The words came from Havelock. “Go slowly, Dobbs. It may be hiding.”

“That’s not the only reason to go slow.” She sent back what reinforcing details she had of Lipinski’s road blocks.

There was thoughtful silence for a moment. “It can’t have gone far then. And if he has managed to… fragment it, you’ll find the traces.”

Dobbs eased herself forward. She stretched every portion of herself as far as the channels would let her and drifted. She gently brushed the moving information as it passed. All of it was ordinary stuff. Life support. Diagnostics. A navigation simulation Yerusha had left running.

She moved forward another few inches, straight into a cloud of white noise. Her senses screamed in confusion and tried to double back into her. Dobbs hauled herself into a tight ball and tried to calm down.

“Easy, Master Dobbs,” said Havelock. “It’s one of the Houston’s roadblocks. Look at it again. We’ve got to get past this.”

The reminder of her title stung her pride, as Havelock no doubt meant it to. Dobbs extended herself again and touched the surface of the roadblock. It crackled and bubbled underneath her, a wall of chaos filling the pathway.

Well, Houston, you’re even better than I thought you were.

“We have it now, Dobbs.” The line reached deeper into her, a needle into her consciousness. “You need to be this way.” The idea planted itself in her physical memory.

Dobbs twisted herself, rolling into a discrete package. The wall was not solid. It had holes in it. They were small and they moved, but she could find them. She held herself against the wall until one hole opened underneath her. She jumped. The compact bundle she had made of herself shot through the hole before it had a chance to move.

The line trailed out behind her, sending a vague itch into her where it threaded through the wall.

Dobbs moved forward. She brushed against something strange lying inert in her path. She stopped and circled it closely, pulling the line across it so that the Guild Master’s could examine the fragment directly.

“It’s in binary,” she murmured. “This must be Tully’s virus.”

“Not entirely. Look here.” The line turned her gently to another shard. Dobbs pressed against it, examining it for herself. Fear seeped up into her private mind. The shard was a splinter of AI code forcibly grafted onto the binary code and then dropped.

Too late. Lipinski did it…

She stopped herself. No. Think. If this was it, if this — mutation — had been the Live One, there should be a lot more of it, and it should be spread out on both sides of the roadblock.

She sent her conclusion down the line and the warm sensation that swam back to her told her the Guild Masters all concurred.

“We’re assigning the study of the fragment to Guild Master Li Hsin,” said Havelock. “This may be a portion of the AI that the Freer lost.”

Dobbs started forward again. She crept along the Pasadena’s thousand information pathways and leapt through Lipinski’s hundred roadblocks, until there was nowhere left to go.

There was no one there. She was alone.

At last, she came back to the holding space inside her own cabin’s desk. There was one thing left to do, but she didn’t want to. She reached for the transfer records down to The Farther Kingdom and replayed the markers from the data that had been sent. No reputable ship actually kept a full copy of their packets, but they kept records of configuration and size. Dobbs let the information flow past her.

Her mind almost refused to believe what it found.

“It’s out,” murmured Havelock.

“It’s not just out.” Horror tugged at her, threatening to cave her in on herself. “It was planted here. It didn’t come with Amory Dane’s packet, Guild Master, it was his packet.”

The Guild Masters were silent for a moment. “It couldn’t be,” said Guild Master Wesbridge to Havelock. “We have the parameters for the packet from Master Dobbs’ previous report. They do not match this set. This thing that was transferred down is not Amory Dane’s packet.”

“So where is the packet? Dobbs wanted to shout. “What happened to it?” She stretched out and found an inventory of the hold’s contents. She pushed the information down the line. “Everything else is accounted for, except that packet and the live one. It can’t believe the live one carted a load of bio-garden data down with it for no reason.” She stopped.

“The New Medina Hospital thought it was receiving the data it ordered. Could the Live One have been using it as a shield or a blind?” Dobbs felt herself reaching towards the comm lines. The Live One was down in the Farther Kingdom free — and alone.

“This will be studied,” Havelock cut through the debate beginning to boil behind her. “What we do know is that the Live One is free in The Farther Kingdom network. Master Dobbs, we need you to continue the search there.”

Even as he was speaking to her, Dobbs felt the return signal from her transceiver knife through her.

“I don’t have time,” Dobbs told them, with greater calm than she felt. “I’m breaking out as it is.” Her internal processes shifted on their own. She struggled to block the reflexes coming to life. She knew the Guild Masters felt them too. They sent back silence.

“Master Dobbs, I can’t order you to endanger your life,” said Havelock.

Her concentration wavered. She drifted up the path. She had to go back. Now. She didn’t want to hear anymore. She had to move, now.

“…but we do not have forty-eight hours to wait,” Havelock was saying. “The Farther Kingdom is a highly engineered eco-sphere. If the Live One panics before then, it could take the entire world down in less than a day.”

“I know.” Dobbs’ hold on the line slid open. “I know.”

Dobbs fell back into her body. Her blood tingled in her veins and she heard herself groan as she opened her eyes.

She didn’t begin her stretching exercisers. Instead, she just lay there, blinking heavily at the blurry ceiling and feeling the cool of the faux silk blanket under her palms. She swallowed against the dryness of her throat. Her stomach curdled from hunger. She shouldn’t take another dosage for forty-eight hours. No other Fool could make it to Farther Kingdom in less than four. The Live One was out there now, burrowing into the networks, making itself a nest, or nests, working on shaping the world it had discovered into something it could use. It wouldn’t be long before a diagnostic program found it or some cracker tripped over it. It would be frightened and it would defend itself.

Then the war would begin.

And it would end the way it had ended on Kerensk. Her eyes squeezed themselves shut. If it ends even that well.

She fumbled for the hypo without opening her eyes and pressed it against her neck.