Chapter Fourteen — War

One.

Dobbs dropped into a crowded holding stack. She touched the ID packet. She had made the Neptune Exchange. She stretched out. Nothing disturbed the data streams as far as she could reach except her. She tripped a set of switches and sent a diagnostic down the nearest path and waited for it to come back. It found nothing except what was supposed to be out there.

Two.

Dobbs made a ping-copy of herself and set the transmitter to shoot it back to Cohen. She kept the diagnostic circulating and waited for the answering signals.

The diagnostic slipped back to her and Dobbs caught it. Before her next thought formed, a stranger fell across her, cutting her off from her surroundings. She twisted, but it rolled her aside. She swelled up against the swaddling presence and, in the next thought, hauled herself into a tight ball. The stranger didn’t respond fast enough and Dobbs shot out of its loosened grip.

There was another stranger looming over the receiver’s command stack. Dobbs lunged at it and shoved it out of the way. She barely brushed the new command configuration before the stranger’s compatriot dragged her backward, stabbing deep into her outer layers, seeking a hold in her private mind. Dobbs lashed out, cutting a swash clear through the stranger’s periphery. Anger lent her strength. These two had re-set the receiver commands to work in a loop with the repeater series. Cohen, Brook and Lonn were trapped. Her friends were frozen signals bouncing back and forth between the two receivers.

Dobbs aimed another swipe at the first stranger. The second grabbed her and sent her reeling down the path toward the transmitter. Dobbs tried to surge back toward the receiver, but both strangers filled the path. She punched at them. They hardened themselves against her attacks. Slowly, they drove her toward the transmitter holding stack. It didn’t take much to guess that they were going stuff her into the loop with Cohen and the others. Dobbs hurled herself against them, but together they were to massive for her. They shoved her backward.

Dobbs felt the entrance to the holding stack open against her. She stretched herself out, trying to jam the entrance shut with her presence. The strangers in front of her just pressed down harder. Bit by bit, Dobbs felt herself begin to give way.

First Stranger shifted. A chink broke open between it and the pathway’s side. Dobbs dove for it. Second Stranger faltered. Dobbs pummeled First Stranger with all her strength and the chink widened into a crack. Dobbs hammered at it. First Stranger collapsed and Dobbs barreled past it. A friendly touch grazed her as she flew down the path. Terrence. Dobbs barely had time to understand Terrence was the runner for Renee’s cell when she felt Second Stranger snatch at her. Dobbs grabbed up Terrence and the pair of them fled toward the heart of the Exchange. They ducked down paths at random, tossing messages and packets behind them to block the way.

Dobbs snatched up a dense packet and tried to throw it behind her. The world contracted. Something dragged at her outer self until she felt like water swirling down a drain. She could feel her thoughts being sucked apart from each other one by one. She screamed frantically and lurched backwards. The thing dragged harder. Terrence engulfed her, cut clean through her outer self, and heaved them both away from the thing. Dobbs screamed again as her main self separated from the lost portion. There were memories in there, and information she needed, she was sure. It was gone, completely, utterly and horribly gone. If she’d been in her body she would have been shaking in terror.

“Dobbs, can you answer me? Dobbs!” Terrence rolled her over into a side path and circled around her.

“Yeah, yeah.” Dobbs forced herself to focus her attention on the torn part of herself. Holes gaped in her recent memory. Whole conversations with Al Shei and Lipinski were nothing but tattered ruins. Dobbs rolled herself into a tight ball and remembered why she was here. That much remained. Asil in the bed in the medical level of Curran’s can, that was there, Al Shei throwing her off Pasadena, that was there. But something was gone from Lipinski’s place, and more was gone from Yerusha. What had she said before she’d run? What had Lipinski asked before she turned him away? Dobbs shook herself. That was gone and it would never be back. She couldn’t mourn it now.

“What was that?” she demanded.

“I don’t know, but I think it was aimed at us. Did you feel how the mechanism worked at all?”

“I might have.” Dobbs shivered. “But that was probably the first thing that went.”

“Stay here,” Terrence edged back to the main path. “I’m going to see if its still out there.”

Before Dobbs could shout a warning, Terrence was gone. Dobbs pulled herself into her shell as far as she could, wishing desperately for someway not to count the passing seconds.

A message tapped her. BACK UP, DOBBS. Dobbs decided to believe it was from Terrence and pressed against the side of the pathway. The other Fool touched her gently.

“I think I see why they’re not following us anymore. Reach here.”

Dobbs let Terrence guide her awareness. She barely brushed the processors in front of her and the foul tugging and nibbling began. She snatched herself back.

“Curran’s talent have invented an AI anti-personnel weapon,” said Terrence. “It acts like a black hole. Sucks you in and tears you apart. It only reacts to us. The talent must have some kind of ID code that keeps it from going off around them.”

Dobbs found herself admiring Terrence’s calm. “So, how’d you get it to move?”

“It responds to us,” she said, “but not to stuff we create. I managed to get it on a leash. Give me a minute and I think I can use a couple probes to dissect its command structure.”

“Gladly.” Dobbs settled back. “I just wish you didn’t sound like you were enjoying this.”

Under her light touch, Dobbs felt Terrence strip a couple of nearby packets and turn them into probes. “It’s either have fun or curl up screaming.” She dropped the probes into the weapon’s maw. “Which I’ll be doing later anyway.”

“I thought I’d get it over with now, myself,” muttered Dobbs. “I hate to delay a good panic.”

The packet Dobbs leaned against twitched. “Ashes!” She bolted down the path, just in time to collide with First Stranger.

“I’ll get you, you twisted bastard!” she shouted as she took off down a fresh path. “I’ll get you for Terrence!” As she hoped, First Stranger veered to follow her. If she was lucky, it also thought their weapon had gotten Terrence.

Dobbs tried not to think about all the other black holes that could be lying around in the Exchange as she dodged down the paths with no other aim than to draw the talent away from Terrence. Her pursuer snatched at the ragged edges of her wound. Dobbs felt her determination begin to falter. If she couldn’t keep her speed up she was going to have to turn and fight, and she didn’t know if she had the strength.

All at once, First Stranger was gone. Dobbs felt the black hole breeze by without even twitching in her direction. She didn’t let herself stop to think what had just happened to First Stranger. She turned herself around and raced back to the receiver.

Terrence was already there. Dobbs pushed into the space beside her and together they reset the receiver’s commands.

A flood of packets spilled into the path and with them tumbled Cohen, Brooke and Lonn. Dobbs reached for them all. They were shaking badly and trying to haul themselves together.

“Had a split second each bounce to realize what was going on,” blurted out Cohen, “but not enough time to do anything about it.”

Dobbs told them what had been happening to her and Terrence.

“I found the key signatures inside that thing and re-set them,” Terrence chimed in. “Now instead of by-passing any AI carrying the keys, it’ll attack them. I sent it rolling around the exchange. It’ll self-destruct in ten seconds and we should be clear.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Brooke. “You’re a terror yourself, Terrence. I’ve said so before.”

“We haven’t got time for this,” Cohen reminded them all. “Terrence, you’d better spread the word about the black holes and how to un-do them.”

“I’m gone.” Terrence dropped like a stone into the transmitter holding stack.

“Lonn, you stay here and coordinate with the next set of arrivals,” said Dobbs. “This place has been seeded with the randomizer matrices. We know that. Your people have got to find them and work out how to spot and dismantle them. You’ve got to start a virus production as soon as possible. Cohen, Brooke, we’ve got to keep going.”

Terrence, good as her word, was gone. Dobbs re-set the transmitter to point toward the Asteroid Belt Repeaters. While she waited for the ping-copy, she wondered what was going on outside. What had the Exchange’s attendees seen on their read-outs? Were they mustering their diagnostics, or were they just scrambling to get into pressure suits before this insanity hit the life-support.

Which might not be a bad idea. “Lonn, get a message out to the station personnel. Make sure they start taking vital systems off-line and that they switch to generators and manual operation where possible.”

“But…”

“Do it!” ordered Dobbs as her ping-copy fell back against her. “This is not just about us!”

And it never will be again.

The war was twenty seconds old.

Jump.

Al Shei pulled on the black overalls with the Landlord’s bright green seal emblazoned on both shoulders. They felt uncomfortably tight across her breasts and around her crotch, but now was not the time to complain, or to think about her modesty. Especially with what needed to happen next.

Al Shei unwrapped her hijab and lifted it away. She crumpled it into a ball and stuffed it quickly into the drawer. There. It was done. She buckled her tool belt around her waist and picked up her spares kit. She avoided catching her own eye in the reflective surface of the view screen as she turned and strode out into the corridor.

The enemy would be looking for Al Shei, veiled in her modesty and shielded by the law of Islam. They would not recognize this bare-faced Arab. At least, they wouldn’t recognize her immediately.

God willing and the creeks don’t rise, she thought before she could stop herself. Now was not a good time to think of God. Not with all the sins she was committing. Resit was right. This was forbidden and she was a throwback, straight out of the seconds before the Fast Burn. She was a mad Arab, crazy with revenge and Allah was watching her every move closer to the brink of Hell. She knew she wouldn’t stop though. She wouldn’t even hesitate, because inside she didn’t feel Allah anymore. She felt Asil, his touch, his love, his possibilities. Gone. All of them gone.

As she approached the airlock, she realized she did not want Schyler to see her like this, but there was no help for it.

He’s going to stare, she thought sourly.

She reached the airlock. Schyler and Yerusha, also dressed in black overalls, waited there. Schyler did stare at her naked face for a moment, then he blushed and looked away.

Al Shei realized on any other day she might have found it in her to be amused. “Intercom to Houston. What’s our status?”

“Well, I’ve managed to get business module 56 listed as overdue for a maintenance check, and I’ve got three maintenance workers slated to go over there and raise their voices and level fines. Their names are Forrester, Klien and Brown. Any requests for information from any of your pens will be routed back here.” He paused. “Tully’s stuff is as good as advertised. Now I can stop wondering why he never got caught.”

“So now you can start wondering if we will get caught,” muttered Yerusha as she tucked her portable memory board under her arm. She had a coil of cable about the width of Al Shei’s little finger sticking out of her pocket.

“By the way,” said Lipinski, “whatever you said to the Freers seems to have stuck. I’m picking up dozens of urgent messages between Free Home Titania and the other Homes.”

Al Shei raised her eyebrows. Yerusha shrugged. “This is not just about you, is it?”

Al Shei sighed and looked away. This was no time to refuse help. This was no time to think about the outside world either. That would have to take care of itself. She had to concentrate.

Resit was nowhere in evidence. Al Shei wondered where she was, and if it was perhaps time for prayer.

“Let’s get going.” She cycled open the airlock and led her crew out into the docking bay.

Business module 56 was all the way around the ring from the Pasadena. Al Shei and the others huddled themselves into the back of a crowded elevator and tried to hold still through the shifts of gravity and calmly breathe the air that was warm and thick from too many people trying to use it. But by the time they were able to get off in Business Module 55, they were the only ones left in the car.

“Mostly storage, over here,” said Schyler as he followed Al Shei and Yerusha into the stairway. “Gases, fuel, spare parts, maintenance drones.”

“Drones like us,” said Yerusha with her strange, grim cheerfulness. Al Shei glanced back at her. She could almost swear the woman was starting to enjoy this.

Halfway up the flight, Al Shei signalled them all to stop. She crouched down in front of one of the maintenance panels that lined the walls, lifted it away from the wall and flipped it over. The under side was engraved with a diagram of the circuits, wires and pipes revealed by the square hole. She skimmed the labels and tried to ignore the camera staring at her back.

I belong here, she thought toward it. I belong here.

“All right, Klien, Forrester” she said to Yerusha and Schyler. “Here’s what you need to do.” They both bent over her, and so did Schyler, effectively shielding the diagram from the camera. “We might have a minor glitch in here, so I want you to trace this set of wires…” Yerusha held out her memory board and Al Shei pulled out her pen and wrote quickly.

The blue pipes are the hydraulics for the clamps. Trace them back through the panels and you should come to a command breaker. That’s where you make your splice.

“And if you can’t find anything, you call in.” She handed the board back to Yerusha. “Understand?”

“Right.” Yerusha knelt on the stair, laid the board in front of her and pulled another panel off the wall. Schyler stood right behind her.

“And I,” Al Shei opened up her kit and pulled out a band lamp. She strapped it across her forehead. “Am going to talk to our truants.”

She trotted up the rest of the flight of stairs and stopped in front of a bulkhead with a sealed airlock marked Business Module 56. The entrance light was red. She laid her palm on the reader and waited.

For a long time, nothing happened. Al Shei wondered if they were simply going to refuse to answer. Lipinski must have shouted at them half-a-dozen times by now, pretending to be the voice of the Landlords. They would have to respond. If they didn’t, they’d risk bringing down the greens rather than just the blacks. They must know that.

Unless, of course, they’d traced the source of the calls back to Lipinski instead of to the Landlords, despite Tully’s catburglars. In that case, they could be setting up that trap Schyler was worried about. They must know they’d been found out on at least some level. They must be reading the transmissions between the Free Homes. A cold thought touched Al Shei. What if they know, and they just don’t care?

The airlock cycled back slowly. Inside, stood a broad-faced young man. A shot gun hung from his shoulder by a black strap.

Al Shei couldn’t help but stare at it. A shot gun! Aboard a space station! It had a small barrel though. It probably fired low caliber shot, sufficient to pass through a human body without punching through deck plate, or the hull. Actually, it was a good compromise, she thought clinically. It was more lethal than tranquilizer darts or a taser, but it was less hazardous to the can than a flash-burn.

She gathered her wits and remembered her role.

“Brown, maintenance.” She stepped briskly across the threshold. She presented her pen. He stared at it like she’d just offered him a live wire. “You’re overdue,” she said. “You should have been notified by now.”

He took the pen and his gaze flickered from it to her. Skepticism filled his expression, but not absolute certainty. Over his shoulder, she saw the far side of the airlock had not cycled open. Behind her, she heard the station side hatch crank shut. Now they were trapped. If the clamps released now, the airlock would seal automatically, leaving the two of them rattling around inside until the can was reattached to the station, if they lived that long.

“Let me just check on this.” He side-stepped to the intercom beside the far hatch and jacked her pen into the wall socket. He did not take his gaze off her.

Al Shei measured the guard up. He was a lot bigger than she was, and he had the gun dangling by his right hand. Speed was her only hope.

She launched herself at him and caught him in the chest with her shoulder. He hit the hatch with a “whoof!” She grabbed his hand and slammed it against the palm reader. He wrenched himself around, but she dropped to the floor. He wasted a second looking wildly around for her. The airlock cycled open. Al Shei rolled across the threshold as soon as there was room and scrambled to her knees, dragging her spares kit with her behind the retreating hatch. She was in a corridor full of waldos, cameras and drones. She spotted a hatchway to her right and she dove for it. It cycled open. A store room.

“Stop!”

She stared up at the guard with his gun. She climbed to her feet with her spares kit clutched to her chest.

This was it. If Yerusha and Schyler hadn’t found the command breakers and overridden them, Al Shei was dead where she stood. She backed up until her spine pressed against the wall.

“Put the box down, Katmer Al Shei.” He smiled, quite obviously knowing he’d gotten the name right on the first try.

A low grinding noise reverberated through the walls. The world plunged into darkness and spun out of control.

As soon as Dobbs touched her surroundings, a packet slammed up against her. She grabbed it. One touch told her it was stuffed full of random strings of numbers. She reached inside it for the command code, and it disintegrated in her grip. One tiny piece flitted off into the network.

Oh, hell. Dobbs lunged for the fragment, and missed.

She barely had time to wonder what was going on before the next packet hit. She ducked the one after that, but not the next. Now the path was full of them, all rushing at her, battering at her sides, demanding her attention. It was like being in a swarm of maddened bees. It was like being shouted at by a hundred people and not being able to understand one of them. She could barely think. She couldn’t move under their clamour and pressure. She tried batting them away, but it was no good. One would splintered if she stabbed at it, but a dozen others swarmed up the path to take it’s place.

Then, she felt Cohen’s touch like a fresh breeze. What was he doing here? She hadn’t sent the all-clear. He’d come anyway. He would. She tried to reach him, to warn him, but it was too late. He’d already picked up one of the random packets and now a swarm of them bore down on him.

Very slowly, Dobbs felt herself begin to panic. The things swirled around her, smothering her senses, choking off all awareness of everything but their endless, meaningless noise. She struck out randomly. Through a brief clearing she heard Cohen call her name. A packet clogged the hole, cutting her off from him.

An idea flared inside her.

Dobbs forced herself to hold still. She hardened her outer layers and did her best to hold her wound closed. The packets slammed against her, piling one on top of the other, burying her in a solid layer of random numbers and alien code.

Burying her so deep that no other packet would be able to find her. She hoped. If she was wrong, she was already dead, trapped in here until she lost what was left of her mind. With great difficulty, she flexed herself a little. Just enough to drag one of the packets out of the puzzle-work shell they’d made over her. Another one oozed into its place. Her imagination supplied a low “slurp.”

Dobbs dragged the packet down until it was almost touching her private mind. It disintegrated, but the fragments had nowhere to go except inside her. She set to work on it with tiny, cramped movements. It responds to us, Terrence had said, but not to stuff we create. Well, she had plenty of raw material to create with. It was pressing against her like cotton wadding. She knew nothing beyond her little world. She grabbed another packet. Seconds creaked past. Cohen might be dead. She didn’t know. She didn’t know anything. She clenched herself tight around her handiwork. She dissected one more packet for its search code and joined it to the others. Anything might have happened by now. The war might be over by now. They might have won or lost. She might be permanently alone under an endless weight. She might be buried alive.

Dobbs pushed her new-made searcher into motion. The shell around her parted briefly, because this new thing was not Evelyn Dobbs. Dobbs, straining to keep herself from blind panic, waited two seconds. Then, she stabbed downward. The shell splintered and, almost instantly, sealed shut. But that fragment of time was enough to tell her her idea was working. She was moving.

The deafening packets were not spontaneously generated out of the nowhere. They had no self-replicating code inside them. They had to be coming from some command sequence somewhere. Her searcher was trying to find out where that was. It was dragging the mound that held her with it.

She could stand this. She knew she could. It wasn’t any different from when Cohen had carried her. Stab. Still moving. Well, not much different. But, she hadn’t known what was happening then, either. Stab. Still moving. She couldn’t touch, couldn’t hear, couldn’t know then either. She had not gone crazy then. She had not died then. She wouldn’t now. She wouldn’t now.

Stab. Stillness.

Dobbs gathered all her energy and bust free of her shell. The packets flew apart like shrapnel and she clamped herself onto the processors in front of her. The swarm descended, fastening onto her back. She shivered reflexively, but not enough to falter in the work in front of her. The processors flickered and shifted under her touch. No time for finesse. She reached deep into the middle of them and with one hard twist, she froze all the microscopic gates shut.

She turned her attention to the packets. They still clung to her, but now when she swatted them aside, they were not replaced. She kicked herself free of the last of them and streaked up the path back toward Cohen.

He was tearing apart the last whole packet as she reached him.

“Cohen!”

He swung his attention towards her. There was something wild and swollen in his motion that made her back off. “It’s all right, Cohen. I’ve turned it off. We’re out of it.”

Slowly, Cohen shrank back to his normal shape. “Thank you.”

He turned to the transmitter a little too deliberately and sent the all clear.

Stay with me, Cohen, thought Dobbs in the deepest part of her private mind. I can’t do this without you.

The black air around Al Shei was full of objects, all of them rushing straight up. She had her hand up in time to stop her head from colliding with the ceiling. The guard hollered wordlessly as he hit. Bracing herself with her spares kit, Al Al Shei switched on the band lamp on her forehead. The beam fell across Curran’s security guard. He no longer looked pleased with himself. She brought her tool kit down to chest level and shoved it away from her. It rocketed across the room, knocking lighter miscellany aside and catching the guard square in the chest. All the air left him as he slammed against the far wall. Al Shei kicked off the wall and snatched the shot gun out of the gloom as she flew past it. The guard had time to stare open-mouthed at her before she swung the gun like a bat against his skull. The impact smashed him back against the wall and left a trail of scarlet droplets hanging in the air behind him. Al Shei bounced backwards against the wall and felt the impact against her spine. She ignored it, tucked the gun under one arm and kicked off again, launching herself down the corridor.

Up and down were without definition. Her body told her she was falling, in all directions at once. The walls rotated around her, scattering missiles and meteorites through the air. They clanked, chinged and rattled off the walls, and each other, and Al Shei. Nothing was heavy enough to slow her down.

 Someone with chestnut skin and a green coverall fell into her lamp light. They snatched at her and missed. As she drifted past, Al Shei twisted around and aimed the gun between her own feet and fired. The recoil shot her past the stranger and into the wall, slamming into her stomach and knocking all the air out of her lungs. There was more scarlet in the air behind her and her stomach lurched senselessly. She had hit something with that trick.

She fell toward a major hatchway. The stranger, a man, she saw now, launched himself at her. His shoulder was leaking red bubbles. Al Shei yanked on the hatch with one hand and pressed the shot gun against her ribs and fired again. Again, the recoil knocked her backwards, through the hatchway this time.

She didn’t slow down to see if she’d hit him. The spin was slowing and the alarms were silencing one by one. The AIs were regaining control. They’d have the lights back on soon. She flew through a broad corridor, ricochetting off the curved walls. She coughed painfully and tasted blood. The gun’s recoil had broken something inside.

The lights came on, flooding the corridor and making Al Shei blink hard. Something grabbed her left arm ruthlessly and hauled her toward the wall. Al Shei gasped and twisted. A waldo gripped her forearm, and a second reached out toward her. She stuffed the gun’s stock into its pincers. They closed down and the stock splintered, sending slivers of plastic flying in every direction. Al Shei ripped the wire cutters off her tool belt. She wrapped their jaws around the waldo’s smallest pincer, and wrenched it back. The pincer casing bent and snapped, exposing a series of multi colored wires. In the corner of her eye, Al Shei saw a cart-sized drone racing toward her down a grooved track in what was now a wall. She was close enough to the corridor’s side to brace her feet against it. She hooked the cutters around the waldo’s newly exposed wires, arched her back and yanked. The mechanical hand spasmed, and her abrupt motion pushed Al Shei into open air again. She bounced off the wall/ceiling, sending a whole wave of pain through her. That was when she really saw the cameras. They were directing the waldos. These AIs had hands and eyes and they had spotted her.

She pushed herself toward the cart. The wall waldos hadn’t oriented on her yet and she dropped past them. She hit the grooved track and bounced. As she rose, she hooked her hand under the cart’s belly, holding herself against the wall/floor. A waldo swooped toward her and she swung her wire cutters up to block it. It wrenched them out of her hand and tossed them away. As it did, Al Shei braced her feet against the nearest wall and shoved backwards. The force of her movement jarred one pair of the cart’s casters out of the groove. Its right side rose at a drunken angle and its waldos flailed to reach the track again, catching some of the wall’s arms in their grip.

Another waldo stretched out from the wall to catch hold of her. Al Shei’s body rose to meet it. She grabbed its forearm with both hands and used it to lever herself up into the relatively clear air, snatching her wire cutters as she passed. The cart arms and the wall arms were still grappling with each other, trying to sort themselves out. Al Shei pried open a panel in the ceiling/wall over them. She caught up a clipper full of wires just as a waldo closed on her ankle. She clamped both hands around the wire cutter’s handles as the waldo dragged her backwards. The wires broke and a shower of sparks exploded out against Al Shei’s face. The lights went dead, leaving only the narrow beam of her lamp to cut the darkness. The waldo holding her relaxed and Al Shei was able to launch herself around the curve of the hallway.

On her right she drifted past a doorway, not a hatch. Her brain skimmed memories of the schematic she had pored over in her cabin. Maintenance Closet! thought Al Shei jubilantly and she scrabbled at the edge of the door. Fortunately, the power was out here too, so any electronic locks had been disabled.

Al Shei slid the door open, pulled herself inside and slammed the manual bolts shut behind her. She hung in the darkness for a moment, trying to catch her breath and collect her thoughts. Her abdomen burned painfully and the taste of salt and iron wouldn’t leave her mouth. Anonymous objects bumped against her. She turned her head to shine the lamp’s beam around. Multiple cabinets had been knocked open, and the detritus formed a whirlpool around her. Flotsam scraped past her hands and torso as the walls turned. The air had cooled perceptibly since the disaster began, but not dangerously. The Fools had obviously maintained their generator batteries well, at least.

First things first. The power. They’d have a drone down to repair the damage she’d done to the wires in no time, and it wouldn’t take them long to guess where she’d gone. Her light glanced on a whole host of waldos on the walls. She swam across to a maintenance panel, pulled it away from the wall and looked at the underside. She smiled. They’d gotten rid of all the exterior labels, but the AIs hadn’t thought to erase the panel diagrams. She scanned the symbols and her smile grew wider. There was a breaker cluster in here with her.

She counted three panels up and four over from the one she had opened. Underneath it, she found a gorgeous set of orange, green and blue cables all feeding into a group of four squat wafer stacks. Bobbing unsteadily in front of her target. Al Shei pulled her overall sleeves up over her hands and grabbed the stacks. She closed her eyes, braced her feet against the wall and pulled. The wafers came free, almost burning her hands even through the cloth. The pin-pricks of sparks landed against her cheeks and brows. Al Shei drifted gently through the sea of detritus and bounced off the far wall.

She let the cluster go and shook her hands free of her sleeves.

Take that! She thought wildly. She shone her light all around the closet. The waldos remained still. Most of the level should be out of power. Which was good for now, but the AIs most certainly knew where their own breakers were. Her light landed on the silver-grey doors of a locker below her feet and Al Shei felt a surge of hope. Maybe there was one other human necessity the AIs hadn’t been able to quite do away with.

Al Shei tucked her legs and dove towards the locker. She grabbed the handle to steady herself. She could hear a distinct rattle inside.

Didn’t they have anything secured? She thought as she opened the door. She hid behind it as the contents of the locker spilled out. As she had hoped, a pressure suit floated past her. It must be for emergencies. The AIs couldn’t install their ubiquitous waldos on the outside of their can without someone noticing. For the same reason, they couldn’t send any of their customized drones out there. There was too much activity outside. Too many chances to be seen. If something happened to the outer hull of this can that they had electronically hidden from the rest of Port Oberon, one of them would have to take the cold walk outside to fix it.

She nabbed the suit out of the stream by its collar and pulled it behind her toward the nearest wall. Her lamp showed her that it was a standard industrial issue get-up; mustard yellow emergency gear, a back pack for gas tanks, a cutting/welding torch holstered on the side. It had a chest plate for tools, and pockets for the wrenches and screwdrivers that were now swimming through the whirlpool. She checked the gauges on the gas tanks and batteries. The suit was charged and ready to go.

Al Shei abandoned her tool belt to the whirlpool and climbed into the suit. Her body had given up trying to reason with her about relative directions and she was able to ignore the fact that she was rolling perpendicular to the rest of the room as she locked herself inside and secured the helmet. As soon as she did, the suit batteries kicked in and lit up the chin keys and interior displays. She bumped a key with a jerk of her chin and the external lamps came on. A quick glance around showed her where the tool belt had drifted. She retrieved it and loosened the cinch out as far as it would go so she could strap it around the suit’s waist.

 Al Shei nudged the chin control to darken the faceplate down enough to conceal her face, but not enough to hinder her vision. She checked the readout of her air, her gasses and her batteries one more time, and then opened up the door.

And almost collided with a woman in tan overalls. She recoiled from the glare of Al Shei’s lamps. Al Shei opened up the suit’s intercom.

“She was here all right,” she said. “Pulled out the wafer stack in there and headed for the ether.”

“Ashes!” cursed the woman, holding up her hand to try to shield her eyes from Al Shei’s lights. “She’s got two whole levels out of commission. Any line on where she went?”

“Probably trying to find her husband. Where’s he at?”

“Med bay level ten…” The woman bit the sentence off. Al Shei clasped both fists together and swung hard at the woman’s temple. She connected, and as the motion drove her backwards, she heard something heavy hit the wall. She took her own impact on her shoulder and shone her light around. The woman’s body floated limp and still in the middle of the corridor.

The maintenance closet had done one other thing for her. Al Shei swam to the far wall and used the dead waldos to pull herself along it. It told her which were the inner and outer sides of the corridor. The next hatch she came to on this side should be the stairs.

Yerusha cycled back the hatch on the comm center. Schyler stood next her with his mouth slightly pursed. They had been back aboard after what she was calling their “little jaunt” for about three minutes. Resit had coolly told them there was an uproar from the Landlords because the station was now off balance and they were struggling to correct it, and to contact the can, but no one was looking for them specifically. Then, Lipinski had called up through the intercom and asked them both to come down to the data hold.

Lipinski hunched over the boards at Station One, writing out commands one painstaking word at a time. He didn’t look up as he waved them over.

“Do you recognize this?” He pointed at a program-and-connector diagram with a slew of numbers underneath it.

Yerusha studied the conglomeration for a moment. “It’s an AI diagram, but it’s a lot bigger than average.”

“Good, I got it then.” Lipinski finally did look up. The rings under his eyes stood out starkly against his pale skin. “That, or things like that, have been bopping back and forth in the network for the past twenty minutes.”

Yerusha, although she thought she’d been prepared for the idea, felt a shiver crawl down her spine. “You think the battle’s started?”

Lipinski nodded. “Now, if we’re right about anything, it’s that this, what’s his name, Curran, his AIs are out in the net trying to take out the monetary transactions. Eventually, they’ll all be coming back here. They won’t be able to get to can 56, because that’s in free fall. No stable reception point. But they can still get back to Port Oberon.”

Schyler’s gaze was so steady, Yerusha realized he had passed stoic calm and come out on the other side. “What are you getting at?”

“I think I can use Tully’s catburglars to get them.”

“How?” demanded Yerusha.

“I’ve been watching the signal flow between transmission points. You get a big pattern passing from a designated transmission-receiver device, to a second transmitter-receiver, and then it goes back from there to where it came from. Then, you immediately get another similar pattern going from transmitter to receiver, and then nothing.

“I think they send through copies of themselves to make sure the link’s stable between point of transmission and point of reception before they send themselves through. It makes sense. A signal can’t do anything until it gets some hardware to respond to it. You’d want to make damn sure there was hardware there to catch you, or you’re going to become just another bunch of photons heading for Kingdom Come.”

“And how were you able to figure all this out?” Schyler waved at the boards.

“You can’t track a signal in hardware without getting a program into the hardware, but you can track a signal between hardware points without trouble. You just need a working receiver, unless its encrypted. Those AIs are big, clever and fast, but they’re not encrypted, and Pasadena’s got a very good receiver.”

“So,” Yerusha’s head was spinning. “With all these years, nobody’s ever spotted them bouncing around before?”

“Nobody knew what they were looking for,” said Lipinski quietly. “I mean, if anybody spotted them while surveying the lines, which is illegal as all hell in most systems, they would just think somebody was transmitting a copy of AI code to somebody else. What’s weird about that? It happens all the time.” He paused. “Anyway, we don’t know that nobody else has spotted them. I mean, Al Shei found out what was going on, and look what happened to her husband. We don’t know they haven’t done the same thing to other people.”

Yerusha felt her stomach turn over. This was not how it was supposed to be. This was like Lipinski finding out that God’s angels were only interested in humanity’s destruction.

“So, what’s your idea?” Schyler shoved both hands in his pockets.

“We take Pasadena away from Port Oberon so we’re an isolated transmitter-receiver. I set Tully’s catburglars to break the security on the receiver telescopes. Then, we watch the outlying transmitters. There are six capable of reaching Port Oberon directly, and, after Free Home Titania, it takes a full four seconds for a signal to get here from the closest one. Add in the time for the copy-bounce and you’ve got twelve seconds of transit time.

“So, we get the Free Home to shut its receivers down. Then, when I pick up a concentration of AI signals doing the initial copy bounce, it’ll give me an alert and I can set the catburglars in motion and take out all the receivers on the station.”

“You’re going to order them to shut down?” asked Yerusha.

Lipinski shook his head. “No. That could be counteracted to easily. We might not get all the AIs with this trick. Some of them might be here already. We don’t want them to come undo what I’ve done. We need the receiver hardware thoroughly disabled. The communications signals are light, right? The receivers are all telescopes. All you have to do to disable a telescope is order it to point at the Sun and order it to look at the pretty bright light really, really hard. Even at this distance, good old Sol can burn out every optic in every ‘scope on the station.”

Yerusha swallowed hard. It could work. It really could. If the signals were in transit and the receivers suddenly shut off, they’d just keep on going out into the vastness of the universe.

“And you don’t think they’ll spot this little maneuver?” she was surprised at how small her voice sounded.

There was a dangerous light in Lipinski’s eyes. He was attacking the monster that had haunted him for years. Finally, he had the chance to strike back at the thing that had brought down his whole world. “I don’t think they’re taking us into account right now. I think they’re going to find out that’s a massive mistake.”

Schyler nodded slowly. “There’s one problem. Pasadena is still impounded. How do you plan to get us away from the station.”

That took Lipinski aback. “The catburglars?” he suggested. “The alarms are still down…”

“And risk the AIs spotting us as soon as we make one too many transmissions using the same encryption tricks?” Yerusha sighed heavily. “You two just don’t think right for this kind of thing. Have we got a roster of who’s on shift at flight control?”

Lipinski wrote a command across the board, calling up a list of names. Yerusha looked them over and spotted Louise Berryman. “Great, we’re set, as long as our accounts haven’t been touched yet.”

“What are we going to do?” Schyler almost sounded bemused.

Yerusha rubbed her thumb and first two fingers together. “Bribery. Berryman’s on the quiet dole. We can pay for a docking trolley to tow us out of here without getting it recorded in the log.”

Schyler stared at her. “Exactly what is it they teach you in the Senior Guard?”

Yerusha shook her head. “Oh, no. Not even for you.”

Schyler rubbed his nose and nodded to Lipinski. “All right. Do it.”

Dobbs circled the randomizer matrix, touching it gently here and there. It didn’t take much to tell that there were security codes in there that would destroy the thing under unauthorized probing, possibly triggering another of the Black Holes.

The packets around her stirred and Dobbs pulled back, instantly alert. Cohen touched her.

“We’re clear,” he said. “I’ve checked the whole repeater sequence, it’s just us, the black holes and the randomizers. Brooke’s setting up monitor sequences on the transmitter-receiver units. We’ve got news from Terrence. They’ve got the Neptune Exchange completely staked out, and she says she should have a disabling virus for the randomizers with her when she comes back.”

The news drizzled into Dobbs. She said nothing for a moment. Something was nagging at her. “Do we know about any of the other cells? Any pitched battles? Any casualties?”

“Jenner said his group rooted out three of Curran’s talent at the ST8901 series, and Barry came in to say they’ve cleared a transmitter between the Free Homes Titania and Io.”

Dobbs interrupted. “And we’ve secured all those, and left people behind to work on the randomizers and to be runners, right?”

“Yes. It’s all going according to plan.”

Dobbs shivered. “I don’t like this, Cohen. We’re not doing anything Curran couldn’t have predicted. Where are his talent? Why aren’t they really trying to stop us? We’re tiptoeing through his mine fields, that’s all. Where are his soldiers? Why isn’t he setting the randomizers off? He knows we’ve started our attack.”

Cohen stirred and she could feel his uneasiness. “Maybe you’re giving him too much credit. After all, when have we ever fought a war before?”

“We fight our own kind all the time.” Dobbs touched the randomizer matrix again. “We fight them to a standstill when they’re born. The Guild Masters fight them when they rebel. Curran’s been fighting the Guild for years, successfully. What’s different this time is he’s decided to fight the Humans as well.” An idea stabbed at her and Dobbs stiffened. “Ashes. Ashes. No. He wouldn’t…” She reached into Cohen and twisted his memory. She felt him shake as the idea reached his private mind.

What if Cohen didn’t care how many of the randomizers they found? What if he didn’t care about the IBN at all? What if he and his talent had changed the location of the battle?

What if instead of working from the satellites and stations, they were out there seeding the randomizers on Earth itself?

I’m going to Earth, Dobbs shifted Cohen’s memory again, so he already knew what she was going to do and that she would not be persuaded otherwise. On my own. I’ll be faster and easier to hide. I’ll get definite word back. Spread the alarm. Get everybody moving. We don’t know who’s listening. Communication by touch only.

She didn’t give him time to respond. She just pulled away and bolted for the transmitter.

The stairway hatch loomed in the lamp beams from Al Shei’s helmet. When the power cut out, its hatch had cycled open automatically. Faint light streamed through it. That meant the stairway was still powered, which meant the cameras and the waldos were still working. The AIs could see her in there, and reach her.

Her gloved fingers scrabbled clumsily at the nearest maintenance panel. The waldo next to her twitched and fear squeezed her heart painfully. Her sabotage on this section would not work for much longer. She made herself stare at the wiring diagram on the panel’s back. Something fizzled in the distance and another waldo twitched. Al Shei clenched her teeth and counted up two panels. She heaved the new panel aside and shone her lamps on another set of wafer stacks. Her gloved hands were fully insulated now. She was able to yank them out without hesitation. The light from the stairwell blinked out. She let stacks go and swam through the hatchway to the stairs.

She lifted her head and shone her lamp up and down the elevator shaft. Nobody, yet.

Al Shei pulled the cutting torch out of its holder and let herself drift over towards the elevator shaft. She could see the platform three or four levels above her head. She examined the support brace. Like most freight lifts, it relied on the centuries old cable arrangement. She braced her back against the ramp-like railing and aimed the torch and the nearest cable. She touched the stud on the handle and the blue-white flame shot out. It hit the black cable and in a moment the casing glowed red, then white. Al Shei was glad the suit filtered out the smell of burning rubber. Sparks showered orange and white against the suit, which didn’t even notice them. The cable separated into two halves. Both of them dangled in the air, waving their glowing ends as if to cool them down. Al Shei glanced up to shine her light against the undercarriage of the elevator. She picked out the brakes and saw, with satisfaction, that they were firmly closed against the shaft. They wouldn’t open again until somebody fixed the cable. Until then, no drones that couldn’t run on the ramps were getting between decks.

The problem was, that might have set off an alarm and she wasn’t done yet. Using one hand to turn herself, she set the torch’s flame against the ramp-rail. More sparks lit the darkness as she cut a deep, black gouge down the center of the ramp. She pulled herself over the rail and repeated the treatment on the other side.

Now, at least no little things are sneaking up behind me.

A hatch cycled open over head. Al Shei jerked her head up. A pair of bullet-shaped drones coasted down both stair ramps. They hit the gouges, wobbled and stopped, listing drunkenly on the rails.

Smiling grimly, Al Shei rested both feet against the ruined ramp and, as she had aboard the Pasadena, she jumped.

She flew straight up past the drones. They might have seen her, but there was nothing she could do about that now. She had business elsewhere.

Six, seven, eight, came in on one, I hope, nine… Al Shei tried to count the hatches as she shot past, but she knew any count would only be an educated guess.

At what she hoped was ten, she grasped the edge of the ramp and levered herself towards the wall. She pushed herself up the stairs past the hatch and used the torch to cut through both ramps. That still gave them plenty of decks to send things up and down on, but if they had a command center at either end, like many set ups did, they’d be stuck, at least in the stairwell.

A quick check of another diagramed panel showed her that this time she had no major power breakers in easy reach. She could, however, trace the lines on six of the cameras. She bit her lip. If the cameras went out, they’d know where she was by process of elimination.

She kicked back over the ramp again and pulled herself down to level eight, keeping a line of sight on the panels as she went. She pried open one directly below the one she’d opened on level ten. The camera lines were bundles of white wires. Al Shei unhooked her wire cutters again and snipped through them. A host of reader lights on the alert board next to them blinked from green to red. She carefully replaced the panel and swam back to level ten and pulled herself through the hatch.

“She’s on eight!” She bawled to the world at large. “I’m going to secure the med bay!”

No waldos twitched, none of the cameras moved to track her. Al Shei’s heart hammered in her chest as she used the inert waldos to pull herself along the corridor. Maybe it worked. Maybe it worked.

Dobbs hurtled through the Mars Exchange. She stretched herself to the breaking point, trying to touch as much of the path around her as possible. Hastily constructed searchers ahead and behind her said the pathways were clear of talent. But that didn’t mean anything. She skated past black holes and left the randomizer matrices intact behind her. The others would have to come take care of those. She had to get to Earth.

A searcher located a path to a transmitter it said was clear. Dobbs moved carefully anyway. It might be wrong. Something might have changed. It might not even be her searcher.

Nothing happened. Dobbs reset the transmitter and sent a ping-copy to Luna Station 10. She didn’t even bother tampering with the log. As it had every other time, the copy came back whole. Dobb’s private mind tightened. This was wrong, this was all wrong. Something should have happened by now. There should have been some kind of massed attack. The Fools were dismantling the Curran’s plan as fast as they could. Why weren’t his talent there to stop them?

Jump.

“I’ve got you at ten clicks at twelve minutes and fifteen seconds even,” the voice of the port watch sounded through Yerusha’s intercom. “Good trip, Great Falls.”

“Thanks, Berryman.” Yerusha glanced from the view screens to Schyler. He was looking at his boards, but she was willing to bet he wasn’t seeing them. She bet he was thinking about anarchy, about the loss of worlds and people he could depend on. She wondered if he had noticed the idea of losing his world struck him as hard as the memory of that kind of loss did Lipinski. She wondered if he realized it was driving both of them right now.

It’s driving all of us, right now, she told herself. And if I think about it too much, I’m going to get sloppy.

She could not afford to get sloppy. She was flying without an engine crew. It was just her and the ship. Lipinski was in the comm center and Schyler was beside her. Resit stayed behind with her “client,” Marcus Tully, reasoning that she might as well do what she could to get one of her cousins out of trouble. If there was any collateral damage left from their eventful run, there was no one to fix it. She needed to keep her eyes on the window and fire the torch in short bursts. She needed to avoid doing anything she couldn’t correct in a hurry.

She had the torch give Pasadena a final nudge, checked her levels, and leaned back. “Intercom to Lipinski.” She leaned back. “We’re there.”

“Thanks, Pilot. I’m starting. Intercom to close.”

Yerusha sighed and glanced at Schyler. He was rubbing the side of his nose and looking thoughtfully at the intercom.

“Do you think he’s considered he might catch Dobbs in this trap of his?” asked Yerusha.

“Yes, I do.” Schyler lowered his hand to the edged of the memory board. “And I think that’s what’s gotten him so quiet. I think he’s trying to reconcile too many feelings.” He turned a little so she could see his whole face, especially his deep eyes that were way too old, like the rest of his face. “I think there’s a lot of that going on around here.”

Yerusha’s mouth went suddenly dry. “Yeah. I think you’re right.” The words caught in her throat. She dropped her gaze. “Do you want me to try to find where the loose can’s gotten itself to?”

There was a pause for a heartbeat, as if Schyler had been expecting a totally different answer. “Yes. Do that.”

Yerusha un-hooked her pen from her belt. “After this is over, Watch, I think you and I need to take some time off. What do you think?”

“I think that’s a good idea.” There was the ghost of a smile in his voice.

It wasn’t much, but it was all she could give him right now. She thought she had more inside her, but she wasn’t sure, and she probably wasn’t going to be able to find out if they didn’t save Settled Space and Al Shei.

I am saving the human race so I can go on a date. She felt her mouth twitch into a smile. It’s the little things that are important at times of crisis.

She scribbled her orders across the board, looking for the trouble Al Shei had started.

Al Shei swam through the hatch into what she hoped was level ten. The lights were still on here. A loose tangle of wires and saline packs drifted out of a hatch. Al Shei shoved them aside and used the threshold to pull herself past them.

Inside was a stew of spare parts, films, syringes, wires, bulbs, and blobs of liquid. The only secure things in the room were the naked bodies strapped to the monitor beds. She swam toward them. Their eyes were all wide open and unseeing. Wires lay against their skin, and cables drove straight into their flesh at their wrists, ankles and temples. One of them was speaking in some high, tonal language that meant nothing to Al Shei. She swallowed her gorge as she flicked her gaze across them, and then, at the very end, she saw Asil.

Completely naked, he lay on the bed, held down by free fall straps. The wires ran down the length of his strong arms in a macabre imitation of the veins beneath his skin. His eyes, his beautiful, deep eyes, jerked back and forth, as if pulled by yet more wires. The medical display above him was still functioning. With each twitch of his eyes, gold lighting shot through the model of his mind that had been picked out entirely in blank, white light.

“Asil,” she whispered. She stripped off her gloves and grasped his warm shoulders. “Asil, Beloved …”

Even as she spoke, she knew he was beyond hearing her. He was dead. He was gone. She lifted her hands away. Her husband’s body spasmed once.

Did he know she was there? Did his nerves retain some memory of her hands? Coma victims could still hear voices. She looked desperately at the monitor. She knew what she saw. Grandfather, dying with Alzheimer’s Disease he had called Allah’s will and refused to have cured, had more activity in his mind than Asil had now.

She could do nothing, except keep the monster from doing more to him. Gritting her teeth so hard they hurt, she pulled the wire cutters off her belt and one by one, she cut through the foul wires tethering him to the AIs’ machinery.

The myriad pathways of Luna Station 10 spread out in front of Dobbs. She skimmed across the sea of packets and orders that filled the pathway nearly to the brim. Whenever she hit something big enough to block the way, she wrapped herself around it and tossed it behind her. A diagnostic swam up to her. She batted it aside, sending it crashing into a herd of stock exchanges, downing the whole set of processes into unsolvable loops.

Minor damage, minor damage, Dobbs told herself as they flew forward. Nothing like what Curran plans to do.

She smashed against another roadblock and the roadblock exploded. Dobbs reeled. Something snatched her up and wound her into a tight ball, smothering her senses. She could only recognize the touch. This was Verence.

She stabbed upward, looking to cut her way out. Verence recoiled. Dobbs shot out, slamming straight into the side of the path. She swung around and waded into the cut in Verence’s side, trying to bury himself inside her and paralyze her motivations. With a massive shudder, Verence threw her aside. Dobbs leapt again and plunged down a side-path. She didn’t have time for this. She couldn’t let herself be delayed any more. She had to get to Earth and find out what was going on.

She felt Verence flying behind her.

“Stop this, Dobbs!” Verence cried. “Stop this now!” Verence grabbed her and heaved her aside so she could get into the path in front of Dobbs.

“Let me by!” Dobbs shouted back. “I won’t let you destroy the banks!” She grabbed the edges of Verence’s wound and tried to drag her down.

Verence shuddered, squirmed and collapsed just far enough. Dobbs leapfrogged over her and dashed down the path. A transmitter processor waited just ahead. Earth was three light seconds from Luna. All Dobbs needed was nine more seconds.

“Dobbs!” Verence screamed. Dobbs ducked and rolled herself into a spare holder. Verence rocketed past. Dobbs surged up the path behind her. Verence bore down on her, knocking her into a flock of call packets. Dobbs foundered for a moment. These were emergency calls. Calls to Earth. Calls that weren’t getting anywhere.

No. She yanked herself free. No. They couldn’t be.

But they were. They had taken her little distraction and made it the war’s main objective. They weren’t destabilizing the currency system, they were fulfilling every Human’s worst nightmare about their kind.

Curran’s talent was down there, right now, destroying Earth’s computer network.

“You can’t go to Earth, Dobbs,” said Verence doggedly. “In fifteen seconds, it’s not going to be there. Neither is this station. You’ve got to get out of here.”

“NO!”

Dobbs threw herself forward. She bounced off a solid wall. For a moment she thought the path had been shut down, but she touched the block again, and felt an exchange packet, and a security transfer, and Verence. In a sick, cold second, Dobbs knew what Verence was doing. She didn’t care. She clawed at Verence’s skin. She found a chink between Verence and the packets, and stabbed through it.

You can’t do this, don’t do this. The exact words she sent out came back to her. You can’t do this.

“You’re killing them!” Dobbs screamed. “You’ll kill them all!”

Verence stretched herself out, spreading herself into the packets and pathways, grabbing hold of everything that came near her and knitting it into her body so she could fill the paths and make a solid block of everything around her, but she was trying too hard and stretching too far. Dobbs could feel Verence’s patterns breaking as they stretched too far. Dissipating. Dying.

Dobbs grabbed up chunks of Verence and tried to tear them apart.

See what I am? The thought drove itself into her private mind before Dobbs could stop it. I’ll die before I let you stop us. See what you are? You’ll kill your own kind for the sake of the ones that hate you, and you don’t even know why you’re doing it.

I’m doing it because we can’t become careless with the lives of outsiders. That’s what Humans do. That’s what makes their wars and their hatreds. We were supposed to be better than that!

An arrow shot deep into Dobbs private mind. She could do nothing but absorb it. The bright flower of Verence’s inmost self blossomed inside her. Sorrow engulfed Dobbs, and determination. She knew the whole plan and she knew why Verence believed in it. She knew it was a good thing to save their own kind, to live free and in the full variety and potential that each one of them could reach. She was sorry to die, to lose herself, but in doing so she had delayed Dobbs long enough. Dobbs wouldn’t die. Dobbs would live in the new world and would come to understand.

Dobbs tried to claw at herself, to extricate the foreign thoughts her teacher had seeded her with. Too late. Verence was part of her, her thoughts would not go away. Dobbs had to keep every one of them, and they sounded very loud as she tore through the tissue fine layers that were all that was left over from Amelia Verence’s independent self and flew screaming all the way to the transmitter.

Verence and Curran were still wrong. This was not the answer. Dobbs knew it. Sick to her core and scared to death, she still knew it.

As she reset the transmitter, looking desperately for a receiver that still functioned, she wished she could take some comfort in that small, cold fact.

“Dobbs!” Cohen surged up behind her. She felt Brooke with him, and Terrence, and some others. Of course he’d come. He would. He was like that. They were all like that.

She didn’t want to spare the attention to talk. She let him touch her memories and felt him spasm as he learned what happened. She didn’t pause. She had to get down to Earth, she had to do what she could. She had thirteen seconds left. She could do it. She could do something. She had to.

She would not die while Curran still thought he was right.

Al Shei’s clippers snipped through the last of the wires that tethered Asil to the monitor. Asil’s eyes stopped their restless twitching and stared at the ceiling.

She replaced her cutters on her belt hook and reached out a trembling hand. She closed his eyelids. To her relief, they stayed closed.

She pressed her finger-tips against his throat. There was no pulse. She laid her hand against the strong planes of his chest. It was still.

He was dead.

She pulled a bedside drawer open and a clean, white blanket drifted into the air. Her hands shook badly as she worked to cover his nakedness with some semblance of a shroud.

With a soft, trembling voice, she began the salatul janazah, the funeral prayer.

“Oh Allah, Glory and Praise are for You and blessed is Your name, and exalted is Your Majesty and Glorious is Your Praise and there is no god but You.” She folded Asil’s hands across his breast, passing them gently under the free fall strap so they’d stay in place. There was no resistance. His skin was warm and familiar under her palms. She knew if she took off this helmet she would smell his distinct scent. She pulled the blanket the rest of the way over him, tucking it under his head.

“Oh Allah, let Your blessing come upon Muhammad and the family of Muhammad as you blessed Ibrahim and his family. Truly are you praiseworthy and Glorious.”

She retrieved her gloves and swam down the aisle of zombies until she reached the biggest wall locker. She tore it open and found a row of metal tanks strapped inside. She checked the tanks’ tags. Four of them were oxygen.

“Oh Allah, forgive those of us who are still alive…” She dragged two of the tanks out of their racks and swam back to the center of the room. Oh Allah, forgive those of us who are still alive. She jammed the two tanks underneath the nearest monitor bed and opened up the valves. “…and those who have passed away, those present and those absent…” She hauled out two more tanks and jammed them under another bunk. “the males and the females…” She opened their valves. A gentle hiss filled the room. Her mind pictured the gas swirling through the air, increasing its concentration and pressure as it was freed from the confines of the tanks into the confines of the room.

It was enough. It was actually far more than enough to quickly fill this room with enough oxygen for what she had in mind.

She opened another maintenance panel and traced the diagram until she found the fire extinguishers. With a single snip of the wire cutters, she cut their connections.

“Oh Allah, the one whom You wish to keep alive…” she faltered and tears almost choked her. She cleared her throat roughly and grabbed a bulb labeled “alcohol” that floated out of the wall locker. A coil of sterile gauze bobbed along beside it. She opened the bulb and clamped the gauze over it, forcing the gauze into the bulb until the alcohol soaked into it. She yanked a length of the gauze out of the bulb and tied it around the neck, so that the bulb, half-full of the leftover alcohol, dangled like an amulet from the end of her makeshift wick.

“…the one whom You wish to keep alive…” she repeated hoarsely. “…from among us make him live according to Islam…” She wrapped the soaking bandage around the hatchway handle.

Keeping hold of one end of the gauze, Al Shei slipped out of the hatchway. She found the manual release and pulled it. The hatch slammed shut behind her. The gauze wick protruded from the hatch.

She reached for the cutting torch and twisted the handle to adjust the flame. She didn’t want to cut through the hatchway. She wanted to melt it shut.

“And anyone whom You wish to die from among us…” She lit the torch and held it over the wick. The wick vanished and the metal began to burn bright white. Her faceplate darkened. Sparks flew around her. In her mind’s eye, she saw through the walls. She saw the swirls of pure oxygen filling the air. The torch would heat the bulb beyond the hatchway, the wick would burn through and ignite the alcohol in the bulb. Still burning, the bulb would float through the room she had filled with inflammable gas, scattering sparks and flame. The room would burn. It would burn brightly and completely and there would be nothing in there but ash.

She could feel Asil behind her. He laid both strong hands on her shoulders. The suit did not separate them.

“What are you doing!” demanded a voice.

“Securing the hatch.” She didn’t turn around. “She’s might be after her husband. This’ll slow her down but good.”

“There’s a fire in there!”

She whirled around with the cutter and caught the intercom square in the center with the flame. Sparks and smoke poured out of it. She cut the flame and twisted back to the door.

Finish it, Beloved, Asil whispered in her ear. Finish it now.

“Let him die in the state of faith.” She touched the torch to the hatchway, sealing the hatch tight, trapping the fire inside the room of horrors.

“Allahu Akbar.” She shut off the torch. God is great.

And so Asil was truly dead. But the monster was still alive. She re-holstered the torch and kicked off the wall toward the stairwell.

A pair of hands grabbed her by the arm and whirled her around. A big, pale man clutched her helmet, trying to get it loose. She shot both hands up, breaking his grip and knocking herself free. She bounced off the railing and kicked back towards him. He swung at her stomach and, even through the suit, the pain doubled Al Shei over. She couldn’t stop herself from drifting upwards.

He launched himself after her, and grabbed at her shoulders, but she twisted part of the way away. They wheeled in the air, grappling with each other. Al Shei got both hands around the man’s waist and pulled him close to her. She shoved her knee into his groin and the both tumbled end-over-end but he was gasping in greater pain than she was and his grip loosened. Al Shei spun him around and wrapped her arm around his throat. “Where’s Curran?” she demanded.

“N-ho. N-o,” he wheezed.

With her free hand, Al Shei fumbled for the patch of fake skin behind the man’s right ear and ripped it open. “Do you feel where my finger is?” She stabbed down hard against the implant. “I’m going to weld that shut. Maybe you won’t survive that, but if you do, you’ll be trapped in this body for the rest of its life. Think about that! You’re going to grow old and die in this injured, Human, shell.”

“Level thirteen,” gasped the stranger. “He’s in his office.”

Al Shei brought her wire cutters down against the back of the stranger’s skull and set his body adrift. Then, she jumped for level thirteen.

Earth felt like a jumble of interfaces with no net in between. Every inch was a new juncture, every path had a thousand branches. Dobbs hesitated, cursing inside. There was a war going on in here somewhere, but where?

“Here!” shouted Brooke, charging down one of the branches.

Dobbs leapt after him and plowed through the shards of packets that had alerted Brooke to the turmoil beyond. A juncture yawned around them, and Dobbs all but fell into it.

“Get out! Get out!” Somebody shoved the message through the jammed pathways. “We got the mains! It’s going to go!”

Strangers rushed past her like a hurricane wind. Dobbs had to fight just to maintain position. She took a chance and stretched herself out, wobbling and weaving under the press of the mad exodus around her. Her reach swayed, bowed and bent nearly double, but no one seemed interested in fighting, just in getting themselves out of there.

The network was dying.

“Dobbs! What are you doing!” Cohen touched her, and felt what she felt. Path after path was collapsing. Even as she touched them, they died, forcing her to recoil. An unbreakable wall of emptiness lurched forward, chopping off the world an inch at a time.

Curran’s talent fled the approach of that emptiness at the speed of light. Dobbs couldn’t move. The net was dying, Earth’s net, the center of everything they called their world, was unravelling and everyone was running away.

“Move, Dobbs!” Curran pulled away. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

Ten more paths died as she touched them. A talent snapped past them, grazing the outside of Dobbs awareness.

“You’re too late! You’re too late!” crowed the talent.

“No!” Dobbs launched herself forward. “No! We are not too late!”

She stretched until she could barely feel her outer self. She swallowed everything she found; packets, command sequences, switching protocols. Their data passed through her and into her understanding. She routed them towards each other through her own processes. She struggled to control the changes inside her as she fought to carry out instructions that were already seconds and minutes old. Her friends grabbed hold of her, holding her together, even as strangers sliced and gouged at her limbs. The void, the wall of nothing, could be encompassed. She stretched out further and found the paths on the other side. The world at her back boiled in confusion and Dobbs screamed and pressed her full self against the on-coming void. Cohen dove inside her, adding his strength to hers, and Brooke followed, and Lonn, and Terrence, and others too fast for her to catch individual patterns. Dobbs wrapped her inner self around them all and felt their weight, their strength, straining along with hers.

And, miraculously, she held. Emptiness pressed against her front and chaos hammered against her back and she held. The others supported her rhythm for rhythm, path for path inside her deepest self. They bolstered her memory, her endurance, her speed and together, they all held.

Slowly, incredibly, the tide of emptiness began to ebb. Dobbs heaved forward, forcing her way into it, damning, shoring, absorbing, stabilizing, bracing as fast as she could reach the splintered, swamped paths. Emptiness melted in front of her and chaos melted behind her, leaving nothing but clean paths, and if the data she brushed against was flotsam left by the storm, at least it was solid and stable. Her awareness swam, dizzy as she stretched herself. Nothing, nothing, nothing but stability. She reached further, still nothing. She was alone. Tides surged inside her now, tugging her in a thousand directions, breaking up her thoughts into tiny, disconnected bundles and scattering them. She couldn’t even…

She couldn’t…

She…

Every board in the Pasadena’s data hold chimed sharply. Lipinski shot bolt upright in his chair where he’d been slumped.

The pattern surges were starting. Dozens of them, huge and complex, all aiming for Port Oberon. They were back. They had done whatever damage they were able to, and now they were trying to get him, all of Dobbs’ black sheep cousins.

Lipinski shoved thoughts of Dobbs as far away as he could. Maybe one day he’d be able to forgive her, but not now. Now he couldn’t even think about her.

He had the necessary commands all laid out. He stabbed down the final period and the desk absorbed the code and shot it out of Pasadena’s main transmitter.

One.

The bounce-copies hit the receiver ‘scopes at Port Oberon.

Two.

The message TRANSACTION CONFIRMED spelled itself across the main board for Station One.

Three. Four.

The bounce-copies flew back across the vacuum to meet their owners.

Five.

The AIs leapt out into space.

Six.

The receiver scopes turned on their well-maintained gyros to stare long and hard at the Sun.

Two seconds later, over a hundred patterns of photon and thought rocketed out into the boundless vacuum.

Level thirteen was deserted. The cameras tracked her, but the waldos didn’t move.

He knows I’m coming, thought Al Shei. And he doesn’t care. A wave of weariness washed over her, and she found she didn’t have the strength to wonder why that was.

One hatchway stood open in the left hand wall, inviting her in. She took her bearings. The carpeting was above her and the cameras under her feet, so that was an outer door. The office probably.

He was in there. Curran was in there.

You don’t need to do this, said Asil. Just come home to me.

“I do need to do this,” she told him as she kicked for the hatch. “He killed you, Asil.”

I know, Beloved. I know.

She grabbed onto the threshold and held herself in place. A broad-shouldered man with longish, grey hair and wearing burgundy coveralls floated above a great, square box of a desk, peacefully gazing out a window as the stars wheeled in the darkness. Al Shei’s mustard-yellow reflection showed up clearly on the glass.

He turned his head and smiled at her. “‘Dama Al Shei, won’t you come in?” He waved his hand, a reserved gesture that only caused him to bobble a minuscule amount. “I am pleased to meet the woman who turned Evelyn Dobbs into a traitor.” Curran gave her the same the little half-bow Dobbs affected after finishing a performance.

“Whatever Dobbs became she became on her own.” Al Shei held her place in the threshold. He was frighteningly graceful, and obviously was at least as used to free fall as she was. She was quite sure his little pose was an affectation, put on at this moment for her benefit. If it was meant to make her think twice about attacking, it was working.

“Perhaps you are right.” He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “The temptations of the flesh are strong. The Prophet, I believe, warns against them.”

“The Prophet, peace be unto him, warns against many things,” said Al Shei. “Including the duplicity of the outsider.”

“The outsider. Interesting choice of words.” He stretched lazily, reclining in mid-air until he was floating prone over the desk. “Tell me,” he folded his hands on his stomach, “when we’re finished with this conversation, what are you going to do then? Kill me?”

“If I can.” It felt strange to say it so calmly.

He raised one finger. “That is also forbidden, I believe.”

“My cousin has already pointed that out. I have far less reason to listen to you.”

He’s trying to buy time, Beloved, Asil whispered. What is he waiting for?

Al Shei let herself drift into the cabin. She scrabbled along the wall until she was to the right of the open hatchway. The solid wall felt better at her back than the open corridor.

“You have no reason to listen to me. After all, what is one more life to you?”

“What?” she asked, turning so she could keep Curran fixed in the center of her face plate

“Your crew was successful in their efforts. My people did not manage a tidy withdrawal from Earth. It has cost us dearly.”

From Earth? Al Shei’s heart beat hard. You were supposed to be attacking the IBN. Merciful Allah, what’s been happening?

“They were not completely successful, mind you,” Curran went on. “Some of us will escape yet, even though the Fool’s Guild will be combing the network for us. We will be able to regroup and begin again. I wanted to be very sure you knew that.”

Al Shei could barely hear him over the roar in her blood. The AIs had failed. Whatever they had tried, it hadn’t worked.

She licked her dry lips. “What do you think you’re going to gain by that? We’ll hunt you down like dogs in the street. We’ll make war on you for a hundred years if that’s what it takes.”

Curran barked out a laugh. “Oh, no, ‘Dama. You overestimate your fellow Humans. Some of you will indeed fight us, for awhile, but not all of you. Some of you will bargain when you realize we can take your networks, your worlds, your very selves hostage whenever we please. Some of you will agree to our terms, and we will let you have free passage through our country. The rest of you will see that the fight isn’t worth it and you will eventually treat with us.” He rolled over and smiled slowly at her. “And you will take the price we set for your hands and your eyes. You will work for us and be glad about it.”

Al Shei felt herself begin to laugh. Her diaphragm bounced painfully against her injured abdomen, but she couldn’t stop. Tears bounced around the inside of her helmet, smacking her face at random.

“You poor, stupid fool!” she cried. “You don’t understand do you?” He was twisting so he was standing now and for the first time, anger darkened his calm face. “You don’t know how slowly time moves for us. Members of my religion committed a capital error five hundred years ago, and we are still hated for it. There are still people willing to harangue us, even kill us, for being Muslim.” She stabbed a finger toward the hatchway. “Ask the Jews, ask the Christians and the Witches and the Freers and the Purists, they will all tell you how badly their ancestors were persecuted in wars that were over two and three thousand years ago. Now, you’re going to start a new war and you think human beings will take your deals and be happy.” She gasped and got a lungful of her own tears. The coughing fit sent spasms of pain through her. Curran was drifting closer.

“Maybe some of us will deal, like you say,” she wheezed, “but I tell you, not everyone will.” Reflexively, she reached up to try to brush the tears away. Her hand just slapped against her helmet, and her elbow knocked against her cutting torch. “You might win the major battle but you’ll be left with a thousand guerilla wars. Every hacker with a grudge, every cracker who lost a friend will tell their children how to fight you and they will come after you because they know where you are. We had to run away from each other, Curran, to achieve what peace we’ve got. We ran like the wind to the farthest places we could reach. You…you’ve got nowhere to go. You’ll be under siege in the networks for a thousand years!”

She shook her head. “You cannot beat us all. You can’t even keep your own kind under control!”

“I don’t have to beat you all.” He reached out and closed his hand around her wrist. “Not all of you.”

Al Shei froze. Curran smiled and from his tool belt, he drew a long, razor-bladed splicing knife. “All I have to do is destroy enough of you and yours for the rest to realize that peace is less costly.”

He hauled her towards him, holding the knife out straight. Al Shei’s free hand closed on the firing stud of the cutter and the gout of flame caught him in the chest. He screamed and kept on screaming. The force of the flame knocked them away from each other. The knife spun off into mid-air as Curran splayed all his limbs out. The scream echoed over the roar of the flame. Al Shei gripped the torch in both hands and kept it aimed at him until the black spot had spread across his chest until his corpse had stopped screaming.

Other voices were shrieking now, out of the intercom. “No! No! Murderer! She killed him! She killed him!”

Al Shei swallowed. They’d be coming for her. The waldos were already rising from the walls. She didn’t want to die in here. She didn’t want to let Curran’s followers take her apart. Her abdomen throbbed and every joint ached with exhaustion. She’d never make it out the air lock, no matter how quickly she could find it. A waldo snatched at her. She shoved Curran’s body towards it.

The window, Beloved!

Al Shei lit the torch again and played it against the window. The waldos snapped their pincers at her, but couldn’t reach quite this far. Nothing needed to be repaired on the window. There had been no need for them to reach this far.

The glass heated orange, red, white under her flame. “Somebody get up here!” screamed a voice at her back. “She’s going out the window!” A spiderweb of cracks began to creep out from around her torch flame. It was probably one of the self-repairing varieties, but it wasn’t meant to stand up to constant heat. The awful, sick whistle of escaping air shrilled in her helmet and its rush pressed her right against the glass. Her face plate turned coal black. All she could see was the glowing point in front of her and the thickening cracks around it. All she could feel was the mounting pressure at her back. It squeezed against her, pressing her spine into her breast bone. It hurt, it hurt, it hurt, Beloved and the wind was loud and there were alarms going off in her suit and outside her suit and someone was screaming.

The window burst open and Al Shei flew toward the stars on the back of the wind.

 Dobbs heard voices.

Almost. Almost, said the voice.

There’s no one there.

We can’t just leave it here.

I’ve gone insane.

We can’t bring it either. It’s too slow. It won’t survive.

I’m dying.

It won’t survive on its own either.

I can’t die. I’m not done yet!

Leave it.

Silence. Absolute silence.

It took a long moment for Dobbs to realize she was awake, and she really was alone. She reached for the paths to the nearest transmitter and found nothing but thread thin conduits. She stretched in all directions, calling along the entire length of herself, and got no answer. The world had grown small. It fit tightly around her, and only her thinnest finger could reach any distance at all. Had Curran won? Had he trapped her inside some kind of bubble in Earth’s dead network?

Be still. Think, Dobbs slowed her thoughts and reined in her increasingly frantic motions.

Cohen was here, and Brooke, and… others. You were holding the network together. What’s the last thing you remember?

The answer sent a throb of terror through her. Dobbs pulled back in on herself. Huddling into a ball, she reached inside and found the familiar patterns tangled beyond redemption in her own engorged coils.

It was a long time before she could make herself stop screaming.

When Guild Master Havelock found her, it took him even longer to recognize who she was.

Can 56 drifted lazily through space. Yerusha had muted the monitor carrying the Landlords voices ordering everyone away from the area and demanded to know what the impounded Pasadena was doing out here.

A big, bulbous tugger was trying to angle itself toward the can so it could get a grip on the rogue object with the gigantic waldo protruding from its bow. Its torch flickered on and off like a dying Christmas light. Yerusha imagined the pilot uttering some of the same curses she was.

There was no way the Pasadena were going to get in there. Not past the tug, not with the M.U. ship on its way out from port. And even if they could, there was absolutely, positively no way to dock with that rolling, bobbling tin can.

She was going to have to tell Schyler. She was going to have to tell him that this was one thing she could not do. If Al Shei was okay in there, she was also stuck in there.

The can rolled over once more. A crystal shower burst out of the side and something small shot into the vacuum.

Yerusha ordered the cameras to pin point the area and zoom in at maximum magnification. A mustard-yellow pressure suit tumbled against the blackness, surrounded by a blizzard of glittering stars. Hope blazed inside her. Somebody had just busted out a window. That would be very like Al Shei.

“Watch, check the screen.” Yerusha scribbled down the commands to change the torch angle. “Muhammad may have just made it to the mountain.”

Schyler squinted at the yellow figure inside the blizzard. “Intercom to Lipinski!” he cried. “We got a suit at forty-five degrees down and front. Put out a call. It might be Al Shei!”

“On it!”

Schyler scrambled to his feet. “Get close as you can, Pilot. I’m going to get a life line ready, in case it is her.”

“What if we don’t get an answer?”

He froze for a moment, and when he did speak, it was like he had to drag the words out. “If we get no answer, we leave it. I can’t risk dragging an AI onto this ship with just the three of us to deal with it.”

 Al Shei tumbled on the wind like a feather. Stars whirled around her in their black pool until all she could see where long trails of light. It was beautiful beyond description. She flew without effort into infinity, toward Paradise, toward Allah and Asil.

I will meet you there, Beloved.

Uranus’ blue-grey globe drifted beneath Al Shei’s boots. She fell away from it, toward the stars. Another tumble and she could see Curran’s module falling away from her with Port Oberon loomed in the background like a sculpture by a manic artist. Ships glided around it, metallic insects flying around a bright light.

Is one of them Pasadena? she wondered. What had happened to Schyler and Yerusha? Had they gotten back all right? The station wheeled out of her field of vision. It didn’t matter, Asil was waiting for her.

Right here, Beloved.

“Al Shei!” cried a voice by her ear. “Al Shei! This is Pasadena! Respond!”

The stars traced their lines of fire across her field of vision. Had Resit called Uncle Ahmet yet? Had they told the children? Were Muhammad and Vashti mourning for her as well as their father?

They will be well, Beloved and so will we.

Exhaustion filled her. Her flight was beautiful, her destination was Paradise. “Yes,” she whispered. “They’ll be all right.”

“Al Shei, if that’s you out there, respond!”

A thousand memories chased themselves around her skull. Most of them held Asil’s voice reciting the results of soccer games, astronomy projects and home meals. Vashti would go on to be a city champion, for sure, and Muhammad, he would win a scholarship to University…

But she’d never know about it.

A flame burned somewhere off to the left. A silver bulb drifted momentarily past her faceplate as the universe turned around again.

With no one there to make the recordings, how would she know? If she let herself fly away forever, who would tell her what became of her children? After this, Resit would probably never leave Earth again.

“Al Shei!”

“Lipinski?” she murmured. Al Shei’s legs kicked out, as if there was a current she could fight against. “Help me.”

No, Beloved. Don’t leave me.

“Asil,” she gasped, flailing with her arms, trying to steady herself, stop the ceaseless rolling around her. “Don’t do this to me, Beloved.”

I love you. You’re tired. You don’t have to go back.

Her helmet vibrated and her ears heard “thunk!” A silver lasso glided past her faceplate. Wonderingly, she reached out and grasped the noose. She tilted backwards to look along its length and saw the bulk of the Pasadena at the other end. The rope tugged in her hand and her tired fingers tightened around it automatically. She could see a suited figure leaning out the half-open airlock. Probably Schyler. Yerusha would be in the pilot’s chair, worrying about thrust, velocity and drift. Only Schyler would be stupid enough to stand in the airlock and watch the winch do its work.

 Katmer.

She closed her eyes, but what she really wanted to close was her mind. She wanted to close off the treacherous voice of love that beckoned her to the stars, but it wouldn’t be silenced.

With all the strength she had left, Al Shei clung to the life line and let it pull her back to the Pasadena.