2

I stood beside Burton staring into the swirl of images circling the room. Two students were helping to fit me into the sleek environment suit. It looked entirely too slim to have much to offer in the way of life support. As if sensing my concern the president spoke up.

“That’s an in-house suit design. We copied some classified patents for special forces gear to reduce the bulk. When the spooks get a foothold in space, this is the kind of thing they’ll wear to put daggers in backs. The focus is on survival in combat emergencies on a station rather than being a personal lifeboat during EVAs and shuttle jumps. If something goes wrong when you’re on a boat, we don’t have a backup to come rescue you with, so we’re just going to have to call it game over.”

“That’s reassuring,” I said and laughed darkly.

However, my ride over to Central was just as cutting edge as the suit. He’d gone all out and bought a military prototype on the black market. It was small, but fast and stealthy. Unregistered, the boat was nearly untraceable. The plan was to zip in on a fast intercept vector, get on top of the station before their radar saw a thing.

“Then, we trigger the entanglers and capture every other satcademy’s main system. When we hack Central, it will be every school and some extra zombie satellites hitting them all at once. No way to tie it back to us specifically.

“We’ll break the entire spacenet to give you cover,” he said matter-of-factly. “Once you’re in range, this AI shell will pick up the slack. It’ll give you control of every system on the platform and lock the station out from non-local connections. About 30 minutes where you’ll be god in the garden before they can manage a reboot.”

We had moved out into the exterior office, on the shore of a sea of gadgets and weapons and other things which made it look as though a military shipping pod had struck a reef in the room. One of the wannabe-knights clipped a reinforced mobile computer to my lower back. It interfaced with the environment suit and through it seeped into my sub-dermal nerve net. A sensation like a tug on my hair as data streamed in through the cord tied up in my ponytail.

There was a brief swirl of colored mist in front of my vision as the AI taught itself to impose signals on my optic nerve. I could feel a tingle cross my scalp; the cold shadow of another intelligence peeking into the window of my mind.

But I could tell right away that this was one of Isidro’s creations. It purred against my inner ear and shyly began slipping dataqueues into sight. Most AIs appeared as inhuman as they really were and totally lacking in manners; he had a talent for evolving living things. My few encounters with military Ghost AIs had been unsettling for how close to human they could seem at times, but Isidro made creatures beyond sapience. These were dream-animals imbued with the presence of myth. Like the mongrel dog in every sprawl neighborhood whose good nature makes it the darling of all children had a supercomputer bolted to its brain.

The totem he created this time was not only a monster of hacking; it had a full complement of deep assistance programs that did everything from picking the fastest route through a maze to sharpening the data from my senses. He, for each one of that guy’s creations invariably took on a masculine mask, dived through my brainwaves to learn how to sense my will.

Next the Hand of Glory was plugged into my sub-dermal as the gauntlet was locked airtight onto my arm. I heard a whispered war as the creature and the AI in the Hand established their boundaries and lines of communication. The thing in the Hand was a truly alien construct. Its singular focus on spatial interpretation and projecting the wearer’s intention left the AI with the personality of a calculator.

The creature purred and the thing clicked.

“Once you find him, there’s a craft docked in storage on Central,” Burton said. Maps of the station and images of the seed-like boat flashed before my eyes. “Another stealth craft, this one already has an autopilot programmed to get you groundside.”

“You really want to try a drop in Manchuria?” I asked.

“We don’t have an option for ocean retrieval ready and there aren’t other zones you can use without testing the patience of the people manning missile barriers.”

Well this is something I haven’t done before. A flood of videos of orbitrunners haggling with Chinese scrappers played in my head. There seemed to be a fad of competing to negotiate the best deals and posting proof online. That isn’t helpful; I’m going to worry no matter how good the odds are.

“What you do when you get inside Central is up to you. We haven’t been able to find where he’s being held with passive hacks, so we can’t plan a rescue ahead of time. Take anything you see fit from here.”

The armory put together by that bastard’s wealth and the ingenuity of the tilting faction was something to behold. In the Knights’ heyday, we were always just scraping by. Running from hidey-hole to hidey-hole we always had just enough gear to get through the next job. Our infamous inventions were exceptions that often broke or had to be sold off to pay another bribe.

All this effort and enthusiasm, how many of you would come with me if I asked for volunteers to be suicide troops? Every possible answer was heavy.

But only a basic load of equipment would be necessary; the Hand would do the heavy lifting. I saddled myself with a medical pouch, a flash cap dispenser, and a few bags of various tricks and treats.

“At least take one firearm, risk be damned. Here, this is a standard rattler with a whole magazine of aethertips. Compact, but you can use it like a buzzsaw even against heavy armor.”

I accepted the small, printcrafted submachine gun from Burton and holstered it on my thigh. I was ready, all I had to do was turn around and walk through the inner office. As soon as I stepped into the private dock beyond it, I’d really be putting my foot in it. I still had no clue which was my true nature, the lack of doubt or the doubt. I hoped that the answer would find me soon.

A student put the suit’s helmet over my head and sealed the collar. The creature looked out through the visor panel, flipped crystal lenses to show me transparent and digital modes. I sank into the isolated abyss of the suit, alone but for the electrical beings probing my mind.

Burton motioned toward his office. As we passed his desk, the old man picked up a satchel and held it out to me. “Whatever you need to get back in the game. Chemical stimulants, aether treated. Uppers, downers, psychedelics. Synth spikes for anger, calm, bliss. Become a killing machine or an emotional wreck or whatever will get the job done.”

I shouldered past him and popped the hatch leading to the docking mod. He caught up with me as I was about to pull myself through the transfer port and offered something else from his open hand. A datacrypt, rugged and mysterious, lay in his palm.

“When you hit the ground, head for the Forbidden City. Tell them this is for Zhou Fu from William Burton. I’ve put a nice preview of the data on an open partition and what’s behind the lock should get you a few million reserve tokens worth of leverage. Isidro knows the passkey.”

“So I’m screwed if I fail to snag him alive?”

“I think you’re resourceful enough to survive on your own just fine. But if you decide to pursue this mystery to the end, I figure you might need some help.” Burton paused and looked far away beyond the walls of the station. “I can’t control what you do once you’re down there: Go straight to their old house or pull on any other thread you’ve got. Walk away and disappear if you want. It’s all up to you.”

Vanishing would be the smart move, wouldn’t it? This quest the two of you are on still has no leads. I spoke with a bit of my old determination. “You haven’t convinced me that you’re right. I don’t know what your fancy ideals mean for what you’re really planning, but I’ll knock your castle out of the sky if you make me think you deserve it.”

The rebel oligarch laughed and his shining grin brought out his youthful quality despite the strain of stress beyond what his age fixers could handle. I saw for the first time the wolfish vigor that must have convinced the mad scientist to entrust Isidro’s life to him.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said. “Safe journeys, miss Ashley Seidel.”

Bowing my head, I slipped into the shuttle. There was barely enough room for two people inside, but it would be plenty alone. The ice blue flicker of instrumentation blinked as I took the helm. The machines conferred and drafted up a flight plan; all I had to do was punch the starter.

The transfer port sealed and then the coupler gently tossed the craft away from the station. Slowly, the boat floated away on the open, pitch black sea of space. Unlimited nothingness glared in from the windows oppressively. Instinctively I wished to be back inside the relative safety of the academy.

From that point on, all I could do was charge on until I got to solid footing. I belted myself to the g-couch, said a prayer to anonymous, cosmic Hope and told the shuttle to go.