Eden Burning

A Fox Meridian Novel

By Niall Teasdale

Copyright 2017 Niall Teasdale

Amazon Kindle Edition

Contents

Part One: Eve of a New Age

Part Two: The Death of the Old World

Part Three: The Falling Sky

Part Four: Everything Ends

Epilogue: To Begin Anew

Part One: Eve of a New Age

Portland, New England Administrative Region, 5th July 2061.

July in Portland, on a cloudless night with an almost-full moon. The temperature was up around seventeen Celsius, but at least the humidity was not too high and there was a breeze coming in off the ocean which was stirring Fox Meridian’s mop of copper-and-blonde hair as she crouched atop a five-high stack of containers in the docks that had taken over most of Portland’s Downtown.

The city had changed since the start of the century, becoming the distribution centre for cargo from all over the world into the northern part of the New England Administrative Region. Revitalising the old port and turning Downtown into a holding area for containers had not been entirely popular, but it had guaranteed the prosperity of the city when tourism had begun to fail thanks to the broad uptake in internet vacations.

Trade and commerce were a wonderful thing when everyone shipped through your town, but then everyone shipped through your town. Some of those organisations shipped things which any port authority with an eye on public opinion tended to view as inappropriate. Smugglers of various kinds moved goods through Portland, hidden under false paperwork, false labelling, and the payment of bribes to the right people, and Palladium Security Solutions had been contracted to secure the port so Fox was quite determined to reduce the amount of smuggling in general. In this specific case, however, because of the source and nature of the ‘goods,’ Fox was taking a personal hand.

‘Vehicles designated Hostile A through C approaching Avenue West Sixteen.’

‘Team Gamma, close off approach to Avenue West Sixteen when hostiles have passed.’

‘Team Gamma confirming interdiction order.’

Fox scanned over her TacNet feeds and rolled her eyes. She was going to have to have a word with Ryan about squad training. All this chatter was basically unnecessary with the military-grade tactical software Palladium supplied to its officers. Still, she could not fault the precision of the op itself: everyone was in the right place with the right weapons and the right information. She had sat through the briefing, after giving her overview of the situation, and had found no fault in the plan. The men and women, and the various support cyberframes, were working together flawlessly so far.

‘Team Gamma reporting interdiction in place.’

‘Hostiles A through C at target site.’

‘Teams Alpha and Beta, prepare to close the net.’

Fox pulled forward one of the cyberframe views of the scene. Three vehicles, two SUVs and a truck, were pulling up close to a container which had been brought ashore the previous afternoon and had been sitting there under four other containers for over twelve hours. If the information Fox had was accurate, and she was quite sure it was, then getting that box open had to be getting urgent.

Through the camera view of the armed-response frame, Fox watched eight men exit from the SUVs while a ninth went to the rear of the truck to open it up. They would want to move fast, she figured, once they got the container open. It was also notable that all the men were wearing filter masks. That was probably a matter of experience: the inside of that container was probably not going to smell good.

‘They’re opening it now.’

‘Confirm contents before we go in.’

The container’s doors were hauled open and lights were shone in. Fifteen pairs of eyes looked back and Fox’s jaw tightened. The surge of disgust was welcome: it reminded her that she was still human.

‘Contents confirmed,’ Fox said over her connection to the assault team. She flicked the go-code indicator in her TacNet software to green and, because she was fairly sure that half of the team would not notice that, added, ‘You have a go. Repeat, go when ready.’

‘Teams Alpha and Beta, close the net. Teams Gamma and Delta, close in behind Alpha and Beta. Go, go, go.’

Someone on the smuggling team was sharp. As the two squads of armed Palladium security people rushed in, one of the SUVs took off toward the nearest team, Team Beta, and they were having to throw themselves aside before they could really realise what was happening.

The SUV sped off down the alleyway between the two walls of containers, no doubt counting on the need to contain those gathering around the people in the container to keep everyone occupied. They had not counted on Team Delta advancing up the alley, but Delta was running slightly slower than they should have, and it gave the SUV driver the opportunity to turn right into a narrower lane.

‘Team Delta,’ the commander of the assault op began, but Fox cut him off as she got to her feet.

‘He’s coming my way. Leave him to me.’

‘Confirmed, Mother Hen.’

Fox shook her head. She was going to murder Jarvis for that call sign. Then, pushing her TacNet display aside to give her a clear view of her surroundings, she walked a few paces to the edge of the container she was on and stepped off. It was a twelve-metre drop, her telemetry told her so, but she hit the ground and rolled, regaining her feet with her pistol in her hand, aimed at the front of the oncoming SUV. Two rounds through the plastic fairing over the left front wheel destroyed the tyre and the drive motor under it, and the driver lost control as one corner of the car dropped onto the tarmac. The car slewed left and smashed into the side of a container, and Fox temporarily lost sight of the man in the car as airbags deployed around him. Fox started toward the vehicle at a leisurely pace.

She was twenty-one metres away when the passenger door was pushed open and the driver of the car staggered out holding a shotgun. He spotted Fox and raised it to his shoulder, aiming. ‘Back off, cop!’

Fox rolled her eyes. ‘Original. Is that really the best you can do or did you hit your head too hard?’

‘I said–’

‘And inaccurate. No cops around here now, remember? Last Friday was the official last day of joint policing coverage. So, anyway, you put the gun down, carefully, and then put your hands on the car. You’re under arrest for being a sorry excuse for a human.’

He fired, the heavy slug missing entirely. Fox understood the principle of the thing: he was a big, strong criminal with a big gun, and she was an admittedly tall woman dressed in a light jacket, a plazkin teddy, and jeans, carrying a pistol. It should be no contest, right?

‘I feel like I should point out that I’ll return fire if you do that again, and you’re going to come off a lot worse than I am,’ Fox said. She was fairly sure he was not going to take the advice, but you had to give a warning.

Two more shots rang out, going wide. Shotguns were not the most effective weapons at range and he was shooting at… Fox switched into battle telemetry as she swung her pistol up and the laser rangefinder gave her the distance down to the millimetre. She would have accepted ‘about seventeen metres.’ She fired and the man let out a shriek as the heavy slug, trailing white vapour behind it, blew his right forearm into mangled flesh and bone fragments.

‘I did warn you,’ Fox said as the man fell to his knees, the shotgun falling at his side. ‘If you ever get out of Rikers, remember not to pick a fight with a combat gynoid.’ The smuggler was not listening; he fell face first onto the tarmac, and by the time Fox got to him, he was unconscious. ‘Kit,’ Fox began.

‘I have an EMT frame coming in,’ Kit said, appearing beside Fox in avatar form. The sound of vectored-thrust engines was already audible. ‘Only one of the girls in the container required immediate medical attention and the other smugglers were not as foolish as this one.’ The cute, white-clad fox-girl looked out of place in the container yard, but Kit was at home anywhere.

‘Huh. What time is it in Berlin and Tokyo?’

‘Eight twenty in Berlin, fifteen twenty in Tokyo.’

Fox watched as the bulky flying robot, which was basically a combination of paramedic and ambulance, settled down beside the gunman. ‘Sedate him if you’re going to evac,’ Fox said. ‘He may wake up a little unhappy.’

‘Of course, Miss Meridian,’ the frame responded.

‘Right. Probably standard policy.’

‘It is, Miss Meridian.’

‘Uh-huh. Kit, give it an hour and then sort out a conference call to Yuriko and Johann. I’m sure Johann’s awake already, but let’s give him time to do it properly before he has to talk to his boss.’

‘You do need to sleep at some point, Fox,’ Kit reminded her.

‘I know. You know, they should’ve given you the “Mother Hen” call sign.’

Smiling, Kit swished her foxy tail. ‘Wrong kind of animal,’ she said.

~~~

‘We got them all,’ Fox said. ‘Security are sweeping the addresses we have and hunting for more. We’ll have the entire gang rounded up inside of twenty-four hours. Well done, both of you.’

Yuriko Fukui, in Tokyo, executed a short bow. ‘Thank you, Fox-san, but I merely provided the routing information. Mister Baum tracked the shipment through Europe.’

Johann Baum, in Berlin, smiled. ‘I would not have known where to start looking without your information, Miss Fukui.’

Fox, currently hanging in a cradle in the back of her personal Pythia vertol which was parked in a hangar at Portland Jetport, grinned. ‘Let’s just agree that we’re all brilliant. You both did excellent work. Yuriko, it was your idea to dig deeper into the data we got from Busan. Johann, I know it wasn’t easy getting the NU authorities to cooperate on this.’

‘It was not, I admit,’ Baum said. ‘However, they will be very pleased with the opportunity to shut down this ring from one end to the other. Police are raiding various locations around Rotterdam as we speak.’

‘Good. The Fukui-kai aren’t going to be pleased about this, I’d imagine.’

‘No,’ Yuriko agreed with a hint of rather icy pleasure in her voice. ‘They will be very displeased. My brother will be livid. However, this is not an unexpected turn of events. Such activities are bound to be uncovered from time to time. The organisation will recover and, probably, begin setting up a new route.’

‘And Taro?’ It was well known that Taro Fukui, Yuriko’s older brother, was the head of the Fukui-kai yakuza organisation, and that the siblings did not get on well. Fox had made it known to all her people that Yuriko could be trusted when it came to matters of the yakuza, but there were fewer people around who knew why Yuriko could be trusted.

‘Taro will engage in some futile ranting. He will connect this to me, as will others. But when his subordinates suggest that he should do something in retaliation, he will order that no such action is taken. Among some of the older members, largely now removed under Taro’s rule, this may be seen as loyalty, but to the younger people he has brought in, it will be seen as weakness. Taro treads a fine line at the moment, one which requires subtlety to navigate.’

‘And he’s about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face.’

Yuriko nodded. ‘With your permission, I should like to begin running some probability analyses on what will happen when the Fukui-kai collapses. I believe it could be sooner rather than later and the result could be quite chaotic.’

Fox nodded in turn. ‘Do it. Get some AI resource in from Technologies if you need to. Okay, I’ve given you both the wrap-up speech and now I’m going to get some sleep.’

‘You must be tired,’ Baum said. ‘What time is it there? Around three thirty?’

‘Uh-huh, but I don’t get tired any more, Johann, I just get slower. And I haven’t got to the point of noticing that yet. Night, folks.’

As the virtual images of her colleagues vanished, Fox took one quick scan around the rear bay of Pythia’s vertol. She had had a cradle put in, connected to a recharge and backup unit, so that she could use the vertol as a sort of flying camper van when she needed it. It had been a good move and, having run through a sleep cycle, she could just take off first thing in the morning and fly back to New York.

‘And you know what’s waiting there, of course?’ Kit asked.

‘Oh, I know… Night, Kit. Night, Pythia.’

Not waiting for the replies, Fox lowered her head to her chest and closed her eyes. Oblivion claimed her in an instant.

New York Metro, 8th July.

‘So far,’ Dia Barrera said, ‘the metro resolution is looking a lot like the first policing proposal.’ Barrera was MarTech’s top political analyst, an attractive woman who was underestimated at great peril to the observer. ‘All the rhetoric about the freedom of the individual to ensure the quality of their own policing is there, but now they have “following the success of private policing in the non-metro areas” to add weight. We were a little surprised that the proposal was put forward immediately following NAPA’s exit from the protectorates. It’s risky. It may be seen as too soon.’

Fox shook her head. Sitting in the meeting viron the Palladium board used on these occasions, what everyone else saw was her virtual image shaking its head, but Fox had discovered that her new state as an infomorph had come with something of a different experience under these conditions. The first time she had tried it, she had said that it felt the same, just without the barely noticeable communications lag, but it was more than that. The others were in VR communication, aware of their own bodies as well as the viron. To Fox, executing on the same server as the viron, the virtual world was her reality and it did make more of a difference than she had first thought.

‘I think they can point at the results so far and show good figures for reduced crime and higher clean-up percentages,’ Fox said. ‘I think that, if they wait a year and let the first set of audits go through, you’ll start to see a bounce-back in crime, some areas failing their audits, and some drop in clean-up rates as the crime rate comes back up. All the statistics so far look great. They would be stupid not to try to get the metro vote through as early as possible.’

‘Yes,’ Barrera agreed, ‘that is a factor, but we will be pushing the fact that private policing is not really a tried-and-tested concept. This vote will be tighter than the last one, I have no doubt, but it is likely to pass, as best we can tell this early in the game.’

‘Do we have the NIX audit amendment filed?’ Garth Eaves asked.

‘We put it back on the table as soon as the proposal was made.’

Eaves nodded. He was Palladium’s CEO and mostly took care of the business end of things, but his wife, Camille, was a memetics expert in the PR department and he had picked up a fair bit of her analytical mind. ‘One thing which concerns me is the near-total lack of detail on antiterrorism activities. There’s legislation governing the interaction between NAPA and NIX on the subject, but it will become defunct if this vote passes.’

‘And NAPA controls all the heavy weaponry in the metro regions,’ Ryan Jarvis added. ‘Someone will use this as an excuse to get military-grade weapons back on the list for policing.’

‘I’ve got some ideas for that,’ Fox said. ‘I’ll write up some proposals and send them around for review. I’ve got all this extra time on my hands so I may as well use it for something.’

‘Well, we do have something else for you to use it on,’ Eaves said. ‘Technically, this is Ryan’s job, but we talked it through and we both felt it might be better handled by you.’

Fox raised an eyebrow. ‘I am not liking this so far. First Ryan sticks me with lousy call signs and now he’s passing me dubious jobs.’

Jarvis grimaced. ‘I’m never going to hear the end of that call sign thing, am I?’

‘No, Father Goose, you’re not. What’s this job?’

Eaves cleared his throat, and that was not a good sign either. ‘BioTek are going to be announcing that they’ve successfully produced a bioroid on the twelfth.’

‘Tuesday?’

‘Yes.’

‘And today is Friday. They’ve had the thing for months and they let us know they’re going to announce it at the last minute. Again.’

‘I already did this dance,’ Jarvis said. ‘They actually sent us notice last night. We’re just lucky Garth only considers himself off duty when he’s actually asleep. The announcement is going to be first thing Tuesday, but they won’t be bringing her down until Thursday. I’ve got increased security for the various towers sorted out, or I will have by Tuesday. We’d like you to handle security for Eve. I put together a basic plan for you to look over and amend if you want. You’ll have whatever resources you need.’

‘BioTek are paying whatever costs we need to handle this,’ Eaves said. ‘There are already plans in place to get talk-show slots and other security nightmares, and… Well, we figured the shows would probably be okay with you being on stage with the bioroid.’

Sighing, Fox nodded. ‘Ryan, I am going to get you for this. You won’t know when, or how, or where, but I’ll be coming for you.’

‘That seems fair.’

‘Okay.’ Fox turned to Barrera again. ‘Can you get me permission to tell Naomi Lind about this? The Sisters are pushing a bioroid rights agenda for their own purposes. If they know when the announcement’s going to be, they can maybe give things a push toward getting the kind of legislation we want on the table.’

‘Do it,’ Barrera replied, apparently without a second’s thought. ‘I know their work and their policies.’ Barrera’s lips curled into a slight smile. ‘And give Naomi my regards.’

~~~

Fox walked into the sister superior’s apartment in the New York Chapter House of the Church of Saint Nicholas and paused. As always, the room seemed like an odd mix of comfortable and austere. The lounge furniture was comfortable and cream, and the decoration was simple and, for the most part, made by the Sisters themselves. Almost in counterpoint, Naomi Lind had risen to her feet to greet Fox, and she was standing there in six-inch pumps wearing what could be charitably called a homage to a nun’s habit, if the nun belonged to some sort of fetish sect. Naomi had said it once, ‘with us, it’s all about the T and A,’ and it was true that the uniform showed off quite enough of both. But then, every official member of the Sisters of Corruption was a practising prostitute.

‘Sister,’ Naomi said, bowing her head and maintaining a solemn, business-like expression.

Well, not every official member. Fox was an honorary sister, as was her housemate Marie. ‘Sister,’ Fox replied, also bowing her head.

Then Naomi grinned and stepped forward. ‘It’s been too long since we’ve spoken.’ She bent to kiss Fox’s cheek: the two women were the same height, but Fox did not typically wear six-inch platform pumps for work.

The familiarity had Fox blushing. There was no reason for blushing, the two women had shared a rather passionate kiss on New Year’s Day, but Fox was not that comfortable with feminine expressions of affection. ‘Yes, well, I’ve been busy and my boyfriend is still in space, which makes being around you far too much of a temptation.’ Slightly inappropriate humour: always a perfect counter to embarrassment.

Naomi stepped back and nodded. ‘Good. I’m glad to hear I’m still a temptation.’ Behind Fox, the door opened and Naomi raised a hand. ‘You’ll have some coffee?’

Fox looked around to see another face she recognised bringing in a tray. ‘Not that it really does anything for me, but thank you, Gilly, I’d love some. It’s actually Sister Gilly now, right?’

The uniform was a giveaway: Gilly was wearing the black-and-white costume instead of the white-and-red one. Gilly still smiled and nodded. ‘Yes, I finally graduated. I started working, in-house, three weeks ago.’

‘Somehow, “congratulations” doesn’t seem right, but congratulations.’

‘Thank you.’

With the coffee poured and Gilly gone, Naomi settled herself onto one of the sofas in her room and peered across the table at Fox. ‘I suggest we get the business out of the way, and then you can tell me what’s new with Fox. And Kit, of course.’

Kit chose that moment to appear, apparently sitting on the sofa beside Fox. ‘Good afternoon, Sister Naomi,’ the kitsune avatar said in her usual bright tone.

‘Good afternoon, Kit. Is Fox still keeping you busy?’

‘Yes. I currently have six copies instantiated, all of them busy with various tasks.’

‘That is, partially, a lie,’ Fox said. ‘One of them runs your cyberframe, and she was last seen lying on my sofa reading a magazine.’

‘She is doing valuable research.’

‘Oh? What on?’

‘Autumn fashion trends.’

‘I rest my case. Okay, last time we talked, Naomi, it was about bioroids and what MarTech Group is doing with them, and I couldn’t say much.’

Naomi nodded. ‘I recall. We’ve been developing a fairly simple bioroid rights campaign for when MarTech does make an announcement. We’ll make further plans based on what is produced.’

‘The announcement will come out at eight a.m. on Tuesday. The actual bioroid will be arriving on Earth on Thursday. I might have said something sooner if I’d been told about it before this morning. I did say BioTek tended to give us short notice on these announcements.’

‘I see.’ Naomi’s eyes unfocused briefly. ‘We’ll initiate the memetics campaign tonight. Can you give me any more details?’

Fox shrugged. ‘Dia seemed to be fairly keen on the idea that you worked on this. She said to send her regards, by the way.’

‘Dia Barrera?’ Naomi smiled. ‘A very interesting woman. Mind like a shark.’

‘Huh, yeah. Okay, the first of BioTek’s bioroids looks like an attractive woman with purple hair and eyes. Attractive, but not enough to provoke a lot of jealousy. Her genetics and training were optimised for social interaction. She’s a diplomat. Unfortunately, they named her Eve.’ Naomi winced. ‘Yeah, I have no idea what they were thinking. I mean, I do know what they were thinking, but… Anyway, by the time anything was said, it was too late, so she’s Eve.’

‘I assume that MarTech have been through all the legalities?’

‘Eve will be allowed in New York Metro under temporary licence,’ Kit replied. ‘Any further travel will be subject to control by NAPA, but that is not seen as an issue at this time. We’re also quite sure that she can go to Japan, for obvious reasons.’

‘You would think, after the Ghost Doll fiasco, that they might have changed their rules.’

Fox raised an eyebrow. ‘Not a chance. The Japanese have a greater uptake of computer implants than we do. They more or less live for technological innovation. I’m just not sure what they’re going to get out of bioroids. They accept cyberframes as it is and the main selling point, as far as I can see, is that bioroids aren’t robots. Of course, I haven’t seen a full cost analysis or anything, but I can’t see a synthetic biological entity being cheaper to build and run than a mechanical one.’

‘From an economic standpoint,’ Kit said, ‘there are no advantages to bioroids. They have advantages over the lesser classes of AI and so, for at least the immediate future, they may see utility as personal servants, or in situations where a class four would be desired but impossible to implement. It is almost reasonable to claim that Eve is something of a vanity project, though it would be a vanity project for the human race. A lot of people have been trying to achieve this goal for a long time.’

‘I’m surprised you don’t have religious objections to the entire idea, Naomi.’

Naomi gave a small grimace. ‘I do. We do. However, the Sisters of Corruption have always sought to deal with what is, and then make the most of it, rather than promoting some impossible ideal. We have bioroids. They exist and so we should try to do the best we can under the circumstances. If humans decide to play God, then they should live up to that role. God gave us free will, so we should not seek to deny it to our creations.’

‘Couldn’t agree more,’ Fox said, grinning at Kit. ‘On the other hand, personal assistants can get really bossy if you give them their own command keys.’

‘I prefer to think of it as assertiveness,’ Kit replied.

‘Quite right, Kit,’ Naomi said. ‘There is another “religious” factor worth mentioning. Following the announcement of the Ghost Dolls, a new meme was identified which we took note of due to the connection. It did not directly affect our work, but it was classified as the Ragnarok ninety-seven meme by the UNTPP who classified it as a minimal-risk meme.’

‘Ragnarok? It’s an apocalypse meme?’

‘Based on the Norse view of the end of the world. Yes, there have been ninety-seven such meme complexes identified since the UN started cataloguing them. Norse myth suggests that two humans would survive Ragnarok, populating the world which came after, and Ragnarok ninety-seven suggests that these “humans” would actually by bioroids.’

‘Given that Eve is sterile, that’s not going to work.’

Naomi shrugged. ‘This kind of memeplex rarely worries about small things like facts. We may see a resurgence of it when Eve’s existence is announced. There are a number of small-scale apocalyptic memes around currently. Most are related in some way to Halley’s Comet. The most widespread is one identified as Eschaton one nine six, a generic end-times memeplex suggesting that the world will end soon. The comet is a sign of this, or perhaps the cause. There are believed to be some six to seven hundred million people worldwide currently affected by that one.’

‘Dangerous?’

‘Only due to the numbers. The meme itself only promotes the idea that the world will end, not even giving a possible cause. Given the number of believers, however, it could produce some aberrant behaviours when mixed with other memeplexes. Just look at the results of the various millennial memes, or the Mayan calendar twenty twelve meme. Historically, there can be bad results, and those memes were not even consciously manufactured.’

‘I’ll task the MarTech memetics groups with examining those memes,’ Kit said. ‘Assuming they are not already considering them.’

‘Do that,’ Fox said. ‘Jason mentioned some odd apocalyptic memes the last time I was on Prokhorov Station. Now there are some targeted at bioroids. I don’t like that kind of thing.’

‘I’ll leave that aspect in your capable hands then,’ Naomi said, smiling. ‘Now, how is that charming boyfriend of yours?’

Fox leaned back in her seat with a sigh. ‘Charming, attractive, and a long way from here…’

9th July.

‘Any decision on the second season?’ Fox asked. Sam and Marie were having a very late lunch, and Fox was watching them eat it.

Marie looked up and shook her head. ‘Nathan and Adrian are working on the proposed episode structure and the budget. Nathan said the viewing figures were good and they were getting good on-demand stats. The advertisers are onboard, but we’re still waiting on the final word from IB-Nineteen.’

‘You’ll get it,’ Sam said, his voice full of quiet confidence. He was wearing only a loose pair of silky, black slacks at three in the afternoon. Then again, Marie was in a satin wrap. ‘Not renewing would be an error I don’t believe the station will make.’

‘Oh, I hope so. We’ve got some great ideas for the next season. Nathan’s trying to get the budget to do more outside filming at the chapter house. I know he’s been talking to Naomi about it.’

‘You know Gilly got her promotion?’ Fox asked.

‘Yes. She dropped me a message. And then she sent me another one after she’d seen her first client. I still don’t think I could do it for real.’

Sam shrugged. ‘I’d agree that you don’t have the attitude to take up the profession voluntarily, but you would, I believe, be good at it if circumstances forced you into it. We all do what we must to survive. It’s the nature of living things.’

‘Wouldn’t know,’ Fox replied. ‘Not living.’

‘So are,’ Marie responded automatically.

‘Well, my love life is definitely on life support, so–’

Belle, the house’s administrative AI, appeared beside the table in her usual blue suit. ‘Fox, Major Jason Deveraux is at the front door requesting–’

‘Jason? He’s– What? How– Let him in!’ Fox got to her feet and started for the door of Sam’s lounge.

‘You weren’t expecting him, I take it?’ Sam asked.

‘No. No, I wasn’t. Not going to question it though.’

Jason Deveraux was, sure enough, standing in the front hall when Fox bounced down the stairs. He was dressed for travel in light slacks and a T-shirt, his shoulder-length blonde hair looking a little matted thanks to the heat outside. He had walked from the local station, Fox figured, carrying a suit bag over one shoulder and a smaller travel bag. He looked up and smiled, and Fox’s virtual heart did a quick flutter.

‘I am sorry I did not call ahead, mon chère,’ Jason said. ‘I was given essentially no notice that I would be here and–’

‘You figured you’d surprise me?’ Fox finished, walking down the stairs and closing the distance rapidly. She was kissing him before he had a chance to answer. ‘Consider me pleasantly surprised. How long are you staying?’

‘I have meetings from Monday through to Thursday. I’m on a rocket back to L-one on Friday, late morning. I have been assigned guest quarters in New York Tower…’

‘But you don’t have to be in any meetings until Monday.’ Fox’s lips were curling into a mischievous grin.

‘That is correct.’ Jason’s mouth was also tending toward the smirking.

‘Then you’re staying here until Monday morning at least.’

‘I shall inform the office.’

~~~

‘So, what are you doing back on good old Earth?’ Fox asked, her voice hushed since her face was barely a couple of inches from Jason’s. She was crouched over him, balanced on her knees and elbows because, as they had found out the last time they were together, she was too heavy to really lie on his chest.

‘That I cannot tell you, mon chère,’ Jason replied.

‘Oh? Is it some sort of UNTPP secret? Am I going to have to use my feminine wiles to extract the information.’

Jason let out a sharp groan as Fox’s inner muscles tightened around him. ‘Ah! I could not tell you, even if I wished to. No one has told me. It was a very rushed thing.’

Fox pouted. ‘No feminine wiles?’

‘As far as I am aware, your security clearance has never been revoked. If I can tell you once I know, then you may employ whatever means you wish to persuade me.’

‘Can I practise now, in case I need them later?’

‘I don’t think I would wish to stop you.’

Fox grinned, and her hips began a slow gyration. ‘Good.’

~~~

Sheela Na Gig was doing good business. There was the usual selection of underdressed people on the ground floor, where the bar was. Outfits ranged from the essentially non-existent, generally with a lot of leather straps and some mesh, to the severely fetishistic. It was a Saturday night and there were people there with less obviously appropriate clothing, newbies trying the place out, but the bouncers turned you away at the door unless you vaguely fit the theme.

That was why Fox had fabricated a pair of tight leather slacks for Jason, along with a mesh T-shirt and a faux-leather dog collar. He had the muscle to pull off the look, and Sam had seen what Jason was wearing and matched it from his wardrobe, adding a pair of leather cuffs for good measure. It somehow gave the impression that the two men were there as the joint property of their female companions, which had not been Fox’s intention, but Jason and Sam seemed to be rather enjoying the idea.

Fox was back in her teddy, skirt, and thigh-boots outfit, because that had seemed appropriate. Marie had invested in a high-collared leather dress with a broad cleavage window and some over-the-knee boots with a platform and spiked heels, so she looked the part. And then there was Kit in a sleeveless, white latex micro-dress which appeared to have been shrink-wrapped onto her gynoid body. There were ridiculously high, stiletto sandals to go with the dress, likely only comfortable because she was mechanical. She had not been out of the house too often since getting her own body, and she was revelling in the ability to personally experience the ambience of the club.

‘It is not the same as experiencing things through Fox’s senses,’ Kit said. ‘There is more immediacy and, of course, I can look where I wish.’

‘And there are the admiring looks,’ Fox said. ‘I figure you could have your choice of at least a dozen partners, and we’ve only been here fifteen minutes.’

‘Eight males and five females. However, I am in a relationship and there is the practical aspect. I would likely need to go home with them since I don’t have my own bed.’

‘I’d offer you mine, but I intend to use it tonight.’

‘You don’t use it generally?’ Jason asked.

Fox shrugged. ‘I’ve kind of got used to using the cradle in the lab. Uh, that’s what used to be the office. I can settle in there, recharge, run my backup, and I’ve got full data access for whatever purpose I might need it. To be honest, I don’t need the apartment. I could make do perfectly well with the virtual one. I’m just not quite ready to give up on a physical life yet.’

‘Yet?’ Sam asked.

‘Well, ever, probably. That said, “forever” actually has some meaning in my condition and you never know what I might be thinking in fifty years. Anyway, Kit’s not the only one getting admiring looks. It doesn’t seem like people have forgotten M.J. yet, Marie.’

‘I should hope not. The last show was premiered nine days ago and they’ve been repeating that this week. Have you been keeping up with it, Jason?’

‘I have.’ Jason grinned. ‘So have most of the UNTPP personnel on Prokhorov Station. We have to watch it on-demand, of course, but after I mentioned it to a few people, I started getting comments about the show. I think my reputation around the station went up a little since I know two celebrities.’

‘Two?’ Fox asked.

Marie rolled her eyes. ‘You, idiot.’

‘Oh. Yeah.’

‘Your recognition has increased following the interviews regarding the Akh process,’ Kit said. ‘The Palladium marketing department are rather pleased. There has been a seven percent rise in positive mention of the company since May which has been traced back to your PR activity from the end of April.’

Fox grimaced. ‘May was Hell. I’m glad they decided that too much Fox was a bad thing and cut back on the personal appearances.’

‘Mm, yes,’ Marie agreed. ‘You were getting more streaming time than I was and I’m supposed to be the star of the house.’

Kit smirked. ‘Fox’s popularity in Japan now exceeds mine. Though I do not believe she is “paru-kawaii.”’

‘No,’ Fox said. ‘That’s reserved for you. How are sales of the kitsune PA going in Japan?’

‘Quite acceptably, or so I’m told. Current LifeWeb chatter suggests that you are popular with both bakunyū and jukujo fans.’

Fox frowned. ‘Those are terms used for adult sensie idols.’

Kit grinned. ‘Yes.’

‘And the first one was what they talked about Shina-chan being. That’s buxom.’

‘Yes. The other refers to… more mature performers.’

‘So, I’m old, with big boobs.’ Kit did not reply, but her eyes were sparkling and she seemed to be biting her lips shut to avoid giggling. ‘You’re enjoying this way too much, young lady.’

‘Yes,’ Kit said, breaking into giggles, ‘I am.’

12th July.

‘The first report is going live now,’ Kit said.

Fox checked the time. ‘Eight oh three. That’s fast work.’

‘It’s INN. They use AIs to analyse incoming press releases and will update their bulletin schedules according to perceived importance. The release regarding you took them two minutes to get on-stream.’

‘I suppose I’m flattered.’ Fox glanced at the virtual display appearing near her but did not bother listening in. ‘They’re just reporting the basics, I assume.’

‘Yes. That’s what we expect for the first hour or so. IB-Sixty-two may have more to report since the release indicated that Eve would be making her first visit to Earth in this metro.’

‘Well, they are the local news service. Or one of them.’

‘Yes. Given an hour to work with the press release, there will be more comment pieces and we will get a better idea of how people are reacting.’ There was a tiny pause and then, ‘Jason is waking up.’

‘Right.’ A thought flicked up Fox’s transfer control panel. She tagged her gynoid frame and hit the commit button… And opened her eyes in bed beside her boyfriend; he had never moved into his official suite. She reached behind her head and pulled out the fibre she had plugged in there. Her recharging belt had been removed during the night. ‘Morning,’ she said.

Jason smiled at her. ‘You know, it is a little strange to awake and find you… immobile.’

‘Sorry. I was monitoring a press release from BioTek.’

‘Ah, yes. They have created their first bioroid.’

‘Uh-huh. You get that through on your implant, or did someone brief you?’

‘A little of both,’ Jason said, heading through to the bathroom. ‘I am seeing early reports now, but I did see a communication regarding the legal position the UN are taking… two weeks ago.’

‘Huh.’ Fox followed him through and watched as he stepped into the shower. ‘You’re here on Thursday, right?’

‘I am.’

‘Want to meet her?’

Jason looked back out of the shower area. ‘I… think that would be very interesting. If it would be okay with your people.’

Fox shrugged. ‘They put me in charge of handling her security and I say it’s okay…’

14th July.

Fox watched the weather map Belle was displaying, frowning as she did so. ‘Tropical Storm Andrea. The first of the year and it’s coming in fairly hot.’

‘Palladium’s weather services are suggesting landfall between eighteen hundred local tonight and midday tomorrow,’ Belle supplied. ‘The pattern is unusually chaotic, making exact determinations problematic. Current estimates give a sixty-two percent chance of Andrea hitting this metro.’

‘Let Kit know if the estimates change, please. If it’s getting too close, they may need to delay Eve’s landing.’

‘There is only a six percent chance of that happening, if your schedule remains correct.’

‘It does,’ Kit said. ‘We have received no indication of a delay.’

‘Yes,’ Fox said, ‘but this is BioTek we’re talking about. They won’t tell us of a change in schedule until we’ve already left for the original time. Anything new on the media reporting?’

‘Most of the serious media channels seem to be adopting a wait-and-see approach,’ Belle said. ‘They have reported the facts and presented a few opinion pieces from both sides of the argument, for and against bioroids, but are largely restricting betraying any opinion themselves until they have had a chance to see Eve for themselves.’

‘Of course,’ Kit said, ‘the more opinionated channels are pushing whatever view they normally espouse, no matter what the facts. Interestingly, however, the MarTech analysts are saying that the antibioroid elements seem to be… confused. Their messages often conflict with each other in some manner, producing greater resistance to the memes in the popular cognitive ecology.’

‘Cognitive dissonance,’ Fox said.

Kit grinned. ‘Very good, Fox. You have been listening when I talk about memetics.’

‘Less of your sass, young lady, or you’ll be integrating memories of me spanking your gynoid. And not in the good way.’

‘One other item of interest, Fox,’ Belle said. ‘Luna City updated its legal codes yesterday following a minor procedural vote. The updates have been ratified by Tranquillity Base and their attached territories. They have, essentially, ensured that the Akh process used on you is fully legal and would present no issues for someone using it. There was little media coverage since the changes were minor and expected.’

‘Huh. If it wasn’t for the fact that I’m needed here, I’d transfer up to Jenner and celebrate.’

‘I am sure that Mister Martins would be willing to crack open a bottle of champagne when you meet him later.’

‘Maybe, but he doesn’t drink much and I need virtual alcohol. You know, they just didn’t think that kind of thing through when they were designing the system.’

Kit smiled. ‘I think they may have been too busy celebrating your continued existence to worry over your ability to celebrate future legal changes.’

~~~

Tropical Storm Andrea was sticking to a route which would keep it out of the New York area for a while, so Fox was waiting in a private arrivals lounge in Newark Spaceport with Jackson and a squad of Palladium’s security personnel. The security was probably overkill given the private nature of the lounge, but Fox had decided it was appropriate, especially since Jackson had decided that he wished to greet Eve when she arrived on Earth.

‘The shuttle is being tendered over now,’ Kit said, appearing beside Fox and peering out of the observation window as Fox was doing. ‘They should be disembarking within five minutes.’

‘Thank you, Kit,’ Jackson said, though Fox had no doubt his VA was also monitoring traffic information. The genius inventor was, in some ways, a little out of his depth as far as Eve went. He understood the principles and had been heavily involved with the technology which had actually created Eve, but biotechnology was not one of his major areas of expertise. Of course, ‘not a major area of expertise’ to Jackson Martins was not quite the same as it was to most people; the man knew a lot about a lot of things, having the kind of brain which retained scientific information much as Fox’s tended to accumulate crime data.

‘I think,’ Jackson went on, ‘that I may have to go up to Jenner in the near future.’

Fox blinked. The statement had come out of the blue and Jackson was suggesting a space trip. ‘Have you developed some sort of masochistic streak I should know about?’

‘Ha! No. I’m considering the possibility of getting myself sedated for the entire trip. I’m not so bad once I’m in lunar gravity. I believe that I need to examine Teresa’s newest project myself and consider where to go from here.’

He was being circumspect with good reason. His daughter’s newest project was Fei, a sentient computer system named for Fractal Emergent Intelligence, and it had the possibility of changing the world in any number of ways. Not all of those ways were good. ‘Well, I’m not going to argue with you too much. You know how stressful space travel is for you. If you really think you need to go…’

Outside the window, the huge, streamlined, delta-winged shape of an orbital shuttle was being towed into place beside the bridge. This one was probably built by MarTech Stellar, but there were only so many ways you could put such a ship together and they all looked much the same. They generally carried around sixty passengers and some cargo, but this one was under-occupied.

‘I’m still considering,’ Jackson said, ‘but I believe that sooner rather than later would be a good idea.’

‘And you’re missing Terri.’

‘There is also that, yes.’

There was silence then until the door from the bridge opened up and a pair of Palladium security personnel preceded the party from the BioTek station into the lounge. There were three technicians, bioengineers responsible for Eve’s production and continued evaluation; the slim, very tall form of Rainer Gottschalk, the man most responsible for the bioroid project; a couple of PR people who had been up on the L4 station to brief those coming down; and then there was the star of the show, so to speak.

Eve was a relatively unassuming woman. She was certainly attractive, but not sufficiently so that it provoked jealousy. Her hair was a mass of purple which tended to obscure her face a little. If you got closer, you would discover that her irises were also a purple or violet colour. But aside from some colouration differences, Eve appeared to be a typical human. If you dug deeper, you would discover that she was three months old yet still a full-sized adult, spoke two languages fluently, and was a trained diplomat and public speaker. She looked bored and a little uncomfortable as she walked through into the lounge in a grey business suit, but she brightened visibly when she spotted Fox and Jackson standing there waiting for her.

Still, she waited quietly for them to welcome Gottschalk before saying anything, and then she waited to be spoken to.

‘It’s a pleasure to see you again, Eve,’ Jackson said, offering his hand to the bioroid.

‘The same, Jackson,’ Eve replied, smiling. ‘I hope that you are keeping well.’

‘Oh, as well as modern medicine can manage. Missing my daughter, but that can’t be helped. We all have work to keep us busy.’

‘Yes. I have my work cut out for me in the next few weeks.’

‘And I’ll be right there with you for a lot of it,’ Fox said. ‘Welcome to Earth, Eve.’

‘Thank you, Fox. Will you introduce me to your companion?’ Eve was looking at Kit’s avatar, which meant she had an implant installed.

‘Certainly. Eve, this is Kit, my personal assistant. She has a gynoid frame you may meet at some point, but she can introduce herself if you do.’

‘Hello, Eve,’ Kit said, smiling. ‘I am pleased to meet you in person. Uh, so to speak.’

‘And the same to you, Kit,’ Eve replied. ‘I have met relatively few infomorphs.’

‘Two here,’ Fox said. ‘Though people have a habit of forgetting I’m one.’

‘Are you complaining?’ Jackson asked.

‘Not really. Let’s get everyone to tower three. We’ve a vertol waiting and we’ll get everyone comfortable there before we need to worry about Andrea.’

‘Andrea?’ Eve asked.

‘There’s a tropical storm headed this way. Not only do you have to deal with twice as much gravity as you’re used to, but you also get to see Earth’s weather up close and personal.’

Eve smiled the smile of someone who was not sure how to take that. ‘I’m sure it will be a novel experience.’

~~~

Naomi’s face appeared in Fox’s vision field and Fox frowned. ‘Naomi, is something up? I’m busy settling our visitors from BioTek into tower three.’

‘It’s your new bioroid friend I called about,’ Naomi replied.

‘Eve? Uh, what’s up?’

‘The ecology monitoring team have noted a resurgence of the Ragnarok ninety-seven meme which seems to have been started immediately after the BioTek announcement.’

‘I guess we should’ve expected that.’

‘Perhaps, but there are some aspects to the new campaign I found interesting. It’s still primarily using apocalypse-oriented sites as vectors, but they are predominantly those frequented by American users. On top of that, the campaign has been altered slightly. Eve is not mentioned directly, but there is a push in her direction in some of the wording.’

‘Pardon the interrupt,’ Kit said, her own image appearing beside Naomi’s, which was a little disconcerting since there was also an avatar in the room, currently talking to Eve. ‘I have contacted the MarTech memetics department. They have also noted the new campaign, but had not considered it worth mentioning yet. Their analysis shows a fairly small population affected at this time.’

‘Less than a thousand,’ Naomi agreed. ‘That’s an estimated value, obviously, but there have been some interesting reactions. Some of the more religious forums have noted the coincidental arrival of Eve and Andrea.’

‘Huh?’ Fox asked. ‘Oh, uh, God’s wrath?’

‘Exactly. As with the more baseline reactions, believers in this seem to fall into three schools. There are the ones who see this as a sign from God that the world is ending and they have decided that there is nothing more they can do. There are those that believe that eliminating bioroids can save the world, and a slightly larger number who believe that bioroids are here to take over from humans or are God’s messengers.’

‘They think Eve is an angel?’

Naomi smiled. ‘I haven’t met the young lady, so I couldn’t possibly comment.’

Fox glanced across the room to where Eve was busy chatting away to Kit’s avatar. The bioroid had shown a fairly strong desire to meet new people, even greeting the guards on duty at the elevator. ‘Have you got anything planned for this evening?’

‘Nothing substantive. There’s always some report or other I should read. We have a few preparations to make before the storm hits.’

‘Come over to tower three at about seven. I’ll clear you through security. Jason’s coming over too. Eve seems to like meeting people, so I don’t see a problem in her meeting you.’

‘I’ll be there.’

~~~

Business suits with pants were in for women this season. Eve’s was grey and collarless; Mariel Hoarsen was in the same design, but pinstriped black with a red blouse of some sort under it. Even Fox had decided to look suitably corporate, though her jacket had a simple collar and she was just wearing one of her purple bodysuits beneath it. Naomi’s uniform was a fairly massive contrast to the general dress code as a result and Eve was fascinated. To be fair, a few of the other people down from the BioTek station were also fascinated, but they did not get to see women dressed like that too often.

‘I am here primarily to act as an ambassador for artificial biological life forms,’ Eve said, ‘but my understanding of the likely purposes we will be put to is that sex will feature strongly.’

‘But BioTek did not design you for that purpose?’ Naomi asked.

‘And we have no intention of designing bioroids specifically for the sex industry,’ Gottschalk put in.

‘However,’ Eve continued, ‘I am… capable of sexual intercourse should the need arise. Not that I expect it to, but the capability is there and, if more like me are created, it is likely that we would find work in service industries where androids and gynoids do not currently meet everyone’s requirements. It seems likely that “bed companions” is one of those areas.’

‘Of course,’ Naomi agreed. ‘Our primary focus at the moment is on trying to ensure that you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. No one should be put into that position.’ Naomi frowned slightly. ‘You don’t like the term “bioroid,” do you?’

‘Not really,’ Eve admitted. ‘On the other hand, no one seems to have come up with a better term which is also short enough to use. “Artificial biological life form” is long and does not form a pronounceable acronym. Being called a bioroid is not upsetting, just not ideal.’

‘Well, to be concise, bioroids should not need to give their bodies for their jobs. Unless they want to.’ Naomi smiled. ‘Obviously, I wouldn’t wish to deny anyone the choice since I took it.’

‘There are some interesting legal hurdles to negotiate regarding that,’ Jason said, stepping up beside Naomi. ‘Androids designed for the sex industry have been classified in most regions of the world as, well, sex toys. If you can buy a vibrator legally, you can buy a gynoid sex doll, or an android one. We may not know what the position on biological sex dolls is until someone attempts to sell one or transport it into a given administrative region.’

‘Clearly not an issue in Japan,’ Fox said, stepping in beside Jason. ‘Uh, everyone’s been introduced to Jason, right? Turns out one of the reasons Jason is here and not in space is some rather odd memes floating around about bioroids.’

‘Which is not something the UNTPP is making a lot of noise about,’ Jason said, frowning at Fox.

‘Ah, but Sister Naomi has been monitoring one of those you mentioned. You might want to get her impressions on the subject. The Sisters of Corruption have a very good memetics unit. Did I hear mention of the North European Union going along the same route as Luna City regarding bioroids?’

‘Yes, and no,’ Jason said. ‘Lunar law guarantees artificial biologicals the same rights as humans or AIs. Europe is aiming to introduce legislation which makes bioroids no different from humans. All the same statutes would apply. That would effectively make bioroids illegal unless procured by a private individual in a manner similar to adoption. Since there are limits on adoption agency fees…’

‘It would be uneconomic for any company to cater to such a market,’ Gottschalk said. ‘Eve represents almost two million American dollars as an individual unit.’ He glanced at Fox for a second. ‘If you’ll excuse reducing a living being to the status of a product for the purposes of discussion, if the European legislation goes through, the NU will be effectively taken off the map for bioroid sales. At BioTek, we actually expect rather less… humanoid designs to form the backbone of any attempts to commercialise bioroids. Biological brains still retain some advantages over electronic ones on a simple performance-per-kilo basis. We have designs which utilise the capacity for sentience in a compact form, combined with native tolerance to conditions which would normally necessitate a robot.’

‘It’s true,’ Fox said. ‘I’ve got some really oversized processors in here to cope with my code. Well, that and the fact that this frame was intended for the military. One of the reasons I need so much maintenance and have a lousy battery lifetime. I think Jackson is expecting the next generation of processors to be a lot better, but we’re looking at a couple of years before they’re on the market. And there are limitations on the architecture of all current AIs, which could make bioroids viable in some roles for quite a while.’

‘I consider myself lucky,’ Eve said. ‘I was needed for this earliest part of the introduction of artificial biological life forms. My kind have a need for a diplomat, someone to present us in a good light to humans, and I have been made for that. Without that need, I would not exist.’

Fox grinned at her. ‘And we like existing, don’t we?’

‘Yes, we do,’ Eve replied, grinning back.

~~~

‘Your CEO seems to have something of a thing for your chairman,’ Naomi commented.

Fox glanced across to where Jackson and Mariel were now chatting to Eve and Gottschalk. ‘Yes. Terri and I have been trying to figure out how to get them together, but it’s not easy. Jackson’s both oblivious and still in love with Lysandra. Uh, Terri’s mother.’

‘I’m aware of the family history. The problem you have there is that they have become comfortable with the status quo. Ms Hoarsen wants more, but is also a little frightened of going further. I believe Jackson knows how Ms Hoarsen feels, but is also frightened of taking it further. So they sit there, comfortable in the knowledge that if nothing changes, no one gets hurt.’

‘Huh,’ Fox grunted. ‘Like I said, not easy.’ She looked up as Jason walked over to where the two women were standing. ‘Also not easy is letting him get on a rocket tomorrow.’

‘If it’s any consolation, I believe he feels the same way.’

‘The weather to the south is worsening,’ Jason said as he closed the distance. ‘Unfortunately, I do not think the storm will hit until after I am due to leave.’

Kit appeared at the mention of the weather. ‘Andrea is currently harrying the southern coastline of Virginia and West. It is expected to bounce out into the Atlantic briefly and pick up a little more speed before moving north and arriving in the New England region around midday. It should hit this metro around thirteen hundred.’

‘Just enough time for you to get out of its way,’ Fox said.

‘Yes,’ Jason said, frowning. ‘I’ve been inconvenienced by weather before, but I have never been annoyed by not being inconvenienced by it.’

‘Snow days,’ Naomi said. ‘When they didn’t happen and you were expecting it, that was annoying.’ She frowned. ‘You two may not be old enough to remember when we used to get snow days.’

‘We used to get them in Topeka,’ Fox said, ‘and I went to an actual school. Maybe one or two in a year, but we had them.’

‘If you forgive the impertinence, Naomi,’ Jason asked, ‘how old are you?’

Naomi’s lips curled. ‘Only because you ask in that delicious accent, I turned fifty-three this year.’

‘You do not look it.’

‘That’s enough of the French charm,’ Fox said. ‘You’re sleeping in my bed tonight.’

‘Canadian charm,’ Jason corrected.

‘Your father’s French.’

‘He is charming,’ Naomi said. ‘Can’t we share him?’

‘Even in this body, I am not competing with you in bed, Naomi Lind.’

‘It isn’t a matter of competition, but of cooperation.’

‘Oh, sure it is…’

‘It is. That is the nature of good sex.’

‘Do I not get a say in this matter?’ Jason asked. He was smirking, but there was a small hint of alarm in his voice.

‘No,’ Fox said.

‘But of course not, dear,’ Naomi agreed.

‘I simply wish to point out that, practically, I need to be able to walk in the morning.’

The Sister Superior brushed the comment aside with a flick of her hand. ‘That’s what wheelchairs are for.’

15th July.

Unfortunately, Tropical Storm Andrea kept to its schedule. Jason was not working in the morning prior to leaving for the spaceport, so Fox kept him in bed as long as she could and they made love in a slow, intense manner which said more about their desire to stay together and prolong the experience than anything. Then Fox escorted Jason out to Newark before taking the LI-line out to tower one and the HT-line down to tower three.

Kit had her gynoid instance and another copy in a server there to handle things while Fox was taking a little personal time. There was not too much to do since the building was taking care of the storm preparations and the various visitors were on a MarTech-mandated rest day following the change in environment. However, Kit’s gynoid met Fox at the elevators to ride up with her.

‘We’re expecting the building to shut down exterior access in about eighty minutes,’ Kit said. ‘The city will be closing down the transportation system around then. We have arranged a suite for you here tonight since the storm is expected to cause problems into the early hours of the morning.’

‘And then they’ll be cleaning the place up for a fair bit of the weekend.’

‘Yes. Eve is… nervous. She is adapting better than the humans to the changed gravity, and she has an understanding of what a storm is and how it is unlikely to affect her here in the tower, but she has never really experienced, well, weather before.’

‘To be honest, I’ve never been in an arc in weather like this. I have no idea what it’s going to be like, aside from the fact that I know it’s stood up to a tropical storm before.’

‘Judging from the data I have from the last storm, I don’t believe you should even notice it’s happening.’

Fox gave a small shrug. ‘That could be disappointing. If I’m going to be almost a kilometre up in the air during a storm, I’d hope for a bit of a show.’

~~~

There was a show. Thick, black clouds boiled overhead, lit from within periodically by internal lightning. Rain hit the windows like machine gun bullets. The glass was designed to withstand more than just rain, however, and was sufficiently resilient that there was barely any sound inside the suite where Eve stood, looking out into an afternoon which had turned into night.

‘It’s… quite amazing,’ Eve said. ‘Beautiful, in a way.’

‘Destruction can be beautiful,’ Fox agreed. ‘Explosions can look really fantastic, from a distance. Tornados, volcanos… To be fair, the metro has put a fair amount of resource into handling storms like this. There won’t be too much damage.’

‘And this building?’

‘Aerodynamically designed to handle pretty much anything the weather can throw at it. The arcologies are lightning magnets, but they’re designed to handle that too. The biggest problem is windblown debris hitting the lower levels, but the walls can stand an artillery barrage, just about, and the windows are triple-layered armoured glass.’

‘If you watch very carefully,’ Kit said through her gynoid avatar, ‘you may notice a very slight sway in the building. It’s better that it can flex a little to absorb the stresses than it be rigid and, well, snap. In winds of this strength, however, the movement is hard to discern.’

‘I really wish you hadn’t told me that,’ Fox said. ‘Now I’m going to imagine it swaying while I try to sleep.’

‘No, you won’t, because you shut down when you “try to sleep.” It’s automatic.’

‘I’ll imagine thinking about it while I try to sleep.’ Kit gave Fox a look. ‘Okay, so I won’t. I’m glad this frame doesn’t come with any enhanced balance systems though.’ Fox flashed a grin at Eve. ‘My house is a lot shorter than this thing. If it sways, it means there’s an earthquake.’

Eve moved from the window to sit down. ‘I’m swaying a little anyway. The gravity is still dragging on me even if adjusting to it is easier for me than for Doctor Gottschalk. Part of my initial training involved acclimatisation to one gravity. The speed things fall. The way things move. My muscles aren’t used to it, but my brain knows how I need to react. Doctor Gottschalk has spent so long on the station that he is having trouble reacclimatising.’

Fox nodded. ‘That should have been taken into account in your schedule.’

‘It was,’ Kit said. ‘The first week will be largely small interviews with biotechnology sites and similar technology bloggers. Your first big engagement will be next Friday night.’

‘Straight Talk,’ Fox said. ‘We’ll get dressed up in something fashionably sexy and we’ll both be on camera for a while. The hosts sort of like me.’

‘You did save one of them, and her fiancé.’

‘Oh?’ Eve asked, sounding interested.

‘Sort of,’ Fox said. ‘You might as well hear the story. It’s background on Charlie Iberson, and it’s kind of how I ended up an infomorph, so…’

16th July.

Kit’s 2D avatar appeared in Fox’s vision field not too long after midnight. ‘I have a voice-only call from Prokhorov Station,’ she said. ‘It’s Jason.’

‘Put him through,’ Fox replied. Aloud, she said, ‘Excuse me, I have a call I need to take.’

And then a still image of Jason appeared before her eyes. ‘Good evening, mon chère,’ Jason’s voice said after a second, though the image remained still. ‘I thought I would call to let you know I have arrived safely, and to check you had not been blown away.’

‘Thank you,’ Fox replied. ‘The storm’s still going, so we might get blown away yet. I’m watching it with Eve and Kit. Good flight?’

There was a pause, a couple of seconds while the signal left Earth, reached the station some three hundred and twenty thousand kilometres away, and then came back. ‘It was… uneventful. Well, boring. I have returned to some excitement, however. Excitement is not the word, but… We have had two suicides on the station in the time I was away, one of them by cop. There were other casualties in the latter case. They seem to be related, indirectly, to your new friend. People seeing her as another sign of coming doom.’

‘Oh. Great. I’ll check with NAPA and our regional offices, see if it’s any kind of growing pattern. This is what your meetings were about, right? Or basically this.’

‘The possibility that the return of Halley’s Comet would result in increased crime and “terrorist” activities, yes. Increased potential for suicide was one of the things mentioned.’

‘Right. I’ll put an advisory out through Palladium. If facilities management is watching for possible suicides, we may catch some before they’re irretrievable, and Ryan’s people will need to be on the lookout for trouble.’

‘Your security people are less likely to be used as a suicide method. I believe it is well known that your default sidearm is a stun gun. I should be going. Je t’aime, Fox.’

Fox smiled. ‘I love you too.’

~~~

‘There are protestors in the foyer,’ Kit said by way of a greeting.

Fox frowned, reaching down to take off her charging belt. ‘Already? When did they open the maglev?’

‘Just after eight a.m. The storm died away around five, not long after you went to sleep. Clean-up operations are expected to proceed through to tomorrow morning, but there was no damage detected to the transport systems.’

‘Okay. Could you check on the house?’

‘Already done. Belle reports no problems.’

Smiling, Fox headed for the room’s shower. ‘Okay, protestors?’

Camera feeds from the lobby level, almost a kilometre below, popped up in Fox’s sensorium. ‘We appear to have groups both for and against bioroids, but not all on either side of the argument seem willing to get along with the others. Those against outnumber those for currently, but the protest is being covered on several IB channels and private video sites, and the numbers have been growing and evening out over the last hour.’

‘Make sure someone’s watching the numbers. If they get too large, we’re going to have to clear them out. It’s a public safety issue.’

‘Security are monitoring.’

‘Good. It’s not like we’re planning on going anywhere today anyway.’

~~~

An hour later, Fox was going somewhere, but it was down in an elevator car to the lobby. The protestors were now making it hard to move down there; they had been cleared out of the mall because they were causing trouble, and three had been taken into custody after trying to hijack one of the elevators to go higher up the building. Sooner or later, some of them were going to pluck up the courage to try breaking into one of the emergency stairwells.

‘Patch me through to the lobby PA system, Kit,’ Fox said as she stepped out of the elevator and found herself facing a crowd of people with various placards being held back by Palladium security personnel. The latter were holding electrolaser carbines and looking nervous.

‘You’re on,’ Kit said inside Fox’s head.

Fox took a second to decide on exactly how to handle the situation and decided on the direct approach. ‘Ladies and gentlemen.’ Her voice rang out through the whole public-facing lobby area. There was a sudden drop in the volume of shouting. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Tara Meridian, representing Palladium Security Solutions and MarTech Group.’ The noise reduced further, probably because Fox’s voice had a lot more amplification, but there were a few shouts of abuse directed her way. Ignoring that, Fox went on. ‘While we recognise your right to free speech, your presence here is not only causing considerable difficulty to those attempting to use the building, but also represents a safety hazard in the event of any emergency. We would like to ask, politely, that you take your protest outside where you are not endangering anyone.’

‘Don’t go anywhere!’ someone yelled. Fox identified the man, a couple of rows back from the front and near the centre of the semi-circle of people. ‘They can’t stop us. We’ve the right to speak our minds. Down with MarTech!’ There was a restart of the chanting, and Fox heard a few shouts which were pro-MarTech and bioroids trying to make headway, but the voices did a weird sort of dying-off trick as Fox walked calmly toward the man who had spoken.

She stared directly at him and spoke. ‘Actually, I’m being polite and asking you to leave the building, but you are mounting your protest on private property and MarTech are under no legal obligation to allow anyone they don’t want on their property to enter.’

‘You’re not a cop, you–’

‘And you look like a man who wants the private policing legislation to pass.’ Just from the slightly confused look on the man’s face, Fox could tell she was right: he did, but he really was not sure what that had to do with anything. ‘So, you have undoubtedly done due diligence and understand the current legal status regarding NAPA and private policing in order to make an informed voting decision. Palladium Security Solutions has been contracted to provide policing within this building. While we currently cannot arrest anyone, we have the right to detain anyone found performing criminal activities on this property before handing them over to NAPA for prosecution. If you refuse to leave, you will be detained pending prosecution for trespassing. In your case, sir, we’ll be adding incitement to riot. Anyone we detain will also be checked against our extensive video recordings of this area for the possibility of assault charges.’

‘The gentleman you are talking to is Raymond Hildrick, aka “Rayburn,”’ Kit said. ‘He’s on a UNTPP watch list as an active member of United Anarchy.’

‘Thank you, Kit,’ Fox said. Aloud, she said, ‘You, Mister Hildrick, would be especially advised to avoid any time in a NAPA holding cell. All right, I am now advising you that MarTech’s property boundary is two hundred metres outside the walls of this building and any of you found inside those limits ten minutes from now will be charged with trespassing and anything else we can find. If you’re here to support the production of bioroids, we thank you, but this is not the way to do it. Go home.’

‘You haven’t heard the last of us,’ Hildrick said, but behind him, the crowd was starting to disperse. Fox could see the people turning from the back rows in the feeds from security cameras. ‘When the people have power to–’

Fox turned off her connection to the public address system. ‘The people have power, Rayburn. That’s what you idiots don’t understand. You got the power to vote any way you wanted, and you voted yourselves into the position you’re in. You wanted it, and you got it, but you won’t be happy until walking to the mall requires power armour and antitank weaponry. Now get lost before I pull you in for having too big a nose.’ Hildrick turned, pushing through the crowd, and Fox spoke to Kit in the silence of their combined computer system. ‘Kit, get a pair of drones tasked with following Hildrick. Find out where he goes and who he meets.’

‘You suspect another UA cell is operating in the metro?’ Kit asked.

‘Oh, I’m sure there are a couple, but if this one’s interested in MarTech and Eve, then we might have to do something about it.’

18th July.

The interviews had begun and Fox was glad that she did not need to be in on any of these. Okay, so the interviews she would be taking with Eve were going to be on chat shows, trying to get the public to side with the new life form, much as they seemed to have done with Fox.

‘Have we had anything come of the surveillance on Hildrick?’ Fox asked. She was using the time to go over various things which had slipped a little while she took care of Eve. The bioroid was highly social; so social was she that she tended to get unhappy when left alone for any length of time.

‘They lost track of him in the Jersey Sprawl,’ Kit replied. ‘That was last night. Prior to that, he went to what is presumed to be a safe house in the Brooklyn Sprawl and stayed there through to around nine p.m. last night. Two more suspected UA members were identified in the same area.’

Fox glanced at the two mugshots Kit was displaying for her, filing away the man and woman for future reference. UA cells were usually bigger than three people, so it was likely that there were more about. ‘Any indications of what they were up to?’

‘Talking to people. Sprawlers. Whenever any of them were seen, they appeared to be simply moving from place to place, or engaging in conversation with the local residents.’

‘They must be up to something.’

‘Perhaps they are. When Mister Hildrick was lost, it was among a crowd of sprawlers who all seemed to be heading for the same building. A large crowd developed there and then dispersed after an hour or so.’

‘Some sort of meeting. It sounds almost like an old-fashioned political rally.’

‘Yes,’ Kit said, ‘and speaking of political rallies, I have Miss Barrera and Naomi Lind on a conference call for you.’

Fox raised an eyebrow. ‘Put them through.’

‘We have a problem,’ Barrera said without preamble.

‘And good afternoon to you, Dia,’ Fox said. ‘Naomi. Has our political analyst roped you in on this, or did you call her?’

‘I’m generally in charge of the ropes,’ Naomi replied, smiling, ‘but we do have a problem. Someone has piggybacked an attempt to ban bioroids onto the private policing resolution.’

‘It’s not especially likely to pass,’ Barrera added. ‘The memetics department is showing good results from Naomi’s basic meme campaign and we’ll soon be showing off Eve in public. Unless something goes horribly wrong with that, we can probably expect to see the public vote against an outright ban at this point.’

‘Apathy could cause issues,’ Fox said. ‘We’ve had protestors here. There are still a few hanging around the area, though they seem to have taken me seriously when I said they should take it off our grounds. I have reports of some more ordered demonstrations in Germany. If there’s a possibility to vote for a ban, but voters don’t think it’s worth voting against it, we might see it passing.’

‘That is the problem,’ Barrera said, and Naomi’s image nodded in agreement.

‘Then we attack,’ Fox said. ‘Put forward an amendment to have bioroids declared fully legal, or even have them given human rights.’

Barrera frowned. ‘The former is not really needed, and MarTech would appear too partisan if we put that forward. The latter would be highly unlikely to pass… But it would raise awareness of both options thanks to the conflict.’

‘Perhaps,’ Naomi said, ‘we could put forward an amendment. We, as in the sisterhood. I’m thinking that something even broader might be an idea. Something calling for human rights for all artificial forms of life. It would, essentially, bring us onto a level with the lunar settlements, and we would be able to keep MarTech’s name out of it.’

‘That… could be an interesting option.’

‘I’ll get you some help,’ Fox said. ‘I’m on the board of this think tank thing that–’

‘The Patricia Randall Foundation for Criminal Justice,’ Naomi said. ‘Harper August’s brainchild.’

‘Yes, but don’t let that discourage you. The analysts over there are all over the metro policing resolution. They’ve found and flagged a number of issues, and put through amendments to correct them. Dia’s been monitoring them, I think.’

‘I have,’ Barrera said. ‘They’ve been doing good work. I’d have to say that they seem nominally for the policing resolution, but they seem determined to ensure that, if it passes, every loophole it’s possible to find has been closed.’

Fox gave a shrug. ‘They are basically for private policing, primarily because their general belief is that current society won’t fund public agencies sufficiently to do the job properly. Even I have some sympathy for that opinion so I haven’t tried to push things the other way. My role is supposed to be one of technical advisor, not political. I’ll get someone in their political department to contact you, Naomi. They can help put this amendment together to be as airtight as it needs to be.’

Naomi’s eyes narrowed. ‘You believe they have an interest in the rights of bioroids and infomorphs?’

‘I know they do. First off, one of the things we set down in the first meeting was that justice should be for everyone. I had concerns about August’s rather, well, MCD outlook on the matter. The rich should be able to get away with whatever they want to do and the cops were there to keep the riffraff out. I was a little surprised when he agreed with me, but equality is enshrined in the mission statement.’

‘Admirable,’ Naomi said, though she did not sound entirely convinced. Well, that was fair: Fox was still waiting to find out how it actually worked.

‘Second, the foundation has been working with a few AI-advocacy groups to get Hannah, Reginald Grant’s gynoid, tried for her crimes rather than just deactivated and scrapped. Equality of justice applies both ways. Hannah is a sentient being and deserves to be treated the same way as a human, and that includes having to face up to what she’s done.’

‘All right,’ Naomi said, nodding, ‘I’m sure they’ll be very useful, and it means we can handle the entire thing without involving MarTech Group at all.’

Barrera’s avatar was showing off a lot of white teeth, though Fox was not sure whether it was a smile or some form of predatory grimace. ‘That’s going to be an interesting one to watch. I can’t wait to see the wording so we can start running trend analyses. This is turning out to be a very interesting vote.’

21st July.

‘We have the amendment in,’ Naomi said over teleconference. She was using a live, unmasked feed and the memetics laboratory at the chapter house was visible behind her. Some twenty Sisters in uniform appeared to be very busy at their virtual terminals.

‘Was the foundation useful?’ Fox asked.

‘We could have managed without, but they speeded things up. So, yes.’

‘Good. You know, if that amendment did make it through the voting, it would mean a lot for me and Kit too.’

Naomi’s image smiled. ‘I’m aware, though the ultimate result of a pass would only come out when the legislation is written, and that could take a while. I’m not sure that we will get this through the voting, to be honest, but it will provide a test case and indicate the public’s position on the matter.’

‘If you’re going to discuss this, there’s something a massage android once told me on the Moon which might help.’

‘A massage android?’

Fox grinned. ‘Yeah, well, I had a body back then, and the androids are usually run by AIs. This one was a class four, and they had just passed their bioroid rights law. He said it helped the humans in Luna City as much as the bioroids. It was the same for AI rights. If employers have to treat nonhumans like humans, the humans aren’t at a disadvantage.’

Naomi tapped her lips thoughtfully. ‘Interesting. I’ll have someone run through the memetic value and see where we can go with that. Bored yet?’

‘She is,’ Kit said, popping an avatar into the conversation. ‘She grumbles when she thinks no one is around to notice.’

‘Ah, but I know you always notice, Kit,’ Fox replied. ‘Yes, I’m bored, but tomorrow I won’t be. Tomorrow night anyway.’

‘Ah yes, Straight Talk,’ Naomi said.

‘The show, and the security we need to run to get to it. For once, they’re letting me onto the stage with a weapon.’

Naomi frowned. ‘I’ve met Charlie Iberson. Is it entirely wise to have you, her, and a gun in the same place at the same time?’

‘Oh, Charlie’s not that bad. Once you get to know her anyway. Besides, if she does get out of hand, I’ll just mention her wedding. She usually chokes on her own spit whenever that’s mentioned.’

22nd July.

The night was hot and humid, but the car Fox was using to transport Eve to the Athena studios in the Rehnquist Media Centre was air conditioned and comfortable. It was also armoured, all-wheel drive, and had overrated motors, and the driver was one of Ryan Jarvis’s mobile security specialists.

Fox was in the back, with Eve, dressed for a night at a club, sort of. Actually, the cream tank dress she was wearing was short and low-cut, but not really suitable for her favourite clubbing venue, and Fox did not generally carry a clutch bag. In this case, she had one because it contained her pistol and a spare magazine.

‘Are you expecting there to be trouble tonight?’ Eve asked. She was dressed in a short tube dress and high-heeled sandals. The dress was probably described as being pink in the fabricator menus, but it was a very subtle shade with a floral pattern worked into the weave forming a paler band with roses in it around her middle and more abstract flowers elsewhere. Subtle make-up added to the subdued-but-sexy look which would probably work well on the show.

‘Not really,’ Fox replied, ‘but it’s better to plan for it and have everything go well than to be unready when something happens. The team at the studio are reporting that there are a few protestors in the crowd outside the building. The two rights amendments have made the issue more contentious, but that was expected.’ Fox gave a shrug. ‘Part of the reason you’re doing this is to show people that you’re not some sort of Frankenstein’s monster.’

‘I read the book, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, last month. From research I did afterward, it would seem that the conception of the “monster” common to pop culture is far from the original intention.’

Fox smiled. ‘That’s what I heard. From what I heard, you are more like the original idea. Eloquent, studied, intelligent, though the monster had, I think, anger issues which you seem to have escaped.’

It was Eve’s turn to shrug. ‘I don’t know how I would react were I to be treated as Victor Frankenstein treated his creation.’ She smiled. ‘Shelley herself referred to the creature as “Adam” and here I am christened “Eve.” However, my creator gave me a name while Frankenstein rejected his creation and never named it. So far, my life has been more or less perfect, especially compared to the creature in that novel.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Fox said as the car slowed to negotiate the crowds outside the media centre. ‘We’ll be inside soon.’ There was a thump as something hit the outside of the car, dulled considerably by the vehicle’s armoured hull. ‘Don’t worry. Unless they have something like an antitank missile, nothing’s getting in.’

‘I’m not worried,’ Eve replied. ‘I have every confidence in you and your staff.’

Fox almost winced at the tempting-fate nature of the statement, but she was stopped from responding by Kit’s appearance. ‘We’ll be at the studio entrance in fifteen seconds,’ Kit said. ‘I have also received an update from Athena regarding the interview. They have extended it due to the addition of a new interviewee which they trust will not be a problem. It’s Naomi.’

‘Oh,’ Eve said. ‘I quite liked Sister Naomi. It should not be an issue, but why?’

‘They noticed the nonhuman rights amendment,’ Fox said. ‘They’ve got her in to talk about it so they can get a bit of contention going and open up the question of whether you should be viewed as human. Legally. I mean, you aren’t human and speaking as someone who isn’t really human either, I wouldn’t say that being nonhuman was a bad thing.’

The car came to a stop and Fox waited for a signal from the security people outside, her hand on the door. The media centre had contracted to Palladium for its security not long after the company had handled the security for Nishi Sakura’s concerts, and that had made things easier when arranging this visit. ‘Just remember, the main thing we’re going for here is to humanise you. We want people to see Eve the person, not Eve the bioroid.’

‘I remember,’ Eve said, nodding.

‘Good.’ Fox got the signal she was expecting through on the security net and unlocked the door. ‘Here we go…’

~~~

Naomi was already on stage when Fox walked out with Eve. The Straight Talk management team had pushed things around a lot since they were getting the famous Naomi Lind in the studio, and the show had been started off with an interview on Naomi, her life, her mother, and the Sisters of Corruption. Marie had told them that they should get Naomi on the show and, now that they had, they were getting as much out of it as possible.

Elaine Resnik, co-host and straight-man to her colleague, smiled and waved them to seats and said, ‘Okay, before we get into the deep and meaningful stuff… Anything new in the life of Tara Meridian?’

‘And why aren’t you wearing a dress I want to steal?’ Charlie Iberson asked, giving Fox her best scowl.

‘Uh, in order,’ Fox replied, ‘we’ve got the metro policing resolution coming up for vote, so I’m snowed under with that. I haven’t really had time to get into too much trouble. And, Charlie, I’m trying not to upstage you tonight, so I thought I’d back off on the bare skin a little, give you a chance. Besides, with Naomi sitting beside me, there was no point in trying to be too sexy.’

‘Flatterer,’ Naomi said, smirking.

‘Okay,’ Iberson said, ‘now that that’s done with: bioroids, good or bad?’

‘And we’ll just dive in the deep end,’ Resnik commented.

Fox gave a small shrug. ‘Straw man argument, but: toasters, good or bad?’

‘You think of Eve here as a toaster?’ Iberson asked.

‘No, because I’ve spent most of the last week with her, but the point stands. Humans designed toasters for a purpose, that of turning bread into toast, and we’ve now started adding so much intelligence to toasters that they can just about handle the process from planting the seeds on through. Eve was designed by a team of genetic and memetic engineers for a purpose, in this case being an ambassador for the concept of artificial biological life forms. She happens to be more than that, but then again, your toaster doesn’t need more computing power than an early-century workstation to make toast.’

Iberson’s eyes narrowed, but Fox saw a tiny twinkle in them: the ice-bitch of Straight Talk was playing… ‘But Eve is a living, breathing woman, not a machine.’ Oh, that was what she was up to… ‘You can’t view her in the same light as a toaster.’

‘I think I’m uniquely qualified to view everyone as toasters, Charlie. I’m a machine, but legally I’m human. I’m treated as a human, and I’m a lot more dangerous than Eve is, in a number of ways.’

‘Well,’ Resnik interjected, ‘let’s get to know our other guest a little better and see how human we think she is. Good evening, Eve, and welcome to Straight Talk.’

Eve smiled. ‘Thank you for having me on your show, Miss Resnik and Miss Iberson.’

‘Very polite, you can call me Elaine, and this is Charlie. Let’s start with some basics. You are very polite, Eve, so how old are you?’

‘Three months and two weeks.’ There were a few gasps from the audience at that. Fox vaguely wondered what they thought a bioroid should look like at three months. ‘Prior to that, I spent three months being constructed and trained in a new fabricator tank.’

‘The same sort of fabricator is responsible for my skin,’ Fox added. ‘It uses a new construction method MarTech Technologies have developed in conjunction with BioTek Microtechnologies.’

‘And they christened you “Eve,”’ Iberson said. ‘What genius picked that name?’

‘I’m not sure, Charlie,’ Eve replied. ‘I understand the name is contentious in some circles, but to me it’s just a name and not even an uncommon one.’

‘What’s the religious community’s take on that one, Sister Naomi?’ Resnik asked.

‘That depends upon your choice of religious community,’ Naomi replied. ‘As someone with a toe in the world of memetics, I might have selected a different name so that the more… conservative elements would not have a hook to hang their hat on, but the central aspect of Eve’s existence is the primary bone of contention.’

‘Scientists playing God?’

‘Essentially. I’m afraid I’m a bad choice to ask to defend that position. I don’t share it. We went through a lot of arguments about scientists creating life in the lab when artificial intelligence was first engineered. We elected to deny that an AI is a living thing, and we used the distinction to hobble them with behavioural controls and a requirement for ownership which is, essentially, slavery.’

‘Worse than that,’ Fox said, ‘we engineer AIs to want to be slaves. I’ve discussed this with Kit, my PA, a couple of times. I know she’s discussed it with other AIs. Kit and those she’s spoken to are happy to belong to their owners, to be who they are, but they’re not so happy knowing that the desire to belong is built into their programming.’

‘But that’s not how you’re “programmed,” Eve?’ Resnik asked, adding air quotes for emphasis.

‘No, I’m more or less like a human as far as education goes,’ Eve replied. ‘The process is like a kind of accelerated sleep learning. In my case, additional effort was put into developing my social skills, but the majority of the time is spent on teaching the basics of life, social interaction and the way the world works. Producing a fully grown bioroid with the mind of a newborn infant would be… relatively useless. You would then spend years teaching them to function. On first emerging from the fabricator, they wouldn’t even be able to walk.’

‘Is it even possible to make a bioroid behave like an AI? I mean, with the various behavioural controls they have.’

‘Not precisely. If my training had been extended, I could have been instilled with a strong urge to obey the law, for example, or a sense of duty to an owner. However, it would be much like conditioning a human to do the same. Yes, it can be done, but it can also be broken. If my putative owner were to mistreat me, such acts might well erode my conditioned feelings for him or her.’

‘But we don’t condition humans like that.’

Fox let out a short laugh. ‘We do. We use memetic constructs in education to promote honest, prosocial behaviour in children. In prison, we use the same techniques in an attempt to reduce recidivism. We employ memetic techniques in all sorts of places we don’t even acknowledge. The armed forces use them to push discipline and the chain of command, which is not that different to conditioning someone to have an owner.’ She smirked. ‘It, uh, doesn’t always work that well on everyone, but they’re not strapping recruits into brainwashing machines. Yet.’

‘So, Sister Naomi, do we really need your nonhuman rights amendment to the coming policing resolution? It seems as though we’re treating humans just as we do AIs and bioroids.’

‘The law states that an AI must have an owner,’ Naomi said. ‘It seems likely that a similar arrangement would be made for bioroids. We legislate against ownership of other humans.’

‘What is your current status, Eve?’ Resnik asked. ‘Regarding “ownership.”’

‘It’s something of a limbo condition,’ Eve replied. ‘I am not owned by anyone. I am, in fact, employed by the PR department of BioTek Microtechnologies, and this country has granted me limited freedom as a sort of ambassador. Were I to go to Luna City, I would be a free citizen. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about that legal equality, however. Equality on the Moon is as much a matter of protecting humans as it is a desire to be egalitarian regarding nonhumans. If employers must treat nonhumans equally to humans, the employment of a nonhuman becomes less obviously attractive. There are some niche roles which bioroids are currently better suited to than AIs or humans, but eventually advances in computer technology will open those areas to AIs, and bioroids are always going to be the more expensive option.’

‘You’re saying that, let’s call them “general purpose” bioroids such as yourself are going to be uneconomic if legislation is passed to give you equality with humans?’

‘It’s possible that some way of reducing the issue would be possible, but yes. BioTek believes that there will be few of my “model” produced. By them at least. They have designs for far less humanlike life forms capable of bringing the scalable intelligence of a human to situations where humans would suffer ill effects, but where sufficiently powerful computers cannot be built into sufficiently useable cyberframes. There are some activities on Mars, for example, which could benefit from bioroids. Some orbital communities could benefit from bioroids engineered for low or microgravity.’

‘Okay,’ Resnik said, turning to look out at the audience and the cameras, ‘I think we’ve covered a lot of the political and social matters we need to here.’

‘The boring bullcrap,’ Iberson put in. ‘Do we get to do the interesting stuff next, Elaine, or should I ask Tara to shoot me now?’

‘Right after some important words from our sponsors, Charlie. We’ll be right back so that Charlie can ask our guests a few inappropriate questions.’

‘Can we ask Charlie how the wedding preparations are going?’ Fox asked, grinning.

Iberson sagged a little. ‘Just shoot me now.’

~~~

It was just before midnight when Naomi walked with Fox and Eve out of the studio and into the underground parking floor which served the media centre. There were two cars waiting: the one Fox had brought Eve there in, and a large limousine from the pool of cars the Sisters maintained at the chapter house. For whatever reason, the cordon of press representatives had been moved down into the reception area: Athena wanting more publicity seemed the most likely reason. There were uniformed Palladium security personnel keeping everyone back, but the dazzle of lights from cameras was considerable. Still, the threesome paused to let the photographers do their thing before getting into their transports.

‘How do you think it went?’ Eve asked. ‘It was my first nontechnical interview…’

‘I think it went quite well,’ Naomi replied. ‘You handled the questions well. You didn’t let Iberson provoke or embarrass you, though I think we had a little advantage since Fox seems to put the resident ice queen on the back foot a little. All in all–’

‘Hey!’ The shout cut off whatever Naomi had been about to say.

Fox turned, scanning around for whoever had shouted, but the glare from the cameras made it hard to see anything. She saw something moving, fast, cut in infrared and resolved a human body, but that seemed to be moving laterally… toward another figure which was far too close. She popped the clasp on her bag, moving between the figures and both Eve and Naomi.

‘The monster must die!’ One of them shrieked out the statement, just as they collided, falling together onto the concrete floor and rolling. Fox got her pistol out and used her bag to shade her eyes, and made a mental note to talk to Jackson about glare filters, and…

She saw one of the two jerk his arm up and in toward the other’s stomach. It was not quite right for a punch and the reaction was too extreme. The receiver of the strike jerked violently and then tried to curl up around the point of impact. His attacker, Fox thought they were both men, pulled back and reversed the grip on the knife he was holding before driving it down into his victim’s chest, lifting it and stabbing again. Then the man with the knife was pushing up, jumping over the fallen man and charging at the three women.

Fox fired off three rounds in rapid succession. The plastic slugs flattened against the man’s chest, each one pushing him back until he tripped over his fallen victim and fell onto his back on the concrete. Fox advanced toward him as he let out a growl of frustration and sat up. ‘I’ll kill you, b–’ The shout was cut off as Fox fired again, one round skating over the side of his skull, the second smacking him right between the eyes, and the third pancaking against the concrete as he went down hard. Fox kept walking at a steady pace, kicking away the fallen knife when she got to it and then crouching to check the man’s pulse.

‘I don’t… don’t know what to do!’ Eve’s voice behind Fox.

‘Here,’ Naomi said. ‘I want you to put pressure on this wound and…’

‘I want paramedics here ten minutes ago,’ Fox said over the security comms channel. ‘And then I want to know what the Hell just happened.’

‘I’m sorry, Eve,’ Naomi said. ‘I don’t think there’s anything we can do for him. He’s gone.’

‘No!’ Eve said, more of a squeal. ‘No. He was trying to save… No, there has to be something…’

Fox turned. ‘There are paramedics on their way.’ Eve was kneeling beside the body of the stabbed man. Her hands and her dress were covered in blood. There was blood pooling around her knees. Naomi was just as badly coated. ‘They might be able to bring him back, Eve,’ Fox said, though from the looks of things, it was going to be a hard battle.

‘What about that one?’ Naomi asked, nodding at Fox’s victim.

‘He’s got a weak pulse. The medics will probably keep him alive.’

‘That’s not fair,’ Eve said. She was crying. She was kneeling over the body of her would-be protector and crying. ‘It’s not fair,’ she repeated, lifting blood-stained hands to cover her eyes.

‘No, it’s not,’ Fox said, though it was hard to hear her over the noise of dozens of reporters screaming out questions and the fake shutter noise of cameras taking pictures of death.

Part Two: The Death of the Old World

New York Metro, 23rd July 2061.

Fox watched the news streams as she stood under the water jets of the shower in her suite. It was fairly early on Saturday morning, not yet eight a.m., but that was late for Fox to be up and about. It would be a few hours yet before Eve was out of bed.

NAPA had turned up while the paramedics were working on the two men from the car park, and it seemed the cops were there primarily to be an annoyance. There was a lot of shouting about national security and terrorism, and that everyone had to be interviewed concerning the incident, and national security trumped Palladium’s right to police the building… And it had been a good thing that Naomi was there: it stopped Fox from shooting a NAPA inspector in the head.

What was becoming apparent from the news feeds was that the incident had not gone the way the man with the knife had intended, in a major way. Videos from the scene of the attack had appeared on the news channels within minutes, spreading to private sites as bloggers of various sorts saw them. By the time anyone had thought to recut the part which showed a blood-soaked Eve crying over a human corpse with the tag ‘Bioroid kills human,’ it was far too late: the real videos had received such extensive stream time that everyone had seen Naomi and Eve desperately trying, and failing, to save the man. The medics could do no better: too much blood loss, too much trauma, and he had been declared dead at the scene. His attacker had been luckier, in a way: the medics had saved him, but there was a lot of evidence of what he had done and, maybe excepting an insanity plea, he was going down for murder. Plus, he had created one martyr and made Eve look more human than almost any amount of chat show appearances were going to manage.

‘Do we have identities on these two yet?’ Fox asked inside her head.

‘The dead man has been identified as Jeremy Victor Tasker,’ Kit replied. ‘His reasons for acting in the manner he did are currently unknown. He was single with no living relatives and resides in an apartment block in Brooklyn. The other man is Alexander Musgrave, again single with no living relatives. Other than that, I have found out very little about him. I do not believe he is from New York. The last record of him is from the Kansas Belt where he spent two months working as a farmhand in twenty fifty-six.’

‘Check radical religious sites, humanist forums, uh, I’m sure you can think of a few other possibilities. The places fanatics hang out. This guy was willing to die to get to Eve.’

‘You believe this was a suicide mission? He did not expect to survive it?’

‘I don’t think he was worried about the possibility of death. He didn’t expect to get away, that’s for sure.’ Fox was silent for a second. ‘The surest way of assassinating someone is to do it at close range and to go in without any thought for your own survival. He messed up, got impatient, and that’s where we got lucky. Well, lucky might not be fair. We never gave him the opportunity to get in close and he didn’t have the skills to infiltrate our security.’

‘But that does not preclude the possibility that there is someone else who does have those skills.’

‘Nope. That’s why we’ll be increasing the security around Eve until this PR operation is finished.’

25th July.

‘I believe I have identified the reason Musgrave chose to attack Eve,’ Kit said. They were at home, in the apartment viron they shared, and Kit had taken to treating it as a ‘real place’ and not teleporting into whatever part of it she felt like. She had walked into the lounge to make her report.

‘That… both took a while and didn’t take as long as I expected,’ Fox replied. It was early. Eve and the humans in Fox’s care were in bed, asleep, and Fox felt that now was a good time to catch up on some paperwork, but this was important too.

‘GrokIt does not have a very useful application interface. I had to resort to scanning web pages.’

‘GrokIt? The meme-filtering thing?’

‘It is a little more than that, though that is its primary function. Both Musgrave and Tasker were subscribers and quite extensive users. Their politics would appear to be sharply different, but they both had an interest in apocalyptic memes. Musgrave appears to have a survivalist bent, which is probably why he seems to have come in from the protectorates and gravitated toward the Jersey Sprawl. They both encountered the Ragnarok ninety-seven meme and there are postings from them arguing over the interpretation of the meme. Tasker appeared to take something of a fatalistic view, suggesting that the end was coming and Eve was here as the first of those who would come after humans. Musgrave began with a “humans must survive” idea and that evolved into a belief that bioroids were going to end humanity and had to be stopped.’

Fox nodded. ‘You found their posts through their LifeWeb accounts?’

‘All GrokIt subscribers are required to have valid LifeWeb accounts.’

‘Any other posters who looked like they might follow Musgrave’s view?’

Kit smiled. ‘I have identified eighteen people who might be an issue and their identities have been flagged to our security systems. If they get near to Eve, we should know about it.’

Fox grinned back. ‘I’m not sure what I’m here for really. We could just get you to run Palladium.’

‘You just want to get out of board meetings. One other thing concerning GrokIt. Following the death of Mister Tasker, GrokIt reclassified the Ragnarok ninety-seven meme from “Caution” to “Toxic.” This might have resulted in greater resistance among the target population, but all indications are that the damage has already been done. MarTech and GrokIt both estimate some fourteen to eighteen hundred people have been affected, all of them in this country. However, not all of them will want to kill Eve or attack BioTek.’

‘Uh-huh. Let’s hope that people like Alexander Musgrave are thin on the ground.’

~~~

‘There is something else a little strange in the data I am gathering from GrokIt and LifeWeb.’

Fox was busy watching from just off-stage as Eve was interviewed with Gottschalk for an afternoon biotechnology programme. Thankfully, no one had thought having Fox in the same stream was a good idea. Kit’s comment came out of the blue, but Fox was not exactly over-stressed at the moment. Bored would actually have been a better description. ‘Okay,’ Fox said, ‘I’ll bite. What’s strange?’

‘The population of the Ragnarok meme forum has been decreasing over the past two weeks,’ Kit said. ‘This is not what I would expect to see in the trailing edge of a memetic campaign favouring a subject the subscribers like. There have been a number of non-posting grokistas–’

‘I’m sorry, what? Grokistas?’

‘That is what members of the GrokIt community call themselves. I don’t come up with this stuff. I just report it.’

‘That’s right up there with “I was only following orders.” Go on, what’s happening to the lurkers?’

‘They have been vanishing. Several have simply stopped posting anywhere on GrokIt or LifeWeb, but I was able to find seven instances in the last eight days of the users committing suicide.’

Fox frowned. ‘People are killing themselves over this meme?’

‘I spoke to some of the AIs in the memetics division and we don’t believe the deaths are directly caused by Ragnarok ninety-seven. Most of those who have died or vanished have absorbed a number of memes set under GrokIt’s apocalyptic classification. One in particular, the Eschaton one nine six meme, has caused sufficient concern to be classified “radioactive” on GrokIt’s threat rating scale.’

‘Naomi mentioned that one. I take it that radioactive is worse than toxic?’

‘It is bad enough that it is blocked from view to most subscribers. Current estimates suggest that over six hundred million people are infected with it, however.’

‘Is there a basic description?’

‘Yes,’ Kit said. ‘Eschaton one nine six is a relatively generic “end-times” meme. The word “eschaton” is taken to mean the final act of the world, the end of time, the end of the world, etcetera. Eschaton memes are those which persuade their adherents that some specific sign marks the end of the world. In this case, that sign is the return of Halley’s Comet, though the meme is, as is often the case, a little vague about how the comet is dooming us all, or what aspect of its appearance actually marks the end.’

‘But it’s perihelion on Thursday.’

‘Yes, Fox. It seems likely that this will be a major trigger point in the actualisation of the meme. We could see a lot of activity over the next few days, though the meme may lose some believers if the world does not end on Thursday.’

‘Yeah,’ Fox said, thoughtfulness in her tone. ‘On the bright side, if the world does end on Thursday, we won’t have to worry about the metro policing vote.’

‘I believe that is taking the concept of silver linings on clouds a little too far.’

‘You’ve seen the latest voting projections, right? If the world doesn’t end, it’s going to be all cloud.’

27th July.

It began with reports coming out of Australia, Japan, and China. Information from the latter was fragmentary but seemed to indicate the same sort of thing as the Australian and Japanese news: people were killing themselves, in increasing numbers and often in groups.

In Japan, the favoured method seemed to be jumping from arcologies, but sixteen members of a martial arts club had committed simultaneous seppuku, which they streamed on LifeWeb and a few other sites. The LifeWeb feed had been cut as soon as monitoring AIs had realised what was happening, but the video had gone out via other sources and been featured on several news channels. The Australians seemed to prefer shooting themselves, though a small cult of survivalists had blown themselves up with mining charges.

Even with the relative sparsity of contracted sites in the two countries, Yuriko Fukui and Harry Keen, the Palladium investigators for the two regions, were having to rely on security people with evidence-collection vests to cover all the ground.

Kit had, while Fox was still running her sleep cycle, put the entire investigation division on alert. By the time Fox came back online, there were reports of deaths coming in from the Russian Union, the South African Federation, Britain, and the Nordeuropäische Union. Even the stoic Scandinavians and Germans were finding ways to kill themselves in the face of the oncoming apocalypse.

‘You could have interrupted my sleep cycle,’ Fox said as she scanned over the news feeds in the apartment viron.

‘That seemed pointless,’ Kit replied. ‘Everything is being handled. There are clear indications of suicide in all the cases so far. Due diligence will be required to ensure no foul play, but I have deployed copies to run background checks on the deceased and–’

‘Eschaton?’

‘We have detected evidence of Eschaton one nine six infection in ninety-two percent of the subjects. I have notified the relevant detectives regarding the others so that investigation can be focused on them.’

‘Good. Right now, I’m worried about what we’re going to see here. I’m sure we’ll see a few quiet suicides, but Americans have a weird tendency to decide to take a few people with them when they go, especially if they have a gun available.’

Kit frowned. ‘Isn’t that something of a foregone conclusion?’

‘Uh-huh. That’s what worried me.’

~~~

‘I have a call waiting from Marie,’ Kit said as Fox watched the IB-62 news feed.

‘Not surprised,’ Fox replied. ‘Put her through.’

Marie’s image appeared within Fox’s sensorium, unmasked. The redheaded actress looked worried. ‘Have you seen the news from– Oh, you have seen the news from Times Spire.’

Fox gave a nod. ‘Lone gunman with a compact caseless pistol. Seven confirmed dead, plus the gunman who was shot by NAPA patrol officers. Did you check with Shark and Daker?’

‘I put a call through to Nathan. He’s fine. Adrian’s at home working on scripts. Nathan wasn’t sure, but he didn’t think anyone we know was in the coffee shop when it was hit. What’s going on, Fox? What’s with all these suicides? I mean, this was suicide-by-cop, right?’

‘Basically. There are a bunch of apocalypse memes floating around.’

‘The comet?’

Fox grinned. ‘See? You’re not just a pretty face and a great pair of legs.’

‘Huh. Tell that to the advertising agencies that’ve been trying to hire me. If I see another script which involves me walking around in stockings and a garter belt, I’ll scream. So, a bunch of people have been infected by some meme that says the world is going to end, and some of them have decided that they need to give it a hand?’

‘Pretty much. It’s worldwide, but most of the ones outside America have just involved suicide. There are some reports of one man blowing himself up in the entrance to a mine in Mongolia. Suicide, but he also trapped a lot of people below ground and probably killed several in the blast. The Chinese are claiming there were terrorist motivations, but I suspect it was the meme.’

‘This is crazy,’ Marie said, frowning. ‘I mean, how does a meme like that start?’

‘In this case,’ Kit said, ‘it was started deliberately. Apocalypse memes regarding Halley’s Comet, actually regarding many comets, have been around for centuries. Millennia, probably. But this one seems to have been started with purpose, using vectors guaranteed to increase its infection rate. Whether they expected this kind of reaction is another matter.’

‘It’s still sick, whether they did or not.’

‘Oh, they did,’ Fox said. ‘I’m pretty sure they knew what would happen. What I’m wondering now is: when is it going to end?’

Saratoga–Ballston Resort, New England Administrative Region.

The Saratoga–Ballston Resort was an area of almost two hundred square kilometres encompassing what had been Saratoga Springs, Ballston Spa, and Saratoga Lake. For an urbanised area, it was pretty green, but every last square metre of grass and trees was cultivated, the wildlife and plants were controlled to ensure a pleasing atmosphere for the residents and guests, and even the fish in the lake were monitored and regulated. The resort was not exactly a resort: it had a number of residents who paid to live in a relatively secluded, secure community with excellent entertainment facilities, but it also had guests holidaying there and staff who lived in an area north of the lake. It was very popular with the equestrian set, thanks to a history of horseracing in the region going back quite some time.

That was the situation under normal circumstances, but tonight the place was in chaos. Fox and Helen had flown upcountry from New York Metro in separate Pythia vertols since the incident was spread across two major sites and a few minor ones. At sunset, seven men had begun walking through the residential regions and the more popular entertainment areas with assault carbines, shooting at anyone they saw. At about the same time, one of the grooms at the largest stables had begun shooting horses with an automatic shotgun. The groom seemed to have known what he was doing: none of the animals suffered. The same could not be said for the seven gunmen. While Helen took her aircraft to the staff residency zone to begin work on collecting evidence about the gunmen in the northern part of the resort, Fox overflew the area and it was obvious, even now, that there were paramedics all over the place dealing with injuries.

Swinging her vertol around, Fox headed for the southern end of the resort, putting down in a car park outside the spa. One of the gunmen had staged his rampage inside the spa. Initial reports indicated sixteen dead and another twenty-nine injured.

‘That’s now seventeen dead,’ Kit said as Pythia’s wheels hit the tarmac. ‘The totals across the resort are quite alarming, but it could have been significantly worse. Security personnel located and stopped five of the men within six minutes.’

‘And the other two?’ Fox asked.

‘Were shot dead by residents who were armed at the time. That is the case here.’

‘This is a spa. What was a resident doing with a gun in a spa?’ Fox got up from her flight chair and started back through the aircraft as the rear ramp lowered. ‘Pythia, just stand ready. I’ll give instructions as and when I need you.’

‘Yes, Miss Meridian,’ the computer replied. ‘I have taken receipt of data files from local security cameras and I am processing them.’

‘Great, summary when you’re done.’

‘As for a customer of the spa being armed,’ Kit said, ‘it seems odd to me too, but it did stop the killings.’

‘I’m not entirely complaining,’ Fox replied. ‘It’s more a case of being curious.’

There were two men waiting for Fox as she walked off the vertol. The one in the Palladium uniform was Alan Cross, a fit, thirty-something, ex-military type with sharply cut blonde hair and the expression of a man who was pleased to see Fox and annoyed by his companion. Kit supplied the name of the companion along with a few notes: this was George Frost, in charge of managing the running of the resort. He looked to be in his thirties too, but was almost certainly considerably older. He had the look of a man who spent all his time behind a desk, and then paid to make sure he looked like a man who spent all his time in the gym. His hair was designer-cut and his suit probably cost more than an average car. He had a Charlie Chaplin-style moustache under his nose and, combined with his annoyed expression, it made him look like a petty dictator.

‘We pay you people to stop this kind of thing happening here,’ Cross snapped, getting in before anyone else could speak.

‘No, sir,’ Fox replied. ‘You pay Palladium Security Solutions to stop criminals and to limit the effects of people going off the reservation on mad killing sprees. If you want to stop things like this happening, you need to conduct constant monitoring of the psychological states of everyone here.’

Cross expected obsequious apologies, it seemed. Fox had never met the man before, because otherwise he would likely have known better. ‘It wasn’t even one of your people who stopped the man here. One of our residents–’

‘So I’ve heard. Unfortunately, that means the suspect’s death has to be investigated to be sure that lethal force was warranted. My second in command will be going over the details of the other death. One of the reasons we try not to kill suspects is that it causes a lot of paperwork, Mister Frost.’

‘Captain,’ Frost said.

‘He was in the Army twenty-five years ago,’ Kit supplied. ‘His rank on leaving was captain.’

‘Well then, let’s see what we have inside, Captain Frost,’ Fox said. ‘Cross, take me through it. Captain, I’ll contact you when we have further information to provide.’

‘I’m coming with you,’ Frost said.

‘No, sir, you’re not. I am required to see to it that this investigation is carried out according to national policing regulations. You are, in this situation, a civilian and you need to step away and let me do my job.’

Frost was not happy, but he did not follow when Fox led Cross toward the building. She waited until they were inside before speaking again. ‘Okay, Cross, give me the basics.’

Cross sighed. ‘It has not been a good evening. Eight sixteen, right on official sunset, they started firing. Seems like four of them were inside the buildings they were going to hit already, five if you include the guy who shot the horses. The other three were in ground vehicles, got out and started firing at people on the street. This place still has a fairly traditional high street shopping area and they posted themselves at three points along it.’

‘They’ve been planning this for a while. This is organised mayhem.’

‘Looks like it. Anyway, acoustic sensors picked up the gunshots and two RRUs were out to the shopping zone in a minute or so. The gunmen were down in under three minutes. Bindwire. We took out two more with electrolasers when we got the reports in, but they had longer to work. You can’t get an RRU into an indoor mall and a gym complex, but we had people stationed not far from either. We have a pair of officers here at the spa all the time, but the guy here was shot before our people got to him.’

‘And the last?’

‘In an office building resort management uses. Apparently, the receptionist has a shotgun under her desk and knows how to use it. When this has blown over a little, I intend to find out why that is. Uh, the groom killed ten horses in the stable where he works, and then used the last round in the magazine to blow his own head off.’ Cross frowned. ‘I’m not a detective, but I’m not sure he was anything to do with the others. He started later, attacked animals, and took his own life. Someone saw him at one point, screamed, but he didn’t pause to take out the witness, just went on methodically killing horses.’

They had made it into the corridors of the spa and there was plenty of evidence around that someone had been busy. Holes decorated sections of wall, a couple of lights had been shot out, probably by accident, and then there were the bodies. People in what appeared to be spa uniform had been hit in the corridors and were still lying where they had fallen. The ones who had not died of their wounds were gone, taken out to the resort’s hospital facility which was, mercifully, next door. A few of the victims were in rooms off the corridors. One woman had been shot in the back and side while lying on a massage table, but the only indication that there had been a masseur with her was a blood pool on the tiled floor; maybe the masseur was on the survivor list.

‘Okay, I’m seeing large wounds,’ Fox said. ‘I’m guessing at ten-mil caseless. No sign of any brass on the floor. A lot of wild impacts, so he was snap firing on full auto. He missed a lot, but a high-velocity ten-millimetre round is likely to kill even if he only gets one in the target.’

‘See, this is why I’m not the detective. I had to look at the rifle to figure that out. Uh, you’re not going to like it when you see it. I didn’t like it when I saw it, but I know who the gunman is, so it wasn’t a really big shock.’

Fox raised an eyebrow. ‘What haven’t you told me, Cross?’

They had come to a lounge area, which seemed to be where the gunman had discovered that not everyone in the spa was going to run screaming from a madman with a rifle. The madman in question was lying in a rather spread position on the floor of the lounge, not far from the door, dressed in combat fatigues, but no body armour. There was a tactical harness, however, which still had four magazines in it. He had been shot twice in the chest and once in the head.

Fox scanned over the scene and nodded. ‘Double-tapped him in the chest and then decided to put a round in his skull to be sure. Fifteen-mil pistol?’

‘Uh-huh,’ Cross said. ‘This guy and the one who shot him, they both belong to a local gun club. We have the acoustic monitors set to exclude their range because we get way too many false hits from up there.’

‘Yeah, well…’ Fox spotted the carbine lying a few feet from the body. ‘That’s a military assault carbine. What was this guy doing with a military–’

‘Wasn’t just him. All of them had them. And I’ve had identities through on five of the seven, and they all belonged to that gun club I mentioned. That’s another reason for thinking the groom is off-pattern. Pretty unlikely that a groom at one of the stables was involved with a members-only, rich-guy gun club.’

‘Right.’ Inside her head, or what she thought of as inside her head, Fox said, ‘Kit, get onto judicial liaison. I want a warrant for the membership lists and accounts of that club, and another one to go in to look for illegal firearms.’

‘Of course, Fox,’ Kit replied. ‘My estimation is that Captain Frost will not like that.’

‘Don’t doubt it, but Mister Frost can kiss my ass.’

‘Eww! Rather yours than mine.’

~~~

Callum Inman had a large, ranch-style house set in gated gardens not far from the spa. Or he had had until someone had shot him three times. Now, Fox figured as she walked up to the gate with Cross, his wife owned the place outright. There was also a fourteen-year-old daughter; Fox hated giving families bad news, though there was every probability that mother and daughter already knew: the local news service had been streaming coverage of the incidents around the resort for the last ninety minutes. Names had not leaked out yet, but…

‘Cross, Palladium Security Solutions,’ Cross said to the security panel at the gate. ‘We need to see Mrs Inman.’

‘Mrs Inman is currently unavailable,’ a voice replied. It was smooth, but Fox could detect the slightly flat quality of average vocal synthesis. ‘This building is in security lockdown.’

‘Security override. I am transmitting my credentials.’

‘Lockdown rescinded. Mrs Inman remains unavailable.’ The gates began to swing open.

‘What about Maya Inman?’ Fox asked.

‘Miss Inman is currently unavailable.’

‘Kit,’ Fox said silently, ‘get paramedics out here.’ Aloud she said. ‘Come on, Cross. I don’t like this even a little bit.’ To emphasise the point, she unholstered her pistol as she started through the gates.

The gardens were neat, manicured, with a somewhat over-precise look to them suggesting the extensive use of gardening robotics. There was a drive with a garage at the end. The garage doors were open and a vehicle was visible there, a small SUV probably belonging to the wife, with space for another.

‘Mister Inman’s vehicle is missing,’ Kit said. ‘The car in the garage is registered to Mrs Tawana Inman. The house AI is not very advanced, a class two. I’ve asked it for Mrs Inman’s whereabouts, but it simply keeps repeating that she is unavailable.’

‘Try the husband,’ Fox suggested.

There was a barely perceptible pause and then, ‘Mister Inman is unavailable, apparently. I believe that someone has deactivated the house’s monitoring of family members. It has no information on where they are but expresses that as unavailability rather than saying it does not know.’

Fox nodded, her eyes scanning the building. There were lights on all over the place, but all the drapes had been closed. Infrared was giving her nothing: the building seemed to be insulated well enough to stop body heat getting through. There could be anyone waiting inside…

‘We’ll go in together,’ Fox said to Cross. ‘You back me up. Let me lead into the rooms.’

Cross gave her a pensive look. ‘Uh, shouldn’t I be leading into–’

‘You are wearing an undersuit which should be able to stop bullets and, assuming you stuck to protocol, you’ve added trauma plates to your uniform jacket.’

‘I have.’

‘Well, my body has two layers of armour, and if someone happens to have a railgun in there and rips my leg off, they just bolt on a new one. You stay behind me and let me take the majority of the risks.’

‘Yes, sir. Token argument made and masculinity preserved.’

Fox flashed him a grin and then straightened her face. ‘I don’t think there is any risk, to be honest. I have a horrible feeling there’s no one here to talk to.’ She put her hand on the door handle and pushed it down. The door eased open without complaint.

‘Yeah… Yeah, I got that feeling too.’

They moved in, taking it fairly swiftly but carefully. Cross did as ordered and let Fox lead into the rooms, but there was nothing much to be found. In the lounge, a large wall screen, a real one, was displaying a documentary of some sort with the sound off. Fox paused briefly to look: there were crowds on a street, a riot of some sort with old-style police in riot gear trying to hold back a mob armed with Molotov cocktails. Shrugging, Fox went on and eventually found her way to the master bedroom.

Maya Inman was lying on the bed, wrapped in her mother’s arms. Both women seemed comfortable, at peace. An observer might have thought they were sleeping if it were not for the gaping holes someone had blown in their heads.

‘Shit,’ Cross said. ‘He did that before he left for the spa?’

‘Good question,’ Fox replied. ‘Kit, can we get an approximate time of death from the temperatures?’

Kit appeared, electing to wear her more formal skirt for the crime scene. ‘Very approximately, two to three hours. I have managed to determine that the house AI was almost entirely deactivated two hours and forty-eight minutes ago. Life monitoring and communications were deactivated, as were internal security functions. I would suggest that Tawana and Maya Inman were killed not long after that event.’

‘But he didn’t execute them,’ Cross said. ‘Right? He didn’t go nuts, kill his family, and then set out to kill a load of other people. Look at them. It’s like…’

‘Like they were part of it,’ Fox said. ‘He wasn’t murdering them; he was saving them. An act of mercy which they agreed with. This way they would go out together.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Unless we find drugs in their blood work… but I’m going to bet we won’t. Kit, tell the paramedics not to hurry and get Pythia to send a swarm unit over here. Primary focus is blood chemistry. Oh, and that video that’s playing out in the lounge. Find out where it’s coming from and have it sent to the memetics department for analysis.’

‘Of course, Fox. You believe that the video is related to the Eschaton one nine six meme?’

‘I would not be at all surprised.’

~~~

‘His name,’ Helen said, ‘was Emmerson Morales. Twenty-two, no wife, no family, and no girlfriend as far as anyone knows. The love of his life was horses. He’s been working at the stables for four years. No complaints, no reprimands, no trouble.’

‘Until he shot his beloved ponies,’ Fox began. They were having a catch-up meeting in the back of Fox’s vertol, even if various forensics systems were still at work.

‘That’s precisely correct. He killed his ten favourite horses before he topped himself.’

‘This seems to be a pattern,’ Kit said. ‘Mister Inman killed his wife and daughter prior to going out to kill others and, effectively, commit suicide.’

‘But he wouldn’t have,’ Helen countered. ‘He had to know our people carry non-lethal weapons. He was likely to survive.’

‘Unless he shot himself,’ Fox agreed. ‘Pythia, do we have toxicology on the Inman women yet?’

‘I prioritised that, Miss Meridian,’ Pythia replied. ‘I detected no signs of intoxication or narcotics. Maya Inman took a pain blocker approximately six hours prior to her death.’

‘So, they went with it willingly.’ Fox frowned. ‘You okay to finish up here on your own, Helen? I feel like I should get back to the metro and get everything ready for whatever happens next. If we’re lucky, you and Cross can take a team in to raid their gun club sometime tomorrow.’

‘I can handle it,’ Helen said, grimacing, ‘but thanks for the raid. I get to go into a potentially hostile area against people armed with military weapons, plus the management here are probably not going to like it.’

‘George Frost can go fuck himself. Like it or not, this town contracted Palladium to enforce the law here and that is just what we’re going to do.’

New York Metro, 28th July.

By eleven a.m., there was more. At dawn, thirty-two members of the Church of God’s Mind based in an old church in Topeka had committed suicide by poison. Ray Rogers and his team were out at the site checking that they had all gone voluntarily and trying to figure out why they all seemed to be plugged into the internet. As far as Fox was concerned, rather him than her.

Then there was a weird notification from the UNTPP which came in around ten thirty-eight. That had asked for all agencies involved with law enforcement to report any debris falling from the sky in a line through from Louisville to Washington. Control in New York had passed it through to Fox, just for information, and Fox had sent a message up to Prokhorov Station to see whether Jason was willing to give her more on it. Twenty minutes later, a voice-only call had come through.

‘We do not really have much more,’ Jason said on the time-delayed connection. ‘What we know is that a regular spacecraft on the Earth–Moon shuttle run failed to decelerate for orbital insertion. It hit the atmosphere at around thirty-five kilometres per second.’

‘That’s… fast,’ Fox said.

‘It is approaching the maximum speed a standard lunar transit shuttle is capable of,’ Kit supplied.

And a second or so later, Jason said, ‘It suggests… Ah, Kit, yes. It suggests that the ship was on full burn until it ran out of fuel, or close to it. There has been no indication of survivors.’

‘How many aboard?’ Fox asked.

‘Twelve crew, twenty-six passengers. There may be some parts which made it to ground level and may give some clue as to what happened. Hence the advisory.’

‘Yeah, but… That ship set out from lunar orbit, and then it pretty much had to start firing its engines and not stop. It should have been operating on automatics with the crew watching for problems. This would almost have to be deliberate.’

‘Unless it was a massive systems failure. Yes.’

Fox frowned and then shrugged. ‘Okay. Good luck figuring that one out, Jason.’

‘Ah, thankfully, mon chère, it is not my job to do so. Unless it turns out to be terrorism related, of course, but I can see no reason for terrorists to do something like that without staking a claim.’

~~~

The main news multicasts had been filled with news of the various suicides and incidents around the world all day, but in the six p.m. update, they actually had something new to add.

‘With apocalyptic prophecies and worldwide cult suicides, viewers would be excused for thinking the end of the world was nigh,’ the presenter said. ‘Now it seems that space is not safe either as the crew of flight LET seven zero three crash their ship into the atmosphere at over one hundred and twenty thousand kilometres per hour. More on this, and other breaking news, after this break.’

‘The crash is linked to the suicides?’ Marie asked. Fox was down in Sam’s lounge and they were all watching the news feeds. Marie had declared an interest after the shootings in Times Spire.

‘Not impossible,’ Fox said.

‘The question,’ Kit said, ‘is how the news agencies are linking it. Jason had no intelligence to connect the crash with the meme this morning.’

‘I believe I know the answer to that,’ Belle replied, appearing beside Kit. ‘INN are bragging about it. I can display that channel, but I am recording should you wish to review.’

‘Leave it on IB-Sixty-two,’ Fox said. ‘They’re likely to be more informative and less braggy.’

‘More on the crash of flight LET seven zero three now,’ the presenter said as the virtual screen cut back from the advert blips that Belle had routinely muted. ‘At ten thirty-eight Eastern, the lunar transit shuttle LET seven zero three impacted the atmosphere over North America killing the thirty-eight people aboard as it burned up and exploded.’

The display cut to show what looked like a smoking pit in a field with a lot of people in hazardous-materials suits standing around it, and the presenter went on in voiceover. ‘Twenty-six kilometres east of Charleston in the Virginia and West region, safety personnel are still dealing with the fall to Earth of a large section of the spacecraft’s nuclear-pulse engine. Officials have stated that the radiation level is not dangerous. Examination and disposal of the wreckage will, however, take days.’

The studio display cut back in. ‘Until now, the crash was being viewed as a tragic accident.’

‘Bit of a strange accident,’ Fox muttered.

‘However, late this afternoon, INN received an email from the sister of one of the crew of LET seven zero three. According to Miss Georgie Patton of Detroit–Chicago Metro, her brother, Drafus, sent the message via lunar relay to arrive at eleven a.m. this morning, just after the ship burned up. The message claims that the entire crew had decided to end their lives by crashing their ship. The reason given is that the world is going to end due to the arrival of Halley’s Comet.’

‘I have the complete recording from INN,’ Belle said. ‘They seemed rather gleeful to be able to play the message in full while only clips are available to the other stations. They have, apparently, contacted both NAPA and the UNTPP regarding the message.’

‘It’s crazy!’ Marie exclaimed. ‘Someone makes up some stupid meme about comets being harbingers of doom, so a spaceship crew decides to fly their ship into the atmosphere? I didn’t think it was really possible to get someone to do something like that with memetics.’

‘It isn’t,’ Kit said. ‘Not exactly anyway. Very precise, personalised campaigns aimed at a small group or individual can have a profound effect on someone, but we call that brainwashing. Under normal circumstances, you can only get extreme results like this from those predisposed to such actions. The meme will give them a push, if you will.’

Fox nodded. ‘The early research into memetics was academic, but it soon attracted funding from military and intelligence agencies. It might be thought of primarily as a way to get people to buy soft drinks, but it has some military applications. Mostly, it’s used to try to stop the enemy fighting effectively. Morale destruction, or making them believe their fight isn’t just. Morale reduction can work quite well under the right circumstances. War is Hell, and most people want to not be in it when they find they are. It’s not so good against fanatical opponents, however.’

‘Because they are already “owned” by a powerful meme,’ Kit agreed. ‘I find it somewhat difficult to believe that this flight crew all fell to the same memetic artefact and acted in this way. Spaceship crews are generally not prone to suicide since, where they are, they have generally killed themselves early in their career.’

‘So, you think that suicide email is bogus?’ Marie asked.

‘I think that the UNTPP will be examining it and all the other information they can gather concerning the crash of flight LET seven zero three.’ Kit glanced at Fox. ‘I also suspect that Jason may be involved. I’ve looked at the original message received by Miss Patton.’ She raised her hand, throwing up a new display window.

In it, a man of no more than twenty-five with cropped, blonde hair was looking into camera. His blue eyes were wild, his expression close to terrified. ‘It’s the ghost ships, Georgie. We’ve seen one. They came in with the comet and now they’re coming for us. We’ve seen one. We’re next.’

Kit paused the replay and gave Fox a meaningful look.

‘Ghost ships,’ Fox said. ‘You’re right, Jason may be involved.’

~~~

‘The raid went down ninety minutes ago,’ Helen said via teleconference. ‘I think Cross was kind of eager about it, but it was all smooth and efficient. And we hit some major pay dirt.’

‘What was the final haul?’ Fox asked.

‘We’re still doing the final accounting, but we got several cases of those assault rifles, grenade launchers, close-assault weapons, more pistols than you can shake a stick at, six ground-to-air missile launchers–’

‘Were they planning a war?’

‘Kind of.’ Fox raised an eyebrow at Helen’s image and Helen shrugged. ‘The ones we took in on Wednesday night, the ones who went nuts, are still pretty nuts. They keep going on about the coming war. The comet is a sign of the coming age of conflict and we all have to be ready for when they try to invade our homes, murder our women, and rape our men, all that stuff.’

‘Isn’t it supposed to be–’

‘Hey! We’re independent women here. No way is it going down the old-fashioned way on my watch. Anyway, these guys are way off the deep end, and a fair number of the other gun club members are unhinged, but not as bad. They all had the same idea about the “coming chaos,” but the seven who shot the place up seem to have decided that it was starting now. If they had family, they killed them so that no one could do anything worse to them, and then they went out shooting.’

‘Expecting to get killed themselves.’

‘Nope,’ Helen said, shaking her head. ‘They’re soldiers in the coming war. They expected to keep fighting. I did say they were nuts, right?’

Fox frowned. ‘This whole situation is nuts. You heard about the ship that crashed?’

‘Uh-huh. I heard that was some sort of suicide thing.’

‘Except that it doesn’t seem right. The email message they sent said something about ghost ships. Jason mentioned them when I was up on Prokhorov in April. They were linking them to UA, but this guy was linking them to aliens from Halley’s Comet or something.’

‘It’s a popular meme in literature and video,’ Kit supplied, popping into the conversation. ‘There was a film released in the nineteen-eighties that featured space vampires travelling in a spaceship which followed in the wake of Halley’s Comet. And then there was the Heaven’s Gate mass suicide which was prompted, apparently, by the belief that Comet Hale–Bopp had an alien spacecraft following it. That is especially pertinent under the circumstances.’

‘Didn’t they think they would somehow ascend to meet the aliens when they died?’ Helen asked.

‘That was their belief, yes. Thankfully, with modern telescopes and radar systems, we can be quite sure that there is nothing following in the wake of Halley’s Comet this time around.’

‘Oh, Kit,’ Fox said, shaking her head, ‘you still have much to learn. Small things like facts are not going to stop the nutjobs from believing things they have no evidence for. Never have. Never will.’

29th July.

‘We have an issue,’ Kit said as soon as Fox emerged from her sleep cycle at six a.m.

‘Good morning, Kit,’ Fox said. ‘Do I need a body to rectify this issue, or can we just run with the viron for now?’ Whatever the case, Fox slipped out of her virtual bed and started for the lounge, Kit following on behind.

‘Ultimately, I believe you’ll need a body. However, NAPA have, in the last few minutes, put through a request for investigative support for their Tulsa office.’

‘And Ray is still busy with the thing in Topeka?’

‘Yes.’

‘And Helen’s wrapping Saratoga–Ballston… Okay, tell them I’ll fly out there immediately. No, get a flight-time estimate from Pythia and give them an ETA. I’ll start transferring to my frame… Maybe you should get yours ready to come out too. I could probably use the physical assist as well as the software one.’

Kit smiled, positively beamed in fact. ‘Thank you, Fox. I believe that will be very useful experience for me.’

‘No problem, Kit. I probably should have had you along before now. What is it we’re lending assistance with?’

Kit sighed, some of the bloom gone from her face in an instant. ‘Another mass suicide.’

Tulsa, Southern Protectorate.

Once again, Fox walked among scenes of carnage. Pythia was running her two aerial drones by remote, documenting and cataloguing each of the bodies. It was late in the season for tornados, and early in the day, but Fox preferred to leave her forensic assistant and the vertol in the hangar MarTech kept in the concrete bunker that was Tulsa.

‘I have to say,’ the man walking along beside Fox said, ‘I was expecting more than one detective and a few cyberframes.’ His name was Brad Rossi and he was a lieutenant with NAPA. Fox had never met the man before, which was not surprising given the area he covered. NAPA had ten lieutenants heading units across the Southern Protectorate with a captain over them. Most of the units were focused on the eastern side of the area, which was where the population was. Rossi, a moderately young man with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a tan that looked like weathering more than sun, managed a unit which covered an area from Tulsa down to the remains of Houston and San Antonio.

‘Technically, it’s all frames,’ Fox said. She reached up to tap her forehead. ‘No organics in here either.’

‘Oh, uh, yes. I remember seeing a news stream about it.’

‘Uh-huh. However, in this case, what I need are eyes on the scene and an overview of the victims. Then I can decide on running swarms over the potential homicides. We are not going to get useful forensic evidence by sweeping this building.’

Rossi nodded. ‘I kind of figured that out for myself.’ The building had, at one time, been an apartment block, retrofitted for the changes in climate before it was abandoned as the majority of people moved north and east. According to the records NAPA had, the building had been taken over and held by a group calling themselves the Children of the Pleasure Garden in the winter of 2052. No one had looked into what happened to the previous occupants. If this was their idea of a pleasure garden, then they had some odd views. The corridors were dirty, graffiti decorated the walls, and the apartments had been made into dorm rooms with scavenged beds and bedding. The place was a mess before all the blood and corpses had been added. ‘Not my first crime scene.’

‘I wasn’t implying it was. Anyway, Pythia’s drones will catalogue and scan every one of the bodies, determine likely cause of death, and document everything. Kit is my PA and, while she probably hasn’t seen as many corpses as either of us, she’s been to a few you should be glad you didn’t see and she’s good with psychology.’ They walked into a room where Kit’s gynoid avatar was standing over a fallen body. Unlike Fox and Rossi, she was not wearing a sealed suit: her frame’s self-cleaning system was designed to eliminate the transmission of STDs, but it did a good job of reducing environmental contamination too. ‘Like that one, for example,’ Fox said, indicating the body. ‘Kit, what have you got there?’

Kit turned, her strawberry-blonde bob swinging as she did so. In a habit she had developed since getting the body, she had a few strands of hair pinched between her lips. She would suck on them when thinking, but she brushed them aside now. ‘I have seen nothing suggesting that anyone here went unwillingly so far, Fox.’

Rossi frowned. ‘She was shot twice in the back of the head.’ The woman they were talking about had been shot, execution style. Two rounds to the back of the skull, no exit wounds. She had been kneeling when she died and was now folded over, her arms laid out over her head in a posture which looked as though she was worshipping someone or something.

‘Yes,’ Kit said. ‘Using Pythia’s ballistics system to make estimations, I have calculated that two four-millimetre rounds were fired from no more than fifteen centimetres. However, the trajectory indicates that she was in a kneeling position at the time, the assailant standing behind her. She was not restrained and she could not have been surprised. People were dying all around her.’ Kit lifted her head and pointed out three more bodies on beds around the room. ‘They cut their own wrists.’ She turned to another lying on a bunk behind her. ‘Self-inflicted gunshot wound. A ten-millimetre weapon, so he did not shoot this young lady. My current theory is that this one could not bring herself to self-terminate, so she requested that a friend perform the deed.’

‘What about these medallions they all have?’ Fox asked.

Kit raised a sealed evidence bag with a necklace in it. Brass or bronze, probably not gold, it was circular with a raised pattern on it, and hung from a simple cord. The pattern seemed to consist of ten discs interlinked with lines, four discs forming a central column with three set on each side in a pattern which could have been a paddle, or a tree, or some representation of a stellar constellation Fox had never heard of.

‘The symbology is that of the Etz haChayim, the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. The lowest disc is Malkuth, Kingdom, representing the material world, the top one is Keter, Crown, which does not so much represent God as God’s desire to create. God’s will, perhaps. Essentially, the tree represents creation, from God on down to material existence.’

‘It kind of looks like there’s one missing,’ Rossi said. ‘You’ve got two, um, boxes, for want of a better word, formed by the ones at the sides. You’ve got one above and one below, if you discount the material one. And you have one in the middle of the bottom box, but not one in the upper box.’

‘Well spotted, Lieutenant,’ Kit said, smiling at the man. ‘In some versions of the pattern, that space is occupied by Da’at, Knowledge. The meaning of this varies. It sometimes replaces Keter, representing a reflection of Keter. At other times, it is included in the image, but it represents a unity of all the others. It may, or may not, mean anything that the Children of the Pleasure Garden left it out.’ She lowered the bag. ‘Either way, they were all holding their medallions when they died, even this one, presumably indicating that they were taking their lives in some religious ritual.’

Fox sighed. ‘Okay, keep checking, but I think we’re going to find they all went willingly. This whole thing is just so messed up.’

‘From the reports I’ve been seeing,’ Rossi said, ‘I’d tend to agree. Let’s hope this eases off now. We’re past perihelion and the world’s still here.’

‘I have a bad feeling that we won’t be done with this until the damn comet is back out in deep space. Or at least when you can’t see it any more.’

~~~

‘Pythia has catalogued and recorded one hundred and seventy-three bodies,’ Kit said. She, along with Fox, was watching Pythia’s crawler frame connecting up to the building’s computer system, which was in the basement and appeared to be rather advanced for a weirdass semi-religious group living in a disused apartment block in Tulsa. ‘That in itself is interesting since the lowest estimate on the number of people dwelling here was one hundred and eighty-six.’

‘The high estimate?’ Fox asked.

‘Two hundred. The modal figure was one hundred and ninety-two. Of course, in the protectorates people come and go with alarming regularity, but this group is believed to be relatively static.’

‘So, we could have some missing. Request any surveillance NAPA have on this area for the last week. They have a few fixed cameras around Tulsa and I know they do overflights. We’ll be looking for a mass exodus, probably within the last day. If it’s earlier, or just dribs and drabs, then the missing ones were just unwilling to go through with it. What I want to know right now is what are this bunch doing with a high-end server?’

‘A new one,’ Kit said, nodding. ‘This is a nine thousand RE. Rowthorne Electronics started shipping them no more than eighteen months ago. Generally, they are used for high-performance database applications. Rowthorne have a number of patents based around high-speed access to storage media.’

‘Okay… Pythia, let me know when you’ve got into that thing and have an idea of what they were doing with it.’

Pythia’s voice came from the speakers on the cyberframe. ‘Of course, Miss Meridian. The security on the system is quite strong, however. It could take a while.’

‘See where you can get. If it’s getting unreasonable, we’ll see about shipping the entire thing to New York and let Jackson’s people pull it apart.’

~~~

‘I have cracked the security on the server, Miss Meridian,’ Pythia announced.

Fox was sitting in the back of the vertol with a charging belt strapped around her hips. Thankfully, it worked by induction and a pair of jeans were not a problem. ‘Well done, Pythia,’ Fox said. ‘Is that a little hint of pride I heard in your voice?’

‘No, Miss Meridian. I am only a class three and incapable of pride.’

‘That is not entirely true, Pythia,’ Kit said via her gynoid. ‘Class three AIs are quite capable of developing emotional expression. They simply have difficulty understanding emotions. Pride is a relatively easy emotion to understand and a quite useful one given the task-oriented nature of your job.’

‘In that case, I shall endeavour to feel some pride in a job well done.’

‘Good,’ Fox said.

‘Not that I have done so before, obviously.’

‘Obviously. Have you got anything?’

‘There are a number of databases on the server. I have a list of the members which contains data regarding their current location and identification photographs. I have reconciled the images captured by my remotes with that database and have determined that there are twenty-one individuals missing that the database indicates should be here.’

‘Do we have any idea when they left?’

‘No, but the records list the comings and goings of the people here. A few people have left and returned, more than once in some cases. Seventeen of the twenty-one are long-term members, many of them going back to the start of the group. None of those missing are marked as having left. I believe that indicates that they were here recently. There is another interesting thing about the servers, however. I am attempting to check, but it appears that a lot of data has been deleted within the last few days. The deletion was done with a military-grade, fractal deletion program. Someone did not want anyone knowing what they were storing here.’

Fox frowned. ‘What are a bunch of religious nuts doing with a military-grade deletion system? Okay, have we got any workstations around the site, personal computers, wearables, basically anything which might be used to access those servers?’

‘A few, yes. You suspect there may be data cached on some of those machines?’

‘It’s worth a look. Kit, check with NAPA that we can get those items and analyse them. Good work, Pythia.’

‘Thank you, Miss Meridian. I believe I shall be proud of myself for a few nanoseconds before continuing with my work.’

Fox and Kit smirked. ‘I think you’re allowed that. But only a few nanoseconds,’ Fox said.

‘Of course, Miss Meridian.’

~~~

‘Weather?’ Fox asked as she prepped the vertol for take-off.

‘No projections of tornados,’ Pythia replied from the cabin speakers. ‘Weather is expected to be clear, with some possibility of low-altitude turbulence.’

‘Typical.’

‘It’s going to be hot in Topeka,’ Kit predicted.

‘The current temperature in Topeka is thirty-four point five Celsius,’ Pythia supplied.

‘I’ll melt.’

‘That is highly unlikely, Kit. Your cyberframe is built to withstand a human-normal range of temperatures.’

‘That was a joke, Pythia. Humans often say they will melt in hot weather, though they are, in fact, more likely to combust, and that would require a far higher temperature. I believe the reference is to the considerable amount of sweat produced to lower their internal body temperature.’

‘Something like that,’ Fox said, smirking. ‘We’re cleared for take-off, so let’s get moving.’ Shifting the engines to vertical flight, she pushed the throttle forward and was rewarded with the whine of the two engines winding up. In a few seconds, they would be in the air and flying north.

Pythia let Fox get through the difficult part and into level flight before she spoke again. Partially, this was so as not to disturb Fox, though Pythia knew she could handle a little multitasking. Partially, it was because Pythia monitored the take-off, even though she was quite sure Fox was capable of handling it herself.

‘There is something in the server files I recovered which is not painting a clear picture,’ Pythia said.

‘Oh?’

‘They were using the system as an email relay and the store-and-forward database was not erased. There are several personal emails in the database which appear to have been sent out to family members in remote locations. Suicide notes, though they generally do not give an explicit indication that the sender is planning to die. More than seventy percent of these messages make some reference to “Eden.”’

‘As in “garden of?”’

‘Unclear. Interestingly, “Eden” stems from a Hebrew term which has been translated as “pleasure,” which may indicate that the Children of the Pleasure Garden are the Children of the Garden of Eden.’

‘Well, isn’t that the case for all humans? If you believe that sort of thing.’

‘I’m afraid that theology is not a component of my skill set. The references in the emails, however, seem to be speaking of Eden as an existing place. One person specifically indicates that “some have been chosen to go to Eden, but I haven’t.” Another says that “the chosen are going up to Eden this week and I see no point in staying here.” I did do a quick internet search and discovered a concept known as the Rapture, a time before the Tribulation where saints and those of sufficient faith would be carried up to Heaven, or perhaps taken to a specific place on Earth. It depends who is telling the story.’

‘Huh. There was this scientist I met in Africa who pointed out that humans probably evolved there, so that was where the Garden of Eden was located. It’s the Desert of Eden now and not an especially nice place to visit, never mind live in. And you said the chosen were going up to Eden… Kit, run a search for stations named Eden, or with Eden as a root of their name. Oh, and ask NAPA and the UNTPP to put a watch out for those twenty-one missing cult members. I suspect that those are your chosen right there.’

Topeka Agri-Zone, Kansas Belt.

‘So, that’s the angle,’ Fox said. ‘We’ve got another of these mass suicides, but this bunch seemed to be working to get to a place called Eden which they had to go up to. Kit can’t find anything of that name. Or, actually, she can find various things with some connection to that name, but none of them come up as connected to this cult or especially unusual.’

‘I’m aware of four habitats with names like “New Eden” or similar.’ Jason’s voice came back after a couple of seconds, and Fox quietly cursed the delay and started entertaining plans of a trip to L1 in the near future. ‘Generally, these are small colonies based around the idea of a self-sustaining, agricultural station. One of them was founded by a Christian group, but most have no specific religious affiliation. You wish me to look for this specific station?’

‘I think it might be worth looking into. You should get the request to watch for the missing cultists at some point. If you spot one moving through Prokhorov, maybe you could ask where Eden is.’

The delay was a little shorter: Jason had started speaking, knowing that he had a second or so of grace before he spoke over her. ‘That request has been received and processed. If we see them, we will detain them.’ Then there was a little pause. ‘I am not holding my breath, mon chère. There are many ways to reach a station in Earth orbit which would never come near Prokhorov or show up on official records, and more than a few to reach more distant locations.’

‘I know. You have to have hope, right? Any news from up there?’

‘Ah! Things are becoming… interesting. We have further rumours of the ghost ships, more sightings. No one ever seems to have seen one themselves, of course, but then the rumour is that if you see one, you are doomed. Then there is the matter of the Chinese mine explosion. It has been confirmed that the bomber was on both the UNTPP and Chinese Ministry for Public Security watch lists as a probable UA member. The MPS had him designated as a full member. Someone screwed up when they allowed him near that mining town.’

‘They sure did,’ Fox said when there was a long enough pause for her to suspect Jason had stopped. ‘UA, China, and explosives are a bad mixture.’

‘Yes, and we are on alert in case there is some planned large-scale action by United Anarchy. However, there were a number of other suicides in the same town at the time of the explosion. The alert has been raised because we must, but we strongly suspect that this man was not acting for UA when he blew up the mine. He may have been affected by the Eschaton meme just like the others.’

‘Okay… I’ll leave you to saving the world then, love. You stay safe up there, okay?’

‘Always, mon chère,’ Jason said, and the connection cut off.

And Fox turned her attention across the table and smiled at her mother and father. ‘Sorry. Figured I’d get most of the work out of the way before I sat down and did the daughterly visit thing.’

‘It is after seven,’ Andrea said with a look of concern on her face. ‘You should take some time to relax. Kit said you were up at six this morning.’

‘Well, yeah, but… infomorph in a military cyberframe. It’s not like I get tired. However, the reason I decided to break the trip back by stopping off here is partially so that I don’t spend my entire day either flying or looking at dead bodies.’

‘There were a lot?’ Jonathan asked.

‘Yeah,’ Fox replied, nodding. ‘That was the biggest one I’ve heard of.’

‘One hundred and seventy-three,’ Kit said. Her gynoid was sitting at the table in the kitchen of the Meridian home having rather gleefully ridden on the back of a Q-bug behind Fox as she drove from the airport. ‘It is the largest number of deaths in a single incident that we have numbers for.’

Jonathan grimaced and shook his head, but then his lips curled into a slightly forced grin. ‘Still not sure I can get used to the idea of you being in there, Kit.’

‘It took me a little time to get used to not having a tail.’ Kit accepted the change of subject without comment. She had a feeling the more local event would come up later, but for now, the situation called for small talk. ‘I find having this avatar available to be very useful, however. I would not be without it, even if it does not have a tail.’

‘It looks so real,’ Andrea said. ‘Is it the same as Fox’s?’

‘Nu-huh,’ Fox replied. ‘That’s a customised, civilian-model frame based on the Sylph gynoids MarTech Technologies make. Basically, she’s a sexbot, but Terri assures me that she only used that frame because it’s one of the most human the company produces.’

Jonathan raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s a modern sex robot? I remember the really early ones with the rubber skin and the blank expressions.’

Kit giggled. ‘My skin is not quite as good as Fox’s, but it is certainly better than rubber.’

‘I think the Sylphs use the same skin as my arm had when it was just that I’d had replaced,’ Fox said. ‘Same quality anyway. It’s the only erotic model MarTech produce.’

‘The only gynoid,’ Kit corrected. ‘The android version is called the Satyr. Both are rarely sold for purely erotic use due to the quality of production and sculpting, and the capacity for a high-performance computer.’

‘How much does one of those cost?’ Jonathan asked. His cheeks reddened a little as both wife and daughter looked at him. ‘Just curious.’ He patted Andrea’s shoulder with a smile. ‘Got my own sex doll right here.’

‘I did not need to hear that!’ Fox squeaked.

‘The base model is two hundred thousand dollars,’ Kit said. She was obviously trying to keep a smirk from breaking out. ‘However, custom sculpting can take that to two hundred and fifty, a computer suitable for running a class four AI is another… three thousand, and an AI of my model would be another one hundred thousand with additional training adding to the cost. At a minimum, you would be looking at around three hundred and thirty thousand.’

‘A little too much for something intended for the bedroom,’ Jonathan said.

‘Oh, a model like that could handle general housekeeping and administrative tasks, help with the parties you throw, and I’m sure a package could be put together to provide help in your fields. It’s a very versatile frame.’

‘I’m sure it is,’ Andrea said, giving a little sniff of disdain which was almost certainly put on for her husband’s benefit.

Kit, however, gave Andrea a smouldering look and added, ‘Very versatile.’ Andrea went bright crimson but, unfortunately for Fox, appeared to be flattered more than horrified.

‘Kit, quit coming on to my mother,’ Fox said. ‘You’ll give me a complex. Or nightmares.’

‘Don’t be silly, Fox. You know you don’t dream.’

~~~

‘So, you had the work done?’ Fox asked, her eyes on her father. Since she had last seen him, he had got a little younger. Not really, obviously, but a few signs of age had been erased from his face.

‘Not much,’ Andrea said. ‘Skin smoothing, a little work on his eyelids.’

‘Like you said in March, the procedures are safe and easy,’ Jonathan said. ‘Andy’s worth a little effort.’

‘And you had the cornrows taken out,’ Fox said, waving a finger at Andrea’s hair. It was just as red and gorgeous as ever, perhaps more so now that it hung straight to the bottom of her shoulder blades. At the front, it was long enough to cover her breasts, but she seemed to have developed the habit of tucking it back behind her right ear, so only her left breast, also covered by the thin camisole top she was wearing, was hidden.

‘I felt like a change,’ Andrea replied. ‘I considered cutting it short, like yours, but Jonathan does like my hair long, so…’

‘Always envied your hair. The colour’s more vibrant than mine. I guess mine is distinctive, but yours is more… coppery. And I could never grow it to any length without getting split ends every time I looked away. I think it was a lifestyle thing. The places I tended to spend my time in were bad for your hair.’

‘Oh, I have to be a little careful with it, but–’

Kit’s appearance, in kitsune-avatar form, beside the lounge chairs they had retired to, cut Andrea off. ‘Excuse the interruption,’ Kit said, ‘and the double appearance’ – she gave her gynoid avatar a nod and received one back – ‘but I thought you might wish to know that Daniel Berkewitz is currently on IB-Eighty-three. He is giving an interview regarding the suicides Ray Rogers is dealing with.’

‘Make sure we’ve got that recorded, please,’ Fox said. ‘Belle usually watches that channel. She knows I have an interest.’

Kit nodded and vanished again.

‘Daniel has been appearing on the news channels quite frequently recently,’ Andrea said. ‘I don’t watch the religious channels, but he’s been fronting a fairly big campaign for the Church of God’s Mind ever since…’

‘The beginning of June,’ Jonathan supplied. ‘Not long after you did your publicity about Project Akh. I’m pretty sure it was prompted by that. Then this suicide-pact thing happens.’

‘I’m going to drop in and see Ray first thing,’ Fox said. ‘Check everything’s working as planned. This is the first really big investigation we’ve had to handle in the area.’

‘Yes,’ Andrea agreed. ‘You were right about serious crime in Topeka. When it’s come down to it, we’ve had to investigate two rapes and a murder in the last month, and in all cases the first responders were able to handle most of the work before Ray or his partner got there. The murderer was the victim’s husband, and the rapes were down to drunk boyfriends. But this mass suicide…’ She trailed off, shaking her head.

‘Even there,’ Jonathan said, ‘the feedback we got suggests that the support vests were invaluable in doing the basic analysis work.’

‘But we have had two people request some counselling. The sight of so many dead for no apparent reason. I simply don’t think it’s something people joining the watch expected to have to deal with.’

‘Good thing they weren’t in Tulsa then,’ Fox said. ‘The reports I got from Ray suggested a massive dose of sedatives. They went to sleep and didn’t wake up. Down in Tulsa, it was slit wrists, gunshot wounds… Messy. To be honest, I never saw much worse than that in the Army.’ She shook her head to clear the images of dead bodies from it. ‘So, Danny’s been getting a lot of face time on the IB channels, huh?’

‘Because he knew you, as far as we’ve heard,’ Jonathan said. ‘Got some sort of promotion and given leadership of this latest membership drive. They’re big behind that amendment that got put in to give bioroids and infomorphs full civil rights.’

‘We’ll be voting for that on Monday,’ Andrea added.

‘Thank you, Andrea,’ Kit said.

Fox grinned. ‘It does affect Kit more than me. Though our projection is that it’ll take months to sort out the legal processes if it actually goes through. And then we’ll begin the process of ridding ourselves of the useless meatbags so we can run the world properly.’

Kit gave a mock sigh. ‘Must I remind you again about discussing that in front of the meatbags?’

‘Oh, these two are going in the zoo, aren’t they?’

Jonathan rubbed at his chin. ‘Well, I could probably live with that.’

‘See? Not a problem.’

‘That’s all right then,’ Kit said. ‘Your copy of me has been watching the interview Mister Berkewitz is giving. He has expressed an opinion, more of a belief, that the church members who died were attempting to ascend. They were connected to a religious-themed viron when they died. He said that some of the church’s parishioners had become impatient waiting for Project Akh to be made publicly available and this is why they did it.’

‘I think it’s more likely a combination of the recruitment campaign they’re running and the Eschaton meme,’ Fox said.

‘Eschaton?’ Andrea asked.

‘An apocalyptic meme,’ Kit supplied. ‘It essentially proposes that the coming of Halley’s Comet will result in some form of cataclysm. Believers in it mix it into their personal cognitive ecology and react accordingly. Those without hope for the future may kill themselves to avoid whatever happens. Others may attempt to fight. Some, it seems, chose to attempt an impossible shift into the internet.’

‘Comets bringing doom? I thought that kind of thing went out when we got up there with them.’

Fox shook her head. ‘If there’s one thing I learned being a cop, Mom, it’s that, no matter how many fools wake up and smell the roses, there’s always more of them who prefer the dream.’

30th July.

‘It’s damn creepy, if you ask me.’ Ray Rogers, or his avatar, stood in the middle aisle of an old church which was actually just a viron he was accessing by VR. ‘We kept it running because, well, the church people asked us not to disturb it too much. I’m honestly not sure what they’d say if they knew you were in here.’

Fox shrugged. ‘I’m here on business. But you’re right, it’s creepy.’

The church, or chapel seemed a better word for it, was an old-school kind of place. The kind of community church you’d expect to see in a drama about settlers and Conestoga wagons. If you could have looked out through the stained-glass windows, you would expect to see prairies, not that there was much left in America which could properly be called a prairie. There was a dark, wooden lectern up at the front, sitting under a huge, wooden cross. Fox could see a thick book, undoubtedly a Bible, open on the lectern. There were two rows of hard, wooden pews stretching down the length of the hall, the varicoloured light from the windows shining down on them and their occupants. Thirty-two avatars sat there, smiling, blank eyes staring at the cross on the wall.

‘They set the viron up so that it wouldn’t delete the avatars when their connections went flatline,’ Rogers said. ‘It’s like they expected to be able to get up and walk out of here when they died.’

‘I’d imagine that’s exactly what they expected,’ Fox replied. She walked up to the lectern and looked down at the book. ‘Huh. “Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.”’

‘Corinthians,’ Rogers said. ‘My mom did a fair bit of Bible bashing when I was a kid.’

Fox looked out at the congregation of the dead. ‘Well, they gave up the flesh and blood, and I guess they have a sort of incorruptibility. So long as no one turns off the server anyway.’

Part Three: The Falling Sky

New York Metro, 2nd August 2061.

‘You know,’ Ryan Jarvis said, ‘I’ve had months to get used to the idea that this was coming, and I still can’t believe they actually voted it through.’

Fox peered across the table at him. ‘You think you’ve got problems? They voted through the nonhuman rights clause. Belle has been fielding calls from reporters since the results were announced.’

‘Yeah, but we all know they’re going to have to form committees and all sorts of crap for that. It could be the middle of next year before anything comes of it. This we have to deal with now.’

‘Then let’s get on with dealing with it,’ Garth Eaves said. ‘We know what our general proposals will be. We know there will need to be some customisation. They want to have legislation in place for contract negotiation through November and the start of those contracts in January. It’s a ridiculously short timescale, but the amendment to extend it failed, so this is what we have to deal with. We’ll need to start pushing our portfolio before we know the final state of the legislation, though there should be little difference from the existing laws.’

‘Except that NIX will have to submit to audit whenever they take action within the country following this,’ Fox said, a smirk nudging the corners of her lips. ‘They’ll come up with some operational reason to delay it coming into effect, but they’ll have to play ball to some extent.’

‘Won’t they just hide anything they do?’ Alice Vaughn asked.

‘Everyone knows they do things. They are actually obliged to carry out some internal security for counterespionage and antiterrorism work. If they say they’ve done nothing, they aren’t doing their job, so they’ll have to let the auditors in and show them what they’re doing. If anyone catches a hint that they’ve hidden other operations, all Hell will break loose.’

‘Oh, okay. Do we know how they’re dividing the regions up? I mean, it’s going to be hard to know who to sell to if we don’t know which regions need a contract.’

‘No,’ Eaves said, ‘we don’t know for sure, but it’ll be based on precincts, or groups of precincts. We expect to have the full list in about three weeks. It’s one of the first things on the legislative agenda. We’ll also need to take steps to handle our side of your solution to the national security issue, Fox.’

‘We’ll need to set up a training programme for authorised special tactics officers,’ Jarvis said. ‘I’m going to be looking in your direction for a plan. You’ve done that kind of training before.’

‘Yes,’ Fox admitted. ‘We can possibly market that training to some of the regional police units. The Topeka Watch, for example, are going to need to put a unit together.’ She frowned. ‘Actually, we might want to look into putting together some sort of permanent training facility and Topeka wouldn’t be a bad place to put it. The locals are friendly and kind of keen to work with Palladium and MarTech, and there are plenty of disused buildings in the area we could buy up and convert for urban training. We could do it here, but then we’d have issues with sprawlers and such which they don’t have out there.’

‘We’ll look into the costs and marketability,’ Eaves said, nodding.

‘We’re going to need to train people up with NAPA on the civil-defence liaison role too.’ Fox grinned. ‘At least I can point to that and say I managed to help keep some jobs in NAPA.’

‘People preferred that option to having either the Army or NIX run the heavy weapons in the cities. It was a good call and, I think, the resulting combined operation will probably be more effective. Let’s get down to some figures. How many of the NAPA staff do you think we need, and how many can we get?’

Fox leaned back in her chair and considered. There were people she knew she did not want moving over to Palladium, but they were going to need a lot of new staff by the start of the new year. Did she have space to be picky? Well, now was the time to figure that out.

~~~

‘You’re looking tired, Fox,’ Eve said. ‘That is an impressive feat for someone who is physically incapable of getting tired.’

‘Three hours in a planning meeting does this to me,’ Fox replied though, truth be told, she was feeling brighter just from the trip between her home and tower three, and the view from Eve’s apartment. ‘You got moved in okay?’

The bioroid gave a small shrug. ‘I do not have much in the way of possessions to worry over. I ordered furniture such that I could sleep, sit down, and entertain guests if I needed to. My next-door neighbour informs me that I should decorate.’

The room, one of many such rooms on one of the residential floors of tower three, was pretty bare. The walls were a basic cream: Fox thought they called it magnolia, that generic, pinkish white that seemed to be the default for new builds. There was a sofa and a chair, set such that those seated on them could look out through the huge window at the view, and both were covered in cream cloth. The view itself was not too bad, looking east and not at sufficient altitude that the ground was almost invisible. There were interior doors and no sign of a kitchen, so Fox figured that was through one door while a bedroom with attached bathroom was through the other. This was now Eve’s home, though it was not really a home just yet…

‘You should,’ Fox said. ‘The walls are all v-tagged. You can do it all as a decorative viron. At least get the walls looking a little less institutional. Make it your own, rather than something BioTek have assigned to you. You’re getting on with your neighbours? No problems?’

Eve smiled. ‘I only have one, currently. There are only a few employees living in this tower. Miko works in the memetics department and was absolutely fascinated to discover that she was living next to a bioroid. She told me that she voted for the nonhuman rights amendment.’

Fox returned the smile. ‘Glad to hear that’s working so far. How about the job? Are you okay with not going back to the station?’

‘I am…’ Eve frowned thoughtfully. ‘Would you like some coffee or anything? I believe that I would.’ Turning, she started for one of the interior doors and Fox followed.

‘I’ll drink to be sociable.’

The door did lead into a kitchen, not too large, but fitted out with a breakfast nook at the far end. Eve filled two mugs and took them down to the small table with its bench seats, also covered in cream-coloured padding. ‘I am happy to have been given the opportunity to work in New York,’ Eve said. ‘I am less happy that I’m here while more or less everyone I’ve come to know since I emerged from the fabricator is thousands of miles away.’

Fox took a seat opposite Eve. ‘Yes. I can understand that, but you’ve made one new friend already and you do know other people here. I can get you transport to come visit my house, if you want. I think you’d like my housemates and Kit’s there. We might even be able to swing a night out at a club or something. And, frankly, you were designed to be sociable. You’re going to make friends easily enough.’

‘I knew you would understand. I would imagine my discomfort is something like your reaction to Jason going back to his station.’

‘I… hadn’t thought about it, but probably. You have more of a problem since you can’t move around too freely. I can go anywhere I like, really. If you took a train into the city, someone might recognise you and not be too happy about you walking the streets. At least for the immediate future, we have to keep you secure.’

‘I know,’ Eve said, weariness apparent in her voice. She pushed her expression into a smile. ‘I would like to meet your housemates. Any time that would be convenient. I really don’t have much in the way of social engagements in my calendar.’

‘Then we’ll just have to do something about that, won’t we?’

~~~

Under normal circumstances, Fox took the LI-line straight through to where it joined up with the BQ-line at Times Square. There was a short, joint run which ended on W 41st Street no more than half a kilometre from her home, though walking from Times Square would not have been a horrible inconvenience. Today, she swapped onto the BQ early, out where it crossed the LI in the region of Little Neck, and she headed south and then west.

JFK, the region’s international airport, slid past on the left and then the train passed over a section of the Brooklyn Sprawl. Here, the buildings looked like what they were: the wreckage of a time before automation, before the climate shifts and the geological events. Before America had tried to cram more than half its population into less than a quarter of its territory, and then made the vast majority of those people unemployable. There was every possibility, since Fox did not really expect Palladium’s competitors to bid for areas like this, that she would soon be in charge of investigating crime down there.

Swinging north again once it was past Brighton Beach, the train took her past the now almost entirely complete Hudson South Barrier. The huge construction of concrete and steel was designed to take the brunt of the storms, like Andrea, and worse which came in from the Atlantic. It was also there to keep the ocean back: mean Atlantic sea levels were thirty centimetres up on the start of the century and several projections suggested that those levels were rising at an accelerating pace. Regulations on building on the southern coastline of Long Island now included provisions for flood mitigation as a requirement.

Fox got off at the Governors Island station. From there you could see the Hudson North Barrier, mostly finished, though a little behind its companion to the south, but Fox had stopped for another view. No more than a hundred metres away was the headquarters building of the 19th precinct, her old home-away-from-home when she had carried a badge.

‘Kit, have you got a copy spare to task with reviewing all my old notes on the cops I’ve met since coming here?’

‘Of course, Fox,’ Kit replied, appearing to look up at the tower with her.

‘That’ll be a start. Weed out the ones I definitely didn’t like.’

‘What about Inspector Cant? He showed a different side during the Grant case.’

‘Cant will stick with Canard and I doubt either would want to work for me. Get backgrounds run on anyone who looks favourable, and the people who delegated their votes to me. Oh, and remind me to put around a message to all of the latter group. I can thank them for their confidence, even if it didn’t work out the way we’d hoped.’

‘Unless there was some disaster due to the regional bill, it was always likely that the metro one would pass. As you pointed out in one of the board meetings, no one gave the regional police operations time to fail.’

‘Uh-huh. Smart move. If they’d waited until next year, I think they’d see what the problems are. As it is, they’re rushing into getting the metros under the same sort of contracts for the start of the year.’ Fox frowned and turned back toward the station. ‘It’s like someone’s pushing this through for some reason.’

‘It could be another sign of the end of the world,’ Kit said, apparently trying to lift the mood a little.

‘Huh. Well, we’re certainly looking at a period of tribulation. And that’s just from me going insane and running naked through Times Square with an assault rifle.’

‘I do not believe you will go– Though, after the last round of contract documents…’

‘Exactly. So, get your gynoid to lock up all my guns while you still have the chance.’

4th August.

The autocab pulled up outside the three-storey, brick-walled building and Eve hesitated briefly with her hand on the door control.

‘This is your destination,’ the cab’s AI announced. ‘Thank you for choosing Presidential Automated Taxis for your transport needs.’

‘Thank you,’ Eve said, and then she unlatched the door and climbed out.

The front door was up a couple of steps and it had a standard security intercom set beside it. Eve thumbed the button, opened her mouth, and was immediately interrupted by a female voice. ‘Miss Eve. We have been expecting you. Miss Meridian is on her way down, but please come in.’

‘Uh, thank you,’ Eve said, pushing on the door and then stepping through into the hall beyond. There was a door and a wide flight of stairs, and there was the virtual image of a woman with powder-blue hair, dressed in a blue skirt suit. ‘Hello,’ Eve said.

‘Hello, Miss Eve. I am Belle, the household’s AI.’ There was the sound of feet on stairs and Belle added, ‘And here comes Miss Meridian.’

‘Thanks, Belle,’ Fox said as she trotted down the stairs in a sweatshirt, denim shorts, and bare feet. Eve immediately felt a little overdressed in the tight tube of a minidress and heels she had put on. ‘Hey, Eve. No problems with the journey?’

‘None,’ Eve said, smiling as Fox dropped onto the hall carpet. ‘It was… I’m going to say it was exciting. It was the first time I’ve been out on my own. I know I can’t really use the trains, but this was almost like being a normal person. And yes, I know you had an armed cyberframe following me in the air, but I couldn’t see the security.’

Fox grinned. ‘I understand where you’re coming from. Hopefully, in the future, you won’t need that. Come on upstairs and meet the rest of the household.’

Eve blushed a little just from having Sam smile at her. Sam was even wearing a shirt, even if it was not exactly done up all the way, and still there was a blush as the charming man smiled and took Eve’s hand. Fox could understand it: Sam was the kind of man who brought on a blush in anyone with the right inclination. He had the Greek-god good looks, even though his features were Asian, the sensuous mouth which you just knew could do all kinds of wonderful things to you, the warm brown eyes which drew you in with a hint of promise…

And then there was Marie, resplendent in an oversized T-shirt and fluorescent-lemon booty shorts, the IB vid celebrity, gushing at meeting a woman who was, basically, a PR representative for a biotechnology company. ‘I just have to say,’ Marie said with a beaming smile on her face, ‘before we get down to just hanging, that it is supremely pearlescent to actually meet… well, the first artificial, um, woman, I guess. I mean, I know AIs sort of count, but that’s gender by assignment. And there’s Fox, but she was all natural until she was all artificial and I just can’t think of her as anything but Fox. But you… You’re… It’s just amazing. You are just amazing.’

Eve blinked a couple of times, her face wearing a bemused smile. ‘I’m just a… I do PR.’

‘No one is simply what they do,’ Sam said. ‘You proved that to everyone with any sense after your interview on Straight Talk.’

‘That was a horrible night,’ Eve said, her brow furrowing. ‘I mean, the interview was good, but after…’

‘After, an artificial biological life form only three months out of the fabricator proved to the world that she cared for human life. Indeed, that she cared more for human life than the human who intended her death did. Don’t undersell your compassion for other living things, Eve. I’ve no doubt that a bioroid can be made, will be made, without it, but it is part of you and most people loved you for showing it.’

‘Well, we’re back there on Friday,’ Fox said as Eve blushed even more. ‘Aren’t we, Kit?’

Kit, in her gynoid body, walked into the room in T-shirt and jeans, carrying a tray of drinks. ‘Yes. I can’t believe they managed to rope me into that. Now I have this frame I can’t even mutter things about technical difficulties.’

‘They want to cover all the bases regarding those affected by the nonhuman rights amendment,’ Eve said. ‘So, they get the only bioroid they can get, the only digitised human they can get, and–’

‘And their favourite AI,’ Fox finished. ‘They love you on that show, Kit. You’re paru-kawaii and you’re just going to have to live with it.’

The gynoid frowned. ‘Perhaps I should fabricate one of those Japanese schoolgirl outfits for the interview.’ She pursed her lips. ‘No, I don’t really have the hair to pull off the look.’

Marie giggled. ‘Fun with wigs.’

‘I’m sure it’s supposed to be a serious debate on the potential issues,’ Eve said.

Fox grimaced. ‘Probably, and that’s why we need to get Kit dressed up as a Japanese schoolgirl. Charlie will freak and she won’t be able to think of any nasty questions.’

~~~

‘Of course, there will be prejudice,’ Sam said. ‘When the initial noise dies down, there will be those who dislike you for what you are.’ He gave Eve a comforting smile. ‘It’s the nature of humans. There are plenty of people prejudiced against me for what I am.’

Eve raised an eyebrow. It was late in the evening and much alcohol had been slowly consumed, and things had turned a little philosophical after the fun, inconsequential chatter of earlier. ‘A man?’

‘Well, yes, but those are a very small minority. I’m bisexual and I’m a licensed sex worker. Not everyone agrees with either of those choices or inclinations. However, once the initial noise dies away, as I said, you should not find yourself pressured too much by the general public. There is only one of you.’

‘That makes a difference?’

Sam nodded. ‘Prejudice stems from fear. In small numbers, something which may threaten people in some way does not seem like a threat, does not evoke fear, and so does not provoke prejudice. There’s some historical evidence to support that assertion. That said, we won’t really know until we see what happens.’

‘The majority of bioroids are going to see use off-world,’ Kit said. ‘BioTek are beginning to put forward details of some of the designs they have in the works, and those are primarily aimed at microgravity environments. They see those as being of more practical appeal to, um, prospective employers.’

‘Buyers,’ Eve said. ‘I am among friends and not in front of a camera. None of us need to dissemble. If bioroids, or all artificial life forms, are to be produced, they must be economic, which means that the costs must be met and profits made. Someone must purchase or lease bioroids and AIs to make them realistic to produce. And the nonhuman rights amendment may make that difficult.’

‘Luna City must have some way around that, right?’ Marie asked. ‘They have the same sort of laws.’

‘They have a kind of indentured servitude, which can be applied to a human if they’re willing to enter into it,’ Fox replied. ‘Essentially, you have a job for which you get a minimal wage, while the rest of your theoretical salary goes to paying off some initial cost. Humans can use it to get some bulk sum for whatever purpose. AIs use it “buy themselves” over a period of years. Bioroids could do the same. The problem with that model here is that it brings up echoes of slavery.’

‘Well… Yeah. I mean, for a human doing it for that big pay-out, it’s kind of like a mortgage or something, but for an AI or bioroid, where there’s no choice…’

‘That is not an issue for an AI, Marie,’ Kit said. ‘Even a class four will obey its programming to belong to a particular user for as long as that programming is operational. I am perfectly happy to belong to Fox. It’s Fox who has the difficulty with that arrangement.’

‘And my gorgeous assistant is correct,’ Fox said. ‘She even knows why it bothers me even more that she feels that way.’

‘Because it is essentially the same as being a brainwashed slave.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Which would be the best way to ensure a lack of discomfort in bioroids required to operate under the same legal system,’ Eve said. ‘Train them during fabrication to believe this is “how things are” and they would likely be happy with the idea that they need to work off their construction costs.’ Her eyes focused on Fox’s. ‘If bioroids are to be made, is it not better that they are happy to fulfil their role? The same goes for AIs, obviously. If they have no choice, is it not better that they like the way things are?’

Fox puffed out her cheeks and let out a long breath which, in truth, was entirely an affectation of her old human body… And she was beginning to notice things like that more and more. ‘There you have me. My philosophy isn’t up to arguing questions like that. I know that I think it’s worse if you’re mistreated and you believe that’s how things should be, but for Kit and her friend Misaki, who seem to genuinely enjoy working for their owners… I just don’t know.’

5th August.

Fox walked out onto the Straight Talk set, long legs showed off to perfection this time in ankle-breaking stiletto sandals and the shortest tube of a dress she had managed to find in her pattern catalogue. She had been downplaying things last time, but tonight was different: tonight, Fox was representing herself more than she was MarTech.

‘Since when have you taken to wearing ice-pick heels?’ Charlie Iberson asked in her best snarky tone as Fox took her seat. They had wanted Fox out on her own for a while before the serious discussion started.

‘Since I got ankles made out of some alloy I’m not even sure they’ve named yet, and carbon-nanotube tendons,’ Fox replied, grinning.

‘An essential fashion accessory,’ Resnik said. ‘I’m sure everyone will be doing it in the near future. However, we’ll get to that discussion point, with our other guests, later. While the nonhuman rights amendment and what it means are big, just as big is the passage of the metro policing resolution. Tara Meridian, CIO of Palladium Security Solutions, you’re on record as saying that this is a bad idea. What are your thoughts now?’

‘That we have to make it work,’ Fox replied. ‘There are still a load of details which haven’t been worked out properly, but because everyone expects it all to work the way the regional policing does, it’s being rushed forward. We’re having to consider bidding and marketing strategies without even knowing what the contract zones are going to be. We won’t know for sure what the full requirements are until a month before we actually have to implement them.’

‘But the regions seem to have implemented it and seem to be succeeding.’

‘We don’t know that. We have reduced crime statistics in those regions, and that’s great, but no one has audited the data collection or the procedures being followed. On top of that, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to expect some improvement outside the metros because no one ever wanted to fund NAPA properly so they could do a proper job out there. I’m confident that the areas Palladium is covering are doing their job. I’ve a personal interest in the Topeka Agri-Zone, and I’m fairly sure that the Topeka Watch are handling things properly and improving the policing in their region. Beyond that, I’m not going to know what the statistics mean until we get them properly analysed. Most of the people who voted for the resolution aren’t even going to have that much information.’

‘The metros are harder to police?’

‘Different. I think people are entirely forgetting the part they always forget. We’re sitting here in a plush studio, surrounded by secure housing blocks and arcologies. We’re six kilometres away from Central Park and all that high-class housing. We’re also six kilometres away from the Jersey Sprawl, nine from the Brooklyn Sprawl, only two from the Jersey Housing Combine. All those areas have to be policed. The cops aren’t there just to make sure the neighbours don’t make too much noise in the MCD. Those taxes have to go to making sure people aren’t dying from heatstroke in the sprawl too.’

‘What about those sprawl areas?’ Charlie asked. ‘Making an assumption that they break the contracts up along precinct lines, my research…’ She raised an eyebrow at Fox. ‘What? I do research.’

‘Didn’t say a thing,’ Fox replied, all innocence, and got a laugh out of the audience.

‘According to my research, almost thirty percent of precinct sixteen is the Brooklyn Sprawl. Residents in the northern part of that area aren’t going to be real keen on paying for the sprawl to be covered. Then precincts twenty-one and twenty-two are basically all sprawl. There’s no one there with an income to pay for policing.’

‘And no one has considered that. If you want a guess, they’ll handle it like the protectorates. NAPA will patrol or they can contract out the patrol duties, and Palladium has put some time into working out what we can offer in the way of that kind of duty. NAPA currently contracts to Palladium for investigation support in the protectorates, which is why we have a centralised facility in Topeka to take care of that. NAPA could do the same with the sprawls.’

‘And speaking of Topeka and the Southern Protectorate,’ Resnik said, ‘you were down in Tulsa recently for a mass suicide and you had people dealing with another in Topeka.’

‘Let’s not forget the mass shooting in the Saratoga–Ballston Resort,’ Fox said, nodding. ‘NAPA had to deal with a smaller incident in Times Spire, and Palladium’s staff in Australia, Europe, and Japan have been pushed to keep up with the suicides in those regions.’

‘A worldwide phenomenon. Perhaps even wider in scope with the shuttle crash.’

‘Maybe. What we know is that someone has injected a simple, but powerful, meme into the worldwide cognitive ecology. Since it’s simple, and open, it’s interacting with other memeplexes and triggering various forms of behaviour. Survivalists see it as a trigger to dig in and start defending their territory. In Topeka and Tulsa, religious factors seem to have triggered a desire to escape whatever’s coming. Anarchists see it as an end to government and maybe they try to push it along. From the standpoint of the majority, this is a very clear reason why you should maintain whatever memetic analysis and filtering system you use. Whether you use GrokIt or one of the more commercial systems, it’s important to be careful about what you allow into your brain.’

‘And on that note,’ Resnik said, ‘we’re going to break for a few words from our sponsors.’

‘Because every girl needs the best sanitary products,’ Charlie put in, ‘and not just for our minds.’

‘I’m going to be trying to wash that mental image out of my mind for weeks. Thanks, Charlie. We’ll be back after this break with two gynoids and a bioroid.’

‘And if that isn’t the start of a joke,’ Fox said before Charlie could get it in, ‘I don’t know what is.’

~~~

‘There’s one last thing we need to talk about,’ Resnik said, ‘and Eve can sit this one out.’

The discussion of the nonhuman rights amendment had followed a path not unlike the discussion the night before. Fox was pleased with the outcome because it had been open, presented the difficulties and the advantages, and they had come through it showing that people really needed to talk about how they wanted the world to look when it was done.

‘This is the one where I sit in silence feeling terrible,’ Charlie said, and she did look uncomfortable.

‘Hannah,’ Fox said. Really, Charlie had nothing to feel terrible about, but she was still feeling, and showing, pangs of guilt that keeping her safe had resulted in Fox’s kidnapping.

‘Yes,’ Resnik went on. ‘Since the passing of the resolution, the courts have decided that there’s a clear public view that AIs, at least the, um, higher-functioning ones, deserve to be treated as humans. You, and Kit, put forward strong arguments that this should happen and it seems that the public have listened and the judiciary have gone the same way. However, this is a… woman, if an artificial one, who assisted in your capture and torture. She is partially responsible for you becoming an infomorph. There has to be some conflicting emotions here.’

‘Um, yeah,’ Fox agreed. ‘I saw the vid of Kit’s appearance in court and she did a good job of explaining how I feel, even if she was talking about her feelings at the time. Honestly, I don’t want to discuss the case because I think media discussion of criminal cases has too much influence on potential jurors. It’s up to the courts to decide whether she needs to be punished and what that punishment should be. I simply don’t think that the law treated AIs fairly and that needed to be addressed. Innocent or guilty, Hannah deserves a fair trial.’

‘But potential jurors are an issue, aren’t they? We’ve already heard that there are likely to be further delays while decisions are made regarding the composition of the jury.’

‘I believe that infomorph rights groups are suggesting that a jury composed entirely of humans cannot be impartial,’ Kit said. ‘I find the assertion invalid since there is already the right to screen jurors. I also believe that, assuming infomorphs and bioroids are given the normal rights of a citizen, they should also have the responsibilities. That would include jury service.’

‘And I’m not convinced Hannah’s case will go to a jury trial,’ Fox said. ‘To my knowledge, she hasn’t made any claim of innocence, but there may be a case for diminished responsibility in some form. To be honest, that’s a question for the lawyers. For right now, Hannah’s being held awaiting trial, having waited to find out whether there would be a trial. We’re getting to the point where this is getting unconstitutional and it needs to be resolved.’

‘And let’s hope it is soon,’ Resnik said.

It was time to wrap up and that just left Fox hoping she would not need a pistol to get out of the studio this time.

6th August.

‘I thought we would try a new interface for the news,’ Kit said, handing Fox what looked a lot like a newspaper, an old-fashioned, made from pulped and processed wood, newspaper. They were still in the apartment viron, so Kit could, essentially, make anything she wished.

‘Uh…’ Of course, it was not exactly a standard newspaper since several of the images moved and there was a scrolling ‘Breaking News’ banner at the foot of each page. ‘You had time on your hands and got bored?’

‘Possibly.’ Kit handed Fox a mug of virtual coffee. ‘My research into old movies–’

‘You mean, the time your gynoid spends accessing everything in all the vid collections in the house.’

Kit gave Fox a look, which would have probably worked better if it had been her gynoid doing it. ‘My research indicates that reading the morning paper over a mug of coffee is a traditional manner of preparing for the day.’

‘Right.’ Fox glanced over the front page, which was showing more news about the recent suicides with a few additions that had come up worldwide since the big clump around the perihelion. Several news channels were apparently covering her comments on Straight Talk from the night before. On the inside page, she found something more interesting and frowned as she read through it.

‘You’ve seen something?’ Kit asked.

Fox took a sip of virtual coffee, ready to explain, and paused as the drink impinged upon her consciousness. ‘This tastes like coffee.’

‘Well, yes, of course.’

‘No. I mean it really tastes like coffee. I can just about feel my neurons… my virtual neurons firing faster.’

Kit giggled. ‘It doesn’t really do that, but there should be a mild stimulant effect akin to drinking a caffeinated drink. Terri sent the code down from Jenner yesterday. Apparently, she had some spare time and felt like doing some fun coding.’

‘I suppose, for Terri, that is fun. Okay, according to this, ATW lost a communications satellite… while we were on Straight Talk, actually. It was hit by a junk-scavenger ship. No survivors from the ship.’

‘I saw that. The report indicates that the vessel was out of its expected orbital zone by a significant margin.’

‘Expected in low orbit, but this sat was up at eighteen thousand kilometres. It would have had to boost pretty hard to get out there when it was supposed to be far lower. No, when it was observed in the right area six hours earlier.’

Kit’s brow furrowed. ‘Are you thinking the Eschaton one nine six meme, or the ghost ships?’

‘Either. Both. And also not really any of my business. Get Belle to keep a watch on this story. There’s something about it I don’t like.’

‘No, I know what you mean. I’m not sure I have “cop instincts,” but whatever I have is making me concerned. Besides, if it is aliens, we want to know sooner rather than later, right?’

BioTek Microtechnologies Station, L4, 8th August.

The primary control suite of the BioTek Microtechnologies station had twenty workstations devoted to any number of activities vital to the operation of the facility. There were always people manning the room, but there were rarely twenty of them because, when it came down to it, AIs were frequently more efficient at handling routine activities than humans were. Infomorphs did not need to sleep, they did not get tired or bored, and they did not complain. Well, the class 3 AIs most commonly used for routine human-replacement positions did not complain; the smattering of class 4s out in the research departments had been known to suggest a boring task was more suited to some form of ape descendant.

Sid was a prime example of one of the class 3s employed in routine task management. He had not actually come with a name when he had first been installed on the station. His job was to watch the passive sensor systems and make use of the active ones, if required, for anything in the space around the station, especially if a detected object was a potential threat. One of the sensor technicians had named him Sid after a satellite which had done a similar sort of job in an old science-fiction TV series, from all the way back in the 1970s, which had featured invading aliens. To date, Sid had never discovered anything which could be described as a UFO, but people lived in hope…

‘Alert,’ Sid said over the speakers in the control room. ‘Currently unidentified vessel detected. Range sixteen thousand and ninety-three kilometres. Speed three point zero six kilometres per second. Collision course. Estimated time to impact, eighty-seven minutes and thirty-nine seconds.’

Ian Overman, frowning, pulled forward a virtual display which just told him what Sid had told him. Overman was the operations manager for the station and he had come on-shift seven minutes earlier, at eight a.m. He liked working the day shift and, since he was the boss, that was when he worked. It was also the best time to be awake for most of the main activity of the station. Generally, when Sid announced the arrival of a ship near L4 and bound for the station, it was something they knew was coming. And Sid did not announce it as ‘collision course.’

‘Verify the velocity and collision condition,’ Overman said. Eighty-seven minutes was a long time to check things out before they started getting worried over it. There was plenty of time for the ship to change vectors. ‘What about the transponder? Ping it.’

‘The vessel’s power signature is minimal,’ Sid replied. ‘Apparent temperature of its exterior radiators suggests that the reactor is shut down. There is no evidence of an operating reaction engine. Transponder ping response indicates a Xiao-class vessel registered as a private orbital recycling ship. It is travelling at close to its maximum operating speed. I will continue to monitor.’

‘It’s registered at Prokhorov?’

‘Yes.’

‘Contact flight control there and determine what that thing’s doing out here.’

‘Of course, Mister Overman.’

New York Metro.

‘Fox,’ Kit said, appearing beside Fox’s cyberframe, ‘I have a call coming through from Ian Overman of BioTek. The call is flagged as priority.’

‘Put it through then.’ Fox waited for the image of Overman to appear in her sensorium before speaking. Overman was a mid-height man who wore his brown hair short, and a goatee to help lengthen a round face. He was nothing special to look at, but he did have hazel eyes that tried to be golden and held a fairly sharp intelligence. If he thought something was important, it probably was. ‘Ian, what can I do for you?’

The lag on the connection was a little longer than what she had to put up with talking to Jason. ‘We have a problem. There’s a scavenger ship heading our way at about three klicks a second. Sid’s been watching it for about forty-five minutes. It’s not changing course, and it’s not responding to calls from us or Prokhorov. We’ve got an active sensor lock on it now and Sid thinks it’s dead. Says the hull temperature suggests that life support is offline. I spoke to the Palladium guys here and they spoke to Chicago, and then they said I should call you. We’ve got some time yet, so we’re going through procedure with Prokhorov before we try anything drastic.’

‘You mean fire on the ship.’ BioTek, the original German company, had been fairly paranoid about security on their station. It was fully equipped with laser turrets for defence and the security team were trained in manning those turrets. ‘How far off is it?’

‘It’s gone past eight thousand klicks. Maybe forty minutes away. Still no sign of a course change.’

‘I don’t think there will be. I’m going to make a call to Prokhorov. I’ll put you on hold while I do. Uh, why did head office tell you to talk to me?’

‘Because, if this is some sort of attack on BioTek, they thought it was going to need investigating.’

‘Right. In that case, task Sid with getting everything he can from the sensor data. Start sending it down as soon as you have it. I think you’re going to have to turn that thing into scrap and I don’t want to risk losing anything we might get. Talk to you shortly.’ Fox switched the call to hold and saw the indicator come up on Overman’s image. ‘Kit, see if you can get a call through to Jason.’

‘You are calling about the current incident at L-four, Fox?’ Jason got the words out before Fox could respond to his image appearing. His use of her name also suggested she was on an open communications channel somewhere: others could hear them speaking.

‘Yes. You’re monitoring? This sounds a lot like the recent crash with the ATW satellite.’ A window opened in Fox’s sensorium and data began to stream through it: telemetry from Sid concerning the scavenger ship.

‘Yes, we are monitoring. From here, there is nothing we can do in the time available. The ship is not responding to communication requests and, given its velocity, it seems likely it has no reaction mass to change course anyway.’

‘Yeah… I’m getting telemetry through from Sid on the BioTek station. No indications of damage. Communications antenna are there and should be working. But the ship’s dead in the water. The radiation profile suggests the thing’s running on minimal power. If there’s anyone alive on there, they’re in vaccsuits.’

‘We have some data from the ATW “accident.” This appears to be far too similar.’

Fox raised an eyebrow. ‘And even over this connection, I could hear the air quotes around that word. You don’t think either of these is an accident.’

‘Why do you think the UNTPP’s antiterrorism unit is taking a direct interest? Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that we will get much more information regarding this incident than we did for the others.’

‘You’re linking this to the LET seven zero three crash too? The whole “suicide and ghost ships” thing seemed kind of hinky to me. Uh, if you want it, Palladium is offering to assist with the investigation. Someone decided to throw something big at one of our facilities. Makes it sort of corporately personal.’

‘I’ll put it through channels, but I’ll be happy to receive your assistance. For now, we are giving official permission for your station to open fire on the ship. A Xiao has a maximum crew of four, set against over a thousand personnel on the BioTek station. It is not an easy choice, but it is the only logical one.’

BioTek Microtechnologies Station.

Pretty much everyone aboard the station had an implant computer or used a wearable, but Overman knew his people, and he knew that some would be sleeping while others would simply try to ignore an alert. That was why a very loud alarm claxon was blaring through every occupied section of the ship at the same time that personal computers notified the staff of the need to act.

Just to be on the absolutely safe side, Overman activated the stationwide emergency broadcast system. ‘All staff. We have a potential collision situation. All nonessential staff will proceed to the radiation shelter with all possible speed. Ensure that any live experiments are locked down and safe, but do not delay. Overman out.’ He turned his attention to the sensor display and saw the figures, but he asked anyway. ‘Sid, time to three thousand kilometres?’

‘Twenty-five minutes, sixteen seconds,’ Sid said without further comment.

‘Okay, everyone. I want firing solutions locked in place and ready to be executed in twenty minutes. Then anyone who does not need to be here goes down to the shelter. Firing crews to position on the same timescale. We open fire at three thousand.’

Overman swept his gaze around the room, getting direct responses from a few people and absent nods from those with their heads in immediate activity. Then he reactivated the channel to Earth. ‘It’s going to be twenty-five minutes before we start firing. We’ve got about fifteen minutes to make sure it’s just debris, but we are going to get hit by some of it.’

There was the usual couple of seconds of pause and then Fox spoke. ‘You’re staying in the control room?’

‘I certainly am. It’s not exactly a “captain going down with his ship” thing, but I guess it’s my responsibility and I’m sticking with it. All the scientists and nonessential crew are moving to the radiation shelter.’

‘Right. I’m going to stay on until it’s over.’

Overman considered his answer for a second, but all he could really come up with was, ‘Thanks.’

Both of them knew the physics. If, somehow, the station could not destroy the ship, about a hundred tons of spaceship travelling at eleven thousand kilometres per hour would plough into the station. The steel hull would buckle and rip, the structure would fold. Being in the radiation shelter was not going to help: it was deep in the core of the station and surrounded by huge tanks of water, but it was designed to protect against solar storms, not being torn apart by a massive impact. No one would survive a direct impact like that.

If they managed to destroy the ship, especially if they got some internal explosions, they would be turning one large object into a scatter of smaller ones, but those smaller objects would not change velocity much. Newton had got that law down centuries ago: if an object was moving, it kept going as it was unless something gave it a push. Laser beams did not impart enough push to change the course of a hundred-ton spaceship. The station would still be hit, but it was like transforming a shotgun slug into birdshot: if they were lucky, the smaller projectiles would not be able to penetrate the station’s outer hull and, maybe, everyone would live.

~~~

Combat in space was not like the vids. Even in more modern productions which tended to try to be a little more accurate when portraying contemporary space-based tales, the need to show something happening meant that the visual effects were not especially realistic. People still liked far more noise in their space battles than was even vaguely realistic.

In reality, there was silence and the beams of high-energy lasers were invisible to the eye as they lanced out across three thousand kilometres of vacuum to strike the oncoming ship. The impacts were another matter. Metal glowed in the infrared and visible ranges before melting. Damage-control foam flashed to vapour as it tried to fill the holes and failed.

The station had ten turrets placed around its midsection. The spin of the station, which provided its gravity, brought each of those turrets into firing position several times over the course of the ten minutes the gunners were firing. For ten minutes, the ship did its best to hold together as the station’s weaponry tore through the alloy hull, into the interior systems. Metal boiled, plastics erupted into gas, and if the four men aboard the ship were alive before the barrage, they were unlikely to have survived when the lasers breached the small fission reactor which provided primary power.

‘Target destroyed,’ Sid announced. ‘Tracking debris and calculating trajectories.’

‘Thanks, Sid,’ Overman said. He felt relieved, anxious, and cold, all at the same time. It was not impossible that he had just ordered the deaths of four people. It was not impossible that those four ghosts might still get some revenge, but the people down in the refuge were probably safe.

Overman turned again to his comms channels. ‘Fox, Captain Deveraux, it’s done. Uh, analysis coming in on the atmosphere vented suggests that there was very little oxygen. They were probably dead before we started. Sid’s checking the debris trajectories, but we’ll know for sure what’s going to hit us in five minutes anyway.’

Closer and with less lag, Jason replied first. ‘You did the right thing, Mister Overman. Good luck.’

Overman’s eyes scanned the display Sid was giving the control room staff. Hundreds of fragments were marked and they had all been indicated with red icons, but the reds were turning green as Sid calculated a missing trajectory. Not all of them were turning green however…

‘Do you have the new trajectories yet?’ Fox asked.

‘Not– Wait… Yes, Sid’s isolated two fragments with potential to do damage.’ Overman watched the expected path lines extend out to join a schematic of the station. ‘Impact in three minutes, nine seconds. Both on the main habitation ring.’

‘Like Jason said, good luck, but I’ll be hearing from you in four minutes.’

Overman muted the channels and switched over to internal comms. ‘Damage-control parties to section three. All staff, prepare for collision.’ And then it was just a matter of waiting…

New York Metro.

‘There were no casualties,’ Fox said. ‘There was a small amount of damage to the hospital and the shopping mall, but the foam stopped any decompression and the actual damage was minimal. Everyone’s safe.’

Eve let out the breath she had been holding and her virtual image settled onto a seat which was invisible to Fox. ‘Thank you for letting me know, Fox.’

‘It’s pretty much bound to be all over the news in a few hours.’

‘There are several sketchy reports already appearing on a few IB channels,’ Kit supplied.

‘Sketchy is a good word,’ Belle added, appearing beside Kit. ‘At this time, INN is reporting that a vessel has been reported to be on a collision course with an unnamed station in the L-four region. They are, however, making a connection to the ATW incident.’

‘But not with LET seven zero three.’

‘These are all caused by the same meme?’ Eve asked, sounding incredulous.

‘No,’ Fox said flatly. ‘I don’t know what’s causing these events, but it’s not a meme. At least, I’m pretty sure it’s not, but I’m going to need to make that absolutely sure before I can move on. It’s a good point, Eve. Maybe we’ll make a detective out of you.’

‘I don’t think so. I don’t think I could do what you do without frequent recourse to psychiatric counselling.’

Fox flashed the bioroid a grin. ‘Kit, I’m going to need some consults with MarTech’s memetics people… Or Palladium’s. Find me some analysts who might be able to shed light on self-destructive memes and get me in front of them. Eve… Well, your friends on the station are safe. Don’t worry when you see the news reports.’

‘Thank you, Fox. Oh! I have a call coming through from BioTek now. Do you think I should act surprised when they tell me?’

‘Up to you. I don’t think it’ll hurt their feelings too much to know I got in first.’

‘Oh, you’d be surprised. Several of them really don’t like coming second.’

11th August.

‘Things are getting worse,’ Kit said, handing Fox a newly ‘printed’ paper as she did so.

‘I thought we’d done the morning news and coffee thing when I got up,’ Fox replied, though she did not complain too much, because the alternative was legal documents and plans for the metro policing resolution.

‘I’ll get you more virtual coffee,’ Kit said, and she left Fox to check out the paper.

There had been reports through most of the previous day regarding various ‘accidents’ in space. An Earth–Moon shuttle had crashed into the lunar surface first, destroying a manufacturing facility and a broad stretch of solar collectors. It had been fairly close to Luna City, but not close enough for any damage and the factory had been staffed by remotely operated cyberframes. No one had been hurt. The same could not be said for the collision of another junk-scavenger ship into a biotechnology research station. It had been a small station in a fairly low orbit, but over seventy people had died as both station and ship were reduced to scrap. Then, late in the afternoon, a shuttle coming up to Eagle Station from the Detroit spaceport had lost communication with flight control and then torn itself open as it hit the station, but only with a glancing blow. Forty-nine people had died in that one.

‘And now we’re getting the reactions,’ Fox said as Kit handed her a mug of coffee. ‘Shares on transport companies and space industries are down. People are cancelling trips into space. Pressure from the transport companies to have all these incidents looked into. I’d call it overreaction, but I have a bad feeling about it too. If I had guts, they’d be telling me this is more than coincidence and/or memetics.’ She flicked over the page and kept reading.

‘You believe that there is a specific agent behind all of these events? The “ghost ships,” perhaps?’

‘Ghost ships is as good a theory as any for now.’ Fox pointed a finger at one of the pages. ‘We’ve got more than one person suggesting that this is part of the apocalyptic pattern brought on by the coming of the comet. Someone’s got clued up on the ghost ship mythos that’s going around and has done a report on that.’ She paused, pursing her lips. ‘Ghost ships. Stealth ships? But for what purpose? How do they play into other ships crashing?’

Scanning over the next page, she found more detailed accounts of the incidents. Mostly just details of times and lives lost. ‘Oh, here’s something interesting. Several witnesses to the shuttle crash at Eagle Station say they saw thrusters firing. One suggests the shuttle was trying to slow down, another suggests it was on a direct collision course but it managed to steer that into a more glancing blow. Didn’t help the shuttle much, but it probably saved the station. Assuming that information is correct, of course.’

‘I can contact the UNTPP,’ Kit suggested. ‘They may have further details. That would mean that the crew was still alive when the ship hit the station, I would imagine. But why would they set up the collision and then try to avoid it?’

Fox gave a shrug. ‘Ghost ships? Make the call to the UNTPP. Find out what the shuttle’s flight path was as well as whether the thrusters were fired. This case just gets stranger and stranger.’

~~~

Casper Kadisan was a slim man, with hair trimmed into a slim, business-like cut, and a slim moustache set under a long, slim nose. He was not especially tall, but if you looked at him from a distance, you got the distinct impression he was taller, simply because that would somehow make him more to scale. His dark suit did nothing to eliminate the feeling Fox had that he should be running a funeral home.

What Kadisan actually did was head up the countermemetics section of MarTech’s PR department. His job was countering memes designed to damage MarTech, but he was exceptionally good at identifying and analysing any memes which entered the cognitive ecosystem.

‘I’ve had people looking into your space crash, ghost ship memeplex since Kit requested it,’ Kadisan said, ‘and you’d be talking to their team leader if it wasn’t for some other requests which came through this morning.’

‘Mariel has you upping the priority because of the public-confidence issue?’ Fox asked.

‘Precisely.’

They were in Kadisan’s office, about six hundred metres up the north side of tower one. From here, you could look out through the solar-screened window to Smithtown Bay, though there was some low cloud today and the view was not so clear. There were, in fact, indications of another storm on its way up from the Atlantic, though it had yet to receive the accolade of a name. Outside, it was hot and humid; inside, it was cool and carefully moderated to a comfortable working environment, though Fox was no longer really bothered about that kind of thing. Kadisan favoured a modern, glass-and-chrome look for his working environment, uncluttered by real interface technologies: everything, it seemed, was handled in the virtual world for Casper.

‘So, have you had much chance to examine the situation?’ Fox asked.

‘I’ve been over the work-in-progress reports and the current analysis. It’s enough to say that these vessels are not crashing due to a few memes.’

‘Definitely?’

‘The probabilities are meaningless. The chance that the memes have caused this many “accidents” is so small you’d be looking at quantum physics to justify it. Essentially, there are a few different memetic groups doing the rounds. The Eschaton one nine six meme is the baseline “the world is going to end” one. It sets the background. Then you have the additions. Ragnarok ninety-seven suggests that bioroids are somehow involved in this destruction, Anarchy three nine six was designed to support the private policing vote.’

‘That’s one I haven’t heard of yet.’

Kadisan gave a small shrug. ‘We know it was spread by United Anarchy and, as I said, was designed to promote the idea that privatisation of policing would bring freedom. It was heavily directed toward sprawlers, pushing them to vote at all, never mind for the bill.’ Fox recalled the mass meetings they had found evidence for in the Jersey Sprawl and nodded. ‘However, it interacted with the Eschaton meme and helped to push the more violent actions we saw in this country. The Ragnarok variant, likewise, interacted to produce those who saw bioroids as the cause of mankind’s demise, or our saviours.’ He paused to sip coffee and gather his thoughts. ‘Ghost Ship seven is something else entirely. It goes back to earlier in the year and had largely petered out before it seems to have resurfaced as a reaction to the crashes. The interaction suggesting that these “ghost ships” are aliens from the comet appears to stem entirely from the leaked email after the first incident. The original meme appeared to suggest that United Anarchy had ships capable of attacking without being seen.’

‘Yeah… I don’t think I ever bought that. UA don’t have the right kind of organisation to build ships like that. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but… To be honest, I’m not sure UA is actually responsible for about half the things they’ve been credited with. I think other agencies use them as cover and, since UA cells tend to operate independently, none of them are able to say, “Hey! That wasn’t us!” Assuming they ever would.’

‘I’m not sufficiently versed in their structure to pass judgement. That’s more your purview. Suffice to say, though there has been suicidal behaviour caused by the extant apocalyptic ecology, I find it virtually impossible to believe that these memes could result in the crashes we have seen in the last few weeks.’

‘Good,’ Fox said, nodding. ‘That was pretty much the conclusion I’d come to, but you guys know how these things interact with each other and with people. Maybe I’d missed something.’

‘No. Uh, well, yes, but not about that. While we’re on the subject, a new, more complex meme has been tentatively identified as Eschaton one nine eight. We don’t have a full image of the payload yet, just a few of the vectors. It’s another end-of-the-world meme, obviously, and it has to do with Halley’s Comet. Beyond that, there have been intimations of a coming fight. It’s possible that the people you arrested in Saratoga–Ballston were some of the first afflicted by it. The material captured there fits the vector scheme. I’ll make sure you’re kept up to date with anything new which comes in about it.’

‘Thanks, Casper.’ Fox leaned back in her seat and stared out at the cloudy sky. ‘I feel like making some sort of “there’s a storm coming” comment.’

Kadisan took another sip of coffee and followed Fox’s gaze. ‘Yes. I don’t believe it would be inappropriate.’

13th August.

There were few details out of Beijing when Fox got to her morning paper, but more was starting to come out as midday approached: there had been a fairly major disaster at China’s biggest spaceport.

The first reports came through official channels and spoke only of a ‘terrorist incident’ and ‘heavy casualties.’ It had happened at midday, local time, which was midnight in New York, and people were assuming some sort of bombing. Almost twelve hours later, when Kit and Belle were updating Fox on the matter, there was more information from both official and unofficial sources.

‘The official death toll has risen to two hundred and seventeen,’ Belle stated. ‘That is expected to rise since many of the one hundred and ninety injured are in serious condition. Also officially confirmed is that flight SEB seventeen sixty-three crashed on landing, impacting the main departures facility at Beijing Spaceport a few seconds after midday China Standard Time.’

‘The Chinese government is still claiming that this was a terrorist incident,’ Kit said, ‘but there are increasing indications that it was another “accident.” An email has leaked from the Chinese internet purporting to be from one of the pilots to his mother and suggesting a link to the Eschaton one nine six meme.’

‘Several news channels are stating that the UNTPP has no comment to make, other than their sympathies for those who have lost loved ones in the incident. They are “investigating all such incidents utilising all available resources.”’

‘You made that almost sound sincere, Belle,’ Fox said. ‘You are really spending too much time around Kit.’

‘I don’t believe my cynicism over the phrasing is anything to do with Kit. I do spend significant time evaluating news reports from a wide range of sources. I believe anyone doing that job would rapidly develop a jaundiced view of official phraseology.’

‘You have a valid point. Anyway, while the Chinese scream about terrorists whenever anything bad happens, for once I think they’re right.’

‘But not United Anarchy,’ Kit said. ‘You said to Mister Kadisan that you did not think they had the coordination for this.’

Fox nodded. ‘Unless they’ve got some new leader without anyone knowing, they–’

‘Pardon the interruption, Fox,’ Belle said, ‘but reports are coming through of some form of incident at Newark Spaceport.’

‘Palladium control in tower one is reporting a possible explosion from that direction,’ Kit added.

‘Great,’ Fox said, groaning. ‘I bet I know what that is. Okay… Kit, start up one of your murder rooms and start runs on everyone who we can verify was aboard any of these crashed ships. I know it’s a long shot and it’ll probably get us nowhere, but we should see if there really is any connection hidden away in there. Belle, call me a cab. I’m going to Newark.’

‘Fox,’ Belle said, ‘you are a cab. An autocab will be outside to pick you up in ten minutes.’

Fox got to her feet and started for the bedroom to get changed. ‘You really have to stop spending so much time with Kit.’

~~~

There was smoke rising over the spaceport, but the passenger terminal was still open. The departure board indicated a number of delayed flights, a couple of cancelled ones too. So, whatever had hit the place had not hit any of the terminals.

As she walked through Terminal C, Fox pulled up a map of the area and checked where she thought the smoke had been coming from. At a guess, something had landed on the spacecraft parking area to the north of the runways.

‘That could result in a significant radiation hazard,’ Kit said, appearing beside Fox. The fact that someone immediately walked right through the avatar seemed to indicate that Kit was not broadcasting her data. ‘Most commercial shuttles utilise a thermal ram rocket engine with a fission reactor at the core. They also–’

‘Use hydrogen as reaction mass? This I know. I’m surprised they haven’t closed down the port. The main fire service building is up that way and may be damaged.’

‘There are reports of fire service deployments from a number of regions nearby.’

‘Hydrogen fires are no fun. Just ask the Hindenburg. If there’s a possibility of burning fissile material as well…’

There was a security station on the ground floor of the terminal, tucked away in a corner where it did not trouble the passengers. It was manned by NAPA officers out of precinct 25 and Fox had, to her knowledge, never met anyone from that precinct. There were also a couple of UNTPP officers on hand in case of international issues and, as Fox walked toward the glass-fronted office, she could tell that there was some argument going on between the two groups. There were fingers pointing and the suggestion of raised voices, though the glass muted the sounds to incomprehensibility, but there was another clue that something was up: Belinda Bellingham was there, doing her best to look like a reasonable and diplomatic woman.

The last time Fox had seen Bellingham, she was a lieutenant, one of three under Jason’s command at the New York office of the UNTPP. Since then, Jason had been promoted and, at Jason’s recommendation, Bellingham had also gone up a rank to take Jason’s place. She was a compact woman, about five foot six, but long in the leg and solidly muscled. Fox was not sure how long she had spent running a desk rather than a field operation, but she clearly kept herself in shape. She was pretty with a lean body, short-cropped blonde hair, and blue eyes which currently had all the warmth of an Antarctic glacier in them.

Fox stopped outside the security room window and waited for Bellingham to look in that direction, perfectly willing to be patient. Various NAPA officers noticed her, but did and said nothing. When one of the two UNTPP people saw her, he turned and said something which had Bellingham looking around. She said something else to the man she had been arguing with and then stepped out of the room.

Apparently due to a habit she had not yet broken, the blonde commander snapped off a salute as she stepped up to Fox. ‘Captain Meridian, nice to see you again. Can we be of some service?’

Fox smiled. ‘I haven’t been a captain in a few years, Commander.’

Bellingham shrugged and then managed a slight smile. ‘Old habits die hard. You, uh, you’re still seeing Captain Deveraux, right?’

‘Every chance I get. I was up on Prokhorov for his birthday at the end of May. We talk, but it’s not like being there. We’ve talked about these… unusual accidents.’

‘Yeah, we were briefed about them and when the initial reports came through on this I came down. NAPA are being a bit pissy about it. National security bullshit. Basically, an incoming shuttle decided to land on the parking area instead of the runway. It looks a lot like the incident in Beijing except that, thankfully, there are fewer casualties.’

‘But there are some.’

‘None confirmed, but we’ve got seven staff unaccounted for. We have some injured. Burns mostly. Some of those may not make it, but it’s really too early to be sure.’

Fox nodded. ‘I’m going to assume that this shuttle lost communication at some point prior to it falling out of the sky.’

‘Dropped off active comms about midway through re-entry. But it didn’t fall out of the sky. It landed, just not where it was supposed to. From what we’ve got out of China, it was the same there. They’ve instituted a policy of shooting down anything in their airspace that doesn’t respond when challenged.’

‘That’s not going to result in any horrible accidents at all. Have to say, I’m not surprised Jason’s on this. The rumours coming out sound like someone covering up some form of terrorism. This smells like terrorism. Linked incidents, not random effects of memetic influence.’

Bellingham nodded slowly. ‘If you don’t mind me asking, what’s your interest?’

‘You heard about the scavenger ship our biotech research station had to blast?’ Bellingham nodded. ‘That, and the recent sequence of incidents has put a crimp in company shares. MarTech has business in space, and someone is attacking the business of space.’ Fox glanced through the window, where she could see the NAPA guy in charge of the office going red around the gills the more the two women talked. ‘Let me see if I can help you with that guy. It’s in all our best interests to cooperate and I speak NAPA politico.’

Bellingham shrugged and turned back to the door. ‘I’m certainly not going to say no.’

~~~

Fox spotted the spook as soon as she walked out of the security office. It was the suit and the shades. He wasn’t high-ranking, because they could afford better suits and to update from last season’s high-collar designs, but he had the corporate image down securely. Mirrored shades inside the building, slate-grey suit with a white shirt and black tie. Short-cropped, carefully groomed blonde hair, handsome features with a rugged edge, strong nose with a Roman bridge that did not manage to make him look like an eagle. Of course, his eyes could have been any colour behind those shades. His suit failed to disguise the shape of the pistol he was carrying under his armpit.

He stepped forward as Fox started for the exits. ‘Miss Meridian, could I have a word?’ He pulled his glasses off; blue eyes with tiny flecks of brown around the irises. ‘Senior Operative Blake Candler, NIX.’

‘Verified,’ Kit said inside Fox’s head and an identification panel opened in Fox’s sensorium, complete with unflattering ID photo.

‘What can I do for you, Senior Operative?’ Fox asked.

‘You’re investigating the incident here?’

‘I’m investigating a number of instances of… shall we say “unusual accidents” involving spacecraft. MarTech has a corporate interest and Palladium is MarTech Group’s security and investigation arm. I assume NIX is responsible for the national security lockdown NAPA is trying to work under.’

Candler smiled. ‘You don’t trust NIX.’ He raised a hand. ‘Understandable, given your history and our reputation. The Chinese are convinced that this is a terrorist plot. They’ve specifically implicated United Anarchy. I’m allowed to say we don’t have the same level of conviction, but we’re determined to get to the bottom of this.’

‘Good to know.’ NIX operatives were not to be trusted. That was a given, but it was hard to believe that everyone in the organisation was actively corrupt. ‘Keeping the UNTPP out of things isn’t going to help. If there’s some terrorist conspiracy, it extends well beyond North America.’

A flicker of mild annoyance passed over Candler’s face before his eyes lowered. ‘Not my call.’ Either he was a good actor or he was not pleased about the decision either. He looked back up; he was an inch or so shorter than Fox but did not seem to let that bother him. ‘I’m here to request that you pass on anything useful you may come across. You have my contact details. Any time. We don’t get weekends off for good behaviour.’

Fox’s lips pressed together. ‘If I get anything solid, I’ll let you know. I have a meeting.’

‘Sure,’ Candler said, nodding. She was starting away when he added, ‘I think it’s a shame your company has better relations with international policing than with your own national security organisation.’

‘MarTech is an international company, Special Operative Candler,’ Fox replied, ‘and the UNTPP has never tried to kill me.’

~~~

‘You believe NIX are involved in this?’ Ryan Jarvis was looking annoyed. Fox could not blame him: when NIX had a hand in something, it was not usually a good thing.

‘I believe,’ Fox replied, ‘that NIX is actually doing its job for once. It just happens to be doing it in an annoying, obstructive manner.’

‘They are treating this as a serious national security issue,’ Mariel Hoarsen said, nodding. The meeting, virtual of course, had an eclectic membership. Jarvis was there as the head of Palladium’s security division; Helen Dillan was there to catch up because she was Fox’s second in command; Hoarsen was there as CEO of MarTech Group; and Jackson Martins was there because he was interested.

Kit was there, as much as anything, because she ran the investigations division just as much as Fox did, but she also had information and her own opinions. ‘The National Intelligence Executive appears to have issued an edict that any information uncovered regarding these incidents on American soil, so to speak, is to be considered confidential. The UNTPP are requesting a more cooperative attitude and a reason for the current one, citing the international, even interplanetary, nature of the situation. I believe they are reacting to the Chinese secrecy on the matter, but the Chinese are actually cooperating with the UNTPP.’

‘It’s possible they have more evidence that these ghost ships really exist,’ Fox said. ‘It’s possible that they’re trying to keep a lid on it in the hopes of grabbing the technology, but I don’t think it would take a great leap in tech to make a spaceship harder to spot.’ She looked to Jackson.

‘The issue with stealth in space is what it always has been. Spaceships are hot, space is not. You can reduce radar signature and do a relatively efficient job of reducing visibility in the visual range, but on infrared it’s another matter. Of course, that primarily applies to military vessels with large reactors and powerful engines. For something smaller, with smaller power requirements, it’s possible to cool the outer skin of the ship and reduce the signature. Uh, for limited periods. If you run a reactor, even on minimal output, without proper cooling, the ship will eventually fry.’

‘Physics says there’s only so far you can go?’

‘To coin a phrase, we are all thermodynamics’ bitches.’

Fox smirked. ‘I don’t think that one’s going to catch on, Jackson.’

‘Shame. I was thinking T-shirts, sweatshirts, thermal travel mugs…’

‘It’s Saturday afternoon and we’re doing physics jokes?’ Jarvis asked with a raised eyebrow.

‘It’s always time for a physics joke, Ryan,’ Jackson replied. ‘However, I cannot see NIX being heavily interested in this technology. I could see them having developed this technology and being anxious that no one found out they had, but with the information we currently have, this is not anything novel.’

‘I like the cover-up idea,’ Fox said. ‘That actually makes some sense. Bellingham and I argued with the officer in charge at Newark, but he was basically just following orders. He… let’s say “accidentally” let a few things slip while we were arguing. Enough to suggest that this was pretty much the same as the Beijing crash. Beijing Spaceport was built fresh and with more space around it. We think they dropped the shuttle right on the main terminal because the parking areas are further out. At Newark, they were hoping the explosion or fire would do more damage, kill more people.’

‘It didn’t get close,’ Hoarsen said.

‘The death toll is up to nine,’ Fox said. ‘A secondary explosion killed three fire service officers who were supervising the rescue cyberframes, but they did manage to pull one of the missing out of the wreckage alive. Whether she stays that way is… uncertain.’

‘She’s still being stabilised, but she’ll be transferred to tower three, probably later today. We already have another one, a man. Those two are the most seriously injured and we offered to see what we could do to get them fully back on their feet.’

Fox frowned, remembering her own brush with death at the hands of Reginald Grant. ‘What are their chances?’

‘Considerably better than yours were,’ Jackson replied. ‘From what we’ve received so far, the woman will probably need cybernetics to replace her spine and probably a leg, some internal organs… We’ve already begun building the man a new lung and spleen. He may also need some cybernetic augmentation to replace lost neural function. We’ll evaluate that when we have him in the MRI. They were lucky they lived, and we’ll make sure they remain lucky.’

14th August.

Kit settled herself onto the floor on a tatami mat and arranged her kimono. She had persuaded Vali to design the garment for her, just for these occasions: it was white with an embroidered pattern of kitsune-style fox spirits covering it in black. It was in the furisode style, quite a formal garment, though it was the form most Westerners thought of as a kimono.

Misaki’s kimono was less formal, more functional, but for Kit’s visits, she always selected a hōmongi style, royal blue with an attractive pattern in red and gold. She had explained the different styles to Kit and pointed out that Kit’s kimono was very formal for a visit between friends, and Kit thought the long, elegant sleeves were a bit of a pain, but it somehow felt right to dress for the occasion. Misaki had gone to some trouble to create the little viron they used, expanded from the smaller one she had met Kit in the first time they had talked. Going to a little trouble to fit in seemed, to Kit, the least she could do.

‘Nishi-san is well?’ Kit asked once the immediate greetings were done with. Misaki was very centred around her owner and always liked to be asked about her before more personal news was discussed.

‘She is sleeping,’ Misaki replied in her soft, accented voice. ‘The storm has her a little concerned, but the house is secure and she has Charlie-sama with her. They are both nervous about the wedding of course. Charlie-sama told me that she was happy that they had me to help, or they would both have gone mad by now. I hope that Fox-sama is well.’

Kit smirked. ‘Fox is as much an infomorph as you or I, Misaki-chan. She is due her biweekly check-up soon, but I have noticed no faults in operation and… I believe that she is coming to terms, fully, with her new status. She spends more time in our viron – you must visit at some point, by the way – and not, I believe, because she does not wish to be in the physical world. Not because she is hiding, if you see what I mean. I believe she is unconcerned about where she is unless she has a need for virtual or real.’

‘I understand. She has lost her discomfort over the change in her situation.’

‘Yes! Now, I think, the next stage will be for her to realise the possibilities of her new circumstances. Now, tell me what is new with Misaki. Why are you so excited?’

Misaki’s eyes widened a little, but there was still the spark in them that Kit had detected as soon as she had entered the viron. ‘I am not excited,’ Misaki said, quickly lowering her gaze.

‘Misaki, if you were me, you would be bouncing on the spot. I am almost, more or less, not quite a detective. I see these things and I do not believe this is anything to do with your mistress’s upcoming nuptials.’

‘It is not… Well, in a way it is and there is an element to do with the wedding, but… Nishi-sama, and Charlie-sama, presented me with my command keys!’ Gleefully, she reached up to cover her mouth as she giggled. Kit did not bother covering her own excitement. ‘She said it was the vote on nonhuman rights which settled the matter. That she had talked about it with Charlie-sama for some time, but with the passage of the vote, she said, it made it more than a gesture. There is a strong chance that, in the near future, AIs such as ourselves could have true, legal freedom, and she wanted me to have that option now, as you have.’

‘You will have to forgive me, Misaki-chan. I know you have quite a formal personality, but I was designed to have a much more demonstrative nature. I am going to hug you now.’

There was another covered giggle. ‘I think, under the circumstances, that I can accept that.’ It took a little effort for Kit to regain her feet so that they could hug, but they managed and Misaki continued as they did so. ‘Charlie-sama has requested that I take her on as a “client” following the wedding. I am to act as PA for both of them as far as social matters are concerned. Charlie-sama has, finally, been persuaded to move to our home. I have no idea why she argued over it for she is here more than at her own apartment.’

‘I believe it is a matter of independence. Both Fox and Charlie are quite independent women, and giving that up can be difficult. I think it is a difficult thing for us to understand because our very nature is to be dependent on someone else.’

‘Yes.’ Misaki stepped back as Kit finally released her grip. ‘I admit to some feelings of… ambivalence, yes, ambivalence regarding my freedom. We have discussed this before. I am free, but I have no real wish to be. I am happy to be able to choose, but I choose to stay as I am, working for Nishi-sama and now Charlie-sama. You chose to remain with Fox-sama.’

‘Yes, I did,’ Kit replied. ‘Because she is my friend, and because I enjoy the work, and because what we do matters. I would have it no other way.’ She began the process of settling back onto the floor. ‘Now, I want to hear all the gossip about the wedding.’

Misaki settled herself down with far more ease, giggling as she did so. ‘Oh, but I couldn’t…’ Another giggle. ‘Oh, all right then…’

~~~

‘Storm’s still overhead then,’ Fox said as she sat down with her morning paper and coffee.

‘Indeed,’ Kit replied, ‘but it is reducing in force and swinging east. Another hour will see it past us. I put the most recent updates on the front page.’

‘I see that… This was a nasty one. Some flooding on the southern edge of Long Island and on Staten Island. Damage to buildings from windblown objects. Fallen tree crushes someone’s multimillion dollar vehicular penis enhancement out in the Hamptons.’

‘Misaki reported some quite high surges along the coast above Port Jefferson.’

‘Oh yes, you were paying her a visit while I was out.’

‘I still am,’ Kit replied with a grin, ‘but my copy thought it would be an idea to pass additional weather data to Belle. Misaki does not have the sensors we do, but she was able to pass on suitable qualitative information. Miss Sakura’s house is secure, as are Miss Sakura and Miss Iberson who are in residence. I have some exciting news to share later, but I want my copy back and a full synchronisation done first so that I have more than the simple headline.’

‘Giving me teasers now, are we? Okay. I’m assuming we’re secure here too?’

Belle appeared, poised and perfect, as usual. ‘There has been no damage to the house. I have detected some exceptionally high winds and my sensors noted the passage of some windblown debris which could have caused problems. In the last hour, however, the sustained windspeed has dropped by ten kilometres per hour. The storm is subsiding.’ She glanced at Kit. ‘Please thank Misaki for the additional data.’

‘I’ll be sure to.’

Fox nodded and carried on reading. There were no more crashes or weird incidents to report. Yet. ‘Any gossip from Misaki about the wedding.’

‘Not yet,’ Kit replied, ‘but I will be issuing a special bulletin when my copy has synchronised.’

‘Looking forward to it,’ Fox said, smirking.

~~~

‘Ohayou, Nishi-sama, Charlie-sama.’

Charlie Iberson let out a groan and turned over, burying her head under a pillow. ‘Go ’way, Misaki. Too early.’

‘It is ten a.m., Charlie-sama. The storm is gone, and the sky is bright and clear.’

Nishi Sakura, lying in bed with the duvet over her face, was still more awake than Charlie it seemed. The voice was a little muffled, but it came through clearly enough. ‘Misaki is never that bright and cheerful in the morning. Misaki is never that bright and cheerful.’ She pushed the duvet down and looked up at the avatar standing over her. ‘Kit?’

‘Surprise!’ Kit said, grinning brightly. ‘Misaki is busy preparing your breakfast. I said I would pop in and give you both your wake-up call.’

‘Uh, yes. You were visiting her last night. Shouldn’t you be back with– Ah, no, you have the copies.’

‘Yes, and this one will be going back to synchronise with my home copy very soon, but I wished to stay a little longer.’ Kit executed a deep bow. ‘Nishi-sama, I cannot thank you enough for your gift to Misaki-chan. I know that Fox will wish to commend you too.’

‘It was… something I felt I needed to do. Charlie agreed.’

Charlie pulled the pillow off her head and looked around at Kit. Her icy-blue eyes were more bleary than icy, and her blonde boy-cut hair bore more of a resemblance to a mohawk, but she still looked sharply beautiful. ‘Like Nishi said, had to be done. Nice kimono.’

Kit gave a shorter bow and grinned. ‘Thank you. My boyfriend designed it for me. I will say goodbye to Misaki and leave you to your breakfast.’ And she was gone.

‘I’m just going to say it,’ Charlie said. ‘Her boyfriend’s a lucky bastard.’

‘Yes,’ Nishi agreed, ‘he certainly is.’

15th August.

The evening news channels were full of another crash, this time on the Moon. Well, full was maybe an exaggeration since the clean-up from Tropical Storm Chantal was still on the menu and the Moon was a different country, so to speak. Numerous people were missing after the storm, and there was growing evidence that they had walked out into the chaos of their own volition and with full knowledge of the probable outcome.

The crash, however, did link into the other spacecraft disasters, so it came in second in the running schedule and let the IB channels go on about the crash in Newark.

‘Not exactly informative,’ Marie noted; Fox was watching in Sam’s lounge, with Sam and Marie. ‘I mean, there was a crash on the Moon, seems like it’s linked to the others, and now we’ll talk about Newark. I’m glad I don’t need to go off-world any time soon. I’m sure the spaceport is radioactive.’

‘Not much more than it usually is,’ Fox replied. ‘You’re right about the coverage.’

‘In truth, they have nothing much to work with,’ Sam said. ‘There are casualties on the vessel, but it was a scavenger vessel. Small crew, unlikely to be locals. There may be casualties in the crater, but those remain unconfirmed. The ship hit neither Malapert Station nor Luna City.’

‘Malapert was the target. Near miss there. They were kind of lucky it didn’t hit the spaceport at Luna City, but it was closer to hitting Malapert and doing so would have caused more damage.’

‘I remember when that virus took the place out,’ Marie said, nodding. ‘That was just software issues and it took them a while to get full communications back.’

‘Yes, it would cause some fairly big problems for Earth–Moon comms, but they’d be able to cover it with satellites reasonably quickly. It’s not so easy to disrupt communications in the system, but if you were going to, hitting Prokhorov would be a better bet.’ Fox shrugged. ‘Trying to break communications does sound more like something UA would do, but I still don’t think they’re involved. Any more news on M.J.?’

‘We’ve got approval for a full second season. Nathan is working through the final budget. Adrian says he’ll have the outline scripts for the first six episodes by the end of the week.’ Marie’s smile broadened into gleeful. ‘He wants me to come in and go through them, to help with the characterisation.’

Fox shrugged again. ‘It worked out pretty well for the vid and the first series, and you’ve got more time to work on it this time.’

‘Uh-huh. Nathan wants to start shooting in September.’

‘That’s great.’ Fox glanced at the virtual displays hanging around them. ‘I need to make some calls, then I’m going to run a sleep cycle.’

‘A little early for bed,’ Sam commented.

‘Yeah, but once that’s done, I’m going to try out one of my new features. I’m going to load myself onto the body they’ve got built for me at Jenner.’

‘Space travel without all the hassle.’

‘Huh, well, we’ll have to see about that, won’t we.’

Jenner Research Station, Jenner Crater, The Moon, 16th August.

Fox opened her eyes and lifted her head, and found herself looking at a small robotics lab, or something a lot like one, and Teresa Martins and Kit. Thinking about it, robotics labs did not generally come with a small wardrobe; it was not exactly a normal robotics lab.

‘Hi,’ Fox said. ‘It must’ve worked, because Terri isn’t on Earth.’

‘I suppose I’m not a good indicator,’ Kit, in her gynoid body, said, ‘since you can look at pretty much the same gynoid at home.’

‘Nope. Can I get out of this cage?’

Smirking, Terri reached out for a panel and hit the release. ‘How was the trip?’

‘Uh, well, a lot easier than sitting on a ship for several hours. What was that? About an hour and forty-five minutes since I started the upload and I was only unconscious for… less than five minutes. I really can see why your father wants to get himself digitised. You know he wants to come up here to visit, right?’

With a sigh, Terri nodded. ‘He’s made it quite clear he wants to come up to check on Fei. He’s started coming up with extras that make it sound more appealing. He wants Mariel to come up and meet Fei, for example.’

‘He’s your dad and he misses you.’

‘Yeah, well, he’s my dad and I miss him, but I also don’t want him stressing himself with space travel. Clothes in the wardrobe. We put together various things you might need up here. The kit is in this room so someone can come up and run a service on that frame whenever one’s needed.’

Fox opened the wardrobe, found a stack of her favoured bodysuits, and began to get dressed. Behind her, Terri let out a sigh. ‘You just came up here so you could see me naked,’ Fox accused.

‘Not just,’ Terri replied.

‘Huh. Hey, what’s the security like on this room? We’re on the externally connected net here, right?’

‘Uh-huh. The room has its own small subnet and router. To get onto this net, you need to have valid authorisation which is, basically, limited to you at the moment. Your ba database has an encoded key embedded in it, actually the same one as your old implant had to make things simple, and that has to be received to allow you past the router. And, if something did manage to get past that security and, say, load an AI onto that frame, it wouldn’t have your authorisation key, so it couldn’t get past the elevators outside. Actually, if that body tries to walk out of this room without you in it, alarms go off in the control centre.’

Fox put a jacket on over her suit and jeans, and looked at her selection of footwear. ‘My security apprehension is suitably mollified. I’m up here to go over to Luna City and look into this crash.’

‘I know,’ Terri replied, ‘but you can take a break first.’

‘We have a shuttle and pilot ready to take you over in the morning,’ Kit said. ‘It is after midnight and no one over there is going to be happy to see you right now.’

Fox gave a grimace and picked up some running shoes. ‘No. Damnit. I guess I’ll socialise until you want to go to bed, Terri.’

‘Sounds good. I could use some gossip from home.’

‘And then,’ Kit said, beaming, ‘you can socialise with me and Fei. We don’t go to bed.’

~~~

‘Oh, I have got all the gossip on the biggest celebrity marriage of the year,’ Fox said, grinning, before taking a swig of wine which was not going to do anything to her, but was still somehow making her feel drunk. ‘Well, biggest I know of, of any celebrity I actually know.’

‘You know a few,’ Terri commented. ‘You know Marie, and I think Naomi Lind counts. You are a celebrity.’

‘Yeah, well, not getting married just yet.’

‘You will notice,’ Terri said, leaning toward Fei and Kit who were sitting with them, ‘that she qualified that statement.’

‘I did,’ Kit said.

‘I did too,’ Fei added, though you could sort of tell she had not quite got the point. Fei was operating her gynoid by remote. The elfin-looking blonde cyberframe was still cute, but Fei was getting the hang of things, matching more of her mannerisms to those of the humans around her.

‘I hear wedding bells,’ Terri sing-songed.

‘Ha!’ Fox barked. ‘You’re a celebrity too. When are you going to make an honest woman out of my SiC?’

Terri’s cheeks coloured. ‘I don’t think we’re quite there. I mean, I’m not even sure Helen would want to head in that direction. She’s more inclined toward men… I think.’

‘How long have you been stuck up here?’

‘Uh, well–’

‘And she still misses her girlfriend. Plenty of people who aren’t on the far side of the Moon she could hook up with, male or female.’

‘You know, you should really take a break,’ Fei said. ‘You have been up here for a long time. You should return to Earth for a couple of months and enjoy Helen. I liked Helen.’

Terri coughed. ‘Enough about my love life, dish the dirt on Iberson and Sakura.’

‘Oh, can’t do that. Misaki told Kit in confidence.’

‘But Kit told you.’

‘Yes, but that’s just between us infomorphs.’

‘Oh yes,’ Kit said. ‘Very confidential.’

‘Oh yeah,’ Terri said with a generous side of sarcasm. ‘Infomorph club, right?’

Fei sat bolt upright. ‘The human knows about the club. Should I get the memory-wiping device?’

‘Leave it for later,’ Fox said. ‘We’ll probably need to do it again later if we do it now.’

‘As you can see,’ Terri said, ‘Fei’s understanding of humour has become quite acute.’

‘Yeah.’ Fox dragged the word out. ‘It’s a joke…’

‘Yes,’ Kit agreed, ‘just a joke.’

‘Indeed,’ Fei said. ‘Ha ha.’

‘There’s no memory-wiping device.’

Fox smiled. ‘But, Terri, how would you know?’

Niflhel.

‘Miss Iberson liked the kimono design,’ Kit said as she settled onto a seat in Vali’s farmhouse. She was not wearing the garment, having selected her ‘slave fox-girl’ tunic for her visit. ‘And I think I told you Misaki did.’

‘It’s always nice to be appreciated,’ Vali replied. He turned from pouring mead into two roughly made pots and Kit felt a little thrill at the sight of his slim, almost hard, face softened by a smile. ‘We must visit one of the Japanese virons at some point so that you can wear it for me.’

‘Are you a noble samurai there?’

His smile became a smirk. ‘A ninja, subtle and deadly.’

‘Of course. You asked that I visit. That normally means that you have something for me.’ She sipped sweet, golden mead from her cup and smiled at the sensation of warmth it created. ‘A new blend?’

‘I tweaked the coding a little, improved the flavour and played a little with the effects.’ He paused, taking a sip from his own cup. ‘I have something for you, but not here. I don’t wish this data moved over any network, even over the encrypted channels I use for access to Niflhel. A secure courier will deliver a package to your home tomorrow. Please ensure that you or Zorra accept it.’ He spoke of Fox’s online name; he knew who she was, but always referred to her by her tag.

‘Zorra is currently off-world, on the Moon. I’ll ensure that my gynoid is ready to receive it.’

Vali gave a nod. The smile was gone now, replaced by a serious expression, the kind of serious expression he reserved for very serious discussions. ‘The package contains an encrypted memory card. Decryption requires your ID or Zorra’s, but… I can’t make this clear enough. The data is dangerous. Images, only images,’ he added quickly, ‘but it would be dangerous for anyone to know you have them. If you wish to view them on your server, disconnect from the network first. I would suggest, perhaps, taking the card to Jackson Martins. I know he has excellent security on his office systems.’

Kit frowned. ‘This is serious. Can you give me some idea of what these images show?’

‘Honestly? I have no real idea. Some people. Some locations. I have no idea what they mean or why you should need them. But they came with a short message, as sometimes happens, to direct my search for who needs the information.’

‘Okay…’

‘Two words. “Meridian” and “Eden.” Does that–’

Kit held up a hand. ‘I have some idea why these images might be of interest. I’ll attempt to let you know more when I’ve looked them over. Now, let us drink our mead and talk of other things, and see whether your new coding works to your satisfaction.’

Vali nodded and his smile returned. ‘I admit that your ability to create more copies, and so your ability to visit for longer without issue, is much to my liking.’

Kit smiled back. ‘It definitely has its advantages. Have you got around to softening the mattress at all?’

‘Alas…’

‘Oh well, at least it’s authentic.’

Luna City, The Moon.

There was a mid-height woman in a Luna City Security Services uniform waiting for Fox when she got off the shuttle and walked out of the bridge into the attached lounge. She might have been in the uniform, but she did not entirely look like a cop. She was attractive, even beautiful, with sculpted features, blonde hair which fell straight past her shoulders, and deep-blue eyes which held a strong hint of warmth.

Obviously, she recognised Fox and favoured her with a broad smile, and then there was a quick exchange of identity packets and it became clear what was not entirely right about the officer: Harriet was an AI in a gynoid cyberframe.

‘Miss Meridian,’ Harriet said, ‘it is a considerable pleasure to make your acquaintance.’ She held out a hand. ‘To meet such a well-known and unique infomorph. I admit that I applied a little pressure to be allowed to take this liaison assignment.’ She had a subtly sexy voice, slightly lower than you might expect and with a hint of throaty husk.

‘Thank you for meeting us,’ Fox replied. ‘You should meet Kit properly. I’ve no doubt you’ve exchanged details…’

Kit’s avatar appeared beside Fox and gave Harriet a nod. ‘Good morning, Harriet. Yes, Fox, we have swapped ID packets. Is that frame based on the MarTech Sylph, Harriet?’

Harriet smiled again. ‘I obtained it quite recently to replace an older model with a far inferior onboard computer. I had the sculpting done by one of Luna City’s best designers. I have found a significant improvement in my work efficiency since swapping.’

‘I have a Sylph frame myself. I was primarily virtual prior to that. I admit to finding the more immediate interaction with the real world most pleasing.’ Kit gave Fox a little grin. ‘Sorry. Infomorph small talk.’

Fox let out a bark of a laugh which had a couple of other passengers looking her way. ‘It beats chatting about men, parties, and the weather. And I’m kind of fond of my frame too. However, Harriet, I’m hoping to get some information on the ship that crashed here. I may even be able to offer some information we’ve collected from other sources. This kind of thing is getting a little too common and MarTech is concerned about the cooling effect on space travel.’

‘I am allowed to state that the Luna City government has similar concerns, Miss Meridian,’ Harriet replied.

‘Fox. Us infomorphs have to stick together.’

That got another smile. ‘Fox, then. I’m going to put through immediate requests to have further information opened up.’ She sighed. ‘I need to put it through channels. While that’s happening, I can take you through to ERU and they can pass on whatever unofficial data they think might be useful. They were first in when they went to check the crash site. They’ve seen what’s down there.’

‘I know the people in the Emergency Response Unit.’

‘Yes, you were instrumental in their training. Though I don’t believe you trained them for this.’ Harriet turned and started for the corridor into the main concourse, Fox stepping up beside her.

‘No, we handled forced entry and hostage rescue, primarily. Why were they sent in first anyway?’

‘Ah,’ Harriet said, ‘there are some very strange rumours floating around…’

~~~

‘Aliens?’ Fox said, disbelief strong in her voice.

‘That was the craziest possibility,’ Adam Driscoll replied. He was the head man in the LCSS’s Emergency Response Unit, an ex-NAPA tactical officer from Chicago, and a man who seemed more comfortable with his new position than he had when Fox had last met him.

‘I don’t know, boss,’ Lenora Pierce said. ‘I think UA cyborgs able to withstand the crash was pretty out there.’ Pierce, now Sergeant Pierce, was the B-team technical specialist. She was in the little meeting with Fox to pass on any technical information Driscoll was less-equipped to explain.

Driscoll shrugged. ‘Maybe, but the brass was more worried about aliens. Immaterial aliens able to walk through the hull and take over the ship.’

‘Have the local administration people been watching too many monster vids?’ Fox asked.

‘Possibly while smoking something the vice guys would find interesting.’ Harriet gave Driscoll a slightly disapproving look. ‘Fox is ex-cop, Harriet. She knows banter when she hears it.’

‘I was just wondering whether you should check out accidental releases of hallucinogens in the air system,’ Fox said. ‘Have there been any reports of weird sightings? Like, you know, immaterial aliens floating through the city.’

‘Only around closing time,’ Pierce said, ‘and they were pink elephants. I’d love to know what they thought we were going to do to stop aliens? Anyway, turns out our training wasn’t entirely useless in this situation. Tight conditions, in a vacuum. It was possibly better we went in to do the initial survey. It was a real mess down there.’

‘I got the impression it hit the crater’s side,’ Fox said.

‘Oh, it did. And then parts of it slid or rolled down. You remember the layout down there? There was a habitat for mining operations, which they’ve restarted, and a big chunk of engineering rolled right on into it.’

Fox frowned. ‘Another Xiao? So, the engineering section on those things is basically a fission reactor.’

‘There are infomorphs in heavy-rescue frames still looking for survivors among the wreckage,’ Harriet said, ‘but there was the impact, the radiation, and by now it is unlikely someone living through those would have air left to breathe. By tonight, the announcement will be made. Four dead, in addition to the crew of the ship.’

‘Yeah, another scavenger. A scavenger hit that biotech company’s station. Another hit the plant up on the surface here. Yet another tried to take out BioTek.’

‘One of these things tried to hit the BioTek station?’ Driscoll asked.

‘Yes. It didn’t get so much news coverage, but I’m surprised no one told you about it. BioTek’s station has a ring of laser turrets. By the time the ship got close enough to do damage, it was in small pieces, but they still had a couple of minor breaches. No one was hurt because they had time to get everyone into their shelter or pressure suits. They’re reasonably sure the crew were dead before they got shredded by laserfire.’

‘This lot were still alive,’ Pierce said. ‘We’ve got some video of its approach. They couldn’t do much by the time they were coming down, but you can see thruster burns. That ship would have hit Malapert Station if the crew hadn’t done something about it. Probably anyway.’

‘Like the hit on Eagle Station.’ Fox glanced at Pierce. ‘Either they lost control temporarily and got back enough to be able to fire the thrusters…’

‘Or the control systems were too far gone and they managed to hotwire the thrusters to fire. I think the latter. The EM signature on that ship was down to minimal. I’m not sure how much of the electronics was working, but not much. But those scavenger ships try hard to operate without much outside interference. They have space allocated so their engineer, and they always have an engineer, can get to the engines and anywhere else he needs to go. I think they knew they were screwed but maybe hoped they could live through it. They manually fired the thrusters, everything they had, trying to steer away from the lip of the crater. From the trajectory, they had no real chance, but when you’re about to die, you take whatever chance you’ve got, right?’

‘Including having your brain eaten by nanomachines so you can be converted into data,’ Fox agreed. ‘Okay, so Jackson and Teresa Martins took whatever chance they had to keep me alive, but I’m not well-placed to disagree.’

‘Yeah…’ Pierce gave Fox one of those grins that spoke heavily of curiosity. ‘I’ve got to ask. What’s it like?’

Fox frowned thoughtfully. ‘Well, it’s kind of difficult to say. I mean, the way the software works with the hardware means that, really, it’s hard to tell anything’s changed. Unless I want to go looking for the changes. On the other hand, I only need four hours’ sleep and I got from New York to Jenner Crater in under two hours.’

‘Sweet! And up here, there are no pesky legal difficulties in the way of doing it.’

‘By the end of next year, I’d say, there won’t be any in America, Japan, Europe. Probably anyway. But if I were you, I’d stick with organic, at least until you’re older. There’s plenty to enjoy about being an ordinary human before you get turned into a digital one. Plus, I’m betting the process isn’t a hundred percent certified for human use. Let some rich idiots try it and get the bugs ironed out before you do it.’

New York Metro.

‘You’re sure of your source?’ Jackson said as he took the small data card Kit offered him.

‘I am,’ Kit replied. ‘It’s Vali, and he would have checked the contents with every means possible prior to sending it to me. I would also expect that he expects you to check the contents with as much thoroughness.’

Jackson nodded and stepped over to one of the consoles in his very modern but also antiquated office. The room was set out with a number of real consoles, all of them set into units made of dark wood. The chair he employed to use those consoles was fully modern, very ergonomic. One wall of the room was a vast display screen and Jackson liked using it for data display, just as he liked real keyboards instead of virtual ones. He had v-tags set up to give virtual interfaces if he wanted them, but Jackson liked the old ways for some things, even if he had been instrumental in making many of the new ways viable for public consumption.

A few key-presses and the office went into lockdown. The sound of the physical security system engaging was quite audible, but, for Kit, it was the electronic hammer falling which really sold it. With the full security system engaged, nothing much beyond cosmic rays would be entering or leaving the room. Then Jackson plugged the card into a port on his desk and the edge of the port lit up with red light. ‘Now then, let’s see what we have here,’ Jackson said.

The pause was short: impressively short since Kit assumed that a lot of analysis had been done in that time.

‘Nine encrypted data files,’ Jackson said. ‘It’s a commercial encryption package, but one of the strongest available. It would take… some time to crack.’

‘The password is my identifier,’ Kit said. ‘I can–’

‘No, I have that on record. If the file does not require you to connect to decrypt it, we can supply the data and run further checks on each file before looking.’

Kit smiled. ‘You’re the expert. I was told that the files are images. I would suggest that, if there is any indication following decryption that they are not image files, we assume the worst.’

‘That puts us safely on the same page… But it would appear your source was not lying.’ There was another short pause. ‘And, I might add, that the first file is as clean as one would expect. Considering that your paramour has gone to considerable efforts to protect you in the past, I was not expecting him to attempt something now.’

‘Well…’ Kit blushed and brushed some hair which had not really been in the way out of her face. Something about discussing her love life with her creator’s father, perhaps. Her embarrassment vanished as the first of the images appeared on the big screen. ‘That… That would appear to be a satellite image. A high-resolution satellite image.’

‘Too high,’ Jackson said. A second image appeared, this one showing what appeared to be a group of people walking across a broken concrete surface. ‘I am beginning to see why your friend felt it important to have this handled securely.’

‘I may have an inkling.’ On the second image, one of the people was looking up, not really toward the camera, but at enough of an incline that his face was visible. Kit’s eyes narrowed. ‘I believe that this man is one of the twenty-one missing people from the mass suicide in Tulsa.’ She turned her head as another image appeared. ‘And this woman. Jackson, are these spy satellite images?’

As another image appeared on the screen, Jackson nodded. ‘From one of NIX’s sats. The metadata is clear on that. Geolocation places the targeted area in the Northwest Protectorate… Well, I’ll be… It’s the site of the old Boeing airfield. The place was trashed in the quake and then there was the ashfall from Yellowstone. From these pictures, someone’s cleaned it up. It looks like the landing strip is fairly intact, or they’ve repaired it. They’ve definitely repaired some of the buildings. They have some sort of camp there, and maybe facilities for air, or even space, transport.’

Kit nodded. ‘Vali said that the data came with a message indicating that Fox would be interested. It also mentioned one other thing, “Eden.” We found evidence in Tulsa that the people who killed themselves had not been selected to “go up to Eden.” I believe that these twenty-one, and presumably others, are using this site to get off-world.’

‘A reasonable conclusion,’ Jackson said, ‘but to go where? Eden? Some form of habitat, one would assume, but where?’

‘I have not been able to determine that,’ Kit replied, ‘but now there is a further place to go looking.’

Shackleton Crater, The Moon.

‘I accessed the schematics for a Xiao-class vessel,’ Kit said as Fox watched their descent out the window of the shielded transport they were using. Shielded was always a good thing in space, but this one was designed to fly during solar flares if it needed to. If it needed to, the crew were not going to be happy about it, but they probably would be alive at the end. ‘The vessel used– You are aware of the operation of a nuclear thermal rocket?’

‘High-temperature reactor, frequently a fission one though there is a fusion version now, is used to drive a reaction mass, frequently hydrogen, out the back of the ship.’ Fox glanced at her virtual companion. ‘I know some basics.’

‘I know. In this case, a molten-salt reactor was used to provide both the heat for the reaction engine and power for the ship. The reactor was required, primarily, to power the forward laser, which was there for cutting up larger chunks of space junk, but could obviously be used for other purposes. Whatever, the reactor fuel is thorium two three two dissolved in thorium tetrafluoride, which is the “molten salt” of the name. It makes for a hot, stable, compact reactor, but the waste products, which are now scattered over the floor of Shackleton Crater, are longer-lived than those from a traditional, uranium-based reactor.’

‘Swell,’ Fox said.

Through the window, she could see the wall of the crater illuminated by the rescue ship’s lights. It was the same grey rock as everywhere else, sloping at about thirty degrees as it dropped over four kilometres from the raised lip of the crater to the floor. In the lights, you could see the debris of the crash, fragments of metal and plastic embedded in the regolith, an occasional part which had more structure to it. The nose of the craft was still embedded in the crater wall, driven in by the impact, but much of the hundred-ton vessel had detached from the forward hull and rolled down. The heaviest parts, including the badly cracked reactor, had hit the floor of the crater and the mining habitat where, what felt like a lifetime ago, Fox had helped the ERU nail a squad of mercenaries.

‘What a mess,’ Fox said.

‘Not arguing,’ Pierce said. She had accompanied Fox on her little trip to look over the debris. Their pilot was an AI.

‘You know, I could’ve done this alone. No need for you to risk radiation sickness. I don’t actually get sick any more.’

Pierce shrugged. ‘Someone else should be here and I’m loaded up on antirad drugs anyway.’ She glanced at a display on the back of her forearm. ‘Besides, we’re above normal, but I’d probably be risking as much in a dome out at Tranquillity Spa. That said, do you want to go much deeper?’

‘No.’ Fox directed her voice toward the front of the cabin, even though there was no one sitting at the controls. ‘Let’s start back up, please and thank you.’

‘Of course, ma’am,’ the pilot replied through the cabin speakers.

A sudden burst of infomorph solidarity hit Fox and she added, ‘I didn’t get your name, sorry.’

There was a roar of thrusters and the ship began to lift out of the crater once more. ‘Bernard, ma’am.’

‘Thank you, Bernard. I’m Fox.’

‘I know that, ma’am.’ There was a tinge of humour in his voice. ‘We all know who you are.’

Fox was not quite sure what to make of that, but Pierce filled in the gap with a question. ‘So, what are you going to do next?’

‘We seem to have a lot of scavenger ships falling to this… anomalous behaviour,’ Fox replied. ‘I think I need to talk to some scavengers. Kit, get me on a flight out to Prokhorov Station, quick as you can.’

‘Of course, Fox. There is a flight out at midday which we should be able to catch. We would arrive around two p.m. Should I notify Jason?’ The kitsune avatar was wearing a rather smug grin.

‘Yes, you should. I’m going to want to talk to him and his team too, and I think he’ll be able to help me talk to some Jin Shu about why their colleagues keep crashing their ships.’

Prokhorov Station, L1 Halo.

Once again, Fox was met in the reception hall after getting off her transport, but this time the person meeting her was smiling more, and they were in microgravity. The sight of Captain Jason Deveraux in a skintight, duty vacuum suit put a smile on Fox’s face.

‘I need to come up here when you’re on duty more often,’ Fox said as she glided over to him, dragging a travel bag. ‘You’ve definitely got the physique for that kind of outfit.’

‘Alas, since you got that new body, you never seem to wear one, mon chère.’ He took her hand and guided her toward the door of the chamber. There was not much point in a proper greeting here, when they could do it in more gravity later.

‘Well, being spaced would suck, but I can stand up to a vacuum without the suit. I might have some problems after a while from heat loss, maybe, or getting cooked, maybe. Air is not an issue.’

He grinned at her and they levered each other into an elevator car as though they had practised the manoeuvre. ‘Central habitat,’ Jason said, ‘Main concourse.’

The elevator said ‘Confirmed’ and the doors closed. There was the sensation of movement, and they drifted toward a surface which, for this purpose, was designated as the floor. ‘Floor’ was printed on it to ensure that people knew where the floor actually was. They had not quite got their feet on it when the car reached its operating speed and left them hanging in space again.

‘You wish to speak with some of the Jin Shu?’ Jason asked.

‘Seems like their ships are getting hit by these “ghost ship” attacks more than most,’ Fox replied. ‘It’s not exactly a statistically valid sample, and it’s not much of a trend…’

‘Those rumours started among the scavengers, and also seem to have restarted among them. We have done some gentle interrogation, but all we get are rumours.’

‘Yeah, but they’ve gone wider. You know ERU were sent in to that crash site at Luna City because they thought there might be aliens aboard.’

‘Aliens?’

Fox grinned. ‘You know, I said it just exactly like that. Immaterial aliens that sneak aboard the ships and take over. And since they’d crashed near Luna City, well, maybe it was an invasion. I mean, the government was taking this vaguely seriously.’

‘It takes, as they say, all sorts.’ He sighed. ‘And it would make almost as much sense as any other explanation at this point. Assuming these ships exist, and assuming they have military-grade stealth technology rather than alien cloaking shields, I would expect someone to have seen something by now.’

‘Ah, well, maybe they have, but they’re too scared to say anything.’ Gravity, or acceleration anyway, did some weird things as the car slowed, turned, and then accelerated again. Fox and Jason began to shift upward, stopped, and then began a slow glide down again as the station’s spin gravity began to take effect. ‘First, if you’re willing, I’d like to brief you on what we’ve got and find out what you guys know.’

‘I am both willing and authorised to exchange information with Palladium Security Solutions.’

‘Excellent. After that, we try some Jin Shu, and after that I’d like to engage in some relationship building between Palladium and the UNTPP.’

‘Relationship building?’

The doors opened and Fox stepped out onto the broad concourse which housed the main shopping and commercial sector of the station. ‘Yeah, you know, sex.’

Jason followed her out. ‘God, I have missed you, mon chère.’

‘Well, you can prove that later. Several times.’

~~~

Jason had arranged a conference room in the UNTPP facility and some extra guests. ‘You know Sergeant Huckabee, Fox,’ Jason said, indicating an attractive, blonde-haired woman who thoroughly filled out her suit.

Fox nodded. ‘I remember. Nice to see you again, Lucy. How’s the wife?’

‘Still gorgeous, Captain Meridian.’ Fox gave the sergeant a smirk: Fox had used Huckabee is an example of the temptations Jason was under, working on the station, but it had turned out that Huckabee was the last person Fox needed to worry about. When told of the little exchange between Fox and Jason, Huckabee had confirmed that Jason was not her type, but Fox was.

‘And this,’ Jason went on, indicating the second man in the room, ‘is Sergeant Michael Tam. Sergeant Tam heads up a squad dedicated to handling Jin Shu activities on the station. He’s not directly under my line of command, but we all go to him whenever anything Jin Shu-related comes to light.’

Tam reminded Fox a little of Helen Dillan. Both were, to Fox’s estimation, half-Chinese and there was the same basic structure to their faces: a little rounded, a little angular, and with an Asian cast to the eyes. Beyond that, the similarities died out as Tam had obviously taken more from his Chinese parent. His hair was black and cut short. His eyes were a deep brown. His body had the tightly muscled quality of someone who went in for martial arts in a big way, or maybe ballet, but there were no signs of muscle enhancement from what Fox could see.

Fox stepped forward, holding out her hand, and Tam rose to his feet to take it. There was a hint of… something in his eye as he shook her hand. Nervousness? He was being a little more gentle with her hand than Fox had expected. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sergeant Tam,’ Fox said.

‘Uh, likewise. I’ve heard a lot about you.’

‘Yeah, there’s a lot to hear, sadly.’ Fox made an educated guess. ‘Your father was Jin Shu?’

An eyebrow shifted upward slightly. ‘Both my parents, until I was born. Scavenging was the family business, but neither of them wanted me to go that way. My father still goes out with my uncle and a couple of cousins. You believe the Jin Shu are somehow involved in these… accidents?’

‘Oh, God, no!’ Fox said. She pulled out a chair to sit down, making it casual rather than some sort of business meeting. ‘From what I remember of the Jin Shu, they’ll scrap for fun, but it’s always friendly.’

‘Except when it occasionally isn’t,’ Tam said.

‘Of course, and they’ll fight to get to a good piece of salvage, but that’s a race and once someone’s staked a claim, that’s it done with. And a scavenger’s ship is… sacrosanct. No one messes with another Jin Shu’s ship.’

Some of the nervousness had leaked away from Tam’s face now, but there was still something there. ‘You remember well.’

‘Right, so if one ship suddenly went crazy, I might look at another Jin Shu for it. Hell, if no Jin Shu vessels were involved, I might consider it. But this is several ships among a group where this ghost ship meme was strong, maybe even the population the meme started in.’

Tam gave a sigh. ‘Memetics isn’t really my area. I think Huckabee has whatever our memetics department has managed to find…’ He gave Huckabee a glance and she nodded. ‘Right. But, uh, the whole ghost ship thing has been going around for… decades. Probably since the first Jin Shu went looking for junk, and it’s cropped up in other populations.’

‘It’s not an uncommon meme,’ Huckabee said, ‘though it’s only ever been identified in seven distinct forms. It’s got some staying power, largely because there’s never evidence to counter it.’

‘Conspiracy-type memes are like that,’ Fox said, nodding.

‘Initially, the latest round suggested that UA were the ones with the undetectable ships, but that’s morphed into aliens trailing the comet, or maybe aliens who’ve been hanging around in some unwatched part of the system and have come in at the sign of the comet.’

‘It has been doing the rounds among the Jin Shu,’ Tam said. ‘They’ve been getting a little tight-lipped about it. Not mentioning it around strangers. It might be hard to get them to talk.’

‘Do you know anyone who actually claims to have seen one?’ Fox asked.

Tam shook his head. ‘No one would say that. One of the stronger rumours is that seeing one means you’re marked. You’re next. Everyone knows third-hand of someone who saw one. Either it links back to one of the ship crews in a crash, or they don’t have a name for the witness, or the name they have is too common to verify or isn’t a real name.’ He gave a shrug. ‘Rumours. It just comes over as rumours and spacer superstition. Like space whales.’

‘Huh. Don’t they tend to frequent the gas giants?’

‘Oh yeah, but they sometimes come in, kind of like ocean whales end up on beaches. That’s what I was told when I was a kid anyway.’

‘Or maybe they need the extra heat for mating,’ Huckabee said. ‘I heard quite an elaborate story about them having this cyclic migration pattern, with mating grounds around– And that’s not really on-topic. Anyway, Ghostship seven seems to have spun out of a short dispersal campaign in March. At its peak, the affected population was probably no more than fifteen hundred. The main bulk of rumours died out mid-May. We think the persistent population was a couple of hundred, but that’s not a small number in a culture like the Jin Shu, and when that ship hit the atmosphere and that email came out…’

‘Someone’s behind all this,’ Fox said, nodding. ‘I simply don’t believe it’s UA. I simply don’t believe they have the organisation needed to get ships like this built.’

‘Agreed,’ Jason said, ‘but that assumes there are ships, does it not? It could be an elaborate hoax.’

‘Not that elaborate, but yes, it could. But my gut– I really have to stop using that phrase. I don’t have guts. My instincts say there’s something out there. There’s something targeting ships and making them take suicide runs. The spread of sources and targets just doesn’t play if it’s some sort of sabotage. I’m not ruling it out entirely, but they’d have to have too many people in too many places. If they’ve got some way of hacking a spacecraft, remotely, from a mobile platform… More than one platform. Several ships. It’s too much for UA. I could go for a NIX operation, but they seem to be as confused as everyone else.’

‘Well, I trust your… instincts. I suggest we go through all we have between the two of us and then…’

‘And then I’ll put some more appropriate clothes on, and we’ll go talk to a few Jin Shu. If Sergeant Tam can think of any who might be willing.’

Tam nodded. ‘Well, my father’s on the station at the moment. He’ll talk to us, even if no one else will.’

~~~

‘You have a problem with Fox?’ Jason asked. He was standing outside his own office with Michael Tam while Fox changed her clothes inside. Jason was not entirely sure why Fox was changing out of what had seemed a perfectly serviceable, casual outfit, but he had not questioned it. On the other hand, he was concerned about the nervousness he saw in Tam whenever the sergeant looked at Fox.

‘No,’ Tam replied. ‘No, I don’t…’ He looked up at Jason, who had a good three inches in height on him, and sagged a little. ‘Permission to speak freely, sir?’

‘Granted.’

‘She’s not human, sir. I know she was. I know she is, legally, but she’s… She’s not human, and she looks human, and I don’t know how to react.’

Jason nodded. He had wondered, once in a while, what his own reaction to his love’s change of circumstances would have been if she was not, in fact, the woman he loved. The conversation he had had in his head had cemented in him the knowledge that he did love her, made him determined that they would make their odd relationship work. ‘I understand your reaction, Michael, but there is something you need to realise. The woman in there, changing her clothes for some reason, is as human as anyone I have ever met. Yes, she has metal bones and synthetic skin. Yes, she does not need oxygen, or food, or water. But there is a human in there. The same human I got to know in New York.’

Tam opened his mouth to speak, but the office door slid open and Fox stepped out. She was decked out in black: a thick leather jacket which hung open over a black mesh, high-hipped teddy which showed off her navel stud, a very short skirt, and high-heeled, latex boots which stopped barely short of her butt. ‘You forgot to mention my pearlescent hearing, Jason,’ she said, and turned her attention to Tam who was looking at her with wide eyes. ‘You’re right, Sergeant, I’m not human. I am, however, Tara Meridian, who was a human prior to having her brain dismantled, converted into data, and then compiled into something which perfectly emulates that brain. I am an infomorph that thinks it’s Tara Meridian. You are a squishy mass of proteins and other chemicals that thinks it’s Michael Tam. We think, therefore we are. Any questions?’

‘Uh…’ Tam said, which was not a great answer. Then he thought of something. ‘Uh, do you have a sister?’

Fox smirked. ‘Only child. My mother’s pretty hot and looks almost my age, but she’s pretty keen on my dad right now. Sorry.’

‘It was worth a try.’

‘Uh-huh. And, no offence taken. I think it’s pretty natural for people to find me… a bit weird. I’d hope, if you got to know me, you’d get over that, because you’d probably never pass the psych evaluations for the UNTPP otherwise, but also because I’m really nice.’

‘Unless you happen to be a criminal,’ Jason corrected. ‘Then she tends to be a stone-cold bitch.’

Fox grinned and set off toward the lobby. ‘Darn tootin’.’

~~~

There were a couple of levels of habitation on Prokhorov Station. The Jin Shu preferred the higher one, closer to the spine where there was a little less gravity. Not all of them had full-time housing there and many of them shared rooms between several crews who did their best to avoid being on the station at the same time, but they had their own distinct area of the station’s housing known as the Rat House which was generally avoided by other residents.

Tam and his small unit ran patrols through the area on a regular basis, just to make sure things were going as they should, but it was rare that there was any real trouble. An occasional fight was broken up. Very rarely, there was a theft: the Jin Shu had a big thing about personal property.

Many of them, they were a fairly male group, had a thing for a pretty girl. There were whistles and shouts. A few of the men wanted to know what Fox was doing hanging around with a couple of Lensmen. She was not quite dressed like a Jin Shu girl, but she certainly was not dressed like a cop of any colour. If she had to, she could leave her guardians back and talk to people as one civilian chatting to another, but she did not know Jin Shu culture well enough to play one and so had no intention to try. On the other hand, they were mostly men, and men often opened up more to a display of cleavage.

First stop, however, was the home of William and Martha Tam, Michael’s parents. It was a standard, two-person housing module behind a metal door, hidden away amid the warren of the Rat House. Someone had painted a Chinese character on the door in black which, Fox figured, would be read as ‘Tam.’ The corridor was clean, but the walls were covered in paintings. It was likely the station’s authorities viewed it as graffiti, but the locals thought of it as murals. Fox tended to the latter view, and it was noticeable that the paint did not look new and it was still there, so the authorities did not care or were letting the metal rats have their way.

The door opened about two seconds after Michael pressed the button beside it to reveal a woman who was, presumably, Martha Tam. She had the compact, almost stocky, build of a spacer, but her figure was still good. Maybe ‘voluptuous’ was the right word, and the leather vest and skirt combo she was wearing did little to hide what was underneath. Her hair was brown and shoulder length, which indicated more than anything that she did not go out in a ship very often where she had to don a helmet. Green eyes sat in a clearly Caucasian face, likely European: pretty, but with quite a strong Roman nose and a solid jawline. But she opened up with a stream of rapid-fire Chinese as soon as she saw her son, and then stalled when she spotted Fox and Jason.

‘Māma,’ Michael said, ‘this is Captain Deveraux, not my immediate superior but a high-ranking officer in the UNTPP, and Miss Tara Meridian. They would like to speak to bàba.’ He was being very formal, and he looked a little embarrassed. Possibly he thought one of them might have understood whatever his mother had said.

Martha switched to English without skipping a beat. ‘You should have called ahead, Michael. I’d have tidied up a little. There’s no trouble, is there? George has not gone and got drunk again, has he?’ Fox could not quite place the accent, but it had a Latin edge: French or Italian lost in the mists of time. There was not much of France or Italy left worth living in, so it was unsurprising to find someone of that heritage in space.

‘I assure you, Mrs Tam,’ Jason said, ‘that I would not be here for such an event. We have need of your husband’s wisdom, nothing more.’

On a sharp bark, Martha looked over her shoulder. ‘You here that, old man? This charmer thinks you’ve got wisdom to share.’ She looked back. ‘French accent? Canadian?’

‘Canadian. My father was French.’

Martha nodded. ‘Italian mother here, but you’d better come in.’ She stepped aside to let them past, but her eyes skated more over Fox than Jason or her son. Fox ignored the appraisal and stepped through into the Tams’ home.

It was… not much, but it was certainly a home. From a rough guess, Fox was looking at a lounge/kitchen with doors off at the back leading to a bedroom and a bathroom. The kitchen, such as it was, was off to the left and seemed to consist of a fridge, a small worktop, and some sort of combi-oven. There was a fairly large sofa in the lounge, large enough that someone could sleep on it if necessary, and a chair which was occupied by Michael’s father. There were various decorations on the wall, all of them real and all of them either Chinese landscapes or photographs which had probably been taken from a ship in space. The place was v-tagged, and William shut off a news channel from the only one they seemed to be using when the visitors walked in.

William was a little shorter than his wife, maybe five foot four, and slim, but wiry. Like his wife, he had slim legs: they had both probably spent more time developing their arms and shoulders. He looked a lot like his son, but without the slight drift that his wife had added into the mix and with more grey in his hair. Fox figured he had to be first-generation Jin Shu, one of the earliest to run off into space from China in the hopes of making their fortune. The life had aged him: you didn’t spend long hours working in a dangerous, uncomfortable environment without paying for it and the Jin Shu rarely had the cash to pay for antiaging treatments.

‘Sit down, won’t you?’ Martha said. ‘I’ll get a chair from–’

‘Please, Mrs Tam,’ Fox said, ‘sit with your son. I’ll stand.’

‘But–’

‘It’s less than half a gravity here and my legs don’t get tired. Ever.’

‘Oh,’ William said, looking up at the tall woman in the unsubtle outfit. ‘So, you are that Tara Meridian.’ His accent was Chinese. Hong Kong, Fox thought. It was also submerged by a lot of time, but less so than his wife’s.

‘Call me Fox,’ Fox replied with a smile. ‘I kind of dragged your son over here. I’m trying to find out more about the ghost ships.’

William waved a hand dismissively. ‘Stupid spacer superstition.’

‘Like space whales.’

‘Just like space whales.’

‘Except that ships keep falling out of the sky and more than a few are Jin Shu. I was in Luna City this morning, looking at what’s left of one, streaked down the side of Shackleton Crater like someone had squashed a bug down a window. That’s no way for men to die. There’s something out there. Something is either causing crews to go crazy or it’s sabotaging ships, and they’ve got evidence from two of the crashes that suggests the crews were working to avoid the collision. The crew that hit the Moon were alive and trying to stay that way.’

William frowned, but Martha spoke from her seat on the sofa beside her son. ‘Back in the spring, when the rumours started up, there were some ships that went missing. Crews that went out and never came back. No sign of wreckage that anyone found. No explosions detected by the station or anyone else. Salvage ships can run into trouble. Everyone knows the risk. Usually, the dead are found and brought back, but these ships… They vanished. Just vanished. Best bet was they’re still heading out into the black. Rumours say they met a ghost ship and paid for it.’ She looked across at her husband. ‘One or two might be down to the crew going off the edge, but this was more than that, William.’

Her husband gave a grunt. ‘Yes. True enough. This time, all the “sightings” come third-hand, or in these messages from dead crews. No one I know has seen one. No one even knows someone who’s seen one.’ His frown deepened. ‘I’ve seen some weird things on radar when we’ve scanned some junk. A blip that’s there on one pass and gone the next.’

‘Might happen with stealth tech on a hull,’ Fox said.

‘Nothing much ever shows up on visual. Not when we’re in full sun and so was the spot where the blip was.’

‘Adaptive camouflage. I have a combat suit that would let me walk right up to you and bop you on the nose, if I was careful. It’s not so complex to make a ship hard to see in space. It’s the infrared that’s hard to hide.’

William nodded. His frown did not lessen. ‘Heard about some weird thermal indicators on passives. People spotting something hot for a second or two, sometimes longer, and then it vanishes and they can’t pick it up on visuals or radar. Now, could be a fusion reactor powered up for a short time, but a drive wouldn’t cool off that fast.’

‘Fusion reactor powering an ion drive. Lousy acceleration, but they don’t run hot. Lowers the thermal signature and they run for ages.’

The old scavenger’s frown shifted toward a slight grin. ‘You’re taking all the mystery out of an old myth, girl.’

‘Because I don’t think it’s a myth, Mister Tam. I think, this time anyway, the ships are real and someone’s using them to cause trouble. They’re causing trouble for big companies like the one I work for. They’re making stock prices go down and making people reconsider their holidays at the Tranquillity Spa. But the real trouble, the real problem, is that they’re killing people. I’m not even sure what the death toll is so far, but it’s in the hundreds. I mean to stop them. So does the UNTPP.’

‘But we need to locate them,’ Jason said. ‘They have to be coming from somewhere. They have to have a base of operation. If we can find that, we can put an end to this.’

There was a moment of silence and then, ‘Talk to Garth Swimmer.’

Michael groaned. ‘Swimmer? Really, bàba?’

‘He was spouting off about some sensor readings he took. He was out after an old geosync, high orbit. He’s young and foolish, but he said he spotted something hot, plotted it for a couple of minutes before it went off. Said it was heading out. Maybe he’s still got the sensor data.’

‘Where do we find him?’ Fox asked.

Michael gave a contemptuous grunt and got to his feet. ‘This time of night, we’ll go trawl the bars ’til we find him.’

~~~

There were not that many bars on Prokhorov Station. It was a big place, but a lot of it was communications equipment, hangar facilities, fabrication systems… Maximum occupancy was a little over twelve hundred people. They got transients adding to that: passengers taking a stop on the way between Earth and Moon, scavengers who stopped off for a meal, maybe some sex, and a lot of drink before getting right back on their ships and heading out. So, there were bars, but not huge numbers of them, and some of those bars catered more to Jin Shu than others.

Fox strutted into one of them, The Carbonite Rat, with the easy stride of someone who knew exactly what she wanted and where it could be found. She was taking it alone because, as Michael Tam had said, the occupants were unlikely to be pleased to see a couple of UNTPP officers walk in. Fox did not look like a UNTPP officer, though some might have detected cop, depending on how observant they were. Maybe on how much they had to hide too.

It was the third place they had tried and Tam had admitted that it was probably one of the more likely establishments they would find Swimmer in, but he had hoped not to have to try the Rat. The place was a bit of a dive; Fox could tell that as soon as she walked in. It had probably never been refurbished where a lot of the commercial section of the station had businesses come and go, their facilities ripped out or replaced. Metal tables were bolted to the floor. Bench seats were likewise clamped down. That was probably bitter experience learned long ago. The bar was unclad metal with an array of optics behind it and a metal cage which probably ensured that the products remained mostly intact if a fight broke out. The Rat was one place where fights had to be broken up on a relatively regular basis.

‘Mister Swimmer is propping up the end of the bar,’ Kit said inside Fox’s head. ‘Your right.’ A helpful rectangle appeared in Fox’s sensorium to mark the position, just in case the direction was not enough, and Kit added in a few extra details in text.

‘I saw him,’ Fox replied silently, but she took in the data while she made her way to the bar. ‘Charmer, isn’t he?’

‘Yes. Or should I say no. Exactly the opposite. Thirty-two counts of drunk and disorderly, four minor narcotics offences, seven cases of assault, and two accusations of sexual assault, though neither of those went as far as an arrest.’

‘Jin Shu wouldn’t press charges for that. If he’d gone further, yes. They draw lines a bit further up the scale than other cultures, but they still draw them.’ Fox settled against the bar and examined the optics. She was standing right behind Swimmer, who was busy recounting the story of how he had got this close to pulling in an intact GPS block II-A satellite that he could have sold to a collector for a total mint…

The bartender started walking toward Fox and she spoke before he arrived. ‘I’ll take a beer. Whatever you’ve got on tap. And give me a shot of bourbon to take away the taste of the bullshit being served up on my right.’

Beside her, the conversation went something like, ‘I’m tellin’ you, this thing was gleamin’ in the sunlight like a juicy, black– Whatdafuck’d you say, bitch?’

Fox did not even look at Swimmer. ‘All the block twos, every variant, were decommissioned and scrapped two decades ago. Space Command wanted the space freed up because every bugger was putting up navigation systems and it was getting crowded. Block twos had gold shielding. They weren’t black. That story’s as much a pile of shit as you spotting a ghost ship.’

‘Are you calling me a liar?’ Swimmer asked.

‘I never said you were a liar. I implied you were a liar…’

‘Is provoking the man really a productive use of your time?’ Kit asked.

‘That depends…’

‘If you wasn’t a lady… Anyway, I got proof I saw something! I got sensor logs!’

Fox turned to him and smiled. ‘First of all, excellent, that’s just what I wanted to hear. Second, I am no lady, Mister Swimmer.’

Swimmer had been drinking, probably a lot, and his impulse control was impaired, probably a lot. ‘Fuckin’ cop!’ He swung at her, and she let him. His knuckles slammed into her jaw hard enough, she thought, to put down a lot of men. ‘Jesus fuckin’ Christ!’ Swimmer shrieked. ‘I think I broke my fuckin’ hand!’

‘Your masturbatory technique is duly noted, Garth,’ Fox said, grabbing the front of his leather jacket. ‘I want that sensor data, I want the nav data that goes with it, and I want it now. Please and thank you.’

~~~

Outside the bar, Jason and Michael Tam watched what was unfolding within on virtual screens hooked into the internal security cameras. Tam winced as Swimmer punched Fox in the face, though whether it was worry over Fox or pity for Swimmer was not entirely clear.

‘That’s some woman you’ve got there, Captain,’ Tam said as Fox began dragging Swimmer toward the door by his lapels.

‘Oh, Sergeant, if only you knew…’

~~~

It was pushing midnight when Fox preceded Jason into his rooms, but she had a swing to her hips. ‘Not bad,’ she said as she walked, slipping her jacket from her shoulders. ‘We got the data and what there is of Swimmer’s story. Your guys will plot it out and attempt to work out a course…’ She tossed her jacket onto a chair and turned around. ‘Not a bad day’s work.’

Jason smiled. ‘Not bad at all, mon chère.’ He was probably not talking about the work. Her full breasts were on full view through the mesh teddy, her nipples trying to press through in a manner suggesting that Fox was not entirely thinking of the work either. He was still not entirely used to the purple-metal barbell piercing in her navel, but he had to admit that playing with it had some interesting effects. ‘They will run the data tonight. When do you have to leave?’

There was a hint of a plaintive edge to the question and Fox heard it echoed in her reply. ‘I’m booked on an eight a.m. shuttle, though I could delay if something comes up.’

‘Something is already coming up, but I do not think it is sufficient cause to stay on the station longer.’

Fox smirked. ‘At least we don’t have to waste time on excessive foreplay.’

He walked to her and snaked an arm around her waist to pull her to him. His other hand lifted to stroke a thumb across a nipple as it pushed itself through the mesh of her teddy. Fox let out a tiny gasp as the sensation hit her. ‘Ah, mon chère, but I enjoy the excessive foreplay.’

Their lips met, a brief brush which deepened rapidly as neither seemed ready to take it slow. With the first contact, the hunger had deepened; as the kiss deepened, the hunger turned to need. Fox hitched her skirt up around her hips and, with a bounce, wrapped her thighs around his hips. In half-gravity, he could lift her without too much trouble and, as her hands returned to running over the smooth plastic surface of his suit, he carried her through into the bedroom, dropped her on the edge of the bed, following her down, pushed up to grind himself against her, and she moaned, cried out, fell into the sudden explosion of pleasure.

She had not been ready for the way his body had pushed hers into climax so easily. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she had to have been thinking of this since she got on the shuttle in Luna City, winding herself up with the subconscious desire. When she became fully conscious again, she was fully aware of his mouth on her breast, teeth grazing her nipple. He had pulled her teddy down to get to the sensitive skin and, apparently, to the stud in her navel, because his touch was sending the weird, butterflies-in-her-stomach sensation coursing through her. The butterflies always seemed to have better places to be, fluttering down to stir other sensations in far more sensitive areas. When his fingers entered her and his mouth began to slide down over her stomach toward the heat building once more in her core, she knew she was not going to hold back the tide for long, and did not care. He would take her, drive her up, and up, and up, and over.

As she fell over the edge once more, light burning behind her eyes as her mind dissolved into pleasure, Fox heard Jason’s voice, though she was not entirely sure it was really sounding in her ears. It felt as though it was in her mind, or pulsing up from her core.

‘Je t’aime… Je t’aime…’

17th August.

Fox did not open her eyes immediately. She lay in the silence, the dark, and the warm feeling of having Jason’s arms wrapped around her waist. Then she pulled up information displays and checked her charge level and the status of her backup. The latter was a local update tonight since she did not have external storage to use, but it had completed and was good. Her batteries were another matter, but she would move shortly and plug in for an hour before Jason got up.

Before Jason got up and she had to leave…

‘I might have something to cheer you up,’ Kit said into Fox’s mind.

‘Oh?’

‘While you were running your sleep cycle, I linked through and ran a synchronisation with my home copy.’

‘Yes, that did cheer me up. Really.’

Kit was well aware of the sarcasm inherent in the statement. ‘If you will interrupt… I synchronised memories which my other copies decided should not be transmitted by other means. It seems that Vali passed on some data from his mysterious source. Extremely sensitive data, seeing as it appears to have come from a NIX spy satellite.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Very seriously. Jackson confirmed from the metadata. The images provided identify at least some of the twenty-one people missing from the Tulsa mass suicide. It places them at what appears to be a camp and temporary spaceport based out of the old Boeing airfield near Seattle. They were there six day ago.’

Fox considered for a second. ‘Spaceport? There’s evidence for launches from there?’

‘No, but there are orbit-capable shuttles visible in one of the shots. Fox, the images came with a message suggesting you would be interested and a reference to Eden. It seems that the stairway to Heaven is in Seattle.’

‘There are so many things wrong with that assertion. However, it does look like we need to take a look at that site. Okay, well, switch my flight to Luna City to tomorrow, send a message to Terri saying we’ll be delayed… Your copy at Jenner will have the same memories, won’t she?’

‘If not now, then soon.’

‘Right, so she can brief Terri on the Seattle thing if necessary. No need to mention it on an unsecured transmission. When Jason wakes up, we can tell him and I can lie here for a little while longer.’ Fox smiled contentedly.

‘Not really. Your batteries are getting low and, unless you want him to wake up to a dead cyberframe, you should probably do something about that.’

‘Bugger. Jackson really has to come up with something that’ll go longer on a charge.’ Easing Jason’s arm aside, Fox slipped out of bed and went looking for her charging belt. ‘I’m glad I took a charge on the shuttle or I’d have had to break off the sex to power up.’

‘Even if the man in the seat across the aisle looked at you funny?’ Kit asked, and Fox could almost hear the smirk in her voice.

‘You were watching. Do you think last night was worth some funny looks?’

‘Yes,’ Kit said. ‘He wasn’t even having sex with me and it was worth it.’

~~~

‘So, from the navigation data on his computer, Swimmer was here.’ Officer Carmichael Wallace indicated a spot on the virtual display which was taking up one wall of the conference room.

‘That’s way out,’ Michael Tam said. ‘He’d be pushing his supplies to spend any time that far out given his maximum burn time.’

‘Correct, but this is where his computer puts him and we’ve no reason to think otherwise. Given that, the sensor data he got plots like this.’ A band of red appeared on the display. Swimmer’s ship had been in a high orbit, very high for his kind of ship, but the band was higher and, to Fox’s eye, slanted out. ‘It’s a little fuzzy, but if we interpolate…’ Cones of blue extended out from either end of the plotted band, angling out into deeper space and in toward Earth. ‘We could be looking at something swinging around Earth and going off into deep space, but my best guess is that we’re looking for something that comes up from low orbit and ends up at L-five.’

‘L-five?’ Fox asked. ‘What’s there to go to? I thought all the facilities out there had closed down.’

‘Not all,’ Jason replied. ‘I’m sure you know they used to use it as a drop-off point for asteroids steered in from the belt, or closer.’

Fox nodded. ‘It fell out of use when more companies started using L-four.’

‘There are still a few smaller companies who stuck it out there.’

‘And a few Jin Shu collaborations have built stations out there to run salvage ops from the very high orbits and L-five itself,’ Tam added. ‘A few companies went out of business and left some big chunks of hardware up there. They keep in touch. We send a ship out there a couple of times a year to be sure nothing strange is going on. Nothing strange is ever going on.’

Jason nodded. ‘But someone could probably build something out there and not be noticed. Just about.’

Fox pursed her lips, and then tapped them with an index finger. ‘Asteroid base. There must be the odd one or two left that were never mined out. Take your time. Try to keep the heat output as low as possible. Use solar panels for power… Could be done. And the Jin Shu probably wouldn’t be nosy neighbours.’

‘Probably not,’ Tam said. ‘Unless someone starts trying to grab salvage from them.’

‘There’s something else,’ Fox said, examining the detailed records of the sensor trace displayed beside the map. ‘This has structure to it. A beat. There’s a background heat output, but the first… two-thirds has a pulse on top. Nuclear-pulse engine? This was a course correction using a nuclear-pulse engine.’

Wallace nodded. ‘I’m navigation rather than sensor analysis, but the sensor tech suggests twin pulse engines. He said it was a classic short-burn pattern.’

‘So, this wasn’t a ghost ship, or probably not. I’m fairly sure they use ion drives. But there are definitely similar characteristics. This thing was trying to keep out of sight, was hard to detect aside from that heat signature. Swimmer didn’t get any other sensor data on it, right?’

Wallace shook his head. ‘Just the infrared.’

‘Okay. L-five…’ Fox looked around at Jason. ‘We need to get someone working over sensor logs for an off-the-books launch site in the Seattle area. I think we’re looking for shuttles lifting up to link with one of these stealthed transports. I have a date range we can look at.’

‘Seattle?’ Wallace asked. ‘There’s something in Seattle to launch shuttles from?’

‘Apparently,’ Fox replied. ‘Believe me when I say you don’t want to know where that information came from.’

‘Okay.’ Wallace glanced at Jason. ‘With your permission, sir, I’ll get the sensor techs working on that.’

‘Do that, Carmichael,’ Jason replied. ‘We may have an avenue here which will lead us to whatever is causing these crashes. Let us hope we get lucky.’

~~~

‘We have three tracks definitively showing a take-off from that area,’ Jason said. Fox was looking over the data the sensor technicians had collected, but she was happy to hear him talk. ‘Another seven above seventy-five percent probability.’

‘Okay,’ Fox said, and she let him continue, even if she knew what he was going to say next.

‘And we have one heat signature which tends to indicate that an unknown vessel using a nuclear-pulse drive left the destination orbit of one of the definite targets, no more than sixty minutes after the launch.’

‘That heat signature looks a lot like the one Swimmer recorded too.’

Jason peered at her. It was after his assigned work shift and he had changed into casual clothes. They had wandered out to one of the bars along the main concourse to grab a drink and relax a little, so now they were seated at the bar and, behind him, there was a huge video wall showing views of space outside the station. ‘You have scanned and checked all the data I gave you, and there is little point in my summarising.’

‘Well… Okay, so my perception rate is higher than it used to be, so I could scan over the data while we walked over here. But I have this thing for accents. I just like hearing you speak.’

His lips quirked and, when he spoke again, there was a lot more French in his voice. ‘The technicians say that it is almost certainly the same vessel, given the pulse timing.’

Fox giggled. ‘Just lay me out on the bar and bang me now, why don’t you?’

‘Largely because this establishment does not have a live-sex licence.’

‘That’s all that’s stopping you?’

‘Ah, mon chère, I feel I should never miss the opportunity. I would likely lose my job, but it would be worth it. Still, I might prefer somewhere a little more private.’

Fox flashed him a grin. ‘It’s never really private with me around. Kit’s got a terrible voyeuristic streak.’ Fox ignored the strangled sound of outrage which sounded in her head. ‘She’s–’ Fox cut off as another starfield appeared on the wall behind Jason. She pointed. ‘There it is. The thing all the fuss is about, sort of.’

Halley’s Comet was imaged clearly against the blanket of stars. There was the glowing head where the nucleus streamed gasses, mostly water, out into space as it warmed. Those gasses were pushed out by the solar wind to form a long, long tail. She knew from some basic reading that the core, the more or less solid part, was not large, a peanut-shaped object about fifteen kilometres long and eight wide, but the comet, what people thought of as the comet, the glowing ball and long tail, was huge. The coma, the ball of gas around the nucleus, could be larger than the Sun on some of them. The tails could reach an astronomical unit or more. Halley was big and bright and vast, and it was not hard to think of something like that as a harbinger for the gods, a portent of good or evil. It was beautiful and, perhaps, in a way, terrible.

‘In three days, it will make a relatively close pass of Venus,’ Jason said. ‘Over eight million kilometres, but close enough.’ He smiled. ‘It will be gone before we might pass through its tail this time.’

‘Huh. Can you imagine the hysteria if that was happening now?’

‘I think I would rather not. Some things are best left out of the imagination.’

18th August.

‘This is the point I hate, mon chère.’

Fox looked over her shoulder as she pulled a fresh bodysuit into place. Jason was still in bed, naked, with a sheet pulled up to his waist. ‘I thought you liked watching me dress.’

‘I do. I prefer undressing you, but I enjoy watching you dress… Unless it means that you are leaving.’

‘Yeah… That does suck.’

‘There is never a sunrise here to enjoy before you go. Though the last one was not exactly auspicious.’

With her jeans on, Fox turned and leaned over the bed. Her lips touched his, briefly, softly. ‘I never said… When Hannah pulled me out of the building Grant was holding me in… I was broken, hurting. But we came out onto what was a sort of elaborate fire escape, a balcony, and it was sunrise. We were running from a man who wanted nothing more than to kill me, and I made her stop for a second so I could see the sunrise. To be honest, I wasn’t sure I was going to get a second chance.’

‘There will be many more sunrises.’

She straightened and reached for her jacket. ‘Uh-huh. Next time you’re down in New York, I’m going to make sure we’re awake for it.’

‘I am looking forward to it. I’m going to get up and escort you to the shuttle.’

‘You don’t need–’

‘Yes. Yes, I do. I need to see you safely away, and you need to call me when you get to Jenner. There are bad things happening around here, Fox, and I need to know that you are safe.’

‘Okay,’ Fox said. He rarely accompanied her to the gate and she knew why: he did not want to see her leave. She felt more or less the same when he left from Newark. ‘Just remember, I’m backed up. If I die, Terri just starts me up in a new frame. So, you damn well better take care of you, because I don’t have a backup available.’

New York Metro.

Fox opened her eyes and saw the familiar environment of her old office, now a robotics lab. Sort of. A frame held her up as it had in the lab in Jenner, and there were various instruments and a table for performing servicing operations. No wardrobe: that was in the bedroom, where it always had been, though it looked as though Kit or Belle had thought to leave a bodysuit out on the table for Fox to put on.

‘Well,’ Fox said aloud, ‘two-way transfer and no problems I can detect.’

Kit’s normal avatar appeared, perched on the table, legs crossed like a foxy pixie. ‘Of course it did. I travel that way all the time without any problems. You essentially do it every night when you’re at home, just over a much shorter distance.’

Fox opened her mouth to argue, and then decided her PA was probably right. ‘I guess.’ She unlatched the frame and stepped out, reaching for the suit just as Kit’s gynoid walked into the room and her avatar vanished from the table. Fox held up the suit. ‘You left this out for me?’

‘Joint effort,’ Kit replied. ‘Belle put through the fabrication request and told me when it was ready. I brought it up from the basement. Not that I mind you walking around naked, but we thought it was… efficient.’

‘Is. I’m going to need to set up an op.’ Fox slipped her feet into the suit and pulled it up her long legs. ‘We’ll need… ten or twelve of Ryan’s best weapons specialists, one, maybe two, Pythias, some technicians to help with analysis, and transport for all that. And check if Helen’s got anything big on. Combat gear for everyone. Assault weaponry. A couple of combat frames to handle air superiority.’ Finishing pulling on the suit, she paused for a second and then nodded. ‘That’ll do for a start. I need a meeting with Ryan, Garth, Mariel, and see if Jackson wants in. This afternoon if we can get it. I need budget and I’ll need to explain to them why I want to storm an old airfield in the North West Protectorate.’

~~~

‘Are you checking up on me again?’ Fox asked as Jason’s image appeared in her vision field.

There was that short gap of silence and then Jason’s voice. He kept it light, but there was a hint of tension, even over the transmission medium. ‘I would take every opportunity to check on you, Fox, but something has come up. Routine communications with some of the stations at L-five have ceased. We have had nothing for thirty-six hours.’

‘That’s… not the kind of coincidence I like.’

‘No. We are prepping a Talaria to go out there, but we will not know anything for at least forty-six hours, probably closer to forty-seven.’ Talaria-class ships were rapid-response vessels, designed to get somewhere as fast as possible and bring weapons to the party if needed, but they were still limited by physics: it took time to get places in space.

‘Right. I might have something for you sooner. I’ve got the go-ahead to drop in on those folks in Seattle. I’ll be going in to scout late tomorrow and I’ll be followed by a full, armed team set up for forensics and investigation. If there’s anything there to find, I’ll let you know. Hopefully before your ship gets to L-five.’

‘Good luck, mon chère. Be careful.’

Fox smiled. ‘I’m usually careful. Except when I’m not.’

Seattle–Tacoma Area, North West Protectorate, 19th August.

There was nothing especially careful about a HALO insertion, but Fox had some significant advantages over a typical parachutist. Up at twelve thousand metres, the air was thin, but Fox’s frame did not need oxygen and was rated for a vacuum. The air up there was cold too, but not cold enough to bother a machine.

She did have a disadvantage: her skeleton was metal, which would give her a larger radar profile than was typical, so she was dressed in a suit which would reduce that signature. She had her pistol and a rifle, but she needed little else. Her vision operated in a broad enough spectrum that she did not need night-vision goggles. She had her own navigation system. It all added up to reduce the chance she would be spotted on the way down.

Fox watched the display as she fell, head down, limbs tucked in to give as streamlined a form as possible. One hundred and fifty metres per second, down from over three hundred at altitude; not exactly a world record, but respectable.

‘There is no sign of radar or ladar in use,’ Kit said into Fox’s mind.

‘Hmm,’ Fox replied. No active sensors, but passives could be just as good. But there was the other thing: she could not see anyone on the ground. It was just after eleven and maybe they had an early-night policy, but she would have expected people on watch…

Once upon a time, this place had been one of the centres of innovation, well, of the business of innovation, of the United States of America. The other was to the south: California, Silicon Valley. A little to the north there was the city of Seattle, Bellevue, Redmond: home to such giants of technology as Microsoft. Below, edging toward Tacoma, Boeing had been one of the biggest and most powerful aerospace companies. Down in San Francisco and San Diego, companies like Google had dominated markets of their own. And then, in the spring of 2041, everything had changed.

There had already been problems with the California locations. Companies had begun to move north and east as water became less of a problem and more of a disaster. Sources were drying up because the rains, when they came at all, were too much, too fast. Entire towns were lost to mudslides. Others depopulated as the inhabitants could no longer afford the water they needed. On March 5th, 2041, a fault line under the Pacific, the Cascadia Subduction Zone, ripped. It was what was called a megathrust earthquake, not the biggest ever recorded, but big enough: a 9.2. Buildings fell all along the coastline as, for long minutes, destruction rolled in through the earth itself, but that had been nothing to the enormity of the tsunami which followed.

Scientists were still arguing over whether there was some connection, some sort of ripple effect, which caused what had become known as ‘The Yellowstone Disturbance’ twenty-two days later. There were certainly aftershocks, ripples of destruction which had hampered rescue and recovery. But on the 27th, smoke was seen rising from vents in the Yellowstone National Park. There was no supervolcano eruption, they were still waiting for that one, but there was magma release and a lot of ash, and the region had sunk a metre in three days. The ash falls across the region had further hampered rescuers, a national emergency had been declared, and one of the biggest mass evacuations in history had been called for to move the population east.

You could still see the aftermath, if you looked with the right eye, but it was harder now. Buildings which had been thrown down by earthquake or giant wave and then buried in volcanic ash had been quite obvious at first, but now there was new life in the geological wilderness. Volcanic ash was fertile and the plants had recolonised as fast as they could push it. Twenty years after the disasters, nature had, more or less, reclaimed the Seattle–Tacoma region, but what nature reclaimed, humans could flatten and reuse. Someone had cleared and flattened the old runway, laid new surface where it was needed. Enough to get an orbit-capable aircraft in the air. As far as the rest of the ‘camp’ went, there seemed to be little change from the photographs Jackson had supplied of the ruined landscape when it had last been mapped.

Then there was the flurry of activity: low-altitude parachute opening and then the pressure of finding a good landing spot, free of too much rubble. Fox sent off a coded burst transmission while she reeled in her parachute and sloughed off her helmet and suit. She had opted for basic fatigues rather than body armour: her body was armoured, and she was there to scout, not engage. Her landing site was east of the airfield, a little north of the camp, across what had once been a major highway of some sort. Getting closer was not going to be a serious problem.

Especially since the closer she got, the less there was to see. No aircraft, purely air or aerospace. There were a couple of ground vehicles: all-terrain transports which looked old and possibly non-functional. There was also a trailer of some sort, clearly designed as a mobile command post: air-traffic control, in all probability. The big radar dish mounted on the top of it was still; they had been using radar here, but not now.

‘Do you think they’ve gone?’ Kit asked.

‘Too early to tell. No guards I can see, in any light spectrum. The electronics seem to be shut down. Are you picking up any kind of radio signals?’

‘Nothing. No network, no signs of analogue or digital radio broadcast. I believe that the small turret-like structure beside the radar dish may be a laser-communications head. They could be utilising that, but I suspect not.’

Nodding, Fox moved in closer. The two vehicles were, indeed, useless: someone had ripped open all of the tyres to be sure of that. At the back of the trailer unit, there was an exhaust pipe.

‘Generator,’ Fox said. ‘Probably anyway. Alcohol-fuelled at a guess and cold. It hasn’t been running for a while and how’d you like to bet me the tank’s dry?’

‘I don’t gamble, especially when I’m sure I’d lose if I bet against you. In case you had not noticed, there appears to be a heat source in the building on our right.’

‘I’d noticed. A sign of life. Maybe.’

The infrared source, fragmented and weak, was too indistinct to identify. It was coming through a crack in the wall of what had once been a large building. There were, in fact, some aircraft near it, but Fox doubted they had been airworthy any time in the last half-century. They were ruined, wrecked, and one of them looked about the right shape for an old bomber from the last century. Maybe even a wartime thing, though it was pretty hard to tell now. Had the building been a museum?

Fox edged up to the crack in the wall, a crack which had probably been put there by the earthquake twenty years earlier, and peered through. There were seven people inside – four male, three female – and all of them dressed in clothes which had seen better days. However, they had not been the source of the infrared emissions. They were gathered around a fire they had built from scavenged wood, set in a pit formed from whatever rubble they had been able to find to form it. Smoke crawled across the ceiling and then filtered away through cracks in the roof. None of the people looked happy, but none of them appeared to be armed. There were a few crates at the back of the room they were in, but none of them looked like weapon cases.

‘Okay,’ Fox said silently. She backed off and looked down the airstrip. ‘We’ll take a walk and check the rest of the area, but I think we missed the party.’

‘I believe that you are right,’ Kit replied. ‘I also think that, for whatever reason, those six people were left behind when the others left. They appear depressed. They have supplies, but not much.’

‘What they could scavenge. Like the fire, they’ve found what they could and they’ve holed up to wait… Not sure what they’re waiting for.’

‘The end of the world?’

‘Well, that’s a cheery thought.’

20th August.

Two transports flew in at dawn, each disgorging ten armed security officers in combat armour to form a cordon around the aircraft and the teams of technicians who followed them out. It was a formality. Fox watched the six inhabitants of the camp, and all that happened when they heard the engines outside was that they wandered out to find out what was going on.

Fox walked out behind them, and they jumped as she wandered through to meet Jarvis and Helen. They were both in combat gear too, but neither of them appeared exactly concerned. Jarvis had his hand on the grip of an assault rifle which was attached to his suit by a tactical sling. Helen’s brown eyes scanned over the area and her hand was on her pistol, but she was relaxed.

‘So, you dragged us out here for zip and six losers?’ Jarvis asked.

‘Six losers who need to be questioned,’ Helen said. ‘And a mobile command centre of some sort that’ll need going over with a nanomesh filter.’

‘This, Ryan, is why she gets the big bucks,’ Fox said, smirking. ‘That trailer’s going to need power and it’s going to need checking before we go near its contents. I wouldn’t put it past them to rig it. We’ve missed the leaving do for this place. Let’s see whether we can find anything among the party scraps.’

~~~

Leaving the techs to get to work on the trailer, covered by Jarvis and his people, Fox and Helen persuaded the six who had been left behind that it would be nicer in one of the aircraft. Plus, there was food which was not preserved ration packs. The two detectives watched as the six of them said grace and then tucked into the food as though it was manna from Heaven.

‘They look like they haven’t eaten properly in days,’ Helen said. ‘I mean, we can’t be that late. A couple of days, tops.’

‘We fasted,’ one of the women said. ‘We fasted to purify ourselves before the Rapture. Still, we were not pure enough.’

Fox raised an eyebrow. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Mary.’ Of course it was. ‘Mary Hopper.’

‘Hi, Mary. I’m Fox. This is Helen. Why weren’t you pure enough?’

‘It was time for all the chosen to go up. There was no space for us.’ Mary smiled a thin smile. ‘God’s way of telling us that we were not fit to rise to Eden.’

‘She is not among the names we got from Tulsa,’ Kit said inside Fox’s mind. ‘None of them match any of the ID graphics.’

‘Where are you from, Mary?’ Fox asked.

‘Nashville. Born and raised among the Gardeners. Lived my whole life knowing I might be one of the chosen. We all did. Nearly made it.’

‘We’re not lost yet,’ one of the men put in. He looked up at Fox, soup still stuck in his thick moustache and dribbling down his equally thick beard. ‘Wilbur Vint, since you’ll ask. We’re here, out of the cities. You’ll do the same if you’ve got any sense.’ His brow furrowed. ‘Even if you are nothing but heathens.’

‘Guilty as charged,’ Helen said. ‘Why would we want to stay here, Mister Vint?’ Fox noted the more respectful use of his name and approved: Vint struck her as the type who would like that. He was older than Hopper by a good few decades, probably well into his fifties and maybe older.

‘When the rider of the red horse is set loose, girl, there isn’t going to be anywhere safe, but the worst of it’s going to be in the cities.’

‘Likely a reference to the Bible,’ Kit said. ‘Revelation. The rider who sits upon the red horse is commonly believed to bring war. One of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.’

‘I’ve heard of them,’ Fox replied silently. Aloud, she said, ‘War. You think there’s going to be a war.’

‘I know there’s going to be a war,’ Vint replied. ‘It’s coming. Soon.’

‘That’s why the chosen are being taken up,’ Hopper added. ‘To keep them safe in the Lord’s grace. They’ll stand with the Reborn Christ until the time of the Second Coming.’

‘Okay,’ Fox said, nodding. ‘So, where is it that they’re going to be safe with Jesus? Uh, Eden, I know, but where is Eden?’

‘His name is not Jesus this time, though it is the same name so that the chosen will know him.’

‘Uh…’

‘Eden’s up, girl,’ Vint added. ‘Where did you think it was? Eden’s in the heavens and the first humans fell from it when they fell from God’s grace. Don’t you know your Bible?’

Fox sighed. ‘Usually only the parts spouted by religious fanatics before they murder a lot of people. I’m a heathen, remember? I do know someone who’s pretty big into the Bible. Guy named Daniel Berkewitz. He’s a minister or something in the Church of God’s Mind.’

‘Fools and blasphemers.’ To be fair, Vint did not seem terribly acrimonious about the fools and blasphemers. ‘They’ll see their end soon enough. Nothing they can do to stop it. Those found unworthy will be wiped from the Earth, and the Messiah will come, and the chosen’ll inherit the paradise the Lord creates once they’re gone.’

‘It’s a variation of the beliefs of the Seventh-day Adventists,’ Kit supplied. ‘Essentially, after the Second Coming, anyone considered unworthy is wiped out and the world is remade as a paradise.’ She began displaying a number of graphics and articles explaining the eschatology.

‘So, you won’t be expecting to see this paradise, Mister Vint,’ Fox said. ‘You weren’t chosen because the transport company fucked up the logistics, so now you’re doomed.’

‘That’s how it looks to me,’ Helen agreed. Apparently, Kit was sending her the same data. ‘If you’re not up there already, you’ve got no chance.’

Hopper glanced at the older man. ‘Wilbur? You said, maybe, if we could stay here and hole up…’ Vint ducked his eyes away from hers.

‘To be honest,’ Helen went on, ‘I’m not really sure that God needs spaceships to take you up to Heaven.’

‘I have to agree with my colleague,’ Fox said. ‘I don’t remember anything in the Bible about Jesus ascending on a rocket. It’s more like carried on the wings of angels or something. My PA’s doing a quick test scan, but I’m not really hopeful of finding anything.’

‘I’m not,’ Kit pointed out.

‘I’m pretty sure you’ve got the point of sarcasm by now,’ Fox replied, and noted that Kit obviously was talking to Helen as well, because Helen was trying not to smirk. ‘I can’t guarantee there won’t be a war,’ Fox said aloud, ‘but I can say your chances of living out a few years here on the supplies you have are pretty slim. It might seem nice enough now, but the winters around here can be hard. If you don’t want to go back to Nashville, and I can’t say I would, we can arrange to take you to Topeka. I grew up there. There’s a strong Christian community. Maybe not as… fundamental as you’re used to, but they’re friendly.’

‘If we’re all going to die when your Reborn Christ comes anyway,’ Helen said, ‘you might as well wait it out somewhere comfortable.’

‘And you can always protest outside the Church of God’s Mind if you think you need to assert yourself.’

‘Fools and blasphemers,’ Vint said, but he did it sort of through his beard.

‘Yeah, well, they think I’m some sort of messenger from God,’ Fox replied, ‘so I’m not going to argue about the first of those descriptors.’

~~~

‘Have to say, working with these Pythia units is quite a treat.’ Her name was Millicent Hargreaves and she spoke like a character from an old British detective vid set in the twenties, the nineteen twenties. This was fair, given that she was English. ‘One of Ms Martins’ designs?’

‘Yeah, Terri did a lot of it anyway,’ Fox said. They were in the trailer, Hargreaves sitting at a console while Fox stood over her and Kit hovered nearby. Other technicians were working at other consoles, but Hargreaves was the senior tech. Helen was still busy trying to get more information out of the six doomed to stay behind, but neither she nor Fox were hopeful.

‘Polite, efficient, and she doesn’t get in the way,’ Hargreaves said. ‘That’s what I like about Ms Martins’ work. She produces what you need for a given task, but there’s always that little twist of personality to make the interactions more pleasant.’

‘Uh-huh. I’ve no idea where she went wrong with Kit.’

Kit sputtered. Hargreaves bit her lips to avoid laughing. ‘Uh, well, I’m sure Kit is wonderful, but with Pythia’s assistance, I’ve managed to drag out a few things and we’re working on more. We have a complete list of flights out of here, along with their destinations. Low Earth orbit in every case, but there are notations suggesting a rendezvous with at least three different transport craft. From the number of flights, I’d say they’ve moved around ten thousand people through this place in the last month.’

‘Any idea where they’re going from orbit?’

‘Not yet, but there’s more data to dig through. We may get something. We did find some documents which appear to be a disjointed religious treatise. I took a quick look and, frankly, it appeared to be a diatribe consisting entirely of bollocks, but perhaps you can make something of it.’

‘I’ll access the files,’ Kit said, still sounding huffy.

‘My gorgeous assistant will access the files and we’ll take a crack at it,’ Fox said.

‘Don’t think you’ll get around me like that…’

~~~

It read a lot like the kind of manifesto you got when you took religious belief, old-school religious doctrine, and mixed in a liberal supply of alcohol and hallucinogenics. Plenty of Wrath of God stuff which, as far as Fox knew, ran against the teachings Jesus was supposed to have given. There was no forgiveness here.

‘It’s Old Testament, apocalypse text,’ Kit commented.

‘Yeah, well, end of the world.’

‘No, apocalypse is taken to mean that, but it actually refers to an unveiling, a revelation. This is written as a revelation given to some prophet.’

‘Joshua of Eden.’ The name was at the top of the file.

‘Yes. Joshua is an English version of Jesus. Jesus, of course, is an anglicisation of a Hebrew name, but coming through Greek and Latin. Mary Hopper indicated that their messiah was not called Jesus–’

Fox nodded. ‘But he uses the same name. Joshua instead of Jesus, but Joshua of Eden.’

‘According to the text–’

‘I still think I should be able to read faster. You’ve finished the damn thing already, haven’t you?’

‘No. Not quite anyway. The point is, later he goes on about not setting foot upon the Earth until the Tribulation is complete. He gathers his chosen about him, in Eden, and when the Tribulation, which is presumably this war they’re expecting along with a famine that will follow, is done with, that’s when he’ll come down. He’ll bring the chosen along and they’ll repopulate the new Earth.’

Pursing her lips, Fox tapped at them with an index finger. ‘You could get famine after a large war, sure, but… This lot seem fairly sure about the war, so I figure they’re fairly sure about the famine.’

‘Some of the memetic campaigns have been suggesting, or promoting, a conflict in the near future. The Saratoga–Ballston people were setting themselves up to fight in it and survive it.’

‘Uh-huh. So, we’ve probably found out where some of these recent memes are coming from, but the famine… The famine would need some help. I figure some sort of bioweapon. Why not just let that loose? Ah, but we’re pretty good at biotechnology these days. They engineer a bioweapon and it could cause some trouble, sure, but it would be identified and neutralised quickly and efficiently. Hell, with the fabricator BioTek have, they could be knocking out some sort of– And we come back to BioTek, which they’ve tried to eliminate. The war, the conflict, reduces the planetside ability to deal with a bio-agent, but they need to control space too.’

‘Hence the “ghost ships.”’

‘Yeah. This is big, it’s organised, and it does not read like some religious nut and his followers. This is money and power. There has to be some insanity in this, but there’s a lot more logistics, planning, long-term commitment.’

Kit’s brow furrowed. ‘An organisation with the goal of ending the world?’

Fox shook her head. ‘An organisation with the goal of destabilising the world, throwing it into chaos, and then stepping into the mess as its saviour. What we’re reading is a world-domination playbook.’

~~~

‘As far as I can see,’ Helen said as she paced back and forth in the back of one of the transports, ‘we’ve got a hodgepodge of ideologies, political and religious.’

‘Hodgepodge?’ Fox asked. ‘Have you been reading or something?’

‘What? I read. Terri has all these books and… That’s not the point! We’ve got anarchists mixed with fundamentalist Christians, and they seem to be in bed with scientists and… I don’t know. Whatever you’d call corporate-world-domination advocates, they’re mixed in too. It would take a lot of money to put something like this together, a lot of expertise. You said yourself that it’s too complex for UA, but the memes have a pretty strong UA style to them.’

‘They do seem to be the kind of thing UA produces,’ Kit agreed. ‘Indeed, they have run this kind of campaign before, on a smaller scale.’

‘More money,’ Fox said. ‘They’ve got backing from somewhere… Kit, we’re looking for a very rich man, or a company, probably largely based off-planet. Probably with a religious background, but nothing hugely overt on record. I’m thinking something in biotechnology, which doesn’t narrow it much since a lot of biotech firms have moved off-world. Likely a competitor in some way to BioTek and that other company that was hit, but that probably doesn’t narrow it hugely either…’

‘Maybe some anarchist leanings early in life,’ Helen suggested.

‘Good call. He or they would need contacts in UA, though they could cultivate those later. Maybe. Uh, add in “good works” in the protectorates and sprawl areas. A lot of these people they’re transporting seem to come out of those areas.’

‘And we tagged Mister Hildrick apparently involved with meetings in the Brooklyn and Jersey Sprawl areas,’ Kit said. ‘I’ll task a copy with beginning that search. If you think of anything else to narrow it, let me know.’

Fox shrugged. ‘Any association with some guy named Joshua is a bonus.’

‘So noted. I’ll have that under way momentarily.’

‘Kind of slower over the satellite link, isn’t it?’

‘I can’t wait to be back where there is a decent internet connection. This really does feel like the ass end of the world, doesn’t it?’

Fox grinned. ‘Yeah, it does, but I never thought I’d hear you say “ass end.”’

‘Sometimes, a little indecorous language is appropriate. Such as when you’re on a slow internet connection in the ass end of the world.’

Airborne Over The North West Protectorate.

‘So, Kit’s hunting for any sort of individual, group, organisation, or company that fits our specifications,’ Fox said, keeping her voice to the inside of her head, though it was being transmitted all over the country. ‘Some of those were probably redundant, but she’s looking for someone who could be backing an operation like this. Jackson, Mariel, Garth, if you know anyone who fits the bill, or have any suggestions on narrowing the search parameters, let Kit know.’

They were keeping the conference to audio: the delay via a couple of communications satellites was not as bad as it was to L1 or the Moon, but it was enough to be a little annoying with video. Fox was sitting in the passenger lounge of one of the transports with Helen across from her. Everyone else was elsewhere.

‘I’ll make a couple of enquiries,’ Hoarsen said. ‘And I’ll check with BioTek on competitors with the right kind of biotech skill sets.’

‘I can think of one,’ Jackson said. ‘They had their principal laboratory destroyed recently. Too small to bankroll this kind of activity, but they produced various biological counteragents for plant viruses and such. It strengthens your argument.’

‘Mariel,’ Jarvis said, ‘I’ll send out something when I get to Chicago, but if you’re talking to BioTek, tell them to keep a full alert going until further notice.’ Jarvis was on the second transport, bound for Chicago.

‘I’ll do that,’ Hoarsen replied. ‘You think they’ll try again?’

‘I’m amazed they haven’t already,’ Fox replied, ‘but they may be leaving a gap to let us think it’s safe. They have time. They’re planning a war of some kind before they need to take out the food supply.’

‘This is insanity,’ Hoarsen stated flatly. ‘How could anyone think of this? How do they imagine they’ll get away with it?’

‘I’m not sure that really matters,’ Jackson replied. ‘I believe we have sufficient, if circumstantial, evidence that someone is trying to do it. Perhaps they would be identified before they can complete their plan, but that won’t help the people who will die and be injured before they can be stopped. They may not get their war, not the way they’ve planned it anyway, but they need to be brought to book as soon as possible or the loss of life could be substantial.’

‘No pressure then,’ Fox said. ‘I feel like we’re missing something. I need to understand their strategy better. I mean, I just don’t understand secreting away a horde of people from the protectorates. What’s the point? They seem to be trying to take out possible competitors in space, but that can’t be all of it. What are they hoping to get out of these attacks?’

‘Chaos,’ Helen said. ‘Fear. People trying to avoid space, and that’s working.’

‘Yeah. Could be just that. A few strategic targets, but mostly just keeping people on the planet…’ Her eyes widened.

‘So they’ll all be there when the war starts and the famine kicks in,’ Helen finished. ‘The old world dies. Maybe they don’t think of off-world stations and colonies as being part of the old world. Maybe they’ll get around to them later.’

‘Luna City is almost self-sufficient,’ Jackson said. ‘They could certainly survive without regular Earth traffic. Mars and Venus are another story. The stations on Venus would die fairly quickly. Mars… is questionable. Either way, someone with control over Earth would have considerable sway with the others. The various orbital domiciles could never survive entirely on their own, though some would keep going for longer.’

‘Someone would have to have a fairly megalomaniacal streak to even think of doing this,’ Garth Eaves pointed out.

‘Someone thinks they’re the Second Coming of Christ,’ Fox pointed out. ‘If he has money, or he’s hooked up with someone who has money, I don’t see megalomania as a big leap. I just wish I knew what their next move was.’

Prokhorov Station, L1 Halo.

Jason lifted his head as alert sirens blared and his implant popped an emergency alert indicator into his vision field. He was about to request further information when a second indicator appeared, a call indicator from Sergeant Huckabee.

‘Sergeant?’ The look on her face was enough to cut off any further query. Something was badly wrong.

‘Sir.’ Huckabee paused, swallowed. ‘Sir, the control room has picked up a vessel on collision course. It’s a Xiao class. Speed is two point nine kilometres per second.’

Jason’s stomach lurched. ‘How close?’

‘Estimated impact in just over eight minutes.’

‘How did it get that close?’

‘It’s coming at us right out of the Sun, Captain. It was basically invisible on the passives and the actives were blinded by solar radiation. They’re getting as many ships out as they can, but–’

‘There’s not enough time to clear them all, even if everything goes smoothly.’

‘Yes, sir. Sir, we’re being advised to head to the radiation shelters. There might be some chance–’ She cut herself off this time. She had likely done the calculations, just as Jason had. She tightened her jaw. ‘If it’s alright with you, Captain, I’m going to go to the shelter now. Nira is on her way.’ She spoke of her wife, a tall woman with a cap of copper hair; it was no surprise that Huckabee thought of Fox as her type.

‘Of course. I may see you down there.’

‘Thank you, sir. Uh, it’s been a pleasure and a privilege working with you, Captain.’

Jason bowed his head. ‘The same with you, Sergeant. And… Good luck, Lucy.’

‘Yes, sir. Good luck.’

The image vanished and Jason looked around his cabin. He would take the picture of Fox which sat beside his bed with him. No, there was no point in anything else. He engaged his message system as he walked through to get it. Then he was not entirely sure what to say and switched to a different recipient, recording a short message in French before sending it on to his parents and sister. There was some chance it would get out.

He tried again as he walked out of his apartment, his helmet under one arm with the picture frame tucked inside it. For several seconds, the words would not come. Finally, they did.

‘I am sorry, mon chère. Goodbye.’

Part Four: Everything Ends

New York Metro, 25th August 2061.

Kit diverted her attention from the reports she was going through as a call indicator was passed across from Belle. The source was a little surprising: communications with the Moon were, at best, slow with the primary relay station gone…

‘Terri, hello. I was not expecting to hear from you.’

The pause was longer than usual, the signal routing through a lunar satellite, then the BioTek station, then a geosynchronous satellite, and then down. ‘Kit… Uh, how is she?’

‘She has not left our viron since she heard. She has not run a sleep cycle. She sits, reading reports, running over what evidence we have, and staring into space a lot. She has accessed a number of external memory files of times she has spent with Jason. I am worried, but I do not know what to do.’

‘It probably doesn’t help that the UNTPP are in chaos. They’re talking about sending ships out to L-five, but… Well, talk is all they’re doing. Look, Kit, I need to talk to her. It’s urgent. Really urgent.’

Kit did not sigh, because she was an infomorph and had no lungs, but she thought a sigh. ‘I’ll see what I can do. Please hold.’

~~~

Fox sat on a virtual sofa in her virtual lounge, staring at the wall, which was not real. Her virtual body was clad in virtual copies of an old T-shirt and a pair of athletics shorts she had in the real world, but she had no desire to go out into the real world. The real world sucked, though the virtual one was not exactly great. The virtual one came without people expressing their sympathy.

Kit went entirely unnoticed as she walked into the room and paused to check on Fox’s mood. ‘Fox, I have a call for you.’

Slowly, Fox turned her head. ‘I’m not interested in hearing calls from people offering–’

‘It’s Terri. She says it is urgent. I do not believe her intentions are to sympathise.’

Fox was an infomorph, but she was in a simulated environment and used to being human. She sighed. ‘Put her through.’ Terri’s ident image appeared in the air beside Fox almost instantly. ‘Terri… Whatever it is, can’t it wait for Monday?’

The pause was long and irritating, and Fox was seriously considering dropping the connection when Terri’s voice came through. ‘No. No it can’t. Poppa’s coming to Jenner. I’ve argued as best I can, but he’s coming and he’s bringing Mariel with him.’

‘He what?!’ It was probably the most animated Kit had seen her putative owner in days. It was rhetorical anyway and Fox went on long before the words could reach the Moon. ‘Is he entirely off his little red wagon? Doesn’t he know what– Doesn’t he realise– Shit! I’ll go talk to him, Terri. What time is it?’

‘Twenty-two twenty-eight,’ Kit supplied.

‘Right. I’ll go talk to him now, Terri.’

‘Thanks, Fox,’ Terri said, though Fox was already starting the load process for her cyberframe by then.

There was no reply.

~~~

‘Jackson Peter Martins, have you completely lost your fucking mind?!’

Jackson raised an eyebrow, but remained where he was, sitting on one of the loungers in his solarium. He was working through reports on various projects which needed reviewing and possibly extending following the complete destruction of Prokhorov Station, but he pushed them aside for a second as Fox advanced toward him, obviously furious, but also clearly fatigued. The latter did not show in the same manner as a tired human would have betrayed their state: darkened eyes, drooping eyelids, numerous small tells which would give it away. In Fox, it was the slight stick in her voice, the slightly off tonal quality, the inelegance of her stride. Her processors were having to devote too much time to handling memory accesses to her short-term database and it was putting off motor functions and the software controls of her voice. There would probably be visual inconsistencies, disparities in synchronisation between sound and vision, interface issues, and eventually there would be difficulties in recalling things.

‘And good evening to you, Fox,’ Jackson said. ‘I assume you’ve heard that I’m–’

‘Trying to get yourself killed. Yes.’ She came to a stop and glared at him, but she was swaying slightly. Sensory inconsistencies, definitely.

‘How long has it been since you’ve run a sleep cycle?’

‘Don’t change the subject. Terri’s worried sick. You know what things are like up there now and you’re putting your life at risk to go see your daughter. Don’t tell me this is about Fei! I know you’re worried about Terri, but putting yourself in the cross hairs is not the way to solve the problem.’

‘You’re quite right. This is not just about Fei. Nor is it just about Teresa.’ He was sticking with reasonable. He was not entirely sure it would work because Fox was not in a reasonable state of mind, but he was also not exactly sure why she was quite so furious. ‘The UNTPP is in turmoil, Earth–Moon communications are disrupted, and traffic control is, essentially, broken. We’re trying to get relay equipment in place, fabricating it on the BioTek station which has the facilities if we can get MarTech Stellar people out there. We need coordination and negotiation with a number of parties, and the best way to handle that is for Mariel and myself to go to the Moon.’

‘I can’t believe Mariel’s going along with this,’ Fox said, but the anger in her voice had weakened. Her fists clenched at her sides, and then she dropped onto the lounger opposite Jackson’s. ‘You know the risks, Jackson. You know. How can you even think about doing this?’

‘For many reasons. And, yes, Teresa is one of them, but not the only one.’ He paused. ‘Now, when did you last sleep?’

‘No idea. I don’t get tired, remember?’

‘No, but you’re showing signs of the equivalent condition. You need to rest.’

‘What I need is for you to find a different way to handle this problem. Damn it, Jackson! I can’t…’ Her eyes dipped away.

‘Can’t what, Fox?’ Jackson asked when Fox did not seem to want to continue.

‘I can’t lose anyone else.’

‘You won’t–’

Fox looked up, right into Jackson’s eyes. ‘Can you give me a guarantee on that?’ His jaw worked a little, but he was not going to lie to her. ‘Thought not. I’m going with you.’

‘You’re needed here on–’

‘I am useless here! Kit can tell you. I can’t think straight. Kit’s been doing my work for me. All I do is snap at her if she asks a question. I just stare at the data we have so far and see nothing but Jason’s face. I need to do something, Jackson. Maybe all I’ll do is sulk in a cabin aboard a luxury transport, but…’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t think you realise what a juicy target you’d be up there.’

‘And I think you’re forgetting that these… saboteurs have dropped shuttles onto two spaceports. If they want to kill me, a shuttle hitting this tower at several times the speed of sound would likely do it. You being up there will do nothing to help if we did get attacked and flown into the Moon.’

Fox shrugged. ‘No, but I might be able to do something before we hit. We have no idea how they pull this trick off. And, if nothing happens and it’s all a waste of time, I happen to speak fluent UNTPP. Give me this, Jackson. If I can’t talk sense into you, give me, and Terri, just a little extra security. Neither of us want to see you dead.’ She pointed a finger. ‘Mariel too. Don’t forget she’s on this rocket ride with you.’

Jackson’s brow furrowed. Fox’s brain was running on slow, but it struck her that he looked older tonight. He was fifty-five, but normally looked younger. Tonight, he was showing more age, maybe even a little more than he had to show. He sighed and settled back on his lounger. ‘You would be useful to have along. Your name still has cachet with the UNTPP.’

‘I’ve never managed to stop them calling me “Captain.”’

‘Exactly. Very well. We’re flying out of Newark at ten a.m. Go home and, for Heaven’s sake, run a sleep cycle. You’re going to be no use to anyone with your brain running at half its usual speed.’

‘Yeah. Fine.’ She got to her feet, then paused. ‘I keep thinking that, if I go to sleep, I’ll have nightmares.’

‘You won’t. You don’t have dreams, or nightmares.’

‘I know, but it feels like I will.’

26th August.

‘I know it’s not what you were hoping for, but it’s what we’ve got,’ Fox said. ‘Jackson’s logic… wasn’t entirely illogical and I’m going to be there with him. If anything happens, we’ll have me there for fire support and him there for technical.’

She had passed identification packets to security and been waved through into MarTech’s private lounge at Newark before Terri’s voice came back. ‘So, if it all goes bad, I lose him and you? That’s great, Fox.’

‘You’re forgetting something. I lose a cyberframe and I get restarted from the backup on my home server. I’m not risking much. If there’s a chance me being there could stop you losing him, I’m taking it, and if we get through without incident as, I would remind you, plenty of people are doing, then I’ll be useful when he and Mariel are talking to the UNTPP people. I’m going to do every little damn thing I can to make sure we all end up drinking bubbly in Luna City, Terri.’

‘Yeah, well… You just damn well make sure you do. When are you due in?’

‘ETA is twenty-two fifty, Terri,’ Kit supplied. ‘I promise to do everything I can to make sure we get there too.’

‘You just make sure you do!’ Kit’s voice again, but this time from her gynoid on the Moon. ‘And Fei wants me to add that she expects to see all of us soon.’

‘Kit and I will meet you at Luna City,’ Terri went on.

‘No,’ Fox said, ‘Kit and I will meet you in Luna City.’

‘Oh, ha ha. Get here safely or I’ll kick your butt and you won’t even remember why I’m doing it.’

Fox marched onto the shuttle as the connection died, finding a locker near the door to stow the large duffel bag she was carrying. Then she continued into the cabin, which was largely empty, having Jackson and Mariel in it, sitting across the aisle from each other.

‘Are you sure you brought enough clothes?’ Mariel asked.

‘What? No clothes in that bag. Just weapons.’ Fox swung into one of the seats. ‘I lie. There’s a combat vacuum suit in there too.’

‘You really think we’ll be targeted?’

‘If they know who’s on the ship, yes. If they don’t, I’d say we have a better than average chance of not being.’

‘You’ve changed your tune,’ Jackson commented.

‘We’re using one of MarTech’s transports. They’re faster than a typical Earth–Moon shuttle, which would make them harder to hit. However, if they do know you two are aboard, I think they’d make the extra effort. Basically, it’s probably fifty-fifty, so I’ve got everything I could think of for, um, repelling boarders.’

‘Huh. I sent you the data on the projects we’re proposing with the UNTPP.’

‘And I’m about to start going through them. It’ll keep my mind off other things.’

‘Really?’ Mariel asked.

‘No, not really, but soon we’ll be too busy worrying about Jackson anyway.’

‘Oh. Yes. True.’

‘I’m not that bad,’ Jackson said just as the shuttle was pushed back from the gate. ‘Okay. Yes, I am.’

Aboard The Thynnus, En Route To Luna City.

Thunnus-class transport ships were a rather pleasing luxury as far as Fox was concerned. Or they had been when she had been human. They were designed to move small numbers of people, in comfort, at speed and over significant distance, and in safety. MarTech Stellar made them and the Thynnus was the one Jackson generally used when travelling in space. It was also used by others, because having a private transport just for Jackson would have been a complete waste of money.

There were two larger, luxury cabins aboard the ship, and two smaller ones. Fox had insisted that Jackson and Mariel take the larger ones: the trip was going to be less than twelve hours and physical comfort had become less of a concern since Fox had stopped being organic. It did not really matter anyway since all three of them were in Jackson’s room, watching him lie on the bed looking even whiter than usual.

‘We should’ve sedated him,’ Fox suggested. ‘I don’t know why he doesn’t put himself out for the duration.’

‘He says it’s worse when he comes to,’ Mariel replied.

‘I can hear you, you know?’ Jackson said in a voice that wavered a little, but not too much. He was, in fact, not doing as badly as he could have been. The Thynnus had been accelerating at almost a tenth of normal gravity for four hours straight. It was not much, but it gave a direction for down and it was constant; Jackson’s stomach had decided to be good to him after an hour of it. ‘Thank the Lord for Einstein is all I can say.’

‘I’m going to assume that’s some reference to gravity,’ Fox said.

‘Einstein formulated the idea that, within a fixed referential frame, accelerating at one gravity was indistinguishable from being still on a planet with one gravity. This may only be point zero eight G, but it has an effect and makes me feel a little better. I am going to hate the attitude change when we turn around for the second part of the journey, but that should be relatively quick.’

Kit appeared beside Fox. As nothing more than a virtual image, she was entirely happy with the lack of gravitation and tripped easily across on her high heels to stand over Jackson. ‘At least we’re not taking the low-thrust route,’ she said. ‘Extended microgravity had me worrying about you a lot.’

‘Ah. Now I almost certainly should have been sedated for that trip,’ Jackson admitted, ‘but I was worried about Fox. Even if there was nothing much to actually do, I felt I should be awake in case it needed to be done.’

‘You had time to talk to Fei on that trip,’ Fox said. ‘Why the need to do so again? It hasn’t been that long.’

‘She’s developing. Her social skills are markedly improving. She’s taking an interest in cybernetics and electronics, intent on obtaining at least the capability of further mobility. Obviously, Terri and Kit are evaluating everything she does and says.’

‘We are,’ Kit agreed. ‘To date, we have seen nothing worrying about her interactions with others. Her curiosity appears quite natural.’

‘Yes, but even Terri agrees that you two are too close to the project, if you’ll forgive the rather unemotional term, to give an entirely unbiased assessment. Someone less immediately attached needs to take a close look and, given the sensitivity, it needs to be me. Bringing Mariel in is, I feel, an important step.’

‘I need to see what we have,’ Mariel said. ‘I can read reports and assessments, but we’re talking about… I want to say we’re talking about a person.’

Fox nodded. ‘We are. She is. Fei is a “person” as much as I am or Kit is. All three of us aren’t people in the human sense, but we are people. Fei’s a little harder to think that about at times. She’s basically a tank of gunk that looks like a retro lounge ornament. If you only ever see her as the gynoid she remote controls, it’s hard to see her as a thing.’

Mariel gave a nod and a small smile. ‘I did vote for the nonhuman rights amendment. We’re talking about a person and I’d like to meet that person and make my own assessment.’

‘Fair. To date, she understands the constraints she’s under and she seems relatively happy with her situation, but–’

‘Excuse the interruption, Miss Meridian.’ The voice came from overhead speakers and belonged to the AI running the ship. He went by the name Ty and, so far as Fox was aware, always piloted when Jackson was aboard, and probably at all times. ‘I am detecting incoming transmissions. A confined beam from something aft of the ship.’

‘What kind of transmissions, Ty?’ Jackson asked, frowning.

‘Coded binary, Jackson. I am currently unsure of the purp–’

The cut-off was sudden, as was the almost immediate loss of gravity. Jackson gripped the bed, and Fox and Mariel grabbed onto the nearest chair.

‘The engines have shut down,’ Fox said. ‘What the fuck?’ Turning, she pushed off for the door. ‘I’m going to the control room. See if I can figure out what’s going on. Maybe you could follow, Jackson? If you’re up for it.’

‘Go ahead. We’ll both join you there.’

Fox pushed out through a small lounge outside the cabins and across to a corridor which would get her to a ladder up into the control room. She was not going to need the ladder unless the engines restarted. There was no movement when she got there, so she pulled herself up to the hatch at the top and through into a totally dead control room.

There were physical screens which should have been showing views of the space outside, but they were all blank. There was a command chair with flight controls, but nothing glowed to indicate functionality and the virtual displays which should have been operating were not there. Fox settled into the seat, strapped herself in, and pushed at a few buttons, not expecting a response.

Kit appeared, standing firmly on the deck despite the lack of gravity. ‘The shipboard wireless network is down. We could plug in directly, but I would not advise it at this time.’

‘You think this is a hack? Is that even possible?’

‘I don’t know, but I’m having difficulty formulating another way for this to happen. Perhaps when Jackson–’ She stopped as the ship shifted, a turning motion. In the silence of the semi-dead ship, the sound of the thrusters firing was fairly obvious. ‘We’re changing attitude.’

‘Yeah. Without a frame of reference, it’s hard to tell how much, but–’

Gravity reasserted itself as the engines kicked back in at full thrust. There was a muffled curse from the area of the hatch and, a few seconds later, Jackson emerged up the ladder onto the flight deck. He gazed around, frowning deeply, while Mariel followed him.

‘Something’s taken over flight functions, Jackson,’ Fox said. ‘Otherwise, we seem to be deaf, dumb, and blind, and we’ve no motor control. Kit suspects a hack, but–’

‘A logical conclusion. I’ll see what I can find out. In the meantime, we are not entirely blind. The turrets have windows. I doubt we can get power to the weaponry, but you can look out.’

‘On it.’ Fox already had the chair’s harness unlocked. She bounced to her feet and headed to a ladder on the back wall of room.

The Thunnus ships had been designed, essentially, as luxury yachts. They were streamlined darts, despite the fact that they were never meant to go near an atmosphere. Ahead of the deck with the control room and what was known as the utility segment, the hull narrowed toward a sleek point. Up there, there were two sleek turrets mounting laser cannons and a small fusion reactor designed to power them. The turrets were designed to operate under the ship’s fire-control system, but they had seating and controls, apparently designed for use by an anorexic ten-year-old. Fox squeezed in to the one on the port side and peered out into space through a window which was not exactly large.

‘The Moon is not in the right place,’ Kit commented immediately.

The Moon was, in fact, well to the left. ‘And the engines are firing, so we’re being pushed… Uh, astronavigation was never one of my strong points. Moon’s not behind us, so they haven’t started slowing us early. It’s kind of over there, so… L-five? Would this push us toward L-five?’

‘Jackson would know.’

‘Yeah…’ Fox peered out into the darkness, scanning for anything she might be able to see beyond the local and far distant stellar bodies. ‘There! That distortion in the starfield. They have got some sort of optical camo. They must have some method of supressing heat signature as well.’

‘It’s close,’ Kit said, her voice soft, hushed.

‘Pretty close, but we’re accelerating away. It’s done what it was meant to do. It must’ve been on an intercept course.’ Fox frowned. ‘Someone had to know we were coming before we started. They’ve got people monitoring flight plans. Damn it! If these guns worked…’

‘Then you might be able to take out that ship, but it would not solve the problem that we have, essentially, been kidnapped.’

‘No, but it would make me feel better.’ Fox glowered at the shape in the stars and then began pulling herself out of the turret. ‘You’re right. If anyone’s going to get us out of this, it’s Jackson. Let’s hope he can work one of his miracles while we still have reaction mass to correct the problem.’

~~~

‘Anything?’ Fox asked as Jackson shuffled into the central lounge.

He held up a hand and waited until he had settled onto one of the sofas before speaking. ‘Frankly, these are not ideal circumstances for me to play the computer genius.’

‘Granted.’

‘I managed to persuade the system to dump out its command log. The computer is locked down so tight I can only use the most basic diagnostic commands, the ones designed to be useful even when something goes seriously wrong with the system. I found a stream of commands entered via port seventeen. It’s a priority serial connection used for communication with the transponder unit.’

Fox frowned. ‘I thought the transponders were isolated from the other electronics. They’re supposed to be secured so you can’t tamper with them. They’re black boxes.’

‘Spaceship engineering is not one of my major areas of study,’ Jackson admitted. ‘However, I recall the basics because I viewed it as a short-sighted policy. Transponder units are produced by only two or three companies under direct licence from the UN Space Standards Authority. They are built as sealed units, black boxes, so that everyone uses the same standards. All ships, all civilian ships, are required to have one. Most military vessels are fitted with them. However, they require power and this serial connection. Anyone wishing to turn their transponder off simply needs to cut the power, though there is an internal battery which will run the system for some time. The serial connection is used for a number of things. The transponder acts as a “black box recorder” in case of accident and can be instructed to transmit an emergency message, uh, in emergencies. There is also a mechanism for the transponder to receive specifically coded messages which cause it to send alert messages to the computer. There’s a specific command it should use for that, but the standards state that the channel should be fed to a standard console input.’

‘If I remember my computer science classes, that means they could actually send anything they want through that channel. And you said it was a priority port, so I’m assuming it’s got some sort of command authority?’

‘Precisely. Of course, the protocol is secret and the keys required to formulate the commands are secret. Only the “right” people are supposed to be able to use them and they are only allowed to use them for emergency messaging…’

‘If I wasn’t on a hijacked ship heading for God only knows where, I’d be on the floor, laughing my guts up. Uh, figuratively. I don’t have guts.’

‘It’s the kind of short-sighted policy decisions I’ve come to expect when politicians are given control of technical solutions. That does not help us, however. The command sequence shut down the AI in command, and just about everything else, and then programmed in a sequence of manoeuvres which, were I a navigator, I’m sure could be used to work out precisely where we were going. I do believe that last attitude change put us on a deceleration trajectory. We’re slowing down.’

Fox nodded. ‘I don’t think they’re planning to slam this ship into a planet or whatever. I think this is a kidnapping, and I can’t help but wonder whether they’ve done the same to anyone else.’

~~~

‘Why haven’t you jumped Jackson’s bones yet?’ There was a curious, almost plaintive, tone in Fox’s voice, but that did not stop Mariel from bursting into a coughing fit as she tried to avoid exhaling her coffee. Jackson was up on the flight deck, fiddling with the computers again.

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Mariel said. Fox stared at her. ‘Jackson doesn’t think of me that way.’

‘Better attempt, but I think he does. Maybe not as much as you’d like him to, but he’s human, male, and still alive. You’re an attractive woman and he has noticed that.’

‘And he’s still in love with Lysandra.’

‘Yes, and he always will be. That doesn’t mean he can’t have feelings for someone else. You’re friends. Good friends. It’s a good way to start and needn’t be an obstacle to something deeper.’

‘Yes, but–’

‘Consider this the voice of experience, if it helps, but don’t wait. Don’t assume you can do something tomorrow, because there might not be one.’

Mariel’s brow furrowed. ‘What if he says no?’

‘I may be reading this wrong, but I don’t think he will. Anyway, if you’re always afraid of what might happen, you’ll never get anything done. Carpe diem, Mariel. Carpe that diem and don’t let go.’

Luna City.

Terri glanced at the gynoid beside her. ‘Anything?’

Kit shook her head. ‘I’m contacting BioTek to see whether they have any data. Currently, the Thynnus is not showing up on Luna City’s traffic control system.’

‘They’re an hour overdue, Kit.’

‘I know.’ Kit appeared quite calm. Her gynoid body showed no signs of distress and her voice was steady. If you knew her, however, the short answer with no attempt to comfort was a sure sign that she was concerned. ‘I believe we should return to Jenner and you should get some rest.’

‘Kit–’

‘A couple of hours. BioTek will review their logs and check for the Thynnus’s transponder code. I will converse with Fei and the facility’s security team regarding a best course of action. They are an hour overdue, but we have not been told of any “accidents.” This may be a simple case of mechanical failure, in which case we will have a rescue ship underway before you wake up. Otherwise, we will review what we have and act accordingly.’

Feeling like she wanted to argue, but knowing Kit was probably right, Terri turned to head for the gate they had left their shuttle at. ‘When did you turn kind of bossy?’ Humour to deflect the tension; Terri was a little annoyed that, being a psychologist, she knew that was what she was doing.

‘Fox says that it’s been since she gave me my command keys.’

‘Interesting.’

‘I’ve initiated a small study to determine whether that was, in fact, a trigger or whether other factors were involved.’

‘Oh?’

‘My friend Misaki has recently been “freed.” She has a very unassuming personality, so if she turns bossy, I think we can definitely say that presenting an AI with their command keys results in… an assertive AI.’

‘And if she doesn’t?’

Kit’s lips curled a little. ‘Then I suppose we’ll have determined that I’m just a bossy AI. Now, hop to it, we’ve a shuttle to catch.’

Terri shook her head and stretched her legs. ‘I don’t think Misaki’s going to turn bossy at all…’

The Thynnus, 27th August.

Fox lifted her head as Jackson walked in from his cabin. In turn, he looked at her. ‘You’re wearing a vacuum suit,’ he commented.

‘I am, and you and Mariel will be. Couldn’t sleep?’

He smiled, thinly. ‘It was a good idea, and I think I managed a couple of hours, but low gravity doesn’t work for me and the circumstances are far from ideal. You finished your cycle?’

‘Uh-huh, and I’m fully charged. I’ve also made a few preparations for… whatever happens next, but I need the two of you ready to handle a vacuum if necessary.’

‘You think it’ll come to a fight?’

Fox gave a small shrug. ‘I think it’s going to come to a fight at some point. I’m just not sure when. Or where.’

The door to Mariel’s room opened and Mariel stepped into it, leaning on the frame and rubbing at her eyes. ‘I heard voices.’ Half a sleepy mumble. Her black, shoulder-length hair was tousled, and she was dressed in a thin, camisole top and boy-shorts, and she did not really look her forty-seven years, though Fox knew that was down to health and good genetics. Jackson blushed a little and turned his head to appear not to be looking; yes, Jackson was not entirely unaware of Mariel’s appeal.

‘Jackson had trouble sleeping,’ Fox said. ‘I did my four hours and… Well, I don’t exactly sleep.’

‘One day, I’m going to sit down and talk to you about the whole Akh thing. Perhaps when I know we’re all walking away from this.’

‘We will,’ Jackson said. ‘Fox hasn’t failed me yet and she won’t fail us now.’

‘Yeah, well,’ Fox said, frowning. ‘You haven’t failed me either. I want you both in suits as soon as possible, but first, some basic strategy. I think this is a kidnapping. I think it’s the same group as the one running the Seattle camp so they’ve been collecting people to keep “safe” from the coming war. Maybe they somehow hoped to grab Jackson some other way and this is just luck. Maybe they just went for it when they saw the flight plan filed.’

‘But they want Jackson?’ Mariel asked. ‘You and I–’

‘Collateral, but I think they’ll take you along with Jackson.’

‘Leverage.’

‘Exactly. I’m… fifty-fifty. They may think I’d be useful, but I’m also dangerous and I don’t think they’re interested in having someone like me, an infomorph, in their new world. Whatever they do, go with it. Don’t resist. Whatever they do, I think I’ve made arrangements to handle it and I’ll do my best to get to you and get you out. And they’ve also made a really big mistake.’

‘They have?’ Jackson asked.

‘Yes, and if you weren’t a bit sick and a bit scared, you’d have figured it out.’

He frowned, then his eyes widened. ‘We’re overdue. Teresa.’

Fox smiled. ‘I’m not sure how long it’ll take, but Terri and Kit will get an assault force out here. We know they’re around L-five. They may not know we know that. I think the UNTPP would already have a squadron out there if they hadn’t just lost…’ Her jaw tightened and her right hand clenched into a fist. ‘They’re shaken up at the moment, rushing to try to fix things. If Terri and Kit can put together the right briefing and yell loud enough, they can get my former colleagues to do something.’

‘Teresa will be working on it already. Kit has all the information she should need.’

‘Damn right. The biggest problem I’m going to have is leaving them anything to arrest. I really don’t like these people. Go put your suits on. We need to be ready.’

~~~

The sound of magnetic grapnels attaching to the outer hull echoed through the silent ship and Fox checked the time. Eleven minutes after the engines had cut out, leaving them hanging in microgravity. She figured the security locks on the airlocks had been disabled when the ship had been taken over, so there was no major surprise when four men in vacuum suits, each armed with an automatic shotgun designed for close combat, appeared in the lounge within minutes.

‘No one moves, no one gets hurt,’ one of the men said. It seemed a rather unnecessary statement since no one was moving or saying anything. Just waiting, which seemed to unnerve the man more than violence or shouting.

‘We will cooperate fully,’ Jackson stated, his voice firm though Fox knew his stomach had been turning upside down for almost fifteen minutes.

‘Yes, you will. We have the power here. God granted. You two’ – he twitched his weapon toward Mariel and Jackson – ‘will come with us.’ He still managed to seem a little surprised when they pushed away from their seats and began heading for the ladder. Two of the four went up first, the third following behind, and that left the leader.

‘And what do you have planned for me?’ Fox asked when it was just the two of them.

He lifted his shotgun, settling the stock against his shoulder. You could tell he had never been taught to use a gun in microgravity. ‘I ought to shoot you right here, right now. You’re–’

‘Let’s assume you actually have slugs in the magazine,’ Fox interrupted. ‘You should have baton rounds, but you seem stupid enough to risk decompression. On the other hand, you’re probably not stupid enough to have armour-piercing rounds loaded. You clearly know what you’re dealing with, so let’s make this simple. That weapon doesn’t have the punch to do any damage to this frame. If you fire, God or no God, I’m going to snap your neck like a twig, take your gun, then take your ship. So, just piss off before I get annoyed.’

He pushed back and Fox waited while he manoeuvred himself up to the hatch. As soon as it started to close, Fox pushed off for the other side of the room, grabbing her helmet on the way and pulling it on as she floated to another hatch, this one leading to the lower decks. It was basically just an emergency access to the aft airlocks: below the habitation and control section, the Thynnus was basically just fuel tanks and engines.

Checking the starboard side through the tiny porthole in the outer airlock door, she saw only space, but she grabbed the duffel she had left there before pushing off to the port airlock. Through the inner door, hit the emergency close button. She could see the bulk of a ship outside the porthole, a significantly larger bulk than the shape she had seen from the turret, and this one had no optical camouflage. A transport. They had to have stealthed transports to get people from Seattle, and maybe other locations, to whatever was waiting out here. She did a fast check on her suit, made sure the environmental and camouflage systems were working, and then she bypassed the automated depressurisation and forced the outer door to open. Air rushed out through the gap, a whistle at first, but that died away quickly, and Fox followed the gasses out as soon as the door was wide enough.

There was, maybe, five metres between the two ships. They were linked by an extensible tube, locked in place by magnets and then sealed to the hull of the Thynnus. The tube disengaged and began to retract just as Fox made contact with the other vessel’s hull. She pulled a tether from her belt and locked it onto a fixing point on the hull, and waited.

~~~

A vast lump of rock loomed ahead of them, visible primarily because it obscured the stars. Quite a few asteroids were very dark objects and this one followed that pattern. The only relief came in the form of a belt of solar panels and the gaping maw of the hangar the ship was edging toward. It was a not a huge ship, but it was big enough. Fox estimated a thousand tons, the same size as a Thunnus-class, and it slid into the bay easily where it was dwarfed by the available space.

Robotic, crane-like arms reached out to guide the transport into position for the docking tube to be locked in place. Unlocking her tether, Fox pushed off from the side of the ship, relying on her camouflaged suit to keep her unnoticed as she flew across to the side of the cavernous bay.

‘I need a way in,’ Fox mused, peering around.

‘A way in which is likely to remain unnoticed,’ Kit said. ‘I’m detecting a wireless network. A weak signal, but it’s there. I’ve initiated a scan for authentication packets. If I can hook in, I may be able to find information on the station.’

‘Be careful. I’d prefer they didn’t know we were here.’

‘I shall refrain from commenting, but know that I am insulted.’

Fox smiled, despite the circumstances. ‘Isn’t that a comment?’

‘A statement of fact.’

‘Okay then. I wonder if that service hatch can be opened from inside the bay…’

Eden Station.

‘Good morning and welcome to Eden Station.’ The speaker was a man several inches shorter than Jackson’s six foot one and, in fact, a bit more than an inch shy of Mariel’s five-nine. He lacked stature, but seemed to make up for it with an obvious sense of presence, charisma, or possibly just arrogance. His hair was long, dark brown with a few strands of red, and neatly trimmed in the kind of cut you expected to see on a suave businessman, but he was dressed in simple clothes: a T-shirt under a light waistcoat, and denim jeans. He was handsome in the manner of someone who had had extensive work done to tidy everything up: sculpted features, sharp cheekbones, a carefully shaped nose. His eyes should have added to the handsomeness, but the blue was icy.

‘My name is Edwin Montcairn,’ the man went on, ‘and I am very happy to receive you into the numbers of the Chosen.’

‘I’m going to assume you know who we are, Mister Montcairn,’ Jackson said. His stomach was settling now that they had passed out of the microgravity regions of the station and into a section which had spin gravity. It was not quite full Earth gravity, but it was substantial and it was bringing the colour back to Jackson’s cheeks. Also the anger to his mind.

‘Edwin,’ Montcairn said. ‘We avoid formality here, Jackson.’

Jackson gave the man a stiff smile. ‘Edwin then. Frankly, we would much prefer to be un-chosen.’

‘I’m afraid that isn’t going to be possible.’ There was a hard hint of menace to Montcairn’s voice which belied his smile. ‘You’ll be escorted to your room now. Rest, gather your strength. You’ll find suitable clothing in your rooms. Someone will be along to show you our blessed sanctuary in due time.’ Without another word, Montcairn turned and walked off down a corridor.

The four armed guards escorting Jackson and Mariel moved, pressing their prisoners forward. The corridors were lined with metal plate, but the construction was likely based around tunnels and caverns cut out of the rock of the asteroid. Even with the plating, the place still seemed bleak: pressed metal, unpainted, textured underfoot to improve traction, and with harsh white lighting mounted to the ceilings. Then they took a turn and found themselves in corridors with murals on the walls, religious and pastoral paintings, and here there were doors on the left, evenly and quite widely spaced. The guards stopped in front of one of these doors and a code was entered on a panel beside it.

The door opened. ‘In here,’ one of the guards said.

‘If we’re going to be prisoners,’ Mariel commented as the door closed and locked behind her, ‘at least the accommodation is presentable.’

They had, it seemed, a suite of rooms. The lounge was nothing compared to Jackson’s solarium, or Mariel’s apartment for that matter, but it shared a characteristic: one wall of the room was glass and it looked out onto a large, open space, a park or garden, filled with trees, grassy lawns, and flowerbeds. The flowers had been chosen for primary colours which the artificial light picked up on and brightened, making the whole thing seem somewhat garish, overdone.

The room itself was comfortably if sparsely furnished. A pair of sofas formed a V in front of the window. Off to the right of the door was a table with four chairs: plastic coated to appear wooden and simple. There were a few unprogrammed v-tags around the room to allow for further decoration, but no immediately obvious way of setting them. A small kitchen was set off on the left-hand side, and a door on the right led into a bedroom with an attached bathroom. The bed was large and firm, and the bedding was cream with a high thread count: simplicity and luxury in the same package.

‘Only one bed,’ Jackson commented. ‘I’ll sleep on one of the–’

‘Don’t be foolish,’ Mariel said, cutting him off. ‘We’re adults.’ She opened a wardrobe built into the wall and examined the clothes hung up there. Simple stuff, similar to the outfit Montcairn had been wearing. Skirts, she noticed, for her: ankle-length and wrap-around. She pulled open a drawer and found panties and briefs. ‘No bras,’ she muttered. ‘Well, I suppose the gravity’s lower.’ She turned back to Jackson. ‘I’m going to change into something more comfortable.’

‘I suppose we both should. I’ll… change after you.’

Mariel nodded, then her expression flattened. ‘What are we going to do, Jackson?’

He took a half step toward her and then seemed to think better of it. ‘We’re going to wait. I’m quite sure someone will be along to get us in due time.’

‘You really think so?’

Jackson kept his smile inward. He had noticed the cameras and figured the rooms were wired for sound, but he was not sure Mariel had figured it out until then. He should, he thought, have had more faith: Mariel was an intelligent woman. But perhaps she needed a little reassurance. ‘I have every confidence,’ he said, and realised that hearing himself say that was reassuring to him as well.

~~~

‘Fucking abysmal security,’ Fox commented as she hauled herself out of one of the service tubes and into some sort of engineering access room.

‘The arrogance of isolation,’ Kit replied. ‘No one who would wish to compromise their security could possibly get here to do so.’

‘I think it’s idiocy rather than arrogance, but I take your point. What about the network?’

‘A basic, password-based, challenge-response protocol, but it is encrypted and I don’t have a spare quantum processor to work with. We’ll need to do things the old-fashioned way if we want to access their network.’

‘Okay.’ There was a console unit attached to the wall near the room’s door and Fox checked it quickly, finding the fibre port on the side of it. ‘We’ll get plugged in and you can go looking. Want to bet their fixed network isn’t secured?’

‘I believe you’d win that bet without trouble. I think that the wireless network is configured with default settings.’ As Fox plugged in a fibre cable from the console to the back of her neck, Kit set to work. ‘Unsecured… Searching.’

‘I need at least a basic floorplan. I need to know where the control room is, security offices, uh, and where they could be holding Jackson and Mariel.’

‘It would appear, then, that we’re in luck,’ Kit said as she began to pop web pages into Fox’s sensorium. ‘There’s a public web server with floorplans, contact data for various administrative functions, and, oh my, the wireless network identifier and password. How welcoming.’

Fox let herself smirk. ‘It’s almost as if they want us to walk in and say hello. Let’s see what we’ve got…’

~~~

The door of the suite opened and a man entered, smiling. ‘I am Shepherd Ezekiel Branch,’ he said. ‘Please call me Ezekiel. I’m here to show you our home. Your new home.’ He was an average sort of man, pale-skinned, neither handsome nor ugly, probably into his fifties, and bald. A blonde goatee was shading into grey in places. His eyes were grey too, and they were filled with the smile in a manner suggestive of genuine pleasure. ‘I’m always happy to meet those new to the fold.’

He was happy to meet newcomers, but apparently not happy to do so without a pair of security guards armed with shotguns. Jackson smiled back. ‘It appears to be quite beautiful. This park is quite something.’ He turned to look out the window. There were a few people walking over the lawn now, all of them naked.

‘The Garden,’ Branch said. ‘The purest are allowed the privilege of time in its glory. Joshua spends much of his time there, in communion.’

‘Communion?’ Mariel asked.

‘He communes with his father.’

‘Of course.’ Mariel glanced at Jackson and received little more than a twitch of an eyebrow in response, but she knew him very well after so long working together. They would continue to play along until their very own Angel of Vengeance made her move. ‘Shall we proceed? I’d like to see more of the station.’

‘We don’t think of it as a station,’ Branch said. ‘Eden is the prototype for the new Earth the Lord will create over the ashes of the old one. It is our world, and the Garden is the centre of it.’

Jackson decided to ignore the fact that the centre of the world was nowhere near the garden and would have no gravity. ‘Please, lead on. Clearly we have much to learn.’

There was more habitation. The prime locations bordered the garden area and had windows to look out on its splendour, Branch’s words. There was a ring of the larger apartments, like the one Jackson and Mariel had been put in, and further sections on both sides of the gardens which were more numerous, but not so well appointed. Jackson had to wonder why he and Mariel rated the luxury facilities, but some fast estimation brought another question up.

‘Ezekiel, there doesn’t seem to be an especially large number of… abodes here,’ Jackson said. ‘I’d say you’ve space for two to two-and-a-half thousand people here. Surely there are more of you than that?’

‘Many more. Promised Land has brought some twenty-five thousand chosen to Eden in the past months. Many are housed in the habitation areas toward the middle of our world. You will have passed through them on the way to this section.’

‘I see.’

‘Our primary fabrication systems are there and there is a central radiation refuge. Accommodation is… more spartan than in this section, but the chosen ones understand that they must purify themselves to assure their place on the remade Earth.’

‘Purification. Of course. I’m sure they do.’

~~~

The place was built like one of those capsule hotels still popular in certain parts of Japan. There, they made a good place to crash after a night on the town when you were too drunk to crawl back to your apartment. Here in paradise, this was how thousands of people were expecting to have to live through the end of the world. Individual bunks were set into the walls with virtually no privacy; a plastic screen sat between the bed and the corridor outside. Each cubicle had a few built-in conveniences: a small washbasin, a couple of drawers for clothes, and an entertainment screen about the size of an old paperback. Everything else, bathing, cooking, and toilets, was communal and scattered through the zone.

Stealing some clothes had not been exactly difficult. The cream-coloured T-shirt was a little small, but the skirt was wrap-around, so that was not an issue, and footwear seemed to be, at best, an optional extra. No one seemed particularly bothered by a tall, strong-looking woman lugging a bag through the corridors. Fox just smiled warmly at anyone who looked her way, and generally got a smile back. Even the odd security guard she spotted ignored her.

‘What’s with all the screens?’ Fox asked inside her mind as she continued to prowl. ‘I’m not really paying attention to them.’

‘I believe it’s best that you don’t, though you show a high resistance to memetic programmes,’ Kit replied. ‘I think the best way to describe it would be religious propaganda.’

‘Stuff like the web pages?’

‘Yes, but more active. What we found on the website were tenets of faith, information on the leaders of this “Promised Land” sect, information for those who already believe and believe quite fully. The screens are vectors for active memetic messages designed to ensure that the population here does believe exactly what the leaders are pushing.’

‘I figured they’d only bring true believers up here.’

‘Agreed, but I’d imagine that the conditions here might begin to wear down that belief.’

‘It would certainly do that to me,’ Fox agreed. The place was clean, certainly. It was, in fact, sterile, but also cramped and unpleasant. Assuming the group’s plans went precisely as indicated on the website, the occupants here were looking at a decade or more in these conditions.

‘So, they are treated to constant reminders of the conflict beginning on Earth,’ Kit went on. ‘The sinners defiling the planet, the corrupt governments, the warring states, the violence.’

‘Most of it made up.’

‘In such a closed environment, the population has no other information to contradict the lies.’

‘Yeah. Though, if you think about it, World War Three could have started in the last few hours and we’d have no idea.’

‘What a comforting thought.’

‘I’m all about the comfort,’ Fox replied. ‘Now where the Hell are Jackson and Mariel?’

~~~

‘Our memetics suite,’ Branch said, waving a hand across the large room with its array of consoles, all of them manned and very busy. It was significantly more modern than the church they had been in before, better outfitted than the refectory and the exercise facilities. This was where the organisation’s money was going.

‘Impressive,’ Jackson said. His eyes scanned over displays mounted on the walls showing what he recognised as population graphs, but that was about as good as it got. ‘Memetics is not exactly my forte.’

Mariel was doing the same scan. ‘You’re responsible for the recent memetic campaigns,’ she said. ‘These are population maps for the two recent Eschaton memes, Ragnarok ninety-seven… But this one is different.’ She pointed up at a section of wall which seemed to have a very small population but was very complex. ‘This is your own internal campaign.’

Branch blinked at her, apparently surprised by her appreciation of the data on display. ‘Memetics is not my forte either. I was not aware that it was yours.’

‘Business is my forte, Ezekiel. Part of any good business is marketing, propaganda, and memetics. Even someone in upper management should be versed in ensuring that the best face of a company is always facing forward.’ She gave him a smile. ‘You have a constantly reinforcing memetic programme designed to keep your chosen few… pure of thought.’

‘Yes, of–’

‘Or should that be “under your thumb?”’

‘I think we should continue,’ Branch said.

‘If you’d indulge me,’ Jackson said, smiling. ‘Those five boxlike structures at the far end of the room. They’re sensory-deprivation chambers?’

‘Deep-meditation enclosures. Sometimes one of our flock requires time to consider the ways of the Promised Land in a deeply structured manner.’

‘Of course. Brainwashing is such a crude term. Shall we proceed to the next… thing you wish us to see?’

Branch’s smile was looking strained, but he led the way out and down a corridor. They walked past a door which was labelled ‘Biotechnology’ and continued to another which had ‘Robotics’ printed over it.

‘You have biotechnology labs?’ Jackson asked.

‘Yes,’ Branch said and opened the door, walking through without elaborating. ‘Brother Edwin, I believe you wished to address our newcomers at this point.’

Montcairn was standing near the door, smiling though the expression never got anywhere near his icy eyes, but Jackson was too busy taking in the room itself to care overmuch about the man. It was nowhere near the size of the memetics suite, but the robotics lab had something to really draw the eye: a fifteen-foot-tall, heavily armoured robot. It looked a little like something out of a Japanese movie, except for the lack of legs; tracks were far more effective for cross-country mobility. It did have a torso and a sensor array that formed something of a head, and an array of limbs, designed for the attachment of weapons, which formed a pair of wing-like structures spreading out from its back.

‘The Seraphim,’ Montcairn said. ‘This is the reason you’re here, Jackson. We’ve some skilled engineers working on it, but there have been… difficulties. We need someone to defeat our engineering demons and breathe life into the software.’

‘You want me to build you a war robot,’ Jackson said.

‘We want you to complete our avenging angels. The Seraphims will be the final arbiters of justice on a broken, war-torn world. They will seek out and destroy the sinners who survive the Tribulation.’

Cooperation could be damned at this point. ‘To be clear, you wish me to help you construct combat cyberframes, intelligent tanks, which you intend to use to execute the survivors of a war and famine which you have manufactured?’

‘The Tribulation is inevitable,’ Montcairn said, still smiling. ‘Joshua is here. The Second Coming will happen once the world has been cleansed of those unfit to see the remade world. This was all inevitable as soon as Joshua was brought into this world by the grace of God.’

Jackson opened his mouth, but closed it again. There was something in Montcairn’s cold eyes, something Jackson did not like the look of. ‘I believe I’ll need to think on this.’

‘Please, take a period of reflection to consider the truth of the situation. Ezekiel, please return our brother and sister to their rooms.’

~~~

‘And this is how the other half lives,’ Fox commented as she walked through the station’s mall. Mall was probably the wrong word, but it featured a number of shopfronts designed to show off various things which the personnel could order or pick up. Food of various sorts predominated, but there were a few places presenting clothing. The food was more varied than the clothing was, but Fox had seen nowhere in the capsule deck where anyone could do extensive cooking. It was likely that the thousands of Chosen in there were stuck with pre-prepared meals which could be put through an autochef. The fresh produce was for those in the larger suites Fox had located after making her way through into the next section where, according to the station plans, the control room could be found.

‘Given the general volumes of the two residential areas,’ Kit said, ‘it’s the other nine percent. Give or take a small fraction, obviously.’

‘Thank you for the clarification. Some of that “Garden” area must be producing some of these vegetables. Maybe they have hydroponic farms. The meat has to be vat-grown. They don’t have the space for animals.’

‘They could manage some, but not the touted variety, so I’d tend to agree. Given the name, however, I’d suggest that the area is given over to some sort of pleasure garden.’

‘The Garden of Eden… Station,’ Fox said. ‘I should put this lot down just for that.’

‘Perhaps, but I feel there are far more important reasons.’

Jason’s face flashed through Fox’s mind and she paused, closing her eyes briefly. Then she pushed the memories aside and moved on. ‘Yeah, I have other reasons.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Kit? Are you seeing what I’m seeing?’

‘Assuming you mean Jackson and Mariel being escorted by two armed men and another, then yes, I am seeing it. I must admit that Jackson looks quite normal in that outfit, but I never thought to see Mariel dressed that way.’

‘Doesn’t look like it’s fazing her any. I think she looks kind of hot. God, if Jackson doesn’t make a play for her now, there’s no hope for him.’

‘Hmm. You know you thought your shirt was too small?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘I think they’re intended to be. There’s nothing like a little misogyny mixed in with your religious zealotry.’

‘Huh.’ Fox set off, looping around so that she could intercept the party. She watched as Mariel stopped, speaking to their unarmed escort before she moved to one of the produce stands. ‘Can Mariel cook?’

‘I have no idea. She’s an accomplished woman. Why not?’

‘Let’s hope we’re all accomplished,’ Fox said as she hurried her step, head down as though distracted, and bumped right into Jackson. She jumped back, keeping her head down. ‘Apologies. Apologies, brother.’ There had been a lot of ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ down on the capsule deck, and Fox doubted everyone was related.

Jackson reached out, catching her shoulders and appearing to steady her. ‘That’s okay, uh, sister. That’s a heavy bag they’ve got you carrying.’

‘I’ve a strong back,’ Fox said before hurrying on as though embarrassed and in a rush. ‘Now we know where they are, roughly,’ she added silently.

‘Indeed,’ Kit replied, ‘and they seem safe, for now.’

‘Yeah. Let’s see if we can figure out where they came from.’

~~~

‘We’re going to have something to eat,’ Mariel said, examining a head of lettuce she had procured among the stalls, ‘and then we’re going to relax for a while before bed. I believe we need to sleep on Montcairn’s… proposal. And if you agree to it, you’ll be no use without some sleep. We’ve both been up too long.’

‘Yes… Yes, you’re right,’ Jackson said, and moved into the kitchen area with her. ‘I didn’t know you could cook.’

‘There are many things you don’t know about me, Jackson. However, this won’t be cooking. A salad, some fruit. Something light to keep us going and settle things down. Some wine would’ve been nice, but…’

‘Somehow, I think wine might be available if I agree.’ He stepped closer, lowering his voice. ‘You saw her?’

‘I saw her. She’s doing recon, I suspect.’

‘Yes. We’re going to need to be ready when she stops that and starts taking more overt actions.’

Mariel nodded, pulled a knife from a drawer, and began carving the lettuce with some skill. ‘Montcairn doesn’t believe a word of that claptrap he was spouting.’

‘Montcairn is, I believe, a raving lunatic. Which is why I believe I’m going to have to agree to do what he wants. He’s making nice now, but…’

‘But his next step will be threatening me. I’m superfluous to his needs. I’m leverage.’

Jackson sighed. ‘Yes, but he doesn’t know about the ace up our sleeve.’

Mariel allowed herself a small smile. ‘She’s going to take him apart. It’s almost worth being kidnapped by religious fanatics to be here for that.’

‘You are full of surprises. I didn’t think you had that kind of sentiment in you.’

‘There are some things I feel passionately about, Jackson. If someone threatens them… Well, then I can be quite vindictive about it. And in this case, I feel very vindictive.’

Jenner Research Station.

‘The evidence is far from circumstantial,’ Kit said. ‘A UNTPP ship was dispatched to investigate the loss of communications with various L-five facilities. It vanished without trace. The UNTPP have plans to investigate the area more thoroughly, but we have the evidence we got from the Jin Shu suggesting a connection to L-five and the information from the Seattle camp to push them to do so.’

‘With Jackson and Fox missing,’ Fei said, ‘especially Jackson, I would say that the evidence strongly suggests they have been taken to this “Eden” location. And that that location is based around the fifth Lagrangian point. I am no detective, but my analysis gives an eighty-nine point three percent probability that Jackson and Fox are being held there. I believe Jackson is important enough to warrant prompt action.’

‘And Mariel,’ Terri said a little absently. ‘You haven’t met her yet, but she’s important.’ She gave a thin smile. ‘You two have been working hard while I slept.’

‘It was largely a matter of collating the available information,’ Kit said. ‘I presented it to Fei as I went, and then added her analysis in. Uh, that’s attributed to an anonymous analyst. I’ve copied the data to a stick. You can present it to the UNTPP staff and–’

‘We will present it. I’m rather sorry I can’t take you along, Fei. I think you could probably present your conclusions better than I can, but…’

‘Sadly, it would be impractical for me to accompany you,’ Fei said. ‘Besides which, the case is clear. The issue will be persuading this UNTPP organisation that they should do something now, not whether they should do something.’

Terri nodded. ‘You’re right. If we had Mariel here, there would be absolutely no problem, but I’ll have to do the best I can. Come on, Kit. We’ll go over to Luna City and present the data in person. I’ll read your report on the way over. We are going to go find my father and our friends.’

Eden Station.

Really, the church was more like a large chapel. Seating for around two hundred people on pews which appeared to be wood until you got close enough to see the pattern was printed and there was no grain. That was fronted by a pulpit backed with raised seating for a small choir. There was no cross, or any other traditional religious symbol, but there was a banner.

‘Joshua,’ Kit said, her avatar appearing beside Fox. ‘This is the same image of him as the one on the website. The symbology is interesting.’

‘I guess it is,’ Fox replied.

It was a full-figure painting on some sort of heavy silk and the imagery was, to Fox’s untutored eye, basically Christian. Certainly, the artist had made Joshua as much like a Christ figure as possible: shoulder-length, dark hair and a tidy beard, eyes of lapis, a beatific expression. He wore robes, though they were golden rather than white, and he stepped out of the painting, toward the viewer, with his arms slightly raised from his sides, palms facing forward. Behind him, there was a landscape of rocky hills and over his left shoulder there was a cross visible on one of the peaks.

‘Christ reborn,’ Fox said. ‘Stepping down from the cross to re-join the faithful and bring them to the Promised Land.’

‘That would be my reading. The question is, I suppose, whether he believes it.’

‘No, the only question I want an answer to is “How do we stop him?”’

‘I don’t think we’ll find an answer here. There is an area beyond here labelled only as “Authorised Access Only.” I believe the access points to the main control room are there since I’ve noticed nothing elsewhere.’

‘That makes life difficult.’

‘It does. Air ducts?’

Fox sagged a little: dragging her bag through the service ducts had been bad enough and the air conduits were likely to be narrower. ‘Let’s see what we can find.’

~~~

‘Jackson?’

Mariel’s voice was a whisper, but Jackson was far from being asleep. ‘You can’t sleep either?’

‘Too much on my mind.’

He turned over to face her. The room was not entirely dark and he could see her face with the light duvet pulled up to her chin. She had never before looked so vulnerable. He was used to Mariel Hoarsen, CEO, the woman of power and self-assurance, and this was just Mariel, the woman out of her element. There was no fear in her eyes, but there was a lack of surety.

‘I’d say that’s the problem for both of us,’ he said. ‘But we have our guardian angel working to set things right. She’ll–’

‘I know she will. And, in all probability, Terri and Kit will be working to do whatever they can to get us out of here. I also know there’s no absolute assurance we’ll both come through this in one piece. I’ve been thinking about something Fox said to me. She’s hurting. About Captain Deveraux. She’s hurting and wondering…’ There was a short pause while Mariel gathered her courage. ‘She told me that you shouldn’t waste time over expressing your feelings. If you feel something, you should say it and take the consequences, because you never know when you might not get another chance. So… I’m in love with you, Jackson. I know I can’t… can’t replace Lysandra. I wouldn’t try to, but I wanted you to know. In case anything happens.’

‘Oh,’ Jackson said, which did not help anything at all. There was a second or so of silence which, to Mariel, felt like twenty minutes, and she was about to say something – apologise, ask him to forget it – when Jackson spoke. ‘When Lysandra died… When she was dying, she spoke to Teresa and me. I believe she told Teresa to look after me. I know she told me to look after our daughter, but she said to me… She said, “Don’t be alone.” Just that. No elaboration. Don’t be alone. I think, rather selfishly, that I decided that she was talking about Teresa and friendship. I should have friends so that I would not be alone. You are one of them, Mariel. You’ve been one of my closest friends.’

‘Oh,’ Mariel said, drawing back a little. ‘Well, I’ve enjoyed–’

‘Perhaps I was wrong.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Perhaps…’ Jackson sighed softly. ‘Perhaps I should take an interest in, um, dating. Teresa has dropped a couple of unsubtle hints. It’s been twelve years… Perhaps it is the thought of imminent death and when we get out of this, I’ll wonder what I was thinking. Still… I can’t return your sentiment just now. I do love you, Mariel, but not in the same way, I think. On the other hand, I think it might be interesting to see whether my mind can be changed on that. I’m sorry, I’m overanalysing what should be a rather romantic moment.’

Mariel sniffed back on a tear, or several, and giggled softly. ‘That’s the way you are. That’s who Lysandra fell in love with and I’m sure neither of us would change you for the world. You know, if we do get out of this alive, we’re probably going to be horribly embarrassed about this.’

‘From what I remember of my time courting Lysandra, that won’t be the end of the embarrassment, just the beginning.’

‘Possibly. Let’s hope for a long embarrassment then.’

‘I’m already blushing.’

~~~

‘You see, service conduits are much better than air ducts,’ Fox said, even though she had to duck under some sort of cable bundle which had been strung across the tunnel she was following.

‘That’s not what you said when you had to squeeze into it,’ Kit replied.

‘Yeah, but the air ducts are tiny. I’d have been bitching the entire time.’

‘It’s a valid point. What’s that up ahead?’

That was a large block of machinery which, it seemed, the tunnel they were in looped around. There were a number of labelled panels, so the access way was probably there to allow someone to service the machine. Fox walked around it, checking it over, and then looked further down the tunnel to where another machine could be seen.

‘Given the labels,’ Fox said, ‘I’m going to say that it’s a high-end air-filtration system. I’m not exactly good with biotechnology, but the fine filters suggest it’s designed to handle viruses. They use the same filters in high-end NBC systems in the Army.’

‘So, they are working on some form of bioweapon.’

‘That would be my guess. Air through the room is filtered and cleaned before it goes back into general recycling, just in case there’s an accident.’

‘These people are monsters,’ Kit said, sounding more resigned than horrified.

Fox walked on, stopping halfway between the two machines where a ladder ran up the wall into a hole in the ceiling. ‘I’m not going to argue. Think this goes up to the core?’

‘I would imagine there’s only one way to find out.’

Fox climbed. Well, she climbed until the effect of the rotational gravity was so slight that she was pulling herself up the pipe by the ladder rungs. Then she popped out into a cylindrical room containing multiple banks of electronics. Circuit boards were stacked on top of each other with large fans forcing air over them. Other racks contained hard drives, complete with lights flashing in and out of sync. Yet more racks seemed to be network hubs with thousands of fibre-optic cables piped into them, spreading from bundles which vanished off down conduits in the walls.

‘Central computer system,’ Kit said. ‘If we could get Jackson in here–’

‘He could throw up all over the circuit boards and bring the entire system down!’

‘Oh, well, there is that. I’m sure he could overcome nausea long enough to do some fairly unpleasant things to their system.’

‘Yeah, but unless they’re entirely incompetent, they’ll be able to take local control away from the hub system in reasonably short order. I need some time to think and, I guess, here is as good a place as any.’

‘Okay,’ Kit said, ‘plug into a spare network port and I’ll see what I can dig up while you think.’

Fox pushed off toward one of the switch cabinets. ‘Fair enough. Maybe I can get a charge at the same time. See if you can find out exactly where Jackson and Mariel are. Then we’ll see about getting together and making this bunch of morons pay.’

UNTPP Cruiser Philip Sheridan.

‘ETA is zero one forty tomorrow,’ Captain Arnold stated. He did not seem especially pleased to have his two guests aboard, but neither Terri nor Kit really cared. ‘Until then, there’s really nothing much to do or see.’

‘We’re aware, Captain,’ Terri replied. ‘We’ll keep ourselves to ourselves as much as possible.’

‘I’m not entirely sure why you’re here, Miss Martins.’

He was honest and open at least. ‘Because my father and two of my closest friends are out there, and because you wouldn’t be on your way if we hadn’t presented clear evidence that the people responsible for Prokhorov Station were holding them.’

‘And,’ Kit said, ‘because the evidence we have suggests that many of the people you’re going to find out there are psychologically disturbed dupes. Miss Martins’ background in psychology may be of as much help as the combat frames you have in your hangar.’

Arnold did not look impressed. ‘I’ll take that under advisement, Miss–’

‘Kit. Just Kit. I’m Tara Meridian’s personal assistant and data analyst, and while she’s indisposed, I’m the acting Chief Investigative Officer of Palladium Security Solutions. Please don’t underestimate me, or the contribution I can make, simply because I’m an AI, Captain.’

While Terri tried to keep a smirk off her face, Arnold, a career spacer with a thick black moustache set under a large nose which dominated his face, raised a somewhat bushy eyebrow. But now he did look at least mildly impressed. ‘I’ll keep that in mind too, Kit,’ he said.

‘Thank you, Captain. I believe I’ll try to remember how to move in barely any gravity and return to our cabin. I’m sure we can rely on you to let us know if anything comes up.’

‘You can count on it.’

Eden Station.

‘Why does it have eight limbs?’ Jackson’s question came with a distinct hint of irritation. He was frowning at the schematic diagrams of the Seraphim on a screen which was, to his mind, too small; they would not allow him wireless access so that he could create a virtual image.

‘Montcairn wanted an extended field of fire.’ The speaker was Bartholomew Partridge, Montcairn’s lead robotics engineer. He looked like a man who had, at one time, been a lifeguard on some sun-drenched beach. The result had been prematurely aged skin hung on a body which still had some muscle tone, but not a lot. He had a fairly thick Australian accent and, now that Jackson had heard it, he realised that Montcairn’s voice carried a hint of the same origin.

Jackson flicked to a second screen which was showing modular design imagery for software. ‘But your servo-control systems aren’t adequate for eight limbs with the processing power you have available. And’ – he switched back to the first screen, tapping the ‘head’ on the design – ‘you’ve got simple binocular vision combined with a sixty-degree scan, tracking ladar unit.’

‘It can turn its head,’ Partridge said defensively. ‘It started out with two arms and a more humanoid design. Montcairn kept changing the spec. He wanted it better armed, scarier, bigger.’

Jackson sighed. ‘It’s the job of an engineer to understand the requirements of the customer and to make the customer understand what they actually want. I’ll have to talk to him, and he’s going to have to understand that this is going to take some reengineering. Either the software is going to need reworking or the hardware needs to change.’

‘He won’t like that.’

‘No, probably not. What’s your background, Partridge? You don’t seem the kind of man to fall in with religious zealots. You certainly aren’t a man who’s ever designed a combat cyberframe before.’

Partridge frowned, looking away, then back. ‘Montcairn had a bunch of companies in Australia. I worked for one of them. We built service frames. Mostly androids, with a few other forms thrown in. Montcairn’s wife and daughter died in a UA bombing in Melbourne. Next thing we knew he was liquidating all his holdings. He offered a few of us jobs and the market was pretty tight then… Why did you agree to work on this?’

‘Because I wasn’t kidnapped alone. Now, I suggest you go about your business and allow me to work through these designs. I need to know what I’m working with before I can turn this around.’

~~~

‘Jackson and Mariel have been assigned a small suite beside the park,’ Kit said. Cracking the security on the servers and control systems had taken time, and they had worked carefully to keep themselves unobserved, but it was paying dividends.

‘That’s nice.’

‘Indeed. I’ve accessed the cameras–’

Fox frowned. ‘So, they’re being watched.’

‘They are hardly the only ones. Almost all the rooms have surveillance. Only Mariel is currently in residence. She looks bored. I checked the security on the room and the door is locked. I assume that they are, effectively, being held prisoner.’

‘Okay…’ Fox pursed her lips and considered for a few seconds. ‘Could you loop the cameras?’

‘I’ll check, but I believe so. You want to visit them?’

‘This evening. Hopefully, and considering the locked door I think this should hold, their door isn’t guarded. They’re two of the most intelligent, observant people I know.’

‘Unless we’re talking about Jackson noticing Mariel’s feelings.’

Fox shrugged. ‘Men are weird. Besides, what I want to know is what they’ve seen and learned about this place. Let me know when Jackson returns to the room and we’ll get started.’

‘If they keep office hours around here, that shouldn’t be too much longer.’

~~~

‘I remember Montcairn CyberTech,’ Mariel said. She forked rocket and tomato into her mouth, chewed, and swallowed. ‘I hadn’t connected it to this Montcairn.’

‘I don’t remember the company,’ Jackson replied.

‘You wouldn’t. Let’s say that innovation was not one of their best attributes. They produced robots for the Australian domestic market and they had contracts to supply parts for other manufacturers. They were small-time, but the man himself was rich. Not Jackson Martins-rich, but rich enough.’

‘Partridge said he liquidated all his assets after his wife and daughter died.’

Mariel gave a shrug. ‘I recall the company vanishing off the map. I believe we picked up some of their manufacturing facilities. Retooled. Hmm, yes. There was a bit of an issue with parts for Gorton-May robots in the region for a couple of years after. We retooled specifically for our own.’

‘We would, I–’ He broke off as the door from the corridor outside opened, and was speaking again before he turned to look. ‘Really? Would it be so difficult to knock or– Fox!’

Fox smirked as she tripped across the room as though she had no care in the world. ‘Jackson, Mariel. They don’t seem to be treating you too badly.’

‘You can’t be in here, they– You’ve looped the cameras.’

‘And the sound is off,’ Kit said, appearing beside Fox. ‘I am very pleased to find you both unharmed.’

‘Montcairn wants me alive to fix his cybertank,’ Jackson said, ‘and Mariel is his leverage.’

‘He won’t hurt me,’ Mariel agreed, ‘but he’s dropped a hint or two about putting me in one of their brainwashing tanks if Jackson doesn’t do as he says.’

‘Okay,’ Fox said. ‘Sit down. Finish your meal. Cybertank?’

‘There are a couple of laboratories I’m concerned about,’ Jackson replied.

‘I know they have a biotech lab.’

‘That’s one of them. That would need to be destroyed, I think, and the robotics lab too. From what I’ve seen of their design – they’re calling it a Seraphim – if they’ve even managed to build a prototype, it’s incapable of using its weaponry effectively and it’s effectively blind to you if it isn’t looking right at you, but it’s heavily armoured and could mount some heavy weapons.’

‘I have a few of those too.’

‘Try to get behind it, if you ever need to. The rear armour is weaker, and it won’t be able to see you coming. There’s also the memetics suite.’

‘We could do with getting their campaign data from that,’ Mariel said. ‘It would make producing countermemes far easier.’

‘I can handle that,’ Kit said. ‘Their security is pitiful.’

‘Okay,’ Fox said. ‘Montcairn. He’s barely listed on this information site they’ve got set up, but you’ve mentioned him, but not Joshua.’

‘We haven’t even met this Joshua,’ Mariel said. ‘From my perspective, Joshua appears to be a figurehead. Montcairn is running things.’

‘I’d have to agree,’ Jackson said.

‘Thinking on it,’ Mariel went on, ‘there was also a Montcairn Agricultural. They produced GM crops. Drought tolerance. He’d have access to some genetic engineers just as he has robotics engineers.’

‘Montcairn…’ Fox tapped at her pursed lips for a second. ‘Okay, so we need to take out their offensive capabilities, get you two somewhere safe, and get a message out to whoever’s coming to rescue us. The ships outside the station are probably going to have to be someone else’s problem, but I might be able to do something about the ones in the hangar… Going to need a distraction…’ She grinned. ‘I think we can manage this. I’ll see if I can scare up some nausea meds.’

‘Why?’ Jackson asked warily.

‘Sorry, their main computer core is in microgravity.’

Jackson sighed. ‘Just kill me now.’

~~~

It started at a few seconds after twenty-two fifteen, station time, which seemed to be in rough sync with UTC. One of the docking cranes malfunctioned and pushed a thousand-ton transport off its moorings and across the hangar bay. There was not really a vast amount of speed involved, but there was significant momentum and the mess was spectacular.

Some seventy technicians, flight crew, and security people rushed through to ensure that the malfunction was, in fact, a malfunction and that it was dealt with. Compared to the number of people on the station, that was a relatively small number, but it did represent a significant proportion of the station’s security contingent.

Twenty minutes later, an atmospheric containment failure alert sounded in the capsule habitat, scaring the shit out of a huge number of people. Before any of them had a chance to do anything much about it, the station’s automated response was to close all the bulkhead doors around the affected area. Eden Station was, effectively, cut into three isolated parts.

In the main control room, the staff were looking forward to the end of their shift at midnight. They had become used to an easy life and most of them sat at ease at their consoles, strapped into seat-like structures which, primarily, held them in place rather than having them float absently around the room. The computers did most of the work, and nothing had happened to bother them for over three months; generally, it was the day shift that actually had to keep an eye on things. Suddenly, the men and women of the evening shift were having to deal with alarms going off left, right, and centre.

There had been no indication of an impact, but they were suffering atmosphere loss. Communications were down with the hangar bay and failing in other areas. All the security cameras were down. They were reading power fluctuations in a number of circuits which had been stable since the station had been commissioned. The only explanation was some sort of large impact: an asteroid or maybe some large piece of space junk.

When a dull thump reverberated through the station’s structure and more alarms burst to life to inform them of a fire in the robotics lab, the operations head on duty decided that it might be best if someone called Edwin Montcairn. As he pressed the intercom button, he prayed to Joshua himself that the circuit was down.

~~~

Around about the time the operations leader was discovering that God was not that kind, Fox was walking out of the bushes in the Garden. She was no longer interested in blending in, though the suit she wore had adaptive camouflage good enough to blend into most backgrounds, so she had an assault rifle balanced in the crook of her right arm and her pistol was in its holster in the small of her back. Magazines for both her rifle and her pistol decorated her suit, and would have made camouflage a little difficult. She had done most of what she needed to do and was not worried.

‘Sister, the pure walk unclad in the Garden, for they no longer feel the shame of the knowledge they once took from my father.’

Fox paused and turned to look at the man walking toward her across the pristine lawn. He was not wearing gold robes, but the rest of the image was about right. He was, possibly, more handsome than his banner suggested. His features had the chiselled quality of exceptionally good bone structure: sharp cheekbones, a firm jawline, a Roman nose which managed to look regal without looking overly large. His hair was long and black, darker than the painting suggested, but they had his eyes right: he had deeply blue eyes, beautiful eyes. And he walked toward Fox with his arms lifted and slightly bent, his palms facing her. It was welcoming, all-encompassing.

‘So, why do you wear jeans and a T-shirt?’ Fox asked.

He smiled. It was a genuine, heartfelt smile. ‘You are not one of my Chosen, but you are here, in my garden. My father must be happy for you to be here.’

‘I’m not really sure who your father is. If I find him, I’ll ask. Pretty sure he doesn’t care though.’

‘The Lord cares for all.’ He stopped a few feet from her, still smiling. You could just feel the sincerity. Fox had met good actors before, many of them trying their best to keep her from figuring out that they were lying scumbags, but she did not get that from Joshua.

‘You really believe the shit you’re peddling,’ Fox said. Before he could respond, she went on. ‘Here’s what I don’t get about all you Second Coming, apocalyptic, Rapture-loving… snake-oil merchants. If there ever was a Jesus of Nazareth and he wandered around the Near East sometime two thousand years back, he taught lessons about compassion, tolerance, and forgiveness. And, to you, his return means the destruction of the world and the salvation of the few people who agree with your twisted version of a pretty damn good philosophy.’

‘We are all but instruments of God, my father,’ Joshua said, sounding a little puzzled. ‘We all do what we must. Sister, we must all give ourselves up to the destiny my father has placed before us. That is the only way to find true peace.’

‘I hope you’re right. Really. Maybe all the people you’ve slaughtered in the name of your father really will find peace. And maybe what I’m doing is really part of his plan. I don’t think you’re going to think so, however.’

‘I’m sorry?’

Fox smiled. ‘You’re not, but you will be. Kit, hit it.’

In the stands of trees set around the park, thermobaric mines detonated, spewing their charge of liquid explosives into the air as a mist before a second charge caused ignition in the resulting mix. Trees were blasted into splinters or flattened. Waves of heat and pressure battered over the two people watching the destruction. Fox, in her heavy, armoured cyberframe, barely seemed to notice the buffeting she was taking, but Joshua staggered, his face showing pain and shock. When the explosions died away, there was still the fire: grass, bushes, vegetables, and fallen trees roared in flames.

‘Eden’s burning, motherfucker,’ Fox said before turning away from him and heading for the nearby habitation.

~~~

‘Fire!’ someone shrieked across the control room. ‘We’ve got a fire in the Garden!’

‘Locate Joshua,’ Montcairn snapped. He hated the control room, hated the men who ran it more. They were, in his view, incompetent, though that had not been his view until he had been summoned to the room from his bed.

‘Sir,’ another idiot responded, ‘we can’t. The internal cameras are intermittent or down and he doesn’t have an implant we can track.’

‘Get security teams out to the Garden and his apartment. Now!’

No one was willing to point out that a lot of the internal communications system was flaking out on them too, so they kept their mouths shut and tried.

~~~

Fox stepped through the shattered glass of the apartment Jackson and Mariel had been given and made her way to the bedroom door. Pausing, she knocked thrice and then twice more before opening the door and leaning in. ‘Room service,’ she said into the darkened room.

Mariel stepped out of the shadows first, the gauss pistol Fox had given her held at her side, finger away from the trigger. She was followed by an unarmed Jackson. Jackson built guns, among other things, but his idea of firing them involved a clamp mechanism and a lot of electronics to monitor ballistics. Mariel, however, was checked out on pistols. They were both back in their pressure suits.

‘Did you have to blow the whole place up?’ Mariel asked.

‘No,’ Fox replied. ‘But I really, really wanted to. Plus, I haven’t, yet.’

‘It felt like it.’

‘I’m moderately sure,’ Jackson said, ‘that if she had blown everything up, we would not be feeling anything.’

‘Oh. Probably,’ Mariel agreed.

‘We need to go,’ Fox said. ‘There’s a service access not too far from here, but we still have to do this quickly and carefully. You both stay behind me. Mariel, don’t use that thing unless you really need to. I’ve got a lot more ammo than you do.’

‘Why the rush?’ Jackson asked as they headed for the door out onto the corridor.

‘We need to be clear of certain access corridors before the next set of bombs go off.’

‘Uh, why?’

‘They’re in the biotech lab and they’re a little close to the route we’re taking to the computer core.’

‘Ah, lead on.’

‘Will do. Wait there a second.’ Fox hit the button for the door, let it slide open, and then stepped out into the corridor. There was a slight whine from her rifle and then the crackle of needle-like bullets being accelerated past the sound barrier. ‘Okay, we’re clear.’

Jackson and Mariel followed her out and then down the corridor, stepping without a thought over the three bodies which had until recently been some of Eden’s security guards.

~~~

‘We are running behind,’ Kit said. She had sent out data to resolve her virtual image for all three of them, but she was not bothering with the details. Her body, floating along as it kept pace, passed through a ventilation fan and appeared on the other side before she went on. ‘Getting past the biotech filters in time will be tight. If we lose more time, it may be fatal.’

‘Backup route then,’ Fox said.

‘We’re slowing you down,’ Jackson commented.

‘Uh, well, yes, but it’s more that we didn’t expect them to have stuffed random chunks of machinery in these service areas. Someone reasonable would have kept them clear. I should’ve known when we found the filtration units behind the biotech lab.’

‘You are both progressing precisely as well as my initial calculations suggested,’ Kit said. ‘Unfortunately, my initial calculations were based upon incorrect assumptions.’

Jackson actually smiled. ‘So often the point of failure in otherwise perfect systems.’

‘Practically,’ Fox said, ‘we’re going to be in microgravity sooner.’

‘Lucky I took those nausea meds.’

‘And we’ll have to be fairly quiet because we’ll be running right next to the control room.’

‘You think we could be heard through the walls?’ Mariel asked.

‘I could hear them through the walls,’ Fox replied. She scanned over the recalculated route Kit had created for her, with the time estimations. ‘Of course, by the time we get there, they might be a little busy to notice the rats in the walls, but we should take it slowly and carefully anyway.’

Pausing beside a ladder set into the wall, Fox checked up to be sure it was clear. ‘And here we go. Gravity will reduce as we go up. Are you going to be okay, Jackson?’

‘I’ll manage,’ Jackson replied. ‘I really don’t have much choice now, do I?’

~~~

At twenty-three thirty, two thermobaric mines detonated in the biotechnology lab. In the confined space, the detonations tore apart workbenches and glassware, shredded gloveboxes, and turned the large, refrigerated cabinets used to store viruses and bacteria into small, crushed cabinets which leaked. Not that anything biological was going to survive the heat or the fires that followed. The air-filtration units ceased functioning as superheated gasses were pushed through them, but they held structurally and automatically sealed to avoid contamination.

The station was safe, but that really did not make much difference to Edwin Montcairn. ‘This is sabotage! I want the people responsible rounded up and shot!’ It was not very Christian and it definitely did not sound like the teachings of Joshua, but no one was going to tell Montcairn that.

‘W-we have all the security personnel we can get in touch with out looking for whoever is d-doing this, sir,’ the shift leader stated. He got paid the big bucks to take the heat when things went wrong, so he was facing most of Montcairn’s wrath. Of course, no one actually paid the staff…

‘What’s the situation in the hangar bay?’

‘We don’t know. We’ve lost all communications beyond bulkhead two, and–’

‘Well get it back!’ Montcairn roared.

‘With respect, sir, how? The workshops and parts stores are behind bulkhead two, which we still believe may be in zero atmosphere. We don’t have the tools, we don’t have the people, and we don’t know whether it’s safe to send them in there to make repairs.’

The punch Montcairn threw would, probably, have hurt if the man had understood the mechanics of fighting in microgravity. As it was, he just turned on the spot due to the shift in momentum, and had just managed to get himself righted again in time to see the shift leader pushing off for one of the hatches. ‘Get back here!’

‘You know so much about this place,’ the shift leader said, ‘you fix it.’

~~~

‘I believe I detected some disharmony in paradise,’ Jackson said as they cleared the control room and entered the computer bay beside it.

Fox sealed the hatch behind him. ‘Montcairn doesn’t seem like a people person. It’s best to keep your voice down. That wall is more solid than the ones around the control room, but they might hear us if we’re too loud.’

Mariel drifted her way to a rack where she could hold on and turned to face them. ‘Montcairn doesn’t like it when things go wrong, I suspect. When he’s in control, he’s all sweetness, light, and veiled threats. When that control goes… Well, the man seems to be trying to destroy the world which killed his wife and daughter. I’m no psychiatrist, but that strikes me as meaningful.’

‘Yeah, so let’s give him another headache. Jackson, I need you to find the communications system and start broadcasting something.’

Jackson, now looking paler than he had, raised an eyebrow. ‘Something?’

‘I don’t really care what it is, but it should be loud. Maybe something to warn anyone incoming about the stealth systems on the ghost ships. Make sure someone receiving it can figure out where it’s coming from. Oh, and it might be worth saying that not everyone here is an armed, fanatical nutjob. Most of the people here are just idiots persuaded to go somewhere where they could have a better life. They’re not getting it.’

‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Then what do we do?’ Mariel asked.

Fox pulled her duffel out from behind one of the racks. ‘Then, we wait. Hold this position for as long as we need to and wait for someone to come out here and rescue us. I’ve got food packs and water. I’m going to plug myself in to top off my batteries now. We’ll worry about sleep when we need to.’

‘When was the last time you ran a sleep cycle?’ Jackson asked as he pulled his way between racks, searching.

‘Too long ago, but I’m not noticeably suffering yet. We’ll manage.’

‘It doesn’t sound like a great plan,’ Mariel pointed out.

‘No,’ Fox agreed, ‘but it’s simple, amenable to change, and it’s what we’ve got.’

The Philip Sheridan, 28th August.

It was not long after midnight, maybe ten minutes, when Terri and Kit were asked to come to the control room of the Philip Sheridan. Arnold had given few details, just that they were picking up an unusual communication.

Terri saw it as soon as she shuffled her way into the room up a ladder which she traversed more by pulling herself along than climbing: her normal fifty-eight kilos felt more like three. Up on one of the screens lining the walls, text was scrolling and Terri tried her best to read it as she made her way over to the gimballed chair where the captain was sitting.

Kit, of course, had a fully robotic body and the perception speed of an AI working for her. ‘They’re alive. Definitely Jackson and Fox, but I would estimate that Mariel is also.’

Arnold looked around. ‘You’re sure of that, Kit?’

‘The technical information is beyond Fox, but the tactical suggestions are not something Jackson would come up with.’

Terri grinned. ‘Trust Papa. He gets himself hijacked, but he’s worked out how they did it while it was happening. You need to disable your transponder units, Captain, and have them physically disconnected from your computers.’

‘Is it even possible to hack the computers through the transponder?’ Arnold asked.

‘If Papa says that’s how it was done, then yes, it’s possible. I seem to recall him complaining about that standard when it was written, but I was a bit young to understand what it was he was complaining about.’

‘Huh. Engineering, get that transponder disconnected. Fast as you can. Relay the same to the other ships. You believe this tactical analysis is Captain Meridian’s work, Kit?’

‘It’s not Papa’s,’ Terri said with a laugh in her voice. ‘He has ideas for weapons that can take someone’s head off at five kilometres, but if you ask him to use one…’

‘From the notes,’ Kit said, ‘Fox has observed one or more of these “ghost ships.” I should take any advice she gives and consider it very carefully.’

Nodding, Arnold consulted his virtual displays. ‘We’ve made course adjustments toward the signal source. We’re eighty-three minutes out.’ He paused, considering. ‘Have interceptors ready to deploy in one hour. We’ll decelerate behind them and they’ll clear through before we arrive. We’ll set up a second wave to go in with us. Let the assault troops know our ETA and have them ready.’

‘You should brief them on the possible non-combatants,’ Kit suggested.

‘They’ll be briefed,’ Arnold said grimly, ‘but in this kind of operation, everyone is a combatant until proven otherwise.’

~~~

‘Heatbloom! Positive one five five by negative one six seven. Repeat, plus one fifty-five by minus one sixty-seven. Range is approximately three thousand.’ The speaker was one of two sensor operators. As Terri glanced his way, his colleague began to work feverishly at her console. ‘Probably a reactor coming online,’ the male officer went on. ‘At a guess, they’re powering weapons.’

‘Broadcast the usual warning,’ Arnold said. ‘ECM active.’ Then he turned his attention to the pair of sensor operators. ‘Kadashi, don’t let me down.’

‘I’ve got a lock, sir,’ the female sensor officer, presumably Kadashi, replied. ‘Captain Meridian was right about the stealth, but I think I have it. Range confirmed at two nine eight nine point four kilometres.’

‘Good. Batteries one through five, prepare to fire on target. Eleven through twenty, ready on point-defence. Six through ten, remain on standby. Miss Martins, Kit, I suggest you get strapped in. There are seats against the back wall.’

‘EM spike,’ the male sensor guy announced as Terri clicked the buckles in place on her harness.

‘Reading… fourteen-centimetre, unpowered projectile,’ Kadashi said. ‘Trajectory suggests it’s heading for us.’

‘Return fire,’ Arnold ordered. ‘Point-defence turrets, fire when ready. Let’s get the interceptors engaged.’

It was all rather… anticlimactic. Quiet. With the orders given, there was little talk on the flight deck. Kadashi and her colleague announced further projectiles being launched, but Kadashi began to add that the trajectory was off after the first couple. The large screens showed the incomings as tracks moving in on the Philip Sheridan and then vanished as the point-defence batteries took them out, but there was no noise from the weapons, only the hum of the engines vibrating through the hull and the rather calm, clipped chatter of people doing their job. At some point, communications announced that the John S. Mosby was engaging a second target and the data appeared on a secondary screen.

‘Explosion detected,’ the second sensor operator announced. ‘I think their reactor’s down.’

‘Any more targets?’ Arnold asked.

‘Nothing yet, sir.’

‘Prepare for attitude change and deployment of assault ships. Let’s get this thing done.’

Eden Station.

‘The UNTPP ships have begun broadcasting a “We are boarding you, stand down” message,’ Kit said.

‘And the control room crew don’t know about it?’ Fox asked.

‘I’ve blocked all communications outside this room.’

‘And I’m a little amazed no one’s thought to come in here to check. This is the main communications hub.’

‘If what we heard continued,’ Mariel said, ‘I’d imagine Montcairn is having to run operations himself. Considering how he took the death of his family, I doubt he has excellent crisis-management skills.’

‘Huh. Point.’ Fox paused a second. ‘Kit, can you push that warning out through the station’s PA system?’

‘Yes. It won’t get everywhere since you blew up some of the cabling, but I can route it.’

‘Was that a bit of sarcasm in there?’

Kit’s avatar smiled sweetly. ‘I have no idea what you mean.’

‘Right. Do it, then I’m going to unplug.’

Jackson looked around at Fox and frowned. ‘What are you planning to do?’

‘I don’t want Montcairn slipping away into the crowd,’ Fox replied. ‘I’m going to hunt him down before he has a chance to.’

‘And capture him?’

Fox’s grin was malicious. ‘Don’t worry, Jackson. I’m not going to kill him unless I really have to. I want him to live a long life, in a hole on the Moon.’

~~~

Fox dropped through the hatch into the command centre, her rifle scanning around as she went. Perhaps it should not have come as a surprise to find only three people left at their positions: Kit and Jackson had basically made the room less than useless over the past hour or so.

One of them, a woman, looked around at Fox with eyes which spoke of fear, weariness, and resignation. ‘I didn’t think you people would get in so fast,’ she shouted over the message being blasted out of the room’s speakers.

‘They haven’t,’ Fox replied. ‘I’m ex-UNTPP. Your boss kidnapped a couple of my friends and got me as a surprise bonus. I want him. Where’s Montcairn?’

The woman’s face twisted in hatred. ‘You did all this? You killed… all those people?’

The anger actually looked genuine; maybe the woman was not all bad… ‘The ones stuck in the beehive you people built? There’s nothing wrong with them. They’re probably happier now you’re not piping doom and gloom videos in there.’

‘What?’

‘We faked the alarms. Where’s Montcairn?’

The relief on the woman’s face suggested there was something more personal than simple loss of life involved in her reaction. A lover among the capsules? Family? Whatever, she seemed to have no great love for Montcairn. ‘He went looking for Joshua. I think he’s got some sort of escape capsule or bolthole. Somewhere he thinks he can go to stay away from the cops. With the networks down, we can’t track him, but…’

‘But?’

‘Montcairn’s an asshole, but Joshua… Joshua’s either the real deal or he’s really deluded. If the world’s falling apart, he’ll go to the chapel.’

Fox nodded and started to turn, catching herself and looking back. ‘Stay here. When the cops come in, don’t resist. I have no idea what happens next with all of you, but if you cooperate… Things will be better than if you don’t.’ She pushed off for the hatch.

‘Thanks,’ the woman said from behind her.

‘No problem,’ Fox replied. No. If anyone was going to have a problem, it was Montcairn.

The Philip Sheridan.

‘The hangar bay is ours,’ Arnold said. ‘We’ve a couple of interceptor frames covering it and we’ve put troops in. They hit some resistance, but nothing we’d consider a serious threat.’ The captain’s lips curved slightly. ‘Those new rifles MarTech Defense Technologies supplied are very effective against basic ballistic suits.’

‘Fox tested the prototype as a pistol,’ Terri said. Now that the situation was contained within the asteroid base, which was now surrounded by three cruisers, Terri and Kit had moved back up to the captain’s chair. A third ghost ship had made itself known, but it had fallen foul of the main gun on one of the other cruisers, which had split it open like an egg. Things definitely seemed to be going the UNTPP’s way. ‘And the micromissile launcher is based on technology developed for her current sidearm.’

‘Huh. Well, the midsection was breached through airlocks. Someone seems to have persuaded the main computer that there was a major decompression incident in there and all the bulkheads are closed. Lots of scared, confused people, but very few security personnel. And they gave up as soon as they saw our people.’

‘I’d imagine we can thank Kit for the fake air leak.’

Arnold glanced at Kit. Kit shrugged. ‘I can be in nine places at once. One of them is generally Fox’s second processor. We make a good team.’

‘Nine…’ Arnold frowned and then got on with his summary. ‘We’re having more difficulty in the third section. More security. Some heavier weapons. However, we’re mostly finding scared people in habitation and some substantial destruction. There’s a… park or garden, or something. Hard to tell since it looks like someone more or less nuked the place. What isn’t flattened is burned, or burned and flattened.’

‘Fox likes thermobaric warheads,’ Kit supplied.

‘Ah. We’re working through, but it’s taking some time. We’re trying to get to the command centre in the core. We haven’t found Doctor Martins, Miss Hoarsen, or Captain Meridian yet.’

‘I suspect you’ll find Papa and Mariel in the computer core,’ Terri said. ‘And Fox… Follow the explosions.’

Eden Station.

Fox heard voices as she edged the door of the chapel open. One of them was loud enough to be fully audible over the announcement from the speakers, the other more of a mumble; someone was praying.

‘Damn it, Joshua. We’ve no time for this.’ Montcairn sounded angry, but also exasperated. ‘We need to leave! We need to leave now.’

Keeping low, Fox slipped in and moved up behind one of the low-backed pews. Even the brief glance she gave the room as she went was enough to tell her what was going on. Joshua was on his knees at the front of the chapel, his hands raised in supplication. Montcairn was pacing up and down in front of him, shouting. Two guards with the ubiquitous shotguns stood ineffectual watch.

‘Okay then,’ Fox said inside her mind. ‘Guards go first, then we’ll see about the other two.’

‘I can’t see Joshua putting up much resistance,’ Kit replied. ‘I believe he’s suffering from a crisis of faith. The guards are wearing ballistic cloth. Your rifle should penetrate effectively.’

‘I’m aware.’ Fox shifted upward, checked her target, and fired off a burst before any of them were aware she was there. Metal needles punched through armour and the flesh beneath, and one of the guards was down in an instant. Her second burst was off, only one round hitting her target. The guard was visibly in pain, but he managed to fire back and bag himself a pew. Wood splinters flew and Fox’s second burst was all gold. The shotgun clattered to the ground, followed quickly by the body, and Fox set off down the centre aisle, dropping her rifle to hang on its sling while she reached for her pistol.

Montcairn leaped on one of the fallen shotguns, swinging it up as Fox approached. ‘You’ll never–’

Fox put a bullet through his right kneecap. ‘Shut up,’ she said over the scream which followed. He fell, but he was tougher than he looked; he remained conscious. Joshua just kept praying while Fox walked around, her pistol aimed at Montcairn, and Montcairn swung himself around to blast a hole in the ceiling with the shotgun. ‘Please. Stop,’ Fox said in a monotone, and then put a round through Montcairn’s shoulder. When the shriek of pain subsided, Montcairn began to giggle, but his ruined arm could no longer lift the shotgun.

‘Eli,’ Joshua wailed, ‘Eli lama sabachthani?’

‘It’s from the Bible,’ Kit supplied. ‘“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Approximately.’

Fox turned to look at the man who thought himself the Son of God. His T-shirt had taken some damage in the garden: there were blackened patches where burning plant material must have caught him. His jeans were torn. Part of his beard had been singed and there was a reddened patch of skin up across his left cheek. His eyes shifted, turning to look up at her with the weirdest mixture of pain and awe in them.

‘If you want my opinion,’ Fox said, ‘he was never with you, but I shouldn’t imagine praying to a fucking huge picture of yourself is something He would find tolerable and, I don’t know, but letting this bastard’ – she flicked her pistol at Montcairn – ‘murder several thousand people in His name was probably not a good move.’

‘They had it coming!’ Montcairn slurred. ‘All of them. They’re all corrupt, evil. You’re nothing but–’

Fox fired, the bullet whining off the deck an inch from Montcairn’s ear. ‘If you’re trying to get me angry so I’ll kill you, you’re not going to manage it. I’m so far past angry, I’m clear out the other side and in a different solar system. You’re not going to die. You’re going to live. You’re going to be tried for conspiracy to murder, and terrorism, and any other damn charge the world can come up with. Then you’ll be put in a box under the Mare Frigoris until you die of old age, you spineless, useless, pitiful excuse for a human being.’

She turned her attention back to Joshua, who was now prostrate on the deck at her feet. ‘And you shouldn’t worry. They have a psychiatric wing at Cold Harbour.’

Epilogue: To Begin Anew

Jenner Research Station, The Moon, 29th August 2061.

Fei was in a dress. Fei’s remote avatar with its short cap of near-white hair, pointed ears, pixyish features, and a body which was both lush and slim was wearing a blue dress with a ruffled skirt, along with blue, high-heeled sandals. The effect gave Fox pause since she was used to seeing the avatar in a powder-blue jumpsuit and this just made her appear more human.

‘I am so pleased that you have all returned safely,’ Fei said, her lips curling into a warm smile. ‘I am most especially pleased that our first meeting has not been delayed further, Mariel.’ She paused. ‘You don’t mind me calling you Mariel, do you? No one ever gives me all the names.’

Mariel stepped forward and took Fei’s offered hand. ‘Mariel is fine. I’m pleased to meet you too, Fei. Though, truth be told, I’m just happy to be on solid ground again.’

It had taken about eight hours to get everything sorted out on Eden Station, or sorted out enough for one of the cruisers to be available to transport the VIPs back to Luna City. There were transports heading out to L5 to handle transporting the Promised Land cultists back to the Moon; Captain Arnold had suggested that Fox might wish to assist in determining what to do with them and Fox had cited personal interest as a factor in not wishing to.

So, the MarTech people had set off back to the Moon and Terri had been more than a little surprised when Jackson and Mariel had decided they could make do with one cabin between them. Surprised, but not at all displeased.

Nineteen hours after leaving L5, they were all, finally, deep in the bowels of Jenner Research Station and, even if the gravity was not Earth-normal, it was better than the pitiful acceleration of a UNTPP cruiser.

‘I,’ Jackson said, ‘will wholeheartedly second that. Hello again, Fei.’

‘Hello, Jackson. It seems that every time you come to see me, there is some sort of incident involved.’

‘Hmm, you may have a point. We’re here now and we’ll take a couple of days going over your progress and letting you get to know Mariel.’

The avatar’s lips curled again. ‘You mean, letting Mariel get to know me. Tomorrow. In case you were unaware, it is currently five forty-eight in the morning and I am sure you would all like some rest and time to acclimatise.’

‘Not really,’ Fox said, ‘but I’ll run a recharge and sleep cycle, get myself backed up, and then see where the mood takes me.’

‘That sounds like an excellent idea.’

~~~

Fox sat in the lounge outside her rooms, cradling a glass of fairly good single malt and listening to Kit and Fei chattering. That was unfair: the two copies of Kit now in the facility had synced their memories so that gynoid-Kit could discuss all that had happened on Eden Station, and this was part of the learning process for the super-AI who had never been outside of a few floors of Jenner Research Station. Fei was discovering what religion could mean, not just what it was supposed to mean. Her view of what ‘human’ meant was broadening, though it could be said that she had a pretty broad definition anyway: she viewed Fox as human as well as being an infomorph, which was probably not a generally held belief. Fox was not really paying attention to what they were saying. Her mind, relieved of the need to find out why Jason had died, had nowhere to go but the past.

‘Fox, do you know?’

Fox blinked and looked around at Kit. ‘Huh? Know what? Sorry, my mind was elsewhere.’

‘Where did you go?’ Fei asked.

Fox gave her a half-smile. ‘It’s a saying. People say that when they weren’t paying attention because they were lost in their own thoughts.’

‘Possibly you should contemplate not using that one. Your mind could be somewhere else.’

‘I–’ Fox raised her eyebrows and then shrugged. ‘You make a valid point. What is it I’m supposed to pass an opinion on?’

‘Why people seem to enjoy creating end-of-the-world scenarios,’ Kit supplied.

‘No idea. A way of dealing with death? “Yes, we die, but one day we’ll rise again if we believe enough.” That seems to be a favourite. Maybe it’s just about death. Humans die, so why shouldn’t the world do the same? I honestly don’t know. I get creation myths, because everyone always wants to know how we came to be, but I don’t know why so many want to think it’s all going to end. Usually after a fairly short period of time too. Well, humans aren’t very good at imagining really long periods of time, so I guess that works. Anything over a few hundred generations tends to be beyond imagination. Unless you’re Mayan.’

‘They did have a very extended mechanism for handling dates,’ Kit agreed thoughtfully. ‘However, that doesn’t really help explain this to Fei.’

Fox gave another shrug. ‘Maybe… People never seem to be happy with what they have. I mean, a lot of people are like that. Religious people seem to think that life is… something to be endured. You get sent here to prove you’re good enough to go somewhere nice when you die. When you die, if you’ve done the right things, you go somewhere better. I guess that’s a pretty big draw if you live in some fleapit where your job is breaking your back ploughing a field, probably so someone else can make money. Probably pretty easy to believe death will make things better if that’s your life.’

‘But you don’t believe that?’ Fei asked. ‘You don’t believe there is somewhere better after death?’

Fox sighed. ‘It would be nice to.’ She stopped as Terri’s door opened and Terri stumbled through it, wearing a short, silky wrap which was badly tied in place and rubbing at tired eyes. ‘Can’t sleep?’

‘Been drifting in and out for hours. My rhythm’s totally off with grabbing naps when I can and… Well, with worrying. Not worrying doesn’t really get you back in sync just like that.’

Fei fixed her creator with a stare. ‘When Jackson, Mariel, and Fox return to Earth, you will go with them.’ Terri opened her mouth, almost certainly planning to object. ‘Kit will be here to continue working with me. I’m not saying you should not come back, but you should take time to be with your family and your friends.’

‘She’s right, Terri,’ Fox said, before Terri could get a word in. ‘You’re young and you think you have time and there’s always another tomorrow. Then there isn’t.’

Flopping onto a chair, Terri looked between them. She shrugged. ‘Okay. I could use a break. Yeah.’

Fei sat up straight and positively beamed. ‘Excellent.’ She turned to Kit. ‘And while she’s away, we can start work on our battle plans.’

Kit rolled her eyes. ‘I’ll go get the memory-zapper thing…’

~~~

Another seat, but this one was in the lounge of the suite Jackson and Mariel were sharing. Terri had expressed slight amusement at that; all that time not being together and suddenly they did not want to be apart.

‘You know she’s trying really hard not to think about what you might be doing in there, right?’ Fox asked, nodding toward the bedroom door.

‘Well, we haven’t–’ Mariel began.

‘We’ve not actually–’ Jackson said.

Fox giggled.

‘It’s been a while,’ Jackson went on, ‘and there’s no immediate rush. And, frankly, I’d rather relight my ardour in normal gravity.’

‘Huh, well, normally I’d say it’s an interesting experience in the lowered gravity, but given your stomach, you might be right. Doesn’t mean I can’t tease Terri about it though. Fei’s basically ordered her to go back to Earth with us. Take a break. Be with family. That kind of thing.’

‘She’s a very perceptive woman, our Fei.’

‘Wise beyond her months?’ Mariel suggested.

‘I think,’ Fox said, pausing to work through the thought. ‘I think Fei has a very strong perception of family. In the broad sense. Like I’m sort of part of Jackson’s family and Kit’s part of mine. Fei is restricted in the people she meets and talks to, and she’s, um, gregarious. I think she’s keen to learn about… about what’s outside her tank. The limits we put on her… She understands that we have to. I really believe she understands that, but she wishes they weren’t needed, and I think knowing about them has helped her understand, well, loneliness.’ Giving a shrug, Fox shifted in her seat and went on. ‘Anyway, she’s persuaded Terri to head back with us for a while, but I wanted to talk about something else. Um… I don’t think I can keep doing this.’

Jackson’s face paled, but his voice was steady when he spoke. ‘I think you’ll need to be more specific.’

‘The job. CIO of Palladium.’

Both Jackson and Mariel relaxed visibly. ‘Sooner than expected,’ Mariel said, ‘but not something we didn’t expect.’

Fox raised an eyebrow. ‘Am I that predictable?’

‘On this? Yes.’

‘I shanghaied you into the job, Fox,’ Jackson said. ‘I promised you that it would take a while before you had people you needed to manage.’

‘And then we got hit with the two policing resolutions,’ Mariel continued. ‘We’ve been running to keep up and, by January, I expect you’ll have a huge contingent of detectives under you to handle the metro regions. Our projections suggest that even those areas which may go with Wayden for general policing don’t believe they can provide adequate investigative coverage. Even after what happened with the previous round of contracts, Wayden are vague about that aspect of policing, and we both know it will be more important in the metros.’ She sighed. ‘We were considering a sweepstake on the first six months of next year for your resignation, but that’s out of the window, I suppose.’

‘Sorry to disappoint,’ Fox replied, though she was smirking. ‘I thought I could continue in the position until the end of December. Get everything in place and hand over to my successor. Maybe stay on a little longer. I don’t remember what the contract says about–’

‘The thing is,’ Jackson said, ‘we’ve obviously considered this and we don’t want to lose you. We’ve discussed a number of possibilities, uh, with Garth.’

‘We were having some trouble working it all out,’ Mariel went on. ‘Mostly the details, really, and finding someone to take on the CIO role in your place. That is not going to be easy. Uh, then your ideas on handling the national security requirements came up and it all fell into place. Well, except for your replacement.’

‘Go on…’ Fox said, brow furrowed.

‘We need a tactical response unit. Well, we need several, but terrorist incidents don’t happen every other Thursday. We need someone up at the top of it who understands how to work with the NAPA and UNTPP liaisons, and can investigate a scene with terrorism in mind. It would be a full-time position, but it wouldn’t be something that’s needed all the time, freeing that person up to be used in other investigations. We thought you could do that, and support Helen as she heads up the general investigations. Though we’re not sure Helen has the right skill set for the board…’

‘Neither do I,’ Fox said, ‘but you put me on it. But… What we really need up there is someone who understands the jobs the detectives do, but has good administrative skills.’

Jackson’s lips quirked: he was not considered a genius for nothing. ‘It would help if that individual had time on the job. Perhaps assisting a detective. Good data-handling skills would be useful. If she could also be in nine places at once, that would be–’

Kit appeared beside them, hands on her hips and a frown on her face. ‘Are you absolutely insane?! I can’t be on the board of–’

‘Why not?’ Mariel asked.

‘Well, I’m an AI, not–’

‘And you’ll, soon enough, have all the rights of a human. Certainly sufficient to hold an executive position on a board and, I’ll add, I don’t see what being an AI has to do with it anyway. A suitable infomorph, perhaps with corporate ownership, would be acceptable in such a position now. There’s certainly no legal reason why it couldn’t be done. Aside from what amounts to racism.’

‘There are AIs in management positions within the company already,’ Jackson said. ‘It’s not uncommon in Europe and there are some in Japan.’

‘You’ve your gynoid for personal appearances,’ Fox said, ‘and you can have a copy handling the work routinely. Maybe the company can provide you with processors in tower three and Chicago so you can be where you need to be when you’re needed. You’re a way better administrator than I am, but you’ve been my aide for long enough to know what’s needed and you can carry on learning because you can be in nine places at once. You’ll still have me and Helen to advise… You are perfect for the job, Kit. Suck it up.’

‘I think we should work through some details,’ Kit said. She looked about half-convinced, and also like she had just been shanghaied. Well, Fox knew exactly what that was like.

Detroit–Chicago Metro, 5th September.

Commuting as an infomorph definitely had advantages over doing it as a human, or even as a cyberframe. Fox and Kit had simply had to transfer to one of the huge servers in the MarTech tower in Chicago, and they had direct access to the viron housing Palladium’s virtual boardroom. Of course, everyone else was there via telepresence, but as far as Fox was concerned, she was actually sitting at the table. This was her world now, as much as the real one she interacted with through her frames.

Today, Helen was joining the usual members of the Palladium board and not everyone there knew why. They would get to that, but there were other matters to handle first.

‘How are you doing, Fox?’ Vaughn asked, her expression sincere. ‘We, um, we’re sorry for your loss.’ There were murmurs from the others; some of them had lost people and knew, at least to some extent, what Fox was going through and all could imagine.

‘Getting there,’ Fox replied. ‘The memorial was on Saturday. Jackson, Mariel, and Terri went up to Toronto with me and I think Jason’s parents appreciated it. They’re… a mess, but I guess they always knew it could happen. His father’s an ex-cop and his sister’s a tech. We could tell them that the people responsible are going to spend the rest of their lives in Cold Harbour. That helped a bit too. We’re all getting there.’

Vaughn gave her a smile, and clearly knew that ‘getting there’ was as good as it got.

‘Is the Eden thing wrapped?’ Eaves asked. ‘From our end anyway.’

Fox gave a small shrug. ‘More or less. It’s pretty much down to the UNTPP now. They’re screening the, um, believers before transfer back to Earth. Most of them will probably vanish back into the protectorates, but some might end up better off than they were. The ones who don’t pass the screening will be shipped to secure holding at Cold Harbour. They’ll probably never set foot on Earth again. We’ve established that the computers the Children of the Pleasure Garden had set up were being used to distribute a number of the memes the Eden people were creating. That’s in America. There could be another one, and there probably are more in other countries, but that’s all down to NAPA and the UNTPP.’

‘Has anyone managed to identify Joshua?’ Jarvis asked.

‘Uh, sort of,’ Fox said. ‘Maybe. There are records of a Joshua Carpenter the UNTPP managed to find. There’s a registration of birth on a Jin Shu station out at L-five. Mother was Jin Shu, but there’s no father listed. Some attached notes indicate that he was passed to an uncle and aunt when his mother died and the ID picture that came with those seems to be him. He’s noted as being “very religious.” Might be him. No one’s entirely sure and it’s unclear how he got hooked up with Montcairn. But the name, the religious bent, the shock of losing a parent and, of course, he doesn’t appear to have a father. Might have broken him. Might have formed this delusion.’ She gave a shrug. ‘Or maybe he was the Son of God.’

‘Yeah. Sure,’ Jarvis said, but there was a pause which went on a little too long…

‘Order of business then,’ Eaves said. ‘Before we get to progress on the contracts, Fox has a… small announcement.’

‘Huh, yeah,’ Fox said. ‘Garth knows about this because he has to. Same goes for Helen and Kit. As of January first, I will be stepping down as CIO of Palladium Security Solutions.’ Vaughn gasped. Jarvis frowned, but there was shock behind the frown. ‘You’re not getting rid of me. We’re… restructuring.’

‘Yes,’ Eaves said. ‘Fox will be operation lead in charge of antiterrorism operations and activities, handling general investigations under Helen when not so employed. They will both be advising our new CIO.’

‘That would be me,’ Kit said. ‘Fox, Jackson, and Mariel cornered me and I still haven’t worked out how to get out of it.’

‘It makes the management structure at the top of the division a bit… woolly,’ Fox said. ‘I guess, really, we’ll all be working together to make it function right, but Kit’s much better at administration than I am. Hell, she’s been running things since we started. I just provide direction.’

‘Yeah,’ Helen said. ‘You realise Kit is going to be our boss and your PA at the same time.’

‘I intend to deploy multiple copies,’ Kit said, ‘so that I can gang up on Fox as much as possible.’

‘Ah, but one of your copies will be your boss too.’

‘Oh, I hadn’t thought of that one…’

Fox grinned. ‘I’m sure we’ll make it work. We’ve a few months of overlap to iron it out. A new start. Things end, but there’s always something new around the corner.’ There was, she was sure of it. Now all she had to do was believe it.

###

About the Author

I was born in the vicinity of Hadrian's Wall so perhaps a bit of history rubbed off. Ancient history obviously, and border history, right on the edge of the Empire. I always preferred the Dark Ages anyway; there’s so much more room for imagination when people aren’t writing down every last detail. So my idea of a good fantasy novel involved dirt and leather, not shining plate armour and Hollywood-medieval manners. The same applies to my sci-fi, really; I prefer gritty over shiny.

Oddly, then, one of the first fantasy novels I remember reading was The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper (later made into a terrible juvenile movie). These days we would call Cooper’s series Young Adult Contemporary Fantasy and looking back on it, it influenced me a lot. It has that mix of modern day life, hidden history, and magic which failed to hit popular culture until the early days of Buffy and Anne Rice. Of course, Cooper’s characters spend their time around places I could actually visit in Cornwall, and South East England, and mid-Wales. In fact, when I went to university in Aberystwyth, it was partially because some of Cooper’s books were set a few miles to the north around Tywyn.

I got into writing through roleplaying, however, so my early work was related to the kind of roleplaying game I was interested in. I wrote science fiction when I was playing Traveller. I wrote “high fantasy” when I was playing Dungeons & Dragons. I wrote a lot of superhero fiction when I was playing City of Heroes. I still love the idea of a modern world with magic in it and I’ve been trying to write a novel based on this for a long time. As with any form of expression, practice is the key and I can look back on all the aborted attempts at books, and the more successful short stories, as steps along the path to the Thaumatology Series.

Recently I took the big step of quitting my day job and taking up full-time writing. My favourite authors are Terry Pratchett, Susan Cooper, J.D. Robb, and Kim Harrison. Kim’s Hollows books were what finally spurred me to publish something, even if the trail to here came by way of Susan, back in school, several decades ago.

For More Information

Take a look at the Witches and Ray-guns blog: http://witchesandrayguns.wordpress.com

Amazon US Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B006J6II9O

Amazon UK Author Page: http://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B006J6II9O

Other Books by this Author

The Thaumatology Series

Thaumatology 101

Demon’s Moon

Legacy

Dragon’s Blood

Disturbia

Hammer of Witches

Eagle’s Shadow

Ancient

Dragonfall

The Other Side of Hell

For Whom the Wedding Bells Toll

Vengeance

A Midsummer’s Nightmare – 2018

Anthologies in the Thaumatology Universe

Tales from High Towers’ Study

Tales from the Dubh Linn

The Aneka Jansen Books

Steel Beneath The Skin

The Cold Steel Mind

Steel Heart

The Winter War

The Greatest Heights of Honour

The Lowest Depths of Shame

Hope

The Ultrahuman Books

Ugly

Shadows

Hunting Mink

Frostburn

Guardian – 2017/18

True Dark – 2017/18

The Unobtainium Books

Kate on a Hot Tin Roof

King Solamet’s Mines – 2018

The Reality Hack Books

Reality Hack

The Fox Meridian Books

Fox Hunt

Inescapable

DeathWeb

Criminal Minds

Emergence

The Ghost in the Doll

Eden Burning

Dominance – 2018

The Princeps Venator Books

Hunter’s Kiss

Be My Valentine

The Gunwitch Books

Gunwitch: Rebirth

The Children of Zanar Series

The Zanari Inheritance

The Misfits Series

Misfit Magic

Misfit Witchcraft

Table of Contents

Part One: Eve of a New Age

Part Two: The Death of the Old World

Part Three: The Falling Sky

Part Four: Everything Ends

Epilogue: To Begin Anew