The warm water inside the executive bathhouse helped ease the tension in Arvad’s muscles. He hadn’t felt this nervous since his early days as an executive, taking the reigns of the galaxy’s largest corporation. So much rode on the success of this mission. As he sat in the warm water, Arvad did his best to clear his mind. Domina deserved his best tonight. While she wouldn’t get that—he’d already devoted too much to the company—it would be the best that he could muster, dammit.

  The door to the bathhouse opened. A figure came into the room, removed their robe, and sat down next to Arvad.

  “Hamilcar,” said Arvad as the man sank down.

  “Arvad,” Hamilcar replied in a deep voice. The man stood a head taller than Arvad and a good measure wider, mostly muscle. With a full beard that covered a strong jaw and a sharp nose, Hamilcar looked every bit the part of Arvad’s chief of security. His jovial demeanor betrayed a cunning mind.

  “I don’t remember calling a meeting,” said Arvad. “In fact, I had Harvey cancel them all for the day.”

  “But you did have James prepare your dinner suit,” said Hamilcar, “which means you’re going to see your wife tonight. I trust under amiable circumstances.”

  “We’re going to Hyrum’s tonight. Hardly calls for an escort, don’t you think?”

  Hamilcar gave Arvad a sidelong glance. “Need I remind you that the head of Carthage is always under threat of attack?”

  “I am well aware.” Arvad grunted. “If you insist, then I suppose I would settle for a driver.”

  Hamilcar pressed his lips together, clearly apprehensive. He suddenly smiled broadly, “Of course. Thank you for allowing at least that.”

  “You didn’t come in here just to arrange my security for the evening.”

  “No,” replied Hamilcar, still smiling, “that is not the only reason.” He splashed the water in the bath. “This bathhouse is also the best in the building.”

  Arvad gave Hamilcar a withering look.

  The chief of security chuckled and held up a hand. “I kid, Arvad. Lighten up.” He dropped his smile. “An old satellite has been receiving signals from the planet.”

  “Is that so?” said Arvad.

  Hamilcar nodded. “We’ve pinpointed the transmissions to this building.” His hands moved while he spoke, sloshing water around. “Naturally, we’re concerned about a data breach.”

  “A cyberattack?”

  The big man shook his head. “As far as we can tell, no.”

  “Have they taken anything?”

  Hamilcar shrugged. “We don’t know yet. The transmission is encrypted with old-world software encryption. Very difficult to crack. It will take a while. I was thinking of cutting off the transmission.”

  “Don’t,” said Arvad. “Let them think they can still use it. The more data we gather about the perpetrators, the better we can understand and ultimately deal with the problem.”

  “As you wish.” Hamilcar sat back for a moment. He then leaned close and spoke quietly as he said, “Arvad, you’re not just my boss. I consider you among my short list of friends. However, my duty isn’t just to protect you. I have a duty to the company as well. If you know something, tell me.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Hamilcar hesitated and then said, “After what happened on Messina Prime, you’ve been different. If there’s someth—”

  “You forget yourself,” said Arvad, standing suddenly, bath water splashing all around him. “I told you never to speak of Messina.” He climbed out and grabbed a towel.

  Hamilcar bowed his head and suddenly looked small for a man his size. “Forgive me. I meant no disrespect.”

  Arvad retrieved his robe and began to leave the room. He stopped and his voice softened as he said, “Messina is still too...raw to discuss.”

  “For what it’s worth, I wish I had been there. Then maybe—”

  “No one else need blame themselves. The fault lays with me and me alone, and I am still paying the price.” He took a breath. “Let me know what your investigation turns up. And Hamilcar?”

  “Yes?”

  “You are probably right. Add one more to my escort, but for gods’ sake, tell them to stay outside the restaurant.”

  Arvad could hear Hamilcar’s grin. “Of course. Thank you, sir.”

  With that, Arvad left the bathhouse.

  Well, this complicates things, he thought to himself. He’d expected that someone might catch on to the old transmissions, but he had counted on it taking longer than this. At some point, he knew he had to brief Hamilcar on his plan, but it had to be at the right moment.

  But all of that would wait. He had a date with his wife and he would not be late.

  -+-+-

  Several hours after evading the Andrani, the tiny ship darted behind yet another asteroid. 2246B counted it as the twenty-fourth they had slipped around since leaving the station. Niko looked as though he might throw up at any time. Once or twice, he almost did, but Roji, the pilot, yelled at him which somehow help Niko keep it down. At one point, Roji had re-engaged the gravity field on the ship which helped the software engineer cope a little better.

  2246B had remained silent since they reached the ship. She didn’t want to speak because something terrified her. Whatever that creature had been that tried to stop them at the sewer, it had…scared 2246B. That fear, that terror deepened when the Andrani worldship came into view. Even through all that had happened at the Mamertine Solaris station, 2246B had not felt a deep-seated fear like when it saw the moon-sized behemoth. Despite its powerful processors and organic brain, she had trouble grasping the nature of the terror it had felt. It was a though she had to come to a vast, planet-size abyss, darker than a black hole and vastly more intense. 2246B felt that if she had moved any closer to it, the abyss would have swallowed her whole, absorbing her very essence. She held up a hand. It still trembled. She quickly put her hand back down and pressed closer to the bulkhead of the ship, trying to calm herself.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “Well, good morning, sunshine,” said Tracer with a mixture of derision and brightness. The sniper was looking down at Silk. She had just regained consciousness. When she tried to get up, she suddenly found that she couldn’t thanks to her bindings.

  “Quit struggling,” snapped Evy, using a boot to push the hacker back down. “You’ll waste oxygen.”

  Breathing hard, Silk asked, “Where are we?”

  “Aboard your escape plan.”

  Silk looked around the cabin of the ship, taking each person in turn. When she returned to Evy, she shrank. “What are you going to do with me?”

  “Well now, that depends on you, dearie.”

  Silk swallowed. “What do you want?”

  Evy’s face reddened as she leaned in closer. With a snarl, she said, “I want my team back, treacherous bitch.” A long, strained silence followed. Evy let out a breath. “But, that’s not possible. You made sure of that.”

  Silk squirmed in the bindings. “I’m sorry, Evy—”

  Evy pressed down hard with her boot. “Tell me, Silk, was it worth it? Was the pay worth betraying your team?”

  Silk coughed, struggling to breathe. She let out a cry of pain.

  “Captain,” said Niko, “ease up.”

  Evy’s gaze snapped up to Niko. “She planned to leave you behind. You really want to go easy on someone like that?”

  He held his hands up in a conciliatory gesture. “I’m not saying she doesn’t deserve what’s coming to her. But, time and place, commander.”

  “I’m with the office jockey, XO,” said Tracer. “She deserves to be spaced, but better to wait until we have the full picture.”

  “The company would never have to know,” said Evy, almost too quietly.

  “Before you do something you’ll regret, think about it,” said Tracer. “Who’s to say she wasn’t following orders from SaCaleta?”

  Evy blinked at that. It was clearly something she hadn’t considered.

  “Besides,” said Niko, “I’d really rather that whatever you did to her, it wasn’t in front of...young eyes.” He nodded toward 2246B as he said this.

  “Don’t get blood on my ship,” yelled Roji without turning around.

  Evy eyed the artificial lifeform for a moment, then looked back down at Silk. Finally, she removed her boot from the hacker’s chest.

  Silk sucked in a gulp of air and coughed.

  “Oxygen!” yelled Roji.

  Evy grunted and sat back down. Tracer helped the struggling Silk into a sitting position on the other side of the cabin.

  “Settle in,” said Tracer. “We’re in for a long ride.”

  2246B watched all of this with reserved interest. The software processes governing her social interaction seemed to understand that none of this constituted “good” or “normal” behavior. However, neither was she surprised by any of it based on her observation of the humans up until this point. She decided that Niko, Roji, and Tracer were “good.” Silk seemed to be “bad.” But the captain seemed to be somewhere in between.

  “Are you alright?” asked Niko, looking at her intently.

  “I am fine,” she said.

  “This isn’t exactly an ideal situation, but it’ll have to do until we can find someplace safer.” He then pulled out his data tablet and began perusing files and applications. He attached a black cable to it and held up the other end so 2246B could see. “I’d like to run diagnostics on you if that’s okay.”

  “Are you concerned?”

  He smiled nervously. “Our journey has been a little more rough-and-tumble than I’d hoped. I just want to make sure everything is in working order.”

  2246B considered this for moment and then nodded. She then turned to give Niko access a port on the side of her neck. He plugged the cable in and began running through a battery of system tests and checks.

  “Niko, why did you save me?”

  The software engineer nearly dropped his tablet. He recovered and said, “What kind of question is that? I didn’t want the Andrani to kill you.”

  “But why me? There were thousands of others like me in that station. You could have saved any one of them. Why me?” She pointed a finger at herself.

  Niko gave her a nervous expression. To make things worse, he notived the three mercs paying attention to their conversation.

  He swallowed and then continued working on the tablet as he spoke. “Well, I worked at the station as a programmer, specifically on the learning software.”

  “The whole project looked risky,” said Tracer. “What exactly was Mamertine’s end game?”

  “They kept us all compartmentalized. It took some effort and more than a bit of guesswork, but I was able to piece together a pretty good idea.” Niko adjusted his glasses. “They were making an army, but something beyond battledroids. Even the most advanced robot could not compete with the intuition, ingenuity, and raw chaotic behavior and thought processes of humans. They wanted something that could think for itself but still maintain control of the soldiers. The toughest part of our job was staying just under the strict definition of artificial intelligence.”

  “Clearly,” said Evy, “you guys stepped over that line.”

  “Not intentionally,” said Niko. He tapped a few items on the tablet. “The point was to make something that was, organically human but with implanted with computer controls centered around communication and coordination. A squad of between four and six could be directed by a single controller. The controller could be on-site or remote. We had specific goals in mind with each half of the equation.”

  “So a sort of homegrown cyborg clone soldier?”

  “Sort of, but you need to think more in terms of the group. They were supposed to be like a swarm of drones that took their cue from a ‘queen.’”

  Tracer raised a hand and said, “What would happen if the connection dropped?”

  “Well, that was part of the trouble. During testing, most simply stopped functioning and shut down. Others simply continued following their last directive. Obviously, not an ideal situation. We had to have a stop-gap that allowed the soldiers to proceed with a pre-defined plan, but still adapt based on tactical changes. These soldiers had to make choices on the fly without input from the controller. This presented a unique problem because we would have to code in unique decision-making capabilities to account for every situation the soldier might come across.”

  Evy whistled. “And how would it accomplish that? There are way too many variables.”

  “Exactly right,” said Niko. “An infinite number, as it turns out. Our first solution was to favor the organic component to introduce more human-like decision making. This however, introduced a new psychological problem. The organic brains began to reject the inorganic implants and shut down. In a sense, they committed suicide.”

  “Holy hell,” said Tracer shaking his head. “That’s some messed up shit right there.”

  “That explains the bodies,” said Evy, recalling their run through the dumping pit.

  “Quite so,” said Niko. “But before you judge too harshly, remember that none of these soldiers were ever really alive, in the strictest sense. They were fabricated in a lab.”

  “Whatever helps you sleep I guess,” said Evy.

  Niko cleared his throat and continued. “We then entered a period of trial and error, trying to find that balance of autonomy within the organic brain and the control imposed by the machine. We lost thousands of specimens thanks to that. To solve the problem, we had to come up with a way for the soldiers to adapt, but we kept toeing that line of true artificial intelligence. You see, all machines run by computers are slave to the original programming. The data they run from is only as good as the creator of that data. An AI, sufficiently learned, can identify gaps and inefficiencies in its own programming and go about correcting the errors. But even the recognition of those errors and the determination of the corrective action are themselves programs.”

  “Just how long did this trial and error take?”

  “A couple of years, I think. You kind of tend to lose track of time on a remote space station.”

  “I’m surprised the Andrani didn’t show up before now.”

  “Well, we did have deterrents in place to prevent leaks. The station is, I mean, was a closed system. The only outside access came via the mining station at the top of the asteroid. It served as cover for the facility’s true purpose. All the ships and communication funneled through it down to the labs. In hindsight, you could probably form a picture of what we were doing thanks to the little hints here and there, but you almost had to be looking for it to find us. It wasn’t until we made our breakthrough that we really began to worry about drawing the Collective’s attention.” He looked up at 2246B. “Well, that’s not quite right. It was when I had a breakthrough that I began to worry.”