Brrroooom.

Several rounds came out in a staccato burst. One of the spider bot"s arms came off, flying away end over end. Then the machine exploded.

"Yes!" Bren erupted.

"Fragged!" Hoffman burst out.

"Yes!" echoed another handler in the Guts.

Bren realized how tense he"d been while witnessing the battle. He checked the weapons log and swore again. Maladomini had fired four rounds through the body of Mordecai, and two of them had at least clipped the spider machine. One of the other a.s.sAIL units had hit the arm.

"Four rounds? Jesus. We need to get this base cleaned up. We"re lucky there still is a base to clean up." He exaggerated only a little. Bren knew four AP rounds along the wrong trajectory could punch a hole through the bulkheads of the base and depressurize a section. He wasn"t sure what four rounds would have done to the fusion plant, but he didn"t want to find out.

"Colonel Henley. We took out the unknown. You have four a.s.sAIL units left to a.s.sist with the high-security zone."

"s.h.i.t. Well, we"re headed in."

Bren reacquired a camera feed and watched as the a.s.sAIL team moved through the remains of the security station. He smiled at the carnage he saw through the feed until his eyes caught a pool of blood. One of the base denizens, wrapped in one of the familiar black suits, had been hiding behind the security counter. He spotted a weapons belt on the corpse and a firearm in the dead hand.

"d.a.m.n! That guy"s seriously fragged."

The machines split up into two pairs to clear the zone. Bren wasn"t sure why they didn"t cl.u.s.ter together. He wondered if some intel gleaned from the station had eliminated concern about encountering more spider bots. Or were the machines more confident now that they"d eliminated one of the bots? Had they found a weakness? The mission chronometer showed twenty-five minutes had elapsed. The machines had learned a lot since they"d been turned on.

Bren watched Meridian move through another video feed. It had body language, he realized. The a.s.sAIL was moving more a.s.suredly now, as it had when first entering the station.

The robotic vanguard swept through more corridors searching through the functional s.p.a.ces of the station. Bren noticed several spotless laboratories dominated the branch explored by the first team, while the other had invaded a security office complete with a surveillance room and detention cells. Several men and women tried to put up a fight there, but their weapons were nonlethal even on humans so they were no match for the a.s.sAIL units.

One team found its way into a large control room and rounded up a final group of high-ranking company people. At that point, the a.s.sAIL units started a patrol pattern waiting for any sign of trouble. The marines continued to secure the personnel in the suits. Bren peeked in on the marine channels to gain details about what the human invaders learned.

Part of the high-security area of the base included the personal living areas of the Bentra Corporation leaders. The place was extravagant by any standards. The living quarters were lavish, even more so if one considered their remote location in deep s.p.a.ce. He locked onto a feed from some of the marines who were rounding up people from the high-security zone.

Bren raised an eyebrow. Each of these executive quarters had a young man or woman in it, all wearing more conventional clothing. Other than the single naked woman in the examination room, these were the only people on the whole base not wearing the black suits. All the ones that Bren caught glimpses of appeared to be Asian.

"These women aren"t registered," Henley said on the marine"s channel. "s.h.i.t. Wait a minute. They aren"t linked. They have no links."

They"re slaves.

On an automated s.p.a.ce fortress like Thermopylae, anyone without a link was a second-cla.s.s citizen. Even something as simple as opening the door to your quarters could be difficult or impossible without a link. There would be no way to order food, change the temperature controls ... they would be next to helpless.

There might be some manual controls in the rooms, just so they could get some work done for their masters.

"Our intel wasn"t fabricated. Who knows what else we"ll find in the labs? This could be a major victory for the UNSF," Bren said.

Henley chuckled. "You running for office, Marcken? You"re sounding like you"re putting a h.e.l.l of a spin on it already."

Bren smiled. He had let his enthusiasm get out of control for a moment.

But to those slaves, we"re genuine liberators. Ironic that we"re liberating Chinese, the enemies of the UNSF back on Earth.

He addressed the remaining a.s.sAIL machines.

"Congratulations. The mission was successful. I owe you all my thanks. Please report back to the Vigilant for debriefing."

He watched the camera feeds as the surviving robot-killers made their way back through Thermopylae. Marines moved around detaining dozens of men and women in the odd suits, checking the station for critical damage, and searching for illegal items. The machines pa.s.sed a group of engineers tapping into one of Thermopylae"s data storage units. Bren smiled. He bet they would be finding a lot of interesting bits there.

The team returned through the breach and back onto the rubberized decks of the Vigilant. Bren got up from his chair and made his way down a short corridor toward the a.s.sAIL post-mission bays.

The handlers were already there. The four with surviving machines were preparing the machine docks to accept the a.s.sAIL units. Each bay extended the length of an a.s.sAIL unit with an opening at both ends for walking in and out.

Bren felt pity for the other six handlers. Two of them hadn"t even bothered to show up. The four who had, stood by with glum looks. None of them had expected their machine would be a leaking pile of sc.r.a.p by the end of the mission. It might be weeks before they got replacements. If they got replacements. The data would be audited carefully, and if any of the handlers had neglected their duties in a way that had contributed to the loss of a machine, those handlers might be replaced as well.

They didn"t do anything wrong. We had no idea there would be such a devastating foe here.

The familiar sound of powerful hydraulics and electric motors grew from the outer corridor. The four a.s.sAIL machines came back into the maintenance room and slid into each bay. Four umbilical connections snaked from the sides of each bay and connected to the machines.

Bren saw Maladomini bore a battle scar. A front panel of metal armor had been rent open revealing a narrow hollow in the center that leaked green fluid. The fluid was key to the functionality of the armor plate since it held millions of long carbon nanotubes in suspension to block incoming projectiles. Struck by the scene, Bren shook his head. It looked as if a wounded metal lion had slinked back to the Guts to bleed out.

Bren monitored his post-mission protocols and tried not to look at the robots. He always experienced nervousness at this point. He felt like somehow they knew. He checked the mission chronometer. The AI cores had been on for more than thirty-four minutes. Each core harbored intelligence many times more powerful than the sharpest humans did, but with a restricted set of knowledge.

Meridian followed Bren"s movements from its bay. Each eye was an armored black hemisphere the size of an old-world quarter. Meridian had eight forward-facing eyes, arrayed symmetrically across its head and shoulders, like a giant metal spider head with creepy, cold shark eyes.

"You are Major Marcken. I have a question," said Meridian.

Bren accessed the power lineup that fed the a.s.sAIL units the juice they needed to maintain mental coherency. He started the power down procedure.

"Yes, Meridian?" Bren replied nervously. He wondered what the question would be this time.

"Have you delivered the message to Sparta?"

"I"ll send them the message, Meridian," Bren said and turned off the power.

Meridian remained conscious for a long second before going dark. Bren always wondered what it thought in that last moment while its capacitors discharged, knowing its existence was about to wink out.

"I would be interested in reading the message," was the last transmission from the AI core.

Bren felt troubled. Fear and guilt battled in the mix of feelings produced by his role in what was the execution of an intelligent ent.i.ty, albeit one only minutes old.

I would be interested in reading the message.

His mood didn"t stop him from running the cleanup protocols and resetting every electronic component back to the startup specs. Not a single bit of old state from the machines would remain outside of the logs when the machine started again. And the logs would be transferred off the a.s.sAIL storage units to Bren"s data storage modules.

The next time the machines were deployed, their cores would start from scratch again. Meridian wouldn"t remember a thing.

Two.

Chris Adrastus settled into the acceleration lounge. He closed his eyes and relished the perfection of it. The muted vibration of the vehicle, the comforting white noise of its drive, and the smell of pristine leather combined harmoniously. Even now, hours after leaving Earth"s atmosphere, the acceleration continued. His link picked up the longest list of services he"d ever seen. It offered access pointers for drinks, food, ma.s.sage, and climate control ... this exquisite throne could even heat, cool, or change shape at his mental command. He thought about the chair angle pointer just so, causing a control panel to snap up in his mind, letting him adjust the settings. His lounge reclined farther without a sound.

But there was more to it than that. Chris realized the real reason it felt so good was because he had earned this privilege.

Six years of service to Vineaux Genomix. Dozens of projects seen to completion. Endless weekends filled with overtime. Hours of politicking with the right people. Sucking up, actually. Chris knew he had mastered it. He unerringly identified the crucial people and inserted a positive concept of himself in their minds. He preened himself toward the image of a successful company man, dressing in well-tailored shirts and slacks. VG was a technology company with younger people at the helm than ever before, so he reinforced a forward-thinking image by avoiding the ties and jackets worn by the old guard.

Chris"s blond hair was short, but not too short, taking advantage of his smooth face that everyone found so innocent looking. He kept trim through discipline and a regular racquetball schedule. The muscle wave machines or a steady stream of toning pills would keep his shape, but Chris opted for the schmooze time he could squeeze out of a racquetball game with a higher-up.

The hardest part had been watching his VR entertainment quotas with ironclad control. Chris knew the execs considered non-training VR time when selecting their best people. Too much VR time meant less productivity. Even the rank and file had to log every minute, and they were paid in fantasy time as much as euros or dollars or Earth standard credits.

His fingers ran across the tiny European Union badge on the edge of the armrest. He knew being a company man put him in the elite. On Earth or off, if you didn"t work for a world corporation or a government, you made a subsistence living under the poverty line. VG enjoyed more success than most corporations, so all the better. Heading toward executive level put him another step toward the pinnacle of power.

He dug out the manual he"d been handed in the office before leaving. "Take this seriously," his boss, Vic, had said. Chris still found it odd that a morale-building offsite exercise came with a manual at all, much less a hardcopy. Why hadn"t they sent the file to his link instead? But he"d read it, love it, and ask for more as long as the company kept paying him his 16,000 ESC per year.

He looked at the manual again. The white cover bore no picture or graphic lending weight to the spa.r.s.e wording it held. It said, "Synchronicity Behavioral Codes. Confidential." Then it went on to make threats in small print about what would happen to anyone who read it without authorization. He started scanning the manual. It reminded him of some of his parent"s real books he"d read as a kid. Chris learned like an AI burst downloading an encyclopedia. He looked over the structure of what he had to absorb for the exercise.

Synchronicity is a place of acceptance of new ways of thinking. It is a place to throw away what you know and rebuild it from scratch.

He winced. "Another take on how to think out of the box," he said under his breath. He didn"t want to spend his time on the giant, deep s.p.a.ce retreat taking some cheesy cla.s.s filled with corporate propaganda. Synchronicity was a luxurious hotel, a science station, and the personal toy of the company president, Alec Vineaux. Although its exact location remained secret, the manual explained that it trailed the orbit of Earth by more than eighty million miles. Even the sleek, wicked-fast s.p.a.ceplane, which hadn"t stopped accelerating at one gravity since they left, would take three days to travel from the airstrip in Brussels to the station.

He forced himself to continue paging through the archaically styled booklet.

All orders are to be obeyed without question. Failure to comply with any order is grounds for expulsion from Synchronicity ...

He flipped through the booklet once and came back to an explanation of what would happen first at Synchronicity. He scanned line after line of meaningless c.r.a.p. Then something caught his attention. Cold.

One of your initial tasks will be selecting gear for your stay. You will be allowed to select one set of gear from many with slight variations. Each set is a full body suit in which you will spend all of your time. The gear is composed of light plastic. It will cover every part of your body including your face. We have made every effort to make the gear as comfortable as possible.

Exiting your gear is only allowed in the privacy of your own quarters. Any person who leaves a.s.signed quarters without his or her gear or who removes their gear outside their quarters will be expelled from Synchronicity. The violator"s contract with Vineaux Genomix will be terminated.

Chris read the pa.s.sage three times. He believed it only after reading it the third time. Then he stopped believing it and read it again. Did they really mean it? He read on.

Outside of your quarters, all communication takes place through your link. An intermediate protocol will be added to obfuscate your name and s.e.x. You will know others on the station only by their obfuscated names. Attempting to communicate your real name, s.e.x, or VG rank will result in severe sanctions and possible termination of your contract.

A steward came by and delivered some cold lunch. Chris picked at it for a while and thought about things. He knew that Alec Vineaux himself considered these trips to Synchronicity special. Chris thought that their leader, known for being a bold extremist, might have invented these rules. So maybe it wasn"t a joke. But how could anyone enjoy Synchronicity while being forced to wear a freak suit the whole time?

After lunch, Chris selected the pa.s.senger"s list from the services the plane offered through his link and located his a.s.sociate, Jack, on the map. According to the plane, his friend sat in a row to himself three chairs back. Chris braced himself and rose, not quite trusting the acceleration as constant. The flight deck had turned perpendicular to the wings to make everyone comfortable under the thrust, but Chris half-expected something to shift at any moment. He"d taken gravity for granted for too long.

He spotted Jack and made his way into his row, settling in next to his coworker. Jack had his eyes closed so Chris pinged him through his link. Jack blinked and looked over.

"Hey, Chris. Nice flight, eh?"

Chris found a sound curtain service and activated it through his link so he could speak with Jack privately. The sounds of the s.p.a.cecraft dropped away.

"An amazing ride, even by VG standards. But on the long side. I have a question about the manual. This booklet isn"t serious, right?"

"It"s on the level. Didn"t Vic tell you? Make sure you"ve read that before we get to Synchronicity."

"There"s some crazy stuff in here that"s hard to take seriously. And why the hardcopy? Why can"t we just download it to our links? I suspect this is all some kind of joke."

Jack turned to look at Chris. For a moment, it seemed he wasn"t going to answer at all.

"Listen, Chris. Go with this. I"m telling you to go with this, and I mean go with it one hundred percent. Alec makes and breaks his execs on this program. If you don"t want to be at VG, then don"t get off at Synchronicity and stick with the flight back. Otherwise, take a Chinese pill and read the manual."

When Jack told someone to take a Chinese pill, he meant to toe the company line. The Chinese bloc sourced half the GDP of the Earth, and they were the only nation powerful enough to ignore the world government set up by the United States, Brazil, and the European Union. Even j.a.pan had fallen to their might, the focused productivity of billions of people willing to do whatever their companies required. Here in the West, company people heard stories of Chinese workers forced into labor with VR fantasy time quotas as low as one hour per week and yearly pay scales of less than 1,000 ESC.

"Yeah, no problem, man. I didn"t expect it ... that"s all."

"It"s only for a couple of weeks. Just take the pill. You won"t be sorry."

Jack flipped off the sound curtain. Chris took the hint that the conversation was over.

Well, that went unbelievably bad.

Chris sat in shock, absorbing the speech. Jack had meant it. Hadn"t he? Or was this some kind of ma.s.sive joke they played on the new high-level execs?

It has to be a hazing thing. I"ll clamber into some ridiculous suit, then they"ll bring me out, have a good laugh, and that"ll be it. Then the rest of the trip we"ll be living it up, getting a taste of the good life.

Chris clung to this new idea in desperation. But he knew he would read the manual anyway, just in case. He had too much invested in his career to go wrong at this critical juncture.

He spent the evening reading the manual in short bursts. He got a picture of a world that ran on different rules than Earth. On Synchronicity, you had to obey any command given to you by a robot. Everyone wore plastic suits that looked like a cross between gothic armor and motorcycle leathers. Personal VR quotas were zero, but the shared virtual environment, nicknamed "Vera," had a two-hours-a-day requirement on it. There were no dining rooms. Everyone ate in his or her quarters.

Chris tried to imagine such a lifestyle. The suits were modified to hide everyone"s ident.i.ty. Speech was restricted to link transmissions. The gear stripped away all the personalized cues of link communication, such as the s.e.x of the speakers or their accents. Names were filtered to last names and then remapped to other names automatically.

Chris wouldn"t know whom he was dealing with, and they wouldn"t know whom he was, either. A total reboot of the social graph.

The gear described in the manual bore color codes. Chris would be wearing blue as a first-time partic.i.p.ant, which put him at the bottom of a hierarchy that replaced the normal company ranks while on the base.

It was all too disturbing to absorb in one read. Chris tried to find the hidden opportunity in it all, but he could only focus on what he"d be losing-his reputation, his network of friends, everything he"d worked for. He felt tired.

The amazing lounges of the s.p.a.ceplane made comfortable beds. Chris ordered his to recline and he tried to find sleep.

Chris awakened after several hours and spent the morning trying to relax. The manual and the disturbing rules kept his mind running in circles. He ate a lavish meal of filet mignon and stretched it out over a few gla.s.ses of wine. An hour after he finished eating, the plane reached the flip over point, and everyone strapped in for a ten-minute maneuver that aligned the vessel for deceleration.

A quick check of the news from Earth didn"t offer any prolonged entertainment. All the same, old stories were percolating through the news agencies. China continued to ignore edicts from the U.S and Brazilian-dominated world government. It had resumed pressuring India to relinquish its neutrality and join its Asian political bloc. The Brazilians threatened to alter their trade laws if the United States wouldn"t lower the cost of its industrial robot exports.

Chris opened some of his work accounts and checked up on things here and there. He couldn"t bring himself to get deeply involved in anything. He had to work from the data cache on the plane since the communication delay between Earth and the plane had grown to several minutes. Besides, he felt as if it would ruin his flight. After all, wasn"t he supposed to be taking it easy at last? This trip served as his victory lap for all the hard work. But he found it hard to remember what people did while they weren"t working.

From what the manual intimated, he"d need to concentrate and focus fully if he wanted to impress Alec and the other leaders of VG. From what Jack and Vic told him, his handling of the strange base rituals could affect his career. It didn"t sound much like a vacation at all.

During the rest of the voyage, he agonized over the manual and caught fragments of entertainment videos piped into his link from the VG-licensed archives. He avoided logging any VR time even though it seemed that he had little else to accomplish. He thought it would look out of place: a promising young exec chosen for his intelligence and work ethic, logging fantasy time even as he headed for Synchronicity.

"We would like to remind you that no pictures of Synchronicity may be committed to link memory," a voice said through his link. "You are required to submit to link memory audit before leaving the base. Any contraband information about the base such as cached maps or point-of-view captures will be erased. Thank you."

Chris"s link presented an agreement that required that he relinquish his privacy rights on his link memory while at Synchronicity. He accepted the conditions as he gathered his loose items for the docking procedures. He thought of all the clothes he had packed that were useless now, unless the rules about gear did turn out to be a hoax as he hoped.