"How are you doing? I wanted to thank you for your a.s.sistance. We"re in your debt."

"I"m more than willing to trade anything you need for a ride back home. I want to go back to my job at VG as soon as possible."

"Please be patient. As you know, a lot is going on right now."

Chris could tell from the admiral"s tone that he was being prepared for bad news.

"I"m not headed back to Earth? I"m sorry, I don"t understand. I just want to get home."

"I"ll route you back with a supply ship as soon as I can. But for now, you have to stay with us. Your information has been critical. We"ve changed course, and we"ll be under heavy acceleration for hours."

Chris"s shoulders slumped.

"So, we"re going back there."

"We"re not the only ones, unfortunately," Jameson said. "We"ve noticed a Chinese task force left Earth orbit and we believe it"s headed for Synchronicity."

"I don"t see how they found out. Cinmei was in that locker most of the time."

"She found a way. Her link was sophisticated or rather I should say her links. She had three."

"Three? Well, I guess I should expect something like that from a spy."

Chris felt his fear come back as strong as ever. It seemed that the Chinese weren"t done s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g with his life yet. He wondered if he"d survive the next encounter.

Chris arrived at the lounge. Now he needed that drink even more.

Fifteen.

Aldriena watched the port inspection machine sift through her luggage. The k.n.o.bby arms carefully grasped her latest C4B and brought it out onto the counter. She waited for the inevitable question.

"This item, identify," droned the machine.

The Cascavel alerted Aldriena to the proximity of another weapon. She instinctively s.n.a.t.c.hed up C4B. She threw a quick glance back toward the departure atrium from where she"d come and then toward the curtain that covered her other exit.

The curtain rustled just as she looked. Aldriena saw a person in gear coming through. She caught a glimpse of a device in the newcomer"s gloved hand.

Aldriena leveled her gun. This C4B could stun, but it was also a projectile weapon. She selected an antipersonnel round with her link and then yanked back the trigger once without bothering to log her shot.

Snap!

The sound was fairly m.u.f.fled. The intruder halted, balance wavering. Aldriena reached out with her free hand and yanked the person into the reception booth. The intruder fell forward. A pistol fell to the floor. Aldriena released a tight sigh. The UNSF weapon wasn"t too bad. She didn"t miss her old gun so much anymore.

"This item, identify," repeated the machine.

Most citizens would call for help with their link after such an attack. Aldriena had enough experience to keep silent. Whoever this a.s.sa.s.sin had been, Aldriena couldn"t gain anything by calling attention to herself now.

The a.s.sa.s.sin had been sloppy with his equipment. The weapon had somehow been hacked to authorize its illegal use, but the weapon link protocols hadn"t been disabled. It was only that link traffic that had allowed her Cascavel to give her a second"s warning.

If they had been competent, I"d be dead.

Fortunately, her gun didn"t cause an immediate alarm, either. Aldriena checked with the sound curtain service. It had been activated at the same time as the wall robot to protect her privacy. That meant no one would have heard the discharge of her firearm. There was still some chance the curtain had recognized the sound and reported it to security, but Aldriena figured the UNSF had probably made sure her weapon wouldn"t cause undue attention, aurally or electronically.

"One-shot stunner," Aldriena finally answered, slapping C4B back onto the countertop. She smiled at her own blatant lie. The weapon had proved itself otherwise.

The machine slowly reacquired its lock on the device. "You may retain your weapon," it decreed.

"That"s rich," she mumbled.

The spinners" psychology puzzled her.

Why do they conduct careful searches of newcomer"s items and then allow the weapons? Some mysterious a.n.a.logue of honor or bravery? All the spinners seem to pride themselves on their combat skills.

Maybe they want to normalize the compet.i.tion, to know what their enemies have, so they can be fought and defeated as peers. Unless our weapons don"t even qualify as dangerous to the spinners. What a depressing idea.

She kneeled down and pulled the helmet off the would-be a.s.sa.s.sin. The face was female and Asian.

"Caralho!" spat Aldriena.

"If you have a complaint, feel free to log it here or from your quarters," the robot responded.

The woman"s eyes were rolled up into her head. a.s.suming the round had worked correctly, the woman would be out of action for a day. By the time the attacker could walk straight, the battle for the station would be long over.

Aldriena stood back up. "Oh, I"ve logged a few, believe me," she sneered. She frowned and furrowed her brow as she considered the woman at her feet.

Chinese? How could they have known of my arrival?

Aldriena left the body and the pistol on the floor. She couldn"t move the body anywhere to hide it without risking immediate detection, and the gun would doubtless refuse to fire unless she managed to hack it.

The robot finished and closed down. Aldriena took C4B and slipped it into her gear. She strode out of the booth, calm and confident. The concourse outside the port had a smooth tile floor with rugs of different colors heading to different destinations. Aldriena chuckled. People had links that could direct them anywhere, yet the designers enjoyed employing such an archaic system of decor.

People must find the simplicity of following a colored carpet amusing even when they have more advanced means buried in their heads.

Aldriena noted that the airscrub gra.s.s on Synchronicity grew in long troughs running along the top of the walls near the ceiling.

Whenever a corporation decides to build a new s.p.a.ce station, they probably have to create a committee to decide how the gra.s.s should be positioned.

She saw three people. Two wore blue-tipped gear, the other green. The green sat looking off into s.p.a.ce, probably partic.i.p.ating in one of the virtual challenges the spinners loved. The other two walked together, headed in her general direction. Aldriena immediately noticed something strapped onto their backs-weapons. A quick glance at the green person showed her that she"d overlooked the same there. A shiny black thing was lying next to him on a lavender ottoman.

She walked briskly down the concourse in front of her. Part of her mission was to identify defensive measures in place and sabotage as many as she could. Obviously, some weapons had been handed out to the inhabitants. What could she do to counter them?

Her Cascavel had a few tricks that might help. She had a program that would jump from host to host and flood the weapons with shot requests. It wouldn"t completely shut the weapons down, but it could significantly slow the rate of fire. It wouldn"t take long for security measures to neutralize the rogue program, but if she released it at the right time, it could be useful.

Aldriena distributed the program to several nearby processors with a release trigger based on fire requests. As soon as anyone else made a shot request of their weapon through their link, the program would start.

A person in gear, headed in the opposite direction, stopped and addressed her.

"You should go pick up your weapon; it"s past the deadline," the stranger said through his link.

"I just arrived. Where do I get it?" Aldriena replied.

She got a pointer, which opened to show the route. The destination was labeled as an armory station in her PV.

Maybe she wasn"t the only person who hadn"t picked up their weapon. Aldriena wasn"t sure, but it couldn"t hurt to take out this armory if it still held any weapons or ammunition.

"Thanks," she said.

The person walked on. After a moment, Aldriena headed to the armory station.

Maybe I could destroy it? Or is it pointless, since so many weapons have already been handed out? It couldn"t hurt to check.

A lone figure in gear stood at the entrance. Aldriena approached him. He didn"t say anything. She tried to access the door, but her link told her she didn"t have authorization.

"What do I need?" Aldriena asked through her link.

"One submachine gun, two grenades," replied the guard. He swept his arm out in welcome as the door opened.

She stepped inside. The room asked her to register the weapons she was picking up. She gave permission to proceed and her information was automatically logged by her civilian link.

She took a quick sum of the power laid out before her. She saw several racks holding projectile weapons. The guns were short black rifles with plastic stocks and wide clips that fit into the undersides. Aldriena didn"t recognize the design.

Perhaps they don"t come from Earth. They could have been manufactured out here in deep s.p.a.ce ... is it even possible that the spinners designed these weapons?

Behind the projectile weapons, she saw three banks of grenades. She wasn"t as knowledgeable about grenades as projectile weapons, but they looked familiar. They might be from Earth. If they were, the grenades would have military level hardening against electronic tampering. Even her Cascavel couldn"t quickly take one over.

She grabbed a gun and two grenades. She accessed the weapons through her link. The weapons registered her as the primary user, but she lacked detonation codes for the grenades. She was locked out.

"I don"t have the codes," Aldriena pointed out.

"You"ll have them when the time comes," the guard said.

"I"m missing some briefing. I just got here. Who are we fighting?"

"It"s just an exercise. When you get to your quarters, the details will download to your link, including a virtual handling course for the weapons. You didn"t have to come straight here, but at least you saved yourself a trip later."

Aldriena considered her options. The new weapons were useless to her but she still had C4B. She felt confident she could destroy the armory, but the result might well be a running firefight with the remaining security personnel. That didn"t sound so bad, it might even be fun, but she didn"t want to fight Captain and Slicer all alone for an hour before the s.p.a.ce force arrived.

"So many grenades in these bins," Aldriena said, reaching down to run her hand over the remaining grenades in the bin. "Can we get more?"

"Not right now," the guard said.

Aldriena placed one of her registered grenades in the bin, and she grabbed a different one where the edge of the bin blocked his sight. She took out the unregistered grenade and held it next to the other registered one.

"Okay, these two then."

Aldriena didn"t communicate with her new grenade. She a.s.sumed that would be flagged as a security concern since she"d already registered her quota.

Aldriena nodded to the sentinel and then walked away. She might not have the codes now, but if she got the code later then she hoped she could remotely detonate the grenade she"d left in the bin. The armory might have some mechanism in place to prevent such a detonation, but maybe her Cascavel could defeat it?

She shrugged internally. Better than nothing.

She wandered to a nearby mall, still mulling over her next move. The shopping area spanned two floors. She came in on the upper floor through an entrance flanked by a fountain on one side and a faux rock wall covered in scrubgra.s.s. She shook her head. The decorations rivaled any mall back on Earth, except for all those densely twisted gra.s.s shoots in every nook and cranny. It felt surreal to walk through the shopping center with an a.s.sault rifle slung over her shoulder and grenades packed into her gear.

It looks like a shopping mall full of starship troopers.

Aldriena looked into the nearest store window. It held VG essentials only-what people needed to replace what was thrown away when they had arrived. She saw towels, depilatories, and tooth cleaning gel. Not exactly a shopper"s paradise, she decided. Surely, people could buy souvenirs around here somewhere? Or was it too expensive to bring such items all the way from Earth, even for VG?

The Cascavel had been snooping the local network. She received a notice in her PV. The traffic on the area network had spiked, rising by about seventy percent.

Aldriena didn"t know exactly what that meant, but it made her nervous.

She looked behind her for a moment, listening. Nothing unusual. She took a glance down to the level below. People seemed to be going on their way. She saw rifles on many of the shoppers. Three people were standing near one another as if they were together, but they weren"t looking at her. Aldriena intercepted enough of their traffic to gather that they were concerned about a virtual challenge.

Then she saw the spinner. It flitted among the people, headed in Aldriena"s direction. Everyone who saw it gave it a wide berth, backing away from the thing as it pa.s.sed. Some didn"t see it in their gear. As far as Aldriena could tell, it moved silently but swiftly.

She calmly resumed her course and waited until she"d moved out of sight of the level below. Then she changed direction and headed for a maintenance hallway behind the storefronts.

She slipped into the back corridor and started to run.

The odds are low that the spinner is out shopping. Especially at such a c.r.a.ppy alien mall.

The station network efficiently split into hundreds of separate sections to route all the communications traffic of the millions of tiny cyblocs that were packed into every device and machine and person on Synchronicity. Aldriena took a back exit and onto a traffic concourse so that she could leave the current sector.

Out on the concourse, the most she dared was a brisk walk. In another twenty seconds, she"d crossed a line between network sectors.

She slowed. Now she would wait to see if she"d avoided the spinner. Her Cascavel could fool the network to some degree and pretend to be in other sectors. She watched the load drop forty percent on the last router and rise rapidly in her current network section.

"s.h.i.t, it is coming after me," she whispered.

Someone had labeled the authorization the machine used as "Slicer." No reason not to believe it, she thought. So it was Slicer following her.

Aldriena dropped her current connection and started moving again. She knew that the spinner had probably entered from the Main Street sector, so she headed the other direction, toward the inner face of the station.

Her attention had turned from sabotage to survival. If a spinner was after her, she might as well blow the armory, she thought. How could it get any worse?

But the map wasn"t helping. The spinner was between her and the armory she knew about. Besides, she realized that C4B might not cause enough damage to make anything explode there.

If only I could arm my grenades. I wonder if they"ll explode when hit by an armor-piercing round? No. Engaging Slicer isn"t smart. The things are killing machines.

She went as far as she could toward the inner ring and then turned spinward. Toward her ship. She had no choice but to move through public concourses; to wander off them would trap her in a cul-de-sac.

Is the spinner toying with me? They"re faster than any human is. Why the h.e.l.l did I agree to come back here?