"Good. Anything we can use?"

"I don"t have a countermeasure in mind. We only have a theory about how the armor was defeated. As in Meridian"s summary, involving molecule cutters to weaken the armor in little circles before the main weapon strikes."

Bren grunted. "I need a shower. I"ll see you incarnate in the Guts in a half hour."

Bren cut the connection. He accessed his water ration record from the room computer. A graph in his PV showed that he had a lot left. Apparently, Vigilant had resupplied from the last s.p.a.ce station.

A panel in the wall of his quarters opened to the shower. It had water and crash foam nozzles on the top with nothing but a hand stirrup along its smooth sides. The tiny s.p.a.ce served as both shower and crash tube; if the Vigilant had to perform emergency acceleration then Bren would climb into it and the entire thing would fill with foam, encasing him in a protective coc.o.o.n.

He stepped in and activated the controls with his link. A hot blast of high velocity water scoured his clammy skin. He put his hand into the stirrup for a shot of caffeine. He couldn"t feel the injection but his heart stirred in response. His body knew the routine.

Bren cut the shower. A blast of air as hot as the water dried him for a ten count. He stepped out of the cubicle and put on a fresh uniform. Finally awake and functional, he double-timed it down to the Guts.

He walked in behind an attractive female handler. Landers, he reminded himself. Her uniform pants outlined her trim shape quite explicitly, and the sway of her hips reminded Bren of his humanity. Her red hair was long and shiny, smelling of lilacs as he trailed her. He sighed. These long cruises were full of such frustrations. Ironically, his recent activity with Nicole had heightened his awareness of the women around him, not satiated it.

Landers was headed toward Hoffman"s station. Thoughts of his earlier fragmented dreams returned as he surveyed her gray uniform from behind. She giggled.

"What are you laughing at?" he said aloud. Last time he checked, his thoughts were his own.

She turned and saw Bren. "Sorry, Major."

"At ease, Lieutenant. What"s so funny?" He kept his voice relaxed, trying to coax the truth from her.

"Well ... you know how Hoffman loves his anchor flats so much?"

"Yeah. I do." Bren looked over at Hoffman, who hadn"t noticed them yet. To the naked eye, it appeared as if he stared at several blank metal s.p.a.ces set out before him. Bren knew that Hoffman used them as PV anchor points to show data displays from his link, interlacing visual reality with his own virtual works.p.a.ce.

"I set them to show him looking at p.o.r.n all day long," she said. Bren smiled. Her PV showed something quite different.

"Hey! I heard that," Hoffman said, turning around.

Bren laughed.

"Well, that"s what you get for using so many anchor points," she told him. "You look like you"re sitting at a bridge station in one of those old s.p.a.ce videos."

"Bah," he said dismissively. Then, "Actually I only use one of them for p.o.r.n ... of you."

"Uh! Well, you have a scan of my face but not my bod!"

"That"s what you think. When I dated Waters, she gave me a feed of the gym showers."

"She wouldn"t!"

Hoffman laughed. Landers walked onward.

Bren looked at Hoffman"s anchor spots again. He had even more than last time. Many people interlaced their real vision with link data. Bren had even heard of people back on Earth who made their wife or husband look like someone else in their PV. Bren preferred to keep translucent floating displays, so he could easily separate the virtual from the concrete.

Hoffman sent him a link and he opened it. It appeared to be a lab study on the physical validity of a cutter molecule attack on the a.s.sAIL armor.

"Hrm. I wonder how much time we can spend on this idea. Even if it"s true that doesn"t necessarily help us," Bren said.

"I"m pretty sure about this, Major. This theory has already racked up a successful prediction. I figured if it really did work that way then maybe we could see some of the results of the pre-cutting. Well, there is. Our machines are riddled with invisible damage."

"Really? The surviving machines too?"

"Yes. We found microfractures in tiny circles scattered across every machine. We found at least two on each one. Nergal had five or six. So whatever this thing is, the weakening element seems to work faster since there are so many potential breakthrough sites in the armor that were never exploited by the main weapon."

Bren saw a new machine being set up in its bay. He accessed his link for the details. A summary caught his eye. He frowned. They only had three new a.s.sAILs available for the Avalon incursion.

"s.h.i.t. Only three more?" he said aloud.

"Tell me about it," Hoffman said.

"Have we named them yet?"

"Well, of course, we still have Meridian. Neptune, Nergal, and Nemesis that made it out of Tanelorn. So we called the new ones Oblivion, Odin, and Orion."

Bren smiled a little. "Nice. We could use an Odin about now."

"Jameson sent the grenades down, too, but we haven"t set them up yet."

"Look on the bright side, Lieutenant. At least we have fewer machines to prep."

"So ... what do you think about this whole aliens theory?" Hoffman asked.

"It"s not a theory. It"s real. Ask yourself about the weapon."

"I don"t know whether to be scared or relieved," Hoffman said. "What I mean is, I would expect an alien weapon to be capable of destroying the a.s.sAILs. I was thinking before, someone on Earth has revolutionary new weapons technology and we don"t know anything about it. But now I know it comes from somewhere else entirely."

"I know what you mean," Bren said. "It makes more sense now that we know where it comes from ... or rather, that we know we could not possibly know where it comes from." Bren smiled. "Before, I thought, how could we be so far behind the curve? The a.s.sAILs were supposed to be advanced weapons."

Hoffman smiled too. "There wasn"t any room in our world view for such technology. So it fits better now that we know it"s from entirely outside our world view!"

"Yep," Bren said.

"I wonder if anyone tried to talk with these things. Sounds like they just came in and took over, huh?"

"Yes. Took over in a big way. I wonder where they"re from, and how many more of them there are. Are they renegades? Soldiers? Explorers? So many unknowns."

"Does the UNSF know more than we"re let in on?"

"I don"t know. I"ll try to find out what I can from Devin."

"You like her?"

Bren was surprised. Apparently, it was obvious to everyone.

"Yeah. I do. But the way things have been going crazy up here, I guess I haven"t had enough time to do much about it."

Hoffman nodded. "Well, you might as well try, before that nuke we"re all sitting on goes off."

Bren shrugged. "Do you think a spurned lover has ever nuked himself out of anguish?"

"Nope. But there"s a first time for everything," Hoffman said and laughed.

Bren sought out Nicole in person on the third deck of Vigilant where she had set up her mobile intelligence camp. After pa.s.sing two marine guards, Bren entered a temporary work area used by the intelligence folks attached to the BCP command staff. It held mostly cubicles filled with personal effects with the exception of a couple of emergency access points for the ship"s computers. Of course, the manual access points were covered in dust.

He spotted her. She sat at a desk centered between a few piles of hardcopy. He thought of Hoffman"s anchor points. People must have their eccentricities, he decided.

"What brings you here?" Nicole asked.

"I heard we have a mysterious guest aboard. One who used to work for Black Core."

"Ah, curious? I can tell you what we find out once we"ve had more time with her."

"I"ve been mulling over our new objectives," Bren said. "I think the Black Core operative may be exactly what we need to have a shot at capturing one of these things alive."

"We already have a mission for her," Nicole said.

"She can disable their radar first. Then we can give her a couple of those industrial glue grenades and tell her to find a Red."

"What makes you think she could pull it off? One industrial spy? Maybe we could find some commandos."

"Did you see the way she stood up to Meridian? That was our first incursion. She had no idea what was up. This woman is no stranger to running by the seat of her pants."

"And quite a seat that is. You think because she"s attractive that means she"s competent."

Bren considered it. Did she have a point? He didn"t think so.

"You should be no stranger to that phenomenon, yourself."

Nicole didn"t respond immediately, but she gave him a little smile, so he continued.

"Aldriena"s the choice of a strong corporation. They"d drop her to subsistence if she wasn"t good. The compet.i.tion there is fierce."

"Your specialization has insulated you, Bren," Nicole said softly. "The UNSF has cut plenty of people now that the corporations have sucked all the money out of the ma.s.ses."

"Do you have any evidence to show she"s no good?" Bren asked. "We have evidence that she"s capable. She"s been spying on the Reds and avoiding the attention of the UNSF. She escaped from us once. I heard she led some rangers on a merry chase, too."

Nicole shrugged. "Okay. I see no reason not to try out your plan. But remember: she has to disable the radar first. If you get her killed, at least we"ll have done that."

Bren nodded.

"Let"s go talk to her, then," Nicole said.

"What? Now?"

"Yes. Why not?"

"We haven"t talked about giving her some grenades with the others."

"I"m in charge of her. We already discussed using her at the meeting. Everyone was amenable to the idea," Nicole said. "Besides, I haven"t handed her any grenades yet."

"Okay. Uhm, incarnate?"

"Sure. That way you"ll get to see her up close. For real."

"You act like I"m some kind of schoolboy!"

Nicole tilted her head. "Sorry. I guess I"m a bit jealous. You haven"t seen the effect this woman has had on every man she"s been near."

Bren didn"t reply. The woman did look beautiful, he thought.

Nicole led him through a hatch and down two adjoining corridors. They walked past two armed marines and up to a closed hatch.

"Here it is," Nicole said. She waited for a moment. Bren knew she must have been announcing their arrival to Aldriena Niachi.

The hatch opened and Bren followed Nicole inside. The quarters beyond were small and clean. The walls were plain white with only airscrub gra.s.s fixtures, couches, and chairs to fill the s.p.a.ce. Bren supposed that since the operative had been captured and brought to these temporary quarters, she wouldn"t have much in the way of personal possessions to clutter the rooms.

Aldriena sat on a plain white sofa before a low metal table. She stood as they entered. Bren realized how much more physical this woman"s presence was than Nicole"s. Aldriena looked like a supermodel, even in a plain white jumpsuit. Bren"s mind immediately conjured up an image of him unzipping the front and sliding his hand in.

"h.e.l.lo again, Lieutenant Devin," Aldriena said.

She struck Bren as a dozen times more beautiful incarnate than he remembered her through the a.s.sAIL video. Her long black hair was so black, he thought. It shined silkily even in the soft white light of the quarters. Her face looked perfect to him, as if she were a jewel of the video industry and not a spy.

Somehow, he kept his eyes mostly level. Then his gaze locked with her eyes, which were even more mesmerizing. Their angles lent her an air of exotic beauty. There were so few Asians in the world government, because of the occupation of j.a.pan and the UNSF"s opposition to the Chinese bloc. That made her more unique and shocking to the eye. Shocking in a good way, he thought.

"I haven"t met you, Major," she said.

"What? Ah, sorry ... uhm, I was absorbed with my link." Bren dipped his head briefly, but didn"t offer his hand.

"Of course. You must be a busy man," she said smoothly.

Bren became aware he was a target for manipulation, so he just looked at Nicole to prompt her to start. She took the cue.

"We"re hitting Avalon next. You been?"

"Yes," said Aldriena.

"Can you infiltrate the base? We have a mission for you. One that beats "sitting around here getting shuffled around from prison to prison.""

Aldriena smiled. Bren"s mind reeled.

"You use my own words against me," Aldriena said.

"Yes, I"ve watched all your interview footage," Nicole said. "I don"t blame you. Well, here"s your chance. Get onto Avalon ahead of us. Infiltrate their navigation controls and disable their short-range radar. Hardware or software, we don"t care. We"ll take care of the public buoys. You cripple their stuff."