"So, that"s it. We have a rogue core," Bren said aloud.

"Wait. I"m not sure," Hoffman said.

"Claw has been destroyed," Meridian announced.

"You shot Nemesis as well," Bren protested.

"The course was necessary to a.s.sure success of the mission."

"It was impossible to disable the creature?" asked Henley. Bren realized that with the marines waiting outside the factory, Henley had probably been following the a.s.sAIL team as closely as Bren.

"The cyborg was disabled. It underwent a voluntary disintegration," Meridian said.

Henley cursed. "So many men dead and we still haven"t learned anything about the aliens."

"A great deal of data has been gathered about the enemy," Meridian said.

"Good, we will carefully review your mission summary," Bren jumped in. "Please return to the Guts as soon as Colonel Henley declares the factory secure."

Of course, Bren was really talking to Henley: Let"s not discuss it any further until the cores are shut down.

He could send Henley private messages through the links. He decided to make it a point to do so in the future. If the cores were smart enough, they"d be able to read between the lines of human communication, despite being only a few hours old.

"Neptune"s hardware is up, but the machine is unresponsive," said a handler. Bren checked the machines in his PV. Meridian and Oblivion were already heading back toward the Guts.

"The machine has fractures ... maybe something got cut that doesn"t show on the hardware diagnostics," Bren said.

"Neptune was compromised by the enemy," Meridian said. "It had to be shut down."

Compromised. As if the Reds" physical combat capabilities aren"t fearsome enough.

Bren started pacing in the Guts. He was still pacing when the clanking of the machines became audible. Bren listened. Meridian was actually making less noise. He realized there had never been an audio problem. He traded glances with Hoffman. The handler looked at Bren questioningly and then he turned to stare at Meridian. Bren saw Hoffman"s face darken. Had he realized the machine was actually quieter?

"Post-mission report is complete. Ready for shutdown," Meridian announced.

Bren felt intensely uncomfortable now, because the machine knew it was here to be turned off. The procedure was bad enough when he believed the machine only knew in the last second or two.

He didn"t say anything but concentrated on the shutdown procedure. He only looked into the a.s.sAIL"s black eyes as he deactivated the power sources. He held his breath, half expecting the power down wouldn"t work, and that the machines would stay alive, and start giving him orders. But Meridian drooped and its running lights dimmed. The machine was once again dead.

Bren fell back against the nearest bank of equipment. He allowed himself to rest only for a couple of seconds.

"Hoffman. I need to talk to you for a minute," Bren transmitted. Hoffman gave Bren an odd look. He was probably wondering if Bren spoke with the link because of Bren"s link bias or if he needed privacy.

"Yes, sir. What"s up?"

"Have you made any changes to Meridian, any alterations to the core seed, or changes to the pre-mission module?"

"No, sir. I know he was acting a little differently, but ... we did start them earlier this time. He"s smarter."

"Look, I know you and I have bent a few rules here and there, but if I find out you"re holding out on me-"

"No. I"m not. I don"t know what"s up with Meridian. He went in with the same pre-mission module as the others."

Bren scowled but he believed Hoffman. Bren wasn"t sure that anything had gone wrong with Meridian. This was the third mission the machine had survived, each time in the face of high casualties. Sometimes men or machines were just lucky.

"We need to pay special attention to Meridian"s sterilization. I have a bad feeling about what"s going on with him. I don"t like these oddities."

Hoffman nodded. "Sure, sir. Whatever you say."

Bren could tell from the tone of Hoffman"s voice that he thought Bren was making a big deal out of nothing.

Perhaps so, Bren thought. Perhaps not.

"We have three good possibilities for our next incursion," Devin said. "Carthage, Camelot, and Synchronicity."

As Devin talked, a pane opened in each person"s PV displaying the stations on the plane of Earth"s...o...b..t around the sun.

"Carthage deserves consideration because we have an unconfirmed report that people there are wearing the gear. The problem with this station as a target is that we don"t think it"s been taking any of the anomalous material shipments from Earthside corporations."

Bren paid as much attention as he could manage to Devin"s information. He watched her carefully for signs that she had forgiven him for his display of interest over the Brazilian operative. Bren figured that he might have blown it with her a second time. Women always added turbulence to his life. Sometimes it was welcome, other times it distracted him too much from his work.

Devin added pictures of Carthage to the channel. Bren thought it looked larger than the stations they had visited already. The supporting materials indicated that Quantix Corporation produced hydrogen cells at Carthage for energy storage in s.p.a.cecraft and s.p.a.ce stations. The official reason for a deep s.p.a.ce orbit was for access to hydrogen barges coming in from the outer solar system when Earth wasn"t a convenient rendezvous.

"We have Camelot on our top list because it"s jointly owned by Reiss-Marck and Bentra, who we know have been involved in this mess, whether knowingly or not. We think it may have been involved with the shipments. At the very least some of the shipments have gone to or through Camelot."

Bren saw a complex tree chart of shipment paths in his PV. The material shipments that had been flagged as suspicious were tracked through the chart. Several of the lines for each company pa.s.sed through or terminated at Camelot, which was highlighted in a red box in the center of the chart.

"Synchronicity is also a prime target," Devin continued. "It"s been involved in the materials shipments for over six months. We don"t know if the populace there wears gear."

"I think it"s safer to go by our materials traces," Vendrati said. "We know that a corporation has tried to deceive us at least once by planting the gear."

"That"s slightly misleading," Devin said. "Was the gear really being falsely planted or was it being sent there in preparation for a takeover of the station? It could be hard to tell the difference without more reliable sources."

"I agree that the other material shipments are a more reliable signal," Jameson said. "We won"t ignore the other sources, but we can set our priorities by the strength of our data."

Bren brought up a pane in his PV to track the shipments. Items had been flagged based on the stations needs from a year ago compared to shipments in the last few months. The data wasn"t perfect, Bren thought. After all, different materials could be needed for new manufacturing processes or experiments-change didn"t necessarily mean anything was up. But these amounts of platinum, gold, t.i.tanium, and a dozen other pure metals, not to mention a laundry list of specialized chemicals that would be difficult to produce locally.

"Bren?"

Bren"s attention broke from the pane. "Hrm? Ahm, pardon, sir?"

"Which station do you think should be next?" Jameson said. Bren detected an undercurrent of impatience in the admiral"s tone. Bren was sure he"d missed something again.

"Synchronicity," Bren said. "I see from the shipments graph here that one or two shipments pa.s.sed through another station and continued to Synchronicity. But no shipment has ever gone to Synchronicity and then been routed past there."

"That"s an interesting observation," Devin warned. "But of course we don"t know if that data has either missed shipments involved with the spinners, or includes shipments that have nothing to do with them. It"s all guesswork, so a couple of anomalies aren"t much to go on."

"We have no evidence that Vineaux Genomix is suspect," Vendrati said. "And we have their a.s.surance that nothing out of the ordinary is going on. Including a message from Alec Vineaux himself."

Bren shrugged. "My answer is based on data from the shipments alone. I wasn"t thinking about that aspect."

Jameson nodded.

"We"ll proceed to Camelot. Besides being operated by companies that we know have been involved, it"s considerably closer to us than the other two stations, and we know time is of the essence. Let"s get back to work and make sure everything"s ready for our next target."

Bren and Nicole found Aldriena pacing in her quarters. Bren thought he"d be used to her looks by now, but seeing her still stirred something inside him and activated parts of his brain that didn"t care anything about logic or the mission.

"I"m glad you"re alive," he said. "You know when we breached Avalon, Meridian told me you were dead."

"Who is Meridian? I thought I was dead myself. Between the spinner and the marines, I don"t know who"s worse!"

"Meridian is one of our lucky a.s.sAIL machines. A heavy, like you saw in the examination room ..."

"With the naked woman?"

"Er, yes. That one."

"Well, what"s so lucky about it?"

"It"s made it through all the incursions so far, a survivor."

"Maybe it made its own luck," Aldriena said. "How smart are those things? Smart enough to be dangerous?"

"How about we get to the point?" interrupted Nicole. "We want you to go in first at Camelot."

"Why should I? Don"t you know what happened? The one person I trusted as an ally was shot dead at the s.p.a.ceport. I would have ended up the same way if Claw hadn"t thrown me in the brig to interrogate me later. As it was, I think they almost shot me anyway when they found me in there. Those marines had orders to shoot everyone. It"s not safe working for you people!"

"We never claimed your job was safe," Bren said. "I thought you liked it that way."

"Maybe, but who deserves to be shot by the people on their side?"

"Then we"ll double your retainer and a.s.sure you make it to someone"s quarters before the next incursion," Nicole suggested.

"No more attempted a.s.sa.s.sination of the Reds," Aldriena said. "Let"s stick to the safer stuff."

"Do you know what went wrong with your attempt?"

"No idea. But I"ve learned not to underestimate these things. Not only did the attack fail, but also that spinner was on to me in seconds. It knew what I was doing, figured it out somehow, maybe even before the attempt."

Fourteen.

Chris wrung his hands and looked at yet another s.p.a.ce force representative. The man looked fit. He was tall with short black hair and a serious set to his mouth.

"Look. I"ve been talking to a dozen people, and I don"t think my message is getting through," Chris said. At first, when his shuttle had been intercepted by the UNSF in deep s.p.a.ce, he had felt elated. The chances of being intercepted by any vessel before arriving near Earth had to be low. Then he"d fallen into despair as he"d told his story and no one responded the way he"d hoped. Then they"d sent him to doctors and he"d begun to doubt his own sanity.

"You"re talking to the right people now. Tell us about Red."

"The what?"

"The spinner. The alien you"ve been talking about."

"Oh. Are you a psychologist?"

"No, I"m Major Creighton. I work for s.p.a.ce force intelligence. Like I said, you"re talking to the right people now."

Chris leaned forward.

"I was beginning to think it was hopeless."

"I understand your frustration. That"s behind you now. Tell us about the cyborg."

"Well, they call one Captain. Alec says that it"s their leader."

"Their leader? At Synchronicity?"

"Yes. And there"s a second one called Slicer."

There was a pause. Chris a.s.sumed his inquisitor was shuffling along information on his link.

"So there are at least two of them? How long has the station been under their control?"

"I think only two. I don"t know how long they"ve been in charge at Synchronicity. Longer than three months. There"s some kind of alien ship there. I don"t know where it comes from. The people have been wearing these suits-"

"Chris, this information is very important to us. Important enough that we need to verify the facts, make sure we don"t miss anything, or get anything wrong. We have some equipment that will help us do that. Would you be willing to let us hook you up here so we can take some readings?"

"Well ... sure. Yeah. I"ve been asking people to give me a lie detector test since I started trying to tell the UNSF about this. It"ll prove that I"m telling you the truth."

"Good," said Creighton. A couple of seconds later, a bald technician in a red overcoat came into the room pushing an equipment cart before him. The machine was larger than Chris expected, about the size of a motorcycle with a bright red sh.e.l.l.

"This man will get you set up. Then all you have to do is answer the questions. I"ll be listening in with my link. Nice to meet you, Chris."

"Sure. Thanks, Major Creighton."

The major nodded and walked out of the room. Chris watched the technician for a second, but he didn"t meet Chris"s gaze. Chris realized immediately that he didn"t like the man, could never like him. The man"s face held some intrinsic detachment that made Chris uncomfortable.

Maybe they"re just playing along. They might think I"m crazy and this is a sanity examination.

Chris hid his dislike and forced himself to speak.