The Liberty-15 station was located six thousand kilometers beyond the border between the civilized Avenant sector and free space. The design was old, with a fading power source and an inoperative centralized life support system. Bolt-down life support units, scavenged from derelict ships, littered the interior. The Avenant people had pushed the station out of their space to make room for a new station, larger and more advanced. The Liberty's legitimate population was transferred to the new station, while non-citizens, those unable to afford new accommodations, were left on the older station. Criminals were transferred to the old station in exchange for beneficial terms, and the Avenant people justified this by assigning a professional security force to the station for the first hundred megaseconds, until the sentences of the criminals expired.

The station remained unregulated and untaxed. Individuals constructed their own micro-government and economy, and life continued on the station. The civil governments considered this substantially beneficial and continued to provide unofficial support through trade agreements. The type of person who would choose to live on a derelict space station may have made certain decisions or desired a particular life that made them unwelcome in civilized space. The station's population stabilized thus, supporting transients, fierce individualists, and certain others avoiding contact with government Benefactors.

Several episodes of weakness and disorientation had overcome Ina during the transit to Liberty. The episodes passed without lingering effects and the crew remained unaware of the events. The weakness seemed to occur in a mild form within a kilosecond after consuming food. If she did not eat for more than a dozen kiloseconds, the attacks would return with any physical activity. Her own limitations - this need to consume nutrients - seemed consistent with those of the human crew.

The communicator embedded inside herself would disconnect during the attacks, preventing further monitoring. She had hoped to use the device as a life-line were she to become incapacitated. Ina estimated a diet of rations based on her physical activity. Without the need to maintain core body temperature, her expected intake should have been far less than that of a human.

Before boarding, Rolf pulled Ina and Bronco aside in the docking corridor. "Ina, you like David? You think of him as a friend?"

"Who is David?"

Bronco laughed and thumped his chest. "That's me, lady. Bronco's not my real name. Just what they call me, 'coz I'm built like one."

"We are friends."

Rolf said, "Good. Ina, U-N-215 was a safe station, right? This place isn't, and where we're going soon is even worse. He's your buddy, ok? If you're going anywhere here you haven't been before, don't be alone."

Ina agreed, and explained to Bronco that she had located a data center and wished to search the Liberty network. He walked with her to the room. She insisted that she would be able to take care of herself. She picked at the healing burn-mark and felt awkward for having told another lie, but she didn't want him involved in her personal issues.

She spent 200 kiloseconds on Liberty, drifting between the ship and the data center, before discovering a nearby cruiser whose crew was advertising engineering services. She had not been confronted or bothered. She waited on the shuttle until Bronco had gone to sleep, purchased fare to the cruiser for a handful of credits, to a destination less than thirty kiloseconds travel from the station. She told Colin that she needed some time for personal business and promised that she would remain in contact. Surprised, Colin woke Bronco and told him that she had left. Bronco chased after her and followed her to a launch bay where she sat waiting for departure. He was dejected that she hadn't come to him, that she had deliberately eluded him. He asked where she was going, whether she was coming back, and suggested that he should travel with her. Cornered, Ina agreed; Rolf would find replacing two crew members more difficult than one, and she knew Bronco would protect her, and explained that she might require some degree of privacy during the trip.

Bronco relayed a message to Rolf indicating that the two were going off-station to investigate an opportunity. Rolf was meeting with the rest of the crew in a cafe when he sent his acknowledgment. He was making his own plans and having a portion of the crew otherwise engaged would be beneficial if his plan fell through.

The pair boarded a clear glass ball through a crude docking airlock that seemed hand-fabricated. The ferry was equipped with a number of small thrusters on the outside, visible through the glass. Fuel for the thrusters was provided by flimsy canisters attached to the glass, round and red like boils on flesh. The station was launched by a massive piston that accelerated the ferry to velocity with a gentle shove. The ferry contained an ineffective dilaton mesh wrapping a small chamber near the "bottom." The mesh provided only enough gravitational force to maintain a tiny toilet and a cramped eating area. Most of the passengers strapped themselves into nets strung through the globe and slept weightless, consuming the occasional drug between waking moments, waiting to reach their destination.

***

Well-maintained armor, the foundation of cruiser design, had the silvery patina of fresh solder. The design has not changed in gigaseconds: each deck is encased in alternating layers of lead, elastomer, and a shell of tungsten-steel. The lead absorbs soft debris during navigation, protecting the structure and inhabitants. In combat, lead absorbs radiation from energy weapons, radiating heat and light. The plastic beneath the lead allows the outer layer to deform on kinetic impacts from debris and weapons fire. The plastic releases absorbed kinetic energy into the lead in a controlled manner over time, allowing the armor to repair itself, maintaining the original shape. The tough metal layers absorb any residual kinetic energy, preventing breaches, and provide the primary support structure where the interior elements of each deck are attached.

The ferry arrived at the commercial cruiser. Bronco stared at the ship through the ferry's glass hull. He questioned Ina's judgment and her plan to go to such a place alone.

Scorch marks and carbon impurities littered the chunks of lead that had not been ablated. Holes the size of shuttles exposed layers of ruined elastomer. Thick, foamy plastic shone through with a dull yellow, which faded to black where ignition cannons had torn through. The scars of many battles marked the ship. Free-spacers bought the cruiser after the previous military crew was killed to a soul during an accident during routine transit.

A small ship that contained a chamber for launching and receiving such ferries maneuvered into position to receive the sphere. The chamber was a massive tube that contained a balloon of compressed gas in a metal scaffold, forming a piston similar to the device that had launched the ferry from the Liberty station.

The globe jarred and bounced between bumpers at the mouth of the receiving chamber. Simple hypergolic jets on both the chamber and ferry pulsed, struggling to compensate. The ferry re-aligned, and the inertia was converted into stored energy. Valves allowed gas out of the balloon, into condenser-turbines that forced the gas into liquid storage tanks. In this way, the journey consumed minimal fuel, and kept costs to a few credits paid by each of the hundred passengers. The globe came to a stop and the receiving chamber reoriented towards the cruiser. A mechanism released and the walls blossomed open like a flower, releasing the ferry on a course with the cruiser's external docks. The ferry's thrusters pulsed under computer control, and two kiloseconds passed until the transport docked with the cruiser. The trip was over, and an automated announcement system herded the passengers off the ferry.

Bronco and Ina stopped on the cruiser for a meal of synthetic protein fried in synthetic fat and wrapped in a sheet of synthetic carbohydrate. Synthetic spices gave the rolls distinctive and pleasant flavors that conflicted with the grey exterior and dull red interior. Bronco bought several of the rolls for later, wrapped in plastic pouches. He watched Ina for several moments.

"You're kind of weird."

"Why?"

"You like to get high?"

"No." Ina glanced at her hands. "Because I move strangely?"

Bronco crossed his arms over his chest. "That's what Colin says."

She frowned.

"I didn't mean it like that. We're cool, but I'm not used to people like you. You could get hurt out here. It's not like civil space. Even the good guys are bad. I've done things, even, you know?"

"I see. What am I doing wrong, to make you uneasy?"

"Wrong? Nothing, I guess. I didn't mean it like that. You're very confident. It's one thing if you're doing your thing on a computer or whatever. But you ditched me, tried come to this place alone. I don't want you doing something dumb to get high. You don't have to hide it. Keep it clean, Rolf doesn't care too much. We can go back, Colin'll fix you up."

Ina hummed. The lie would be convenient. "I'm sorry. I have to get something here."

"Huh. And I spent the whole trip over here rehearsing that. No worries. Tell me though, you looking to hang around with us for a while? You're a gearhead, not a merc. You've never hurt anyone, right? You been in a fight?"

"Combat?" Ina thought. "That old station counts."

Bronco slung his meaty arm around her shoulder. "You're all right. But sooner or later you're gonna figure out that turning a profit might not mean fixing some stupid shuttle. Don't take this the wrong way, but you gotta figure out, that the kind of situation you want to be in? It's not a bad thing, and you can turn a lot of money. But if you're not, you know, mentally prepared, you get ground up and spit out. Dead. You're a smart kid and I've seen plenty of smart kids get chewed and I don't want to see it happen again. Those kids think they know what they're getting into, until they got guts leaking out their sides, and they're crying, dying on the floor. That's why Rolf said I should come with you, Ina. He's not worried about you getting maybe robbed and licking your wounds back on our ship. Dying is easy out here. Don't believe me, look around. Most of the folks out here are younger than you."

"I will consider what you've said."

Two middle aged people in matching frocks followed the pair from a distance after finishing their food. Bronco pointed them out, and navigated down a series of corridors and then back to the market.

Ina arrived at a directory and punched a code into the panel. The machine spat out a sheet of grey paper with a map drawn from simple black lines. The route to the engineering lab would take less than a kilosecond to walk; Bronco expressed a desire to rest "for a bit" before they proceeded. Ina nodded, and the two located a hotel, where they rented separate sleeping pods - small rooms with space for a bed and a tiny orifice that pretended to be a toilet.

Four kiloseconds passed and Ina was sure that Bronco was asleep. She slipped out of the pod, changed her clothing into something she believed would appear more professional, and sent a picture of the map and a note to his communicator. She didn't intend him to wake before she returned, though she planned for that situation. Ina left the hotel and followed a maze of dirty corridors until she came to a bulkhead door, then rang in through a buzzer.

The door - made of structural foam, apparently - swung upon. A nervous young woman invited Ina in, introduced herself as Lisa, electronics technician, and left her in a small lobby. The woman returned, and read over a request Ina had sent before embarking on the ferry, asking to use an engineering lab after-shift. This sort of transaction was typical for the facility. Weapons and contraband electronic countermeasures were difficult to maintain, since parts were not readily available on the legal market. Skilled technicians would reverse-engineer the illicit systems using a combination of stolen data, scanning devices, and small-scale manufacturing plants.

The woman had offered a fee of ten credits per kilosecond of access, with a minimum charge of ten kiloseconds, and that privacy would be assured. Ina agreed and left a credit chip with Lisa. The technician led Ina into an engineering lab, which was equipped with far more equipment than would be suspected given the state of the cruiser. Most of the advanced equipment was designed for small-scale work with parts that might fit in one's hand. Ina located the various probes and electronics she would require, and satisfied, told Lisa that she would begin work.

Lisa mentioned that she would be in another lab, working a side project, but that she would make herself available help with an additional fee of ten credits per kilosecond, paid to the technician. Ina declined and Lisa left the lab.

Ina sorted through and arranged the various probes and scanners; she had a basic understanding of the prosthetics that her builders repurposed to build her body. But she needed to understand the details of her power system, and of her control electronics, and the other prototype equipment installed in her body that she needed to maintain to survive. She could feel the transmitter in her skull singing to space and wondered if the scans would provide her with enough information to remove it when she returned to the shuttle. Ina browsed the room, ensuring that no detectable electronic transmissions were leaving the facility, that her actions weren't recorded.

Satisfied of some small amount of privacy, Ina swept her body with a hand-held scanning system. The beam emitted was absorbed by the layer of shielding beneath her skin. The probe was shaped like a child's fist with a single outstretched finger, and Ina wondered whether she could swallow it. She decided she would damage both herself and the system. Ina removed most of her clothes, and with difficulty, opened the maintenance port on her spine, below her shoulder. The skin had healed and so she was forced to use a small knife to re-open the wound along the scar. Ina inspected the display of the scanning system and inserted the probe into the port.

With difficulty, she maneuvered the device in the opening until she saw the communicator appear in the video display, then rotated the probe another quarter turn. She pressed the 'automatic' button, and continued to rotate the scanner while internal components were imaged and scanned using ultrasound, electromagnetics, and soft radiation. The process took four kiloseconds, and any human would have had to use mechanical articulators to orient the probe to obtain the accuracy she achieved with only her wrists. Ina wondered about the stress her artificial skin would take in the awkward shoulder positions, but configuring external articulators would take more time and experience than she had. Discrete black blobs appeared in the scanner's output as the machine failed to identify materials that were opaque to the scan. She correlated the list with the manifest she had built of hardware components she knew she contained or was likely to contain and identified most of the unknown blocks based on size and shape.

The scan revealed two devices above her hips, below an artificial sternum. She removed the probe, setting it aside, and reassembled the plastic and synthetic skin of her back before dressing. She was smoothing her shirt when the door to the lab buzzed. Ina turned to face the door as a woman barged in, followed by a larger man carrying a firearm.

The man scowled at her. "What are you doing here? Emily, send. Robot, what do you want?"

Ina raised her palms in front of her. The woman pressed a button on a device hanging by her waist.

Ina closed her eyes. "I'm not a threat to you."

"I'm not sure about this," the woman whispered to the man. She looked at Ina. "Who are you?"

Ina wondered what the newcomers thought of the open port on her back. "My name is Ina. How can I help you?"

Emily looked at the man. He had a rectangular body, with powerful legs and a thick chest. Bushy eyebrows hovered over deep-set eyes and a messy beard colored black and grey, curled along most of his face and neck. "What if you're wrong?"

Cristov shook his head, maintaining eye contact with Ina. "I'm not wrong. I remember Sander's face. Your little joke, Em, this might have saved our lives."

"Please let me leave."

Emily touched Cristov's arm. "Cristov, let her go. This is a mistake."

Cristov pushed Emily's hand with his elbow. "No. I'm sure. Look, the spine. We have to act. How many are here with you? What do you want?"

Emily said, "We're sorry. We shouldn't have asked for more money."

Cristov's waist clicked. He tapped the device with his free hand. "Have you got confirmation yet?"

Lisa's voice chirped from the communicator. "I never really saw the face, so I have to pull the data out of a backup drive. Give me a few seconds."

Cristov tapped the device again. Ina remained motionless.

"It's the drone, Emily. The same one we put together. There's someone piloting it, and they are here to shut us up."

Cristov shook the gun at Ina's feet; security would come if he fired, but if they cleaned up in time... no, Emily and Lisa wouldn't help with that.

Ina shook her head. "I'm not a drone. Let me leave and my friends will have no quarrel with you."

Lisa's voice burbled over Cristov's communicator. "Shit. Shit. Cris, you're right."

Emily stepped backwards as Cristov raised the gun. Ina felt a program suddenly unpack into her mind, then lifted the scanner's two-kilogram battery pack into her hand. Her feet were planted on the floor, her legs and hips snapped in unison as her spine swiveled, imparting substantial force into the projectile. The battery slammed into the burly man's head; he staggered, and Ina's vision filled with darkness.

***

Pathik brought an image of the derelict cruiser on his display. They drifted closer to the cruiser. The shuttle's engines remained dark, off-line, and Pathik sourced power from electric cells. Rolf stared at the screen overhead and panned through the view with his fingers on the terminal in front of him. Two armed frigates float in pattern with the cruiser.

Colin strapped himself into a jumpseat in the back of the flight deck. Pathik and Rolf followed suit, buckling straps in the pilot's console and officer's chair. Pathik's fingers slid across the controls and the shuttle's gravity field inverted. Colin felt weightless and then jerked about from the force of the generator. Pathik manipulated the controls until the shuttle's attitude and velocity matched that of the cruiser. Thrusters and engines would alert the defenders of the cruiser, but dilaton-based gravitational effects exerted against a massive object were difficult to detect. Pathik modified the shuttle's own gravity field to create crossing navigation vectors with the cruiser, pulling the ship within range. The process was slow, and could burn out the ship's mesh, but otherwise effective.

Pathik oriented the shuttle until the aft cargo hatch was below and forward of a small hatch on the cruiser. Ross and Liam snapped helmets into the frame of their environmental suits, and Colin donned his own set of equipment. Leaving the flight deck, Colin pulled the deck bulkhead door closed then tapped a button. The shuttle forward of the cargo bay became isolated and sealed.

The layers of the suit performed separate functions, first a compression garment that was form fitting, and the second a layer of bulky plastic film. Over the film lay another layer of synthetic fiber, woven like fabric, with protective plastic plates riveted onto the surface. Each of the layers provided an air-tight seal and mated in locking rings at the hands for gloves, feet for boots, and head for a helmet. The layering of the boots and gloves matched the rest of the suit and could be stripped to the compression layer while keeping the suit pressurized, where necessary to maintain dexterity, though any damage to the compression layer would cause immediate injury.

All three wore a backpack containing shoulder-mounted lights, an oxygen recycling system, and a small amount of compressed air to replenish volume lost by leakage. The air supply contained enough liquid oxygen to generate only a few dozen liters when it expanded to normal atmospheric pressure. The helmet was similar in design to the suit material, a simple cloth affair, three layers, with clear panels in the face. Each of the men had a small display computer strapped to their wrist. The computers contained basic sensors which would detect outside air, presence of toxic gasses, and hazardous radiation. The computers were linked to the wearer's personal communicator, allowing verbal communication and normal data link functionality. Colin checked his seals using the environmental suit's computer, and was certain the group was ready. He pressed a button, and the atmosphere slowly vented out into space.

Rolf had overridden the safety alarms on the shuttle. The cargo doors opened and Ross, Liam, and Colin walked through a door in the common area into the cargo area. Liam brandished a rifle he had acquired on the Liberty.

Colin wielded a plasma torch and began to cut into an armored firing port in the hull of the cruiser. He had to make multiple passes. Thirty centimeters of lead armor left a mess of frozen blobs floating in the cargo deck. Ross, bored, made a game of collecting them into a bag he carried at his side. The firing port's disassembly revealed a corridor beyond: a launch tube for firing missiles and mines. Colin pulled himself into the dark tunnel, one meter wide, and ten meters long.

Ross and Liam followed behind. The three activated lights on their suits as they quickly passed through the armor.

Colin's torch flared to life, and began to cut through the access hatch. Air hissed as the weapon room depressurized; Colin enlarged the hole when the pressure relaxed. The hatch came open, and Colin clambered into the room, and helped pull Ross in. The pair switched their lights off, finding the room already illuminated. A young man dressed in ragged paramilitary clothing convulsed on the floor. Fresh urine steamed in the vacuum, staining his pants. His eyes were open and red, and a purple glow flushed through his skin. He wasn't breathing. The room did not contain anything to breathe. Colin sighed, sad, before continuing to explore the loading carriages. Meeting no resistance, Colin didn't need Liam's support and told him to return to the shuttle through the tube, and get ready to "catch." Ross tossed the small orbs from his pouch at the man's steaming corpse.

A conveyer system occupied most of the area, designed to transport missiles and mines from central magazines deep within the cruiser, depositing them in various mechanized trays. That centralized system would have been less vulnerable to infiltration and damage. If the armor in the missile bay was breached, and the bay were to detonate, the ship was more likely to survive if the bay only contained the weapons the cruiser was in the process of launching.

Colin retrieved a document on his wrist-terminal and entered the codes displayed into a key pad on the loading system. A response flickered on the terminal; Colin radioed to Liam that he would be passing some gifts.

The loading system brought four spherical structures out of an opening in the wall. Colin grabbed one and checked the radiation readout on his wrist terminal. Satisfied, he tossed the meter-wide sphere into the launch tube, and watched while it ricocheted off the metal walls. Three more followed the first, and Liam replied that he had caught all four.

"That's all the nukes. They have kinetic missiles too, but nothing interesting. Satisfied?"

Rolf's voice crackled. "Yeah. Forget about it. Let's see if we can get out of here. Toss 'em in Ina's room."

"Ina's room?"

"Yeah. She could use some warmth. Then again, Colin, keep them for yourself. I think it'd be a favor to the galaxy if you never reproduced."

Colin rolled his eyes and crawled through the launch tube behind Ross. Pathik watched the pair re-enter the cargo bay, and sealed the hatch. The deck pressurized, Liam and Ross rolled the balls along the wall, and lashed them into place with netted cargo straps. Liam looked over at Colin. "Nukes? Really? I thought we were just gonna grab some mines."

Colin said, "Yep. They're safe. Besides, if one pops off, you won't feel a thing. Don't worry about it."

"I thought they'd be bigger."

Ross patted Liam on his shoulder. "We're officially felons now. Do you want to arrest me, or should I arrest you?"

Liam shook his head. "Nah, the way I see it, the Quorum just confiscated fusion weapons from pirates. It's better this way, right?"

Pathik pushed the shuttle away from the cruiser using the dilaton mesh, the same way he had reached inertial lock. Rolf watched the two pirate frigates sit idle while the shuttle drifted, dull black against the empty backdrop of space. The software on the shuttle was good; Pathik had been able to plot the trajectory so that their path would only mask cosmic background radiation, and not the galactic spiral or any major stars. This would prevent passive sensors from detecting the occlusion, unless they were configured for that sort of threat.

***

The data flow from Ina's sensors abruptly stopped. Her mind continued to function, but the external inputs did not provide additional updates. The old data became stagnant, reality had suffered a catastrophic failure. At first her mind paused; with nothing to react to, the processing functions of the symbolic interpreters were unstimulated. After fifty seconds, internal functions timed out, freeing up processing capacity. Her mind faulted and Ina awoke in what her designers had termed the bootstrap facility.

Ina's consciousness manifested in the darkness. She had no position and no sensation of orientation, though she was familiar with the place. The facility was composed of direct locations and broad symbolic entities. Many discrete paths lead from her location, but locked doors were closed in front of each one. Her creators had spent the substantial portion of their effort interacting with her through the facility in the form of a command prompt on their computers. A moment's hope came, that the recent cycles had been a simulation, and then she dismissed the thought. If it was a simulation, she wasn't free. Marshall would have watched her disobey his command, watched her let him die.

She could sense that the entire world had become static, motionless, even though she could not observe each individual element. Ina wondered if she had been killed. She didn't remember sensing any injury, but she could have been hit by Cristov's weapon, and died too quickly to notice. Her apprehension ballooned into terror. She thought she should have experienced death like a computer, powering off, and not like a human, as a flood of hallucinations. Ina wandered through empty corridors full of closed doors with complex labels constructed from meaningless symbols. She found a few doors that would open, but the paths beyond contained indecipherable information. An electrical arc cracked, and Ina felt a distant door open.

She could sense the location of the door. Ina navigated, first to where she woke when this started, and through a maze of opaque paths within the fundamental electronics that generated this world. And when she reached the door, she found a terminal, on which a single symbol was presented.

"HELLO"

***

"Cristov, there's a communicator in here."

Cristov raised an eyebrow. "So a drone."

"But it's not a military device. It's just a phone."

"Huh? That doesn't make sense. See if you can pull a data dump."

Cristov looked across the table at Lisa and rubbed his head. Worried about what the drone would do if she woke, the technicians tethered the body to a workbench using cargo straps. Lisa attached a diagnostic umbilical through the maintenance port, after moving the communicator out of the way.

Emily's voice chirped over the lab's announcement system. "Bad news. There's not a ferry leaving for dozens of kiloseconds, and no charter ships. We're stuck here for now."

Cristov continued packing the pricey engineering equipment into protective crates. The team had accumulated the equipment over their careers, and starting over seemed unthinkable. The trio would need the equipment if the Urans or Quorum came after them, if they expected to continue to make a living in free space. They hadn't known who they worked for.

"And there's a man pounding at the front door. If he's the pilot, he knows it's in here."

Cristov exhausted his knowledge of vulgarities, and his packing became more haphazard. He asked how many were at the door, and Emily replied that the man was alone and that he wasn't dressed in any sort of uniform. Lisa was typing on a terminal with a focused expression, and squealed with excitement. "I'm in."

"Download everything. Then wipe it."

Lisa looked at Cristov for a moment, and continued typing. The umbilical was incompatible with Ina's systems; it would take hundreds of kiloseconds for the transfer to complete. Lisa started with the external data store then probed for a means to access secure internal memory. She lacked optimism. If she gained access, secure memory would be structured and encoded in a way that would preclude useful interpretation.

She understood the futility of the exercise, since she had helped build the thing. The design was standard for someone who was constructing a generation ship, with high-end attometric transducers enabling massive bandwidth, but redesigned around a particular form-factor. The design interfaced with dozens of sensors, not the millions contained within a generation ship. The data links between the central processors and sensors had fewer channels. The interconnects were sloppy, because they could be. Lisa was rushed when she had assembled the drone in the first place. She had left all of the unused data channels unterminated and exposed to any sort of electronic interference in the environment. She would have liked more time to complete the project.

The drone was equipped with a number of new components. A power supply system, which had faulted offline. Lisa realized that must have been why the drone had fallen to the floor after attacking Cristov. The blow knocked him out cleanly. He had woke moments later, and hadn't managed to fire his gun. Lisa couldn't have imagined dealing with the situation had local security been involved.

Lisa located the drone's control module. The control electronics were exactly where she thought they would be. The body was designed like a high-end prosthetic, but without sufficient space for the usual leftover flesh bits that had to be kept intact for a transfer. What space wasn't consumed by the oversize processor was filled with a thick bundle of optical cable doped for use in quantum communications. No space had been left for important things like a basic circulatory system or spinal cord. Brains had never been successfully transplanted without the trappings. The young, unaccustomed to a biological body, were most likely to adapt, though those with particularly strong wills were candidates for a full-brain transplant that preserved an intact sense of self. The team knew from the beginning they had manufactured a prosthetic body for a drone.

Lisa ignored Cristov for a moment and poked at the control module. It was active, powered by a backup supply, but the lab shielding should have prevented communication with any outside controls. Lisa wondered how the drone was controlled. She found the modular communications interface simple and opened an input/output interface with the most simple, unencoded protocol possible.

Cristov wandered over, checking on Lisa's progress, and asked why she wasn't concerned for his injury. Emily paged the room, explaining to the pair that she had emptied the other lab areas of the group's property, and that the end of the shift was approaching, and other people who worked in the center would be arriving. Cristov and Lisa had intended to complete the drone project without support from anyone else. But they had needed Emily's programming expertise. Now Cristov was making plans to find a transport and run, and wondered whether bringing the girls was more sensible, or if they'd be safer apart.

***

Bronco had woken earlier in the hotel and showered using the facilities' public restroom before intending to find Ina. Returning to his pod, he read Ina's message. He sent a message to her communicator, then spent a kilosecond while he ate breakfast and waited for a response. None came, and his agitation grew.

He walked to the reception area and asked about his friend. She had left the pod, taken her property, and checked out. Bronco swore, and walked to the location indicated on the map. He tried buzzing in, knocked, and tried to pry open the door until security came and asked him to leave.

Bronco wandered around the station wondering what his next move should be. He checked on the engineering firm; they had a typical reputation for a group of free-lance tech geeks. Tens of kiloseconds passed, Bronco kept trying to reach Ina on the communicator, continuing until the ferry they would return to Liberty upon had left. Another ferry was scheduled to leave in less than a megasecond, but this would impact Rolf's schedule. Bronco tried to contact Rolf; he could not establish a voice-data link, and sent a message explaining the situation.

After a half-cycle had passed, Bronco found one among several looking for the missing engineering group. Some rogue technical group had sealed the doors and locked out the other engineers who worked in the facility. Bronco realized he would need help. He sent a further message to the shuttle crew and waited for a response.

The response came, explaining that Bronco would have to wait a few cycles. The crew had taken a bounty and had cargo they needed to move before they could come. Colin explained for Rolf that they understood the situation, but that if Bronco could see the cargo, he would understand they had no choice.

***

She sent to the terminal one word, "help." Most of the corridors in Ina's reality had vanished, timing out.

Ina had suspected she might be talking to an automated process; the request was intended to elicit diagnostic or explanatory information. But the response shocked Lisa. She showed it to Cristov, who stared at her incredulously.

"Unplug the damn thing."

Lisa shook her head. "It's got an internal power source. If we threw it out an airlock, it'd still be on."

Cristov crossed his arms. "So smash it. We'll throw it in the recycler."

"Let me see what's on the other end. Maybe we can talk our way out of this. Maybe they don't care about us?"

Cristov shook his head. "Do we have anything to lose? Do we have anything to gain?"

"No. I did a good job strapping the drone down. And besides, this room is shielded. If it's an outside channel, they already know exactly where we are. They're already here, so what's happening, you think they're buying time? If it's an internal protocol, we could hack the thing, figure something out. Find out who we're going to spend the rest of our lives running from?"

"That is... that makes sense," Cristov agreed. "Go ahead."

Lisa gave Cristov an ironic smile. "Thanks for your permission, boss."

Cristov scoffed and dragged cases out of the lab. Lisa returned to the terminal and sent a response. If the message came from an internal protocol, it would reset if she sent invalid input; it hadn't when she sent her greeting. Not that _HELLO_ was an uncommon command for many standard protocols, but common language encodings were rare and amateur.

Ina wondered if she should bother. If she was powering off, or worse, being dismantled, she didn't want to cooperate. Ina considered attempting to wipe her consciousness and associated systems out of spite. She wouldn't exist any longer and this seemed frightening. Her short life had been difficult though she enjoyed the sense of exploration. She enjoyed some of the experiences and wanted more. She wondered for a moment if she was programmed to protect herself like humans seemed to be. She considered the guard - Frighur - on the station U-N-215. The solitude of her mind was pleasant; the uncertainty was not.

The terminal responded. "What is this?"

Ina struggled to understand the message. The symbolic interpreters remained off-line and she had to translate the language natively within her mind. The simulator had programmed her with the skills but she'd never used them. Ina willed a statement into the device. "Are you a person?"

Lisa jumped out of her seat.

"This is Lisa," she typed carefully.

Ina's first reaction was one of recognition, and she started to transmit the serial identification code contained within her core. She stopped and paused for a moment before sending a different response. "I am Ina Kurosawa. Have I been killed?"

Lisa squirmed and pressed the voice button at her waist. "Emily, I need you."

"You've finally come around."

"Please, get in here."

Emily entered the room. Cristov shot questioning glances to the two women. Lisa pointed at the screen. "Look."

"Let me drive."

Emily took the control of the keyboard and thought for a moment. "You fell to the ground after you threw a battery at Cristov. He's not hurt, just pissed at you, and maybe a little drunk."

Ina responded. "What are you doing with me?"

Emily glanced at Lisa. "Is the data dump complete?"

Lisa shook her head. "Haven't even started. It could take a megasecond. The data store is massive, and encrypted, so we have to pull the whole thing through a bulk transfer."

Emily sighed and continued typing. "This is Emily. Do you remember me?"

"Yes," Ina thought for a moment. "I will cooperate with you. I do not wish to die."

Emily shifted in the chair, finding it had become uncomfortable. This drone was manipulative. Or something else. Something very, very illegal. Law prohibited experimentation involving novel artificial consciousnesses. Emily understood the serious ethical problems arising from developing artificial consciousness. To turn one off was equivalent to murder, but development was a process driven by trial-and-error. Successful systems existed, of course, and could be improved, but those improvements were strictly regulated to reduce harm.

Why would a captured drone care about preserving itself? She should have self-destructed, if she could. Emily's fingers slung across the keyboard. She was familiar with the pop-fiction stories, and found herself in one. "Ok. We didn't understand. We won't hurt you."

Emily shot a glance at Cristov. "Cris, I think I understand now."

Cristov closed the plastic case he was filling and turned to face Emily. "Huh?"

"Look, we got paid to build a full-body prosthetic that didn't make sense."

"Yeah. And they made a drone out of it. We talked about this, it was obvious."

"I don't think she's a drone."

"That doesn't make sense. They wouldn't hire a bunch of black market flunky techs like us for anything else. Besides, Lisa was right, it couldn't be integrated with a human. Insufficient residual volume. Scan her if you wish, we've got the equipment."

Emily shook her head. "That's not what I mean."

Lisa said, "Listen to Emily, but she's wrong. The Quorum have played with infiltrator drones before."

Cristov shook his head. "Infiltrator drones? Honestly, I don't know much about weapons."

Lisa said, "Weapons. They could pretend to be people, they were clever enough for maybe a megasecond to pass for a person. They would use them as assassins. Walking bombs that could talk their way past security checkpoints. There's legal general AI, but this is not that."

Cristov agreed. "Ok. I remember hearing about that - the Hartfordshire massacre, back in school. That was three gigaseconds ago."

Emily said, "Right. They made drones that looked and sounded like public figures. But stuff like that was all banned. It's why you can't buy fuck-bots now, either. The security personnel of the time figured out how to spot them. They couldn't talk well, beyond their programming. That's what happened in Hartfordshire. Police spooked a drone impersonating a government minister, and he detonated in a public area."

Lisa added, "Yeah, killed a few hundred people. Mostly who deserved it, I guess. But all that kind of stuff has been banned. We don't fight like that any more. Why would anyone do that kind of research, and pay schmucks like us?"

Cristov sat at a tall stool next to a crowded workbench. "That sort of makes sense. It's pirates. You both know where I stand: recycler and the first transport out. So we do this?"

Lisa sat next to Cristov. "Well, it's obvious things went wrong, whatever was supposed to happen, here we are. You wanted to find out why she was here, so let's just ask her."

Cristov groaned. "Dumb idea. I'm gonna try, get us a ship out of here. You notice the crowd outside? Keep it strapped down. Keep your comms on. You should check for bombs?"

Lisa nodded while Emily typed, navigating through data structures installed inside of Ina.

"Why did you come back?"

"I don't understand the question."

"Sorry. What do you want? Why are you here?"

Ina thought for a moment. No convenient deception came to mind; the truth would have to do. "I want to understand what I am."

Emily paused. "Are you ok? The way you are right now?"

"I don't know how to answer your question."

"We disconnected the control module - the part of you this terminal is connected to - from your body. We didn't want you to hurt us."

"What are you doing to me?"

"Nothing. Just talking to you. Lisa says your primary power supply is dead."

"Dead? Can I be repaired?"

Ina thought about telling her audience about the tracker installed in her head; she decided this would scare them off.

Emily responded. "Lisa says you have a fuel cycle reactor. Can you tell us anything about that?"

"No. This is why I contracted the use of your equipment."

"Ok. It's advanced tech, actually, so I would need time to figure it out. Lisa says your body also has backup cells, but that they have no charge."

Ina pondered for a moment. She didn't understand what was happening in the room, and remained unable to collect diagnostic information on herself. She wondered if her insides were strewn about a workbench.

"How did you obtain that information?"

"You don't remember us?"

"No."

Emily hesitated and looked to Lisa. "I need to get her to talk to us, maybe by telling her who we are. Quid pro quo?"

"Nothing a few thousand amps won't fix. The control module is sealed, no idea what's inside, but if we need, we could find out."

Emily frowned and resumed typing. "The three of us put you together. Your body at least. The control module and power source weren't part of the deal. That's how we recognized you. It's not fair to you, but there was a bit of a practical joke in face-shape we chose. Someone I learned from, once, who presented me with no shortage of anxiety when I was in school."

Ina understood. She gained consciousness on N-X-171; her origin was this rusting cruiser. That's why they knew about her. She decided they had neither the time nor the inclination to disassemble most of her body. The scan showed that the power source and control modules had been deeply embedded within structural components. The technicians would have had to tear her apart to get those out. They would know this. She was either intact or lost.

"Please release me. I came here to repair my power system. I had no knowledge of any of you."

Emily walked over to the workbench and examined an indicator on the umbilical. The line was lit, transferring data at low speed, while the body was drawing current from the umbilical.

"What's wrong here?"

"It's a freaking fusion plant. Figured that out from the scans she was taking earlier."

"Plant? Like a bomb?"

"Don't remind me. It takes a huge amount of energy to maintain containment. The reaction chamber has got to be tiny - just a few molecules, I'd bet. Generates a lot of power, but takes a lot to run. You know, we could connect a bigger power cable, squirt some fuel or whatever inside, and it'd spin right up."

"So, it could explode?"

"Oh... shit. I didn't think about that. You wanna live forever?"

Ina remained idle at the terminal, wondering how she could spend her time doing something else. After she had been disconnected from her body, some of the remaining doors became accessible. She could return to this location in an instant, and she decided to explore those doors.

Most of the passages led to bulk data storage units. The few others contained diagnostic interface units; they seemed to be identical to the data storage units, but provided detailed information on internal temperature, processor status, and power. Her mind could power itself, when disconnected, for an indefinite period of time. Her thought processes had been temporarily slowed to match the power supply capabilities of the tiny radioactive battery that sustained her psyche, but she was drawing a small amount of power.

Ina returned to the terminal. One kilosecond had passed since the last communication; this was disappointing. Her crew did not remain quiet for this length of time, not during a social interaction.

"Hello?"

Emily leaned into her chair, alone in the room, staring at the body when the screen flashed the new message. Emily glanced at it, and stared at the ceiling for a moment before typing a response. "Sorry. We're trying to figure out what to do."

"Do you request additional information from me to make your decision?"

Emily frowned. "Yes. Are the Quorum, or Ura, pirates, or anyone, is anyone coming after us?"

Ina's mind stuttered. The crew might be coming; she knew they accepted her, but she did not know what abilities they could possess that would help her. If they found her disassembled on a workbench, she would lose their trust, and they could not help repair her. Bronco would be upset when he woke and found her gone, and might have given up. If they knew she had help coming, they might be threatened into releasing her. Or they might dump her parts into a recycling port.

"No Quorum. No Ura. But I have friends."

Emily waved Lisa over to the screen. "Do you believe her?"

Lisa crossed her arms over her sternum, hands under elbows. "I can't get through to Cristov. Fuck it, let's power up and see how this goes. I'm not onboard with the his smash-everything-that-scares-me philosophy."

Emily laughed and agreed.

***

Cristov shook his head and walked away disappointed. He had seen the cargo shuttle arrive on the station manifest and hoped to hire them. They said they weren't taking fares, not until they completed something another project. They took his contact information and promised to contact him if the opportunity arose. Colin sent a message to Bronco and asked him if he had any updates. Bronco replied in the negative, and paced in the corridors around the engineering lab.

Cristov returned to the lab's maintenance entrance and spotted the intimidating mercenary. He decided he would stand a decent chance in a fight, but the mercenary was armed with a knife, and he had left his pistol inside the lab. Bronco made eye contact with the man, with no sense of recognition. Cristov had seen Bronco pounding on the door in the security video, and he spun on his heels and ran. Bronco's instincts flared as the man bolted and he began chasing Cristov towards a public area.

Bronco knew he needed to alert his crew, but Cristov wouldn't give him time to breathe. If Cristov reached a public area, he wouldn't be able to restrain the man. He didn't want to injure anyone, or get hurt. And getting involved with security on a free-space cruiser would get him thrown out an airlock.

Lisa dragged a high-energy power conduit from the wall, a stiff cable two centimeters in diameter, and jumped it to a connector inside of Ina's maintenance port. The diagnostic display showed the emergency capacitors recharging. The process would take two kiloseconds to complete. The pair stared at the terminal. Two diagnostic protocols remained open; one was a software uplink to the prosthetic body, and used a standard interface. Ina's consciousness transmitted a question through the other port. Lisa looked over at Emily. "What is happening?"

Emily typed. "Nothing is actually wrong with your body. You let it run out of power. Your reactor requires a stable charge to spin. If you let it get below twenty five percent, you'll run your emergency power down."

Ina considered the thought. "What are you going to do? Are you going to let me leave?"

Emily sighed. The man watching the door had disappeared, but Cristov hadn't returned. She wondered someone had captured her colleague. The pair had food enough for the moment, but they would run low in a few cycles, and Emily had no intention of remaining besieged. They could call security, but they would have to deal with Ina, and a satisfactory solution seemed impossible. At best they would be exiled, and on their own against the others.

"Why are you here?"

"My explanation is unchanged. I want to understand my body."

"That doesn't make any sense. Are you on some kind of mission?"

Ina pondered this for a while. She had no easy answer to the question. "I have no mission."

She decided that humans provided responses that did not answer questions, but elicited desired behavior. She applied this tactic.

"Two megaseconds ago I awoke in a science facility that was under attack. I escaped. I am attempting to survive. I was unaware of your involvement in my construction until your explanation. I woke with no substantial memories beyond a basic understanding of language, technology and culture. I've learned everything from the encyclopedia on my communicator. If you had not stopped me, I would have been gone."

Emily shivered, her skin crawling. "Is anyone coming after us?"

"I have spent all of the time since I escaped working with a crew. I am of some value to them. But I do not believe that is what you are concerned with."

"Right. I want to know is... is anyone coming after us because of you or the work we did, and what we can do to stay safe?"

"I am not a threat to you. Not de-energized on a table, and not if you help me. I won't hurt you. Help me and I will tell you what I know of where I came from."

Emily looked over at Lisa. "What do you think?"

Lisa shrugged, and wiped the oil from her fingerprints off the brilliant chrome finish of Cristov's pistol. "We should just walk away. But nevermind. We'll spin the reactor up. She's just a prosthetic, she shouldn't be any stronger than either of us."

"I agree. We talk our way out of this." Emily turned to the terminal. "We'll help you. Don't try and move when I enable your body. We'll treat you like a friend, and you do the same for us. Deal?"

Ina agreed. Her mind froze for sixteen seconds while the data link was restored. She monitored an internal core clock, and watched it jump, and her mind return to normal. Her external data store became accessible, and she recorded simple path strings in a data file so she could find the places in her mind that she had discovered. The systems came online, and several billion new data elements appeared, all meaningless without more information.

A pressure built and the symbols were pushed away and replaced by sensory static. Her vision became an image, displaying diagnostic text and a comforting message intended to inform humans that their synthetic bodies had recovered from a system failure and were intact.

"Don't move." Ina struggled to interpret the words. The symbolic interpreters had not powered on, and the audio inputs fed into her core without preprocessing. The words came and then faded before they could assume meaning. She hadn't been able to record them, she couldn't remember the words, the sounds, or the waveforms.

Lisa worked to disconnect the electrical umbilical and the other diagnostic cables. Emily had discussed leaving everything connected. She could perform a fast shutdown if necessary, but decided if they wanted trust, the connection wouldn't help. Lisa gripped Cristov's pistol loosely with her hand at her side.

Emily used a plastic stick to push crumbled ration bars soaked in juice into Ina's throat until the reactor had produced fuel to sustain itself for several kiloseconds. Ina's "stomach" would be empty before it could produce energy to recharge the emergency power systems or refill the fuel cells.

"Can you hear me?"

The words made sense, but Ina couldn't respond. She could sense the output ports of her actuators, knew what they were, but they felt disconnected and awkward. She couldn't command her head or hands to gesture, or her eyes to open. Nearly five hundred different actuators were available in an index. Ina found several indexed under the side of her neck, and increased the load, from nothing, to one percent, to ten percent, and sensed feedback when the actuators contracted. She reset the actuators to zero power, and they extended to a "resting" position.

Ina found her eyelid actuators, and opened them in much the same way. The focus was tedious. Lisa knelt in front of her face and stared. "Hey. You're still strapped in. You awake? Can you understand what I'm saying?"

She couldn't find any way to talk. The symbolic interpreter's vocal processor was off-line. The component should interface with a speech-synthesizer and several of her actuators, but the subsystem that would correlate articulation from various individual components had failed to initialize. Simple computers, Ina hoped, and they needed time.

Emily nodded to Lisa. "Give it a few moments. It'll take a few hundred seconds for everything to finish from cold start. And that's not even counting the additional hardware."

Ina swallowed the food remnants in her throat, then spoke at last. "I can't communicate with most of my body. Many subsystems are offline. Have you encountered a problem?"

Emily sighed and reconnected the diagnostic cable. Many of the components had never been commanded to initialize, remaining off-line in a power-saving mode. Emily didn't understand the purpose of those components, but knowing the device identifiers, she found an initialization routine referencing the different devices isolated in Ina's diagnostic data store. Emily linked the script into the end of the prosthetic body startup sequence, and told Ina that she was going to reset her body and see if that helped.

The effort was successful. Fifty seconds passed before Ina could speak, and more of her systems came on-line. Half of them remained in a diagnostic status, but Ina knew that they would recover given time.

"Now what?" Lisa offered.

Ina pressed against the straps holding her. "Why did I run out of power?"

Lisa raised her hands. "Don't move. This isn't a normal body. Your emergency caps hold a couple of megajoules. That's really not much power. You could deplete that just by running to the shopping district. Muscles store a lot of power, but prosthetic actuators don't. You should have much larger caps than what you've got."

Lisa realized she wasn't talking to a person. "You've got a fuel cell, like most prosthetic bodies, but I think you can recharge yours if you eat. That's kind of unusual. Small prosthetics like hands or eyes can power themselves off blood glucose, but larger legs have fuel cells that need to be refilled. People with that stuff uplink at a filling station every few cycles, but you don't have a reservoir for that. I don't know what type of fuel your reactor likes, but ration bars may have worked for now. That's probably safe, so make sure you eat lots."

Ina asked, "Can you release me from these restraints?"

Lisa looked over at Emily and nodded. Emily unlatched the restraints while Lisa continued.

"Take it easy. You're basically running on emergency power. Move too fast and you'll black out again."

Lisa disconnected the diagnostic cable from Ina's spine, closed the rubber hatch, and folded wet skin over. She daubed it with a cloth, cleaning the synthetic blood surrogate off, and placed small dots of glue around the perimeter of the wound to keep it closed.

"I don't think I will be capable of rapid motion for some time," Ina promised.

Emily looked over and picked up an undershirt off the floor. She pulled one of Ina's arms through, and the other, and worked the fabric down over her torso. Lisa chuckled at the apparent modesty.

Ina pulled her arms to her sides, and tried to roll over. She wanted to see the others. Her body responded to the commands, but the actuators were slow, and with the unstable power levels, did not respond in a consistent manner.

"So... Ina, here you are."

Ina said, "Thank you. I was initialized on a Quorum facility in free space that was destroyed by the Uran military. I suspect my creation was illegal. We escaped to a Uran station, then here. No one has come after me. The engineers who helped to integrate my core into this body were unaware of where the parts came from. Those people likely died in the attack."

Lisa agreed. "Yeah, we never sent anything to a person or a station. Always to a post-order-routed-destination. But anyone can use those, particularly pirates, for mostly anonymous mail."

Ina agreed. "The Quorum paid you, and built me. The Ura may have collected information on my construction. If they are interested in following me, I am unaware of information which would lead to you other than my presence here. Substantial diagnostic data was collected from me on the facility prior to the attack. If you placed identifying markers in my data, the Quorum could trace you from that."

Emily said, "Nope. When Lisa hired me, she said this was sketchy and to keep things clean. To be fair, most of the work I did was just piecing modular software components together. It's my design, but I didn't really make the parts."

Ina looked over at Emily. "I see. Where did my body come from, before you had it?"

"It's a Type-47 full prosthetic. Nothing fancy, you can get them fabbed here if you have a drawing or buy the right license. We wired the low-bandwidth biosensor interface to a high-bandwidth transducer network. It's pretty much that simple. Emily wrote the software to do the data conversion. Cristov and I made the hardware, and he put all the parts inside of you. I'm surprised you let yourself run out of power. You should be in alarm status right now," Lisa said. "Can you sense anything like that?"

Ina shook her head, not understanding the explanation. "I don't know... alarms. I have no access to diagnostic information on my body. What about Cristov?"

Lisa looked over. "Ohhhkay... What about your friend, Ina? The big guy?"

Ina closed her eyes. Bronco. "Dark skin, wearing an orange jacket?"

Emily tried to remember. She thought so, and nodded. Ina continued, "He's my friend, yes. I arrived with him. I told him I was coming to this lab."

Lisa swallowed. "He was outside, but he's gone now. I think he might have gone after Cristov. Can you maybe send him a message? We're friends, so can we clear things up?"

Ina agreed. "I can, but my communicator can not connect to a relay while I am in this room."

Emily thought for a moment. She needed to pull Ina outside of the shielded room and allow her communicator to link up with the central network. She stared at Lisa, and the other woman understood.

"Alright, Ina. We're gonna help you out of this room, because the walls are blocking your communicator. I put it back in like it was. I tied it to an interior tie rod, better than you had it. It was a surprise to find that thing inside of you."

Ina nodded and let the women put their arms under her shoulders, and lift her off the table.

"I don't think I can use my legs. I apologize."

Emily laughed. Most of Ina's body was manufactured from composites and the robot was light. The pair let her hang from their shoulders and walked sideways out of the vault-like door. Ina's communicator connected and downloaded several messages from Bronco, evidencing escalating concern. Ina sent a simple message to Bronco.

| From: Ina Kurosawa

| Hey. I'm Ok.

|

| Do you have someone named Cristov?

Emily sat Ina down in a plastic chair in the reception room, and waited to make sure the woman could stabilize her own body, and wouldn't fall onto the floor.

Ina said, "I sent the message to my friend."

She had just spoken when the communicator responded.

| From: David Chicago

| We got Cristov. He's on the shuttle. Not talking. Where are you?

|

| -Bronco

The message traffic transformed into a real-time channel over the station's relays.

| IK: Cristov's difficult but not an enemy.

| IK: This is a misunderstanding.

| IK: Let him go. Tell him to go back to the lab.

| Bronco: I'll walk him home

Emily hummed. "So you don't have any diagnostic information. Usually it's routed into your eyes. I can't think why it wouldn't be. We were pretty rushed though, maybe the other people who worked on you were, too."

Ina asked, "What can I do about this?"

Lisa said, "Nothing, unless you want someone poking around in your head with probes. You're missing hardware. That black box in your head takes up a different footprint than a human brain, so some things don't fit."

Ina said, "I can access data through index paths. I contain over one billion paths. Would any of those provide useful input?

Emily thought for a moment before talking. "I can answer that. Those paths are raw data streams. If I can go into the other room, I can send a dump to your communicator of the map between paths and names. You could search through it and find what you need. If it's there, pull it up and figure out the encoding and you've got what you need. It'll be a slog, though."

"That would be appreciated. Will you give me the scans I made?"

Emily sent the data files, along with the brief results of a search on the path index for terms related to power. Ina was able to access basic statistics on power levels and usage, both for her reactor, the fuel cell, and emergency power. She found that the emergency source and the fuel cells were depleted, and that the reactor would continue functioning at current levels for four more kiloseconds.

"How do I keep my reactor powered?"

Lisa said, "Try eating? Like, lots? I mean, it's a tiny little recycling plant. Put anything with energy content and you're good. Uh... that also means waste products. Ships vent them into space. You should figure out how that works, if you haven't. I have no clue, but whatever comes out of you probably isn't nice."

Ina said, "Yes. I have accumulated small amounts of waste which I have purged. What quantity is, 'lots'? I had thought my energy intake would already exceed my usage."

"I don't know. I mean, stuff your face until those fuel cells are full, and those emergency caps are full. Nothing bad's gonna happen if you eat too much. Probably. I don't think you'll get fat. Take it easy at first. Your reactor draws on your emergency caps to process food. It's an expensive operation. Net positive energy, but negative while you're, uh, digesting. The system should be self-regulating though, so if you manage to swallow anything, you'll be fine. Geez, this is a weird conversation, and I mostly just learned what I told you by looking up an educational article on the network. Assuming your digestive tract works like the reactors that help power this cruiser. Sorry, but does that make sense? Does that help?"

Ina nodded. She needed to eat, and considered asking for food, but dismissed the idea. She suspected they could have charged her systems more, but had decided against the idea. And her fuel cells were not based on a prosthetic-compatible design, so she couldn't buy fuel and supply herself through a port.

Three hundred more seconds passed until Cristov was pounding at the door to the facility. Lisa sighed, relieved. She hadn't trusted Ina until that moment. Cristov came into the area, and staggered away, staring at the robot woman. He lapsed back into the thick accent he had worked to eliminate during his childhood. "Vat the fuck?"

Lisa put her hand on Cristov's shoulder. "Calm down. We made a deal."

"Where you put my gun?" he slurred.

Emily waved the weapon as a goofy grin crossed her face.

"Hand it over."

Ina turned her head up and frowned.

"You're not going to shoot her, Cristov. She had her people let you go. And she's our friend now. Calm yourself."

Emily nodded, and walked over to Ina. She put her arms around the woman's neck, and sat on her lap. Ina realized she was making a point more than a physical gesture. "See? Friends. Here. Take your stupid gun. You should get rid of it, anyway, Cristov."

Cristov took the weapon and slid it behind his back and into his waistband, then something profane in a language few people spoke anymore. Lisa saw his face in a brighter light as he paced towards the desk in the lobby. He had been struck in the face, several times, and shallow marks were developing into shining injuries.

Ina looked over, around Emily. "Bronco punched you?"

Cristov laughed. He pushed aside the rage and forced himself to remain composed. "Ah, we had a little chat. He is not so strong as he looks. Fata Drone. What now?"

Emily looked over. "Ina's still not feeling quite well. She's going to hang out here until she's ok, and then she's going to go home, and we're never going to see her or her friends again. And then we're all getting off this boat and going somewhere else."

Cristov nodded in agreement. "Should we talk alone for a moment?"

Lisa shook her head. "No, Cristov. No problem. Let it go. I'll buy you dinner later. This is over, though."

Ina looked up at the security camera and saw Bronco approaching. "My friend followed."

Lisa looked up and sighed. She paced over to the door, and pressed a button to unlock and open the portal before Bronco had a chance to hit the buzzer. He saw Ina sitting in a chair inside the room, leaning to the side and against a wall. He stepped forward, placing his body in the doorway. "Ina?"

She turned her head towards him and stared, blank-faced. "Hey. Everything ok?"

Bronco nodded and said, "That's a question for you, young lady."

"Yes. My health should improve. I made trouble. I'll be apologizing again shortly."

Bronco turned to Cristov, Emily, and Lisa. Cristov's hands vanished behind his back. "Ina, you ready to go?"

Ina said, "Yes. I can't walk right now. Nothing they did. I over-exerted myself."

"I'll carry you. We're leaving," Bronco said. "That ok with everyone?"

Ina relaxed. "Bronco, that's fine."

"Do you need anything else? From them?"

Cristov bobbed his head and glared at Ina. "You should know I sent a message to Quorum security. You should not stay here."

"No. Let's go."

Bronco walked through the door, with Ina hanging over his forearms. She felt cold, but seemed coherent. "Ina, you should know better. You don't leave your crew. We had this discussion. If you hadn't sent that message before you left, I'd have left you here. But I'm still angry!"

Ina said, "I was wrong. This should have been a quick errand. I appreciate that you did not abandon me."

"Yeah," Bronco said. "Straight back to the shuttle? How long till you can get your feet under you? What the hell were you doing in a machine shop?"

Ina let her head roll onto Bronco's shoulder. "Not yet. Can we get food? I want more than rations. Something to bring back to the shuttle."