Alice shivered in the cabin. Her jacket, along with the rest of her possessions, had fallen into the sea during the earlier aerial acrobatics. And while the weather was not cold, a brisk ocean breeze was blowing in through the open door of the helicopter.

"We need to go. With any luck our unplanned maneuver there will convince whoever tried to kill us they succeeded. Hard to say if they'll come looking, but I'd rather not be here when they arrive. Plus there's still the whole fallout thing," Alice added with a gallows smile.

"Good news on the latter issue," said Robert, eyes on his laptop screen, "provisional news reports say the explosions were a series of meteor strikes, if you'll believe it. So at least we needn't worry about radiation. What I don't understand is how the Near Earth Object Surveyor didn't catch them months ago."

The half-smile slid from Alice's face. She blinked hard, then opened her eyes slowly, the hint of moisture pooling in the corners. "Robert, do you know why I was flying to London?"

"Some kind of press conference right? Something to do with the asteroid mining work?

"Yes Robert. Because last night, we successfully transferred Petbe, a city-sized metallic asteroid, into Earth orbit." Alice paused to let the words sink in. "So either four highly improbable meteor strikes just happened on the same day, or some lunatic is dropping space rocks on world capitals. If my math is right, they still have 97% of their ammo left."

Robert stopped typing. He stared at the floor in front of his shoes, unblinking. His lips pressed tight against his teeth, as if resisting the urge to spit. He took a deep breath, then began to speak, his voice low but intense. "I've worked so hard Alice. So hard. I dropped out of school. I pulled 80 hour weeks for decades. Thirty years of life, thirty years of single-minded focus, building the greatest company in history.

"I have no wife, no kids, no girlfriend. Hell, no friends at all. I have poured my soul into Space Core, and it has risen. A beacon of human ingenuity in a world sinking into the muck.

"All I have Alice, ALL I HAVE, is this company." Robert was shouting now, eyes ablaze. "And that motherfucker Parker just took my good work, all our good work, and used it to blow up the goddam planet! Well fuck him, and fuck Space Core.

"I will turn this company into the biggest pyre the world has ever seen, and I will place that asshole on top of it. I will burn it all to the ground." Robert's hands sprang to life, a blur against the keyboard, stabbing savagely as if he could gouge his cofounder through the keycaps. He reached up with one hand to flip his shades to VR mode, still typing furiously with the other.

"Robert, you need to–"

"You don't tell me what I need to do! I know what I need to do. I always knew this day would come, knew that asshole would betray me." Robert finished setting up his glasses and connected to his private channel to Lynch. The copter picked up the feed and displayed it on the big screen. Alice wasn't sure if this was intentional or not. She stayed quiet.

Robert's avatar hung in empty space, a sketch of a head stuck on an amorphous blob, waiting for Lynch. The real Robert hammered away on the keyboard, preparing to unleash digital armageddon on Space Core.

The scene on the screen blurred and shifted. A hooded figure wrapped in crimson robes strode in from the edge of space, awash in the light of virtual stars. A cloud of fiery suns orbited him, a center of mass that moved galaxies. The heavy-handed symbolism was not lost on Robert.

"Robert," a confident voice boomed, "I was so happy to see you calling. I had been sure you were caught in one of today's catastrophes."

"Cut the crap Aden. I know you're behind this. What I want to know is why."

The robed man held out his upturned hands. "I should hardly need to tell you, should I? We have always made compromises. To remake the world you sometimes have to bend it, break it a little even. But always, always for the greater good. And we are doing it Robert! We are delivering to man his destiny among the stars. A few sacrifices, what are they against the advancement of our species?"

"A few sacrifices? Aden, you just annihilated four entire cities, murdered tens of millions of innocents."

"Less than 1% of the planet so far, Robert. In perspective, a small price to pay. And I would hardly call the city-dwelling bourgeoisie innocent. Today I seized the reigns from a few of the bumbling idiots that held us back. In time I shall purge the rest.

"Do you know what they wanted the bounty of Petbe for, the so-called leaders of our world? Missiles and bunkers. Fast cars and holo-feeds. The petty trappings of a dead-end culture. They lack the vision of you and I. With the culling of a few billion we can forge a society to conquer the cosmos."

"You actually think– no. No, you really have lost it. I never fully trusted you Aden, you always were a little too smooth, a little too cocky.

"I've built back doors in every system I've touched from the day you joined me. I let you enjoy the illusion of control, but I never released the reins. I'm pulling the plug now. It's over." Robert issued the command on his computer, his face a mixture of triumph and sadness at the end of the enterprise he had built.

Then the errors started rolling in.

"You know, I never trusted you either Robert." A vicious smile creased Parker's avatar's face, a forest of thin, sharp needles.

"Do you know there's a whole team at Space Core devoted just to maintaining and neutralizing your little exploits? No, of course you don't. All off the books of course. I've been bleeding millions for decades, all for your little ego-tripping noble hacker nonsense. Though in the end, it looks to have been one of my shrewder investments."

Robert mouth hung partway open, speechless. His eyes darted over the output of what was to have been his coup de grâce. A little floating panel next to his avatar issued an endless stream of timeouts, access errors, 404s and closed connections.

"Now that we are done with childish games, let us talk Robert. Despite your attempted deceptions, you have served me well over the years. True, we have not consistently seen eye to eye, but with time you always came around to my perspective.

"I was reluctant to lose you, truly. Maybe there is still a place for you in my new world order. There is so much for us to build, so many wrongs to right. Where are you now? I'd like to meet, talk this over in the flesh. I'll send a transport."

"Robert!" Alice shouted, realizing too late the game being played. "Robert, you need to disconnect now."

"Well now, that must be Alice. What a delight that both of you have made it through today's ordeals. I'd like to meet with her too Robert. Tell you what, you pick the location. We can–" the rest was cut off by Alice ripping the glasses off Robert's head. He blinked against the brightness of daylight, then slowly shook his head.

* * *

A servant knelt before Aden Lynch's avatar, waiting for command. In the final analysis he was glad Robert had made it through to witness his triumph.

"Did we locate him?"

"Yes sir, he tried to hide his IP with Tor, but we've got root on most of the entry nodes. We traced him back through the SpaceConnect constellation. Analysis has him somewhere in a small radius over the English channel. We've calculated the remaining power on his craft - here's the map of where they can take it." A new panel floated into view showing England and France. A small red circle lay in the water between them, intersecting a small slice of coastline on either side.

"Not too large," mused Lynch, "Doable. Activate all local sleeper agents in coastal France and England. Instruct them to patrol the landing zones, keeping an eye out for small copters."

"And if they find any sir?"

"Shoot them down."