Profiteer

Instantly the pressure shot up as the hydraulic fluid began backfilling. Levy didn’t look at the readouts. He stared at the sealant holding the hoses in place. It would be very bad if one began to leak. Neither did.

 

When the numbers stabilized, Dom realized he’d been holding his breath.

 

“Good,” said Levy. He flipped a few more switches on the small pump, and it began sucking hydraulic fluid into its tank. The pressure dropped faster than it had risen. The pump whined, made a slight slurp, and the numbers dropped near zero. The readout slowed its descent until it hit some absurdly small decimal. The pump still worked, but the number stayed the same.

 

“That’s as perfect a vacuum as we’re going to get?” Dom asked.

 

“Yes,” Levy said. “But it’s enough. That was the last major technical hump.” Levy smiled and Dom thought he could catch a hint of irony in Levy’s voice. “We’re going to have no more big proble—”

 

Zanzibar said, “Shit!”

 

There was a clatter outside and Dom hurdled the outer door to stand next to Zanzibar. Zanzibar was tensed to the breaking point and had her electromag pointed down the corridor, back they way they’d come.

 

The clatter had been the alien, Flower, dropping a plasma rifle.

 

“Damn it!” Zanzibar said. “I could have shot you.”

 

“I understand, but the risk made me necessary. I come to warn you of a potential difficulty. It seems that we are expected.”

 

Levy had been wrong. They were going to have a few more big problems.

 

<>

 

* * * *

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

 

Counterinsurgency

 

 

“It is never as bad as it seems—but sometimes it is worse.”

—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

 

“Distrust all men in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.”

—Friedrich Nietzsche

(1844-1900)

 

 

07:32:15 Godwin Local

 

Shane leaned against the massive door closing off the secondary computer core. She could barely hear the commotion beyond it. It sounded as though all five marines that manned the Blood-Tide had recovered from Mosasa’s stun field.

 

The three insurgents seemed to have the momentary advantage. Random had sealed every door on the ship. He was still in charge of communication. If Random had to, he could still pulse the stun field.

 

In other words, all Shane had to do now was sit on her hands and brood on the irony.

 

Her own people were going to kill her.

 

Shane knew it was self-defeating to think along those lines, but she couldn’t help it. After Random had been hooked into the ship’s computers, her job on this mission was over. She had nothing left to do but worry.

 

Nothing to do unless shooting started.

 

And if shooting started, they were all dead.

 

“The safe team’s opened the outer door.” Random’s voice came from one of the speaker grilles next to her. “Flower is making its way through the warehouse level. I see no resistance.”

 

Shane nodded. The mission looked as though it would succeed, even if the three people in the Blood-Tide never made it back to Ivor’s getaway vehicle. Random was checking all the sublevels constantly, and he wasn’t picking up a single marine down there.

 

Not a single marine.

 

Why did that bother her?

 

The same reason the fact that a sentry was equipped with a bio-augmentation pack bothers me.

 

Those things improved combat effectiveness, but they did so much damage to the user that it was against Occisis regs to use them outside a hot combat situation. That meant the colonel was—is—expecting an attack.

 

But we’re in.

 

“And we’re trapped,” Shane whispered.

 

“Are we?” asked Mosasa.

 

Shane snapped her head to look at Mosasa. Somehow she had managed to avoid thinking of him. Easier than admitting to herself that she’d once thought of him as human.

 

What was he?

 

‘I am. You can squeeze through the vents you came through—”

 

Mosasa shook his head. “The emergency containment that Random used is to handle sudden depressurization. The vents are sealed. We are living off one of the redundant life-support systems now.”

 

Shane looked at Mosasa a little differently. His dragon tattoo glistened a metallic green in the dim lighting. “I think that might be the longest speech you ever gave me.”

 

“Perhaps.”

 

“It’s up to Random what happens now, right?”

 

“I trust him.”

 

“Do you have a choice?”

 

“Right now neither of us does.”

 

The grille spoke. “They’ve set up the equipment to take the big door. Flower’s caught up with them. Flower’s explaining the situation up here.”

 

“Thanks,” Shane said. Then, to Mosasa, “Who are you?”

 

“Tjaele Mosasa.”

 

Shane shook her head and Mosasa gave her a surprisingly human smile showing a few decorative gold teeth.

 

“Your question really is, ‘What are you?’ I’m what’s left of a smuggler named Tjaele Mosasa who found the remnants of five old Race AIs. By the time Mosasa died, Random was his own person, but with the Confed feelings about AIs, he needed a human front. The only human he could trust was Mosasa.”

 

“Random built you?”