Sheen never truly lost consciousness, though she did lose some awareness of what was happening to her and where she was. That awareness only returned once she was strapped on the surgical table. She focused first on Agent Spencer, who stood at her head fiddling with a pedestal-mounted autodoc, then on Gorman and Cormac who stood beside the door.

"I'll tell you nothing," she said.

Gorman grinned, then groped about in his top pocket for a cigar, which he lit with an old petrol lighter.

"As you have recently experienced, Cormac, when an aug is installed," Agent Spencer continued the explanation she had been making before Sheen's interruption, "the patient cooperates in the interfacing process, enabling the aug software to recognise its targets and thus guide in the nanofibres to synaptic connection."

"Which takes me back to my previous point," said Cormac. "It's a difficult process to first install an aug, even with the recipient's cooperation, then a lengthy learning process afterwards to get it to work properly—the recipient's mind learns how to use the aug and the aug itself learns how to interpret the recipient's mind."

"So I'm just meat now," said Sheen. "You're just going to ignore me?"

Agent Spencer picked up an item from a glass tray mounted on the side of the autodoc. It was a large, translucent plastic plug with a hole bored through the centre, attached to a skin-stick strap. Spencer kept it from Sheen's sight, which was easy enough with the Separatist's head secured in a clamp.

"On the contrary, Sheen," she said. "You are a very valuable piece of meat and you are going to receive my utter attention over the next few hours."

"You can't—" was all Sheen managed before Spencer leant across, clamped a hand on her chin, pushing her jaw down, and shoved the plug deep into her mouth, pressing the skin-stick strap down on her cheeks. Now all Sheen could do was make sounds from deep in her throat.

"It's to stop her swallowing her tongue," Spencer explained. "Or biting it off." She now moved the autodoc into place beside Sheen's skull.

"You were saying?" Cormac enquired.

As he understood it, the process was easier to conduct if the subject remained conscious. He understood that some would find all this rather distasteful, cruel even, and feel it something those of a civilized society should not do. Trying to feel some sympathy for Sheen, since they had fought together, he only felt cold. Criminals like Sheen tortured and killed with utter abandon, they ruined people's lives and, when they wanted information, they got out the blow torch and disc grinder.

"Yes," Spencer continued, "interfacing with an aug is an act of cooperation. Limited synaptic contacts are made and both mind and aug learn to use the communication channels they provide. Increasing the amount of contacts can lead to problems: destructive feedback, destructive synergy of the kind that killed Iversus Skaidon when he invented runcible technology and, of course, organic damage. In this case we are worried about none of these."

Cormac noted the sudden look of panic on Sheen's face. She'd just realised what Spencer intended doing to her. Perhaps she'd expected interrogation under drugs and torture, or maybe just a plain old execution, but ECS was more civilized than that.

"We'll be making multiple nanofibre connections, recording synaptic and neuro-chemical data all the while. The process records the structure, both architectural and neuro-chemical, of her brain, meanwhile building up a virtual model of it. It takes an AI then to deconstruct that model and interpret the data from that deconstruction as thoughts, images and memories."

"And Sheen's brain?" asked Gorman, watching Cormac as he asked.

Spencer glanced up. "It's mush afterwards. We maintain the connections to keep the autonomous nervous system going and the body is handed over to ECS Medical. I think they're trying for direct download now of recorded minds."

Sheen's eyes were wide as she stared sideways at the autodoc. Terror? Maybe, though Cormac doubted she would be so scared of death. More likely she was frightened about all she was due to betray.

"Download?" queried Gorman. "I'd heard it's theoretically possible…"

"I'm told the physical and neuro-chemical structure of the brain has to be changed to accept the mind in waiting," said Spencer. "It is actually restructured by nanomachines throughout the download process and takes several months."

"Interesting," said Gorman. "I've been thinking about getting myself a memplant." He tapped the side of his skull."

"Even more interesting if you ended up occupying the body of your killer," Spencer quipped. She now tapped a control on top of the autodoc and it immediately extruded a probe like a chrome-and-glass tubeworm against the side of Sheen's head. She started yelling from the back of her throat, the sound made into an odd whine by the aperture of her mouth plug.

"Goodbye, Sheen," said Spencer. "The next person you encounter will be the AI that takes apart your mind and turns it into a report for ECS."

After a little while the sounds Sheen was making tapered off to a sighing. Cormac crossed his arms and watched for a while longer.

"Is it necessary for us to be here any longer?" he finally enquired.

"Why?" asked Spencer. "Are you uncomfortable with all this?"

"No, bored, and Gorman was going to buy me a beer or two."

Spencer waved her hand in dismissal.

Some hours later, Cormac returned, and watched the blank-faced drooling thing that had been Sheen being wheeled out on a gurney to be taken to the spaceport. He thought it good that in her new incarnation she would serve some useful purpose, beyond that his concern was nil.

"Waky waky," said Gorman, slamming into the room and whipping the heat-sheet from Cormac's body—his presence turning on the light.

Cormac's instincts told him he had been asleep for about thirty seconds, but his aug told him precisely fifty-five minutes had passed since his consciousness fled into the pillow.

His instincts also told him that his immediate course of action should be to punch Gorman on the nose, turn off the light and return to bed. However, he swung his legs over the side and sat on its edge for a moment, deliberately not swearing at his unit leader, since that was precisely what Gorman expected.

"Some problem?" Cormac asked.

"Get your stuff together," said Gorman, scanning the room's sparse collection of belongings and frowning, "we're shipping out."

"Why?"

"Apparently Agent Spencer will be giving us chapter-and-verse aboard the attack ship," Gorman explained.

Now Cormac did swear, and his unit leader grinned. He had known that if the fact that they were still under orders from Spencer wasn't enough to get a reaction, then knowing they would shortly be aboard an attack ship would. His work done, Gorman departed whistling tunelessly and leaving the door open behind him.

Cormac stood up, walked over to close the door, then returned to his bedside locker from which he removed a self-heating coffee and a stim-patch. He pulled the tab on the coffee and set it down, and after stripping off its backing pressed the stim-patch down on his forearm. He pulled on disposable undergarments, his envirosuit and then dragged his pack out of a cupboard, into which it took him only a moment to shove a few more belongings, and by that time the stimulant was kicking in and the coffee steaming. Next he released his pulse-rifle from its coded rack by pressing his hand against the palm-lock beside it. The clamps dropped open and he took the weapon out and hung it by its strap from his shoulder. From under his pillow he took Pramer's thin-gun, which he shoved into his belt, then he was ready—just in time to receive a demand through his aug for his presence outside the barracks. Sipping hot coffee, he headed out.