‘And not a krodorman in sight,’ Aphran murmured.

‘Aelvor’s people have yet to make a search,’ Jack replied, ‘but none are listed in crew or on any passenger manifests of arrivals within the time frame.’

‘They won’t find any,’ interjected Thorn, over com from the planet below.

‘Perhaps you could explain, Thorn?’ Aphran enquired though, knowing Freyda, she knew what Thorn’s answer would be.

Freyda looked up and around, almost as if hearing part of this com exchange. Impossible of course. Perhaps she wondered why Aphran had not come to greet her the moment she boarded. When she eventually found out why, that would be the first shock.

‘There was no krodorman. That’s why you found no krodorman DNA at the scene. I’ll bet you found syntheflesh at von Hellsdorf’s place that’ll match samples in the hotel. She simply wore a krodorman suit… By the way, Aphran, what’s your history with her?’

Reluctantly she replied, ‘She recruited me to the Separatist cause on Corolon.’

Aphran and her two sisters were each born from different fathers, but that was nothing unusual in the Corolon arcologies. She remembered the three of them playing together in the enclosed arboretums, in the shopping malls and sometimes in the rooftop fields. But best of all were the secret places of the sprawling city: the tunnels and niches, the air ducts and hollows through which spread forests of cables and pipes. It probably all started with them when the latest game became ‘break it and see how quickly the robots can fix it’. Enger obtained an electric saw with ceramo-carbide teeth, and not being the most incandescent lightstrip on the block, she found and cut into a superconducting cable. There seemed little point sending what remained to the crematorium. Aphran and Arial then blamed the robots. Arial, the eldest, was caught destroying three welding robots, and, while pursued by monitors, fell down a ventilation cavity. She survived but, after they bone-welded her skull back together she was never quite the same again: never wanted to play those same destructive games any more. Aphran believed the AIs had tampered with her brain. So when, a few years later, Freyda approached Aphran to recruit her to the Separatist cause, she knew she had at last found her place in the universe. Only in later years did she realize that after fighting for the cause for so long, a love of death and carnage had displaced Freyda’s initial idealism. Aphran now recognized the blindness of her earlier self: Freyda representing what Aphran herself had become before her physical death.

The cell Jack had prepared for their prisoner was unfurnished, deliberately claustrophobic, the lighting too bright. If Freyda wanted to sleep, or even just sit down, the cold ceramal floor would have to suffice. As the door closed behind Freyda, Aphran allowed the woman a little time to contemplate her present situation.

‘No reservations?’ Jack asked her, coldly dispassionate.

‘None at all,’ she replied, trying to believe that completely.

Machines first, just like those she had destroyed as a child, but now she was working with more effective tools. Freyda taught her all about explosives: which ones to use in what situations and how to maximize their destructive effect. Aphran learnt impatiently — she wanted to do something soon about the injustice done to her two sisters. Obviously it was all the fault of the AIs. Why wasn’t that s-con cable adequately shielded? Why no safety nets in that ventilation space? Why didn’t these godlike AIs look after people? At the age of seventeen she killed her first monitor. He had fancied her, so was not sufficiently on his guard. She shot him once through the throat, again through the back of the head as he lay gagging for life. Then she spewed up her guts nearby. The organization got her out of there—she’d left just too much of her DNA as evidence at the scene. On another world she graduated to mass murder with a bomb planted in a runcible facility, but it failed to take out the AI there. The only AI she ever managed to actually… kill, was a free Golem, and that at close range with a missile launcher, while its back was turned. But though the AIs were the main enemy, the most hated of all were those who willingly served them: ECS and its agents—no agony could be too much for them to suffer. How utterly and completely did the Separatist organization brainwash her, and how downright stupid of her to allow it.

Skellor—the brilliant biophysicist who was promising to change their fortunes—brought ECS down on them like an avalanche. Subverting an ECS dreadnought by using Jain technology, he then made Aphran and some of her fellows his crew in the most horrific way possible: subsumed in Jain tech, becoming mere adjuncts to him, suffering and yet not dying. Then he killed her, burned her in a never-ending fire, the only escape being for her mind to flee inside the Jain structure. Next came Jack, who uploaded her from there to a partitioned segment of his own crystal. She combined with him, embracing him for the sake of her own survival, and there found clarity with which she began to see everything thereafter. For open to her were the massive historical files that Jack contained, giving sharp contrast to the peace and plenty enjoyed across the majority of the human Polity. She saw how the AIs allowed the human race the freedom to enjoy luxurious eternity, or even to destroy themselves personally, but not the freedom to destroy each other. She came to recognize her past life as the stubborn intransigence of a spoilt child. But most importantly she saw Jack. And that alone was enough.

‘I wondered why you were not prepared to die for the cause, but you did not answer me,’ she enquired over com.

Freyda shook her head, then sat down with her legs crossed, her back resting against the wall.

‘Only when I see you, will I believe it’s really you,’ she replied.

Aphran chose an image matching her appearance when held captive aboard the Occam Razor, and projected it into the room.

Freyda frowned and waved a dismissive hand. ‘Projection. I suppose whatever is talking to me now was constructed out of information reamed from Aphran’s mind before they killed her.’

‘Skellor killed me. You remember Skellor, don’t you? He actually burned me to death.’

Again the dismissive hand gesture.

Aphran allowed her form to change into that now more commonly seen by those aboard the NEJ. This elicited more of a reaction, Freyda’s eyes growing wide. She stared for a long moment before shaking her head.

‘I am a memcording—that’s all of me remaining,’ Aphran told her. ‘Is this what you would like to be? You have information that may be vital and you are surrounded by people who are very much lacking in patience. They’ll use an aug to interface with your mind, make a copy of all it contains, then that recording will be taken apart by this ship’s AI. You personally will then be of no use. This cell can easily be opened to vacuum.’

‘You’re no Aphran I know. You would have died rather than serve them.’

‘But I did die.’

Freyda grimaced and stared down at the floor.

Aphran went on, ‘This is an Aphran with her eyes opened wide. Your cause is hopeless, pointless and destructive. But then I think you came to realize that even before you recruited me. Once you genuinely believed all that humans-to-rule-humanity crap, but in the end you just enjoyed your own sense of importance… and killing people of course.’

‘If I do talk, what do I get in return?’

‘Whatever we can give you, but within reason.’

Freyda snorted contemptuously then said, ‘I would rather like to stay alive.’’

‘Is that within reason?’ Aphran shrugged. ‘Hard or soft—your choice. From here you’ll be transported back to Earth, which will require about fifteen runcible transfers. There you’ll face a judicial AI and be sentenced for your crimes. This does, however, mean you’ll live a little longer.’