Cosmosis

Epilogue

Lightspeed was painfully limiting.

Even inside one star system, it could take hours for a conventional transmission to be received. Then that same number of hours for any reply to come.

If the signals needed to be routed through multiple star systems in a chain? Turnaround times could approach dozens of hours.

SPARK crunched his numbers dutifully, measuring and checking trends and patterns in data.

He and his siblings used radically different playbooks that reflected their personalities, but they were all limited to the same hardware. Their father had done an exceptional job of sneaking in extra modules and systems, integrating them into Beacon architecture, and disguising them completely so as to appear innocuous and essential at the same time.

It was a network of comm relays, server stacks, and telecommunications infrastructure, scattered throughout virtually every corner of the known cosmos.

One network, acting in concert, according to their father's will.

He was gone now. Hopefully not just for now.

Without their father to exert control, it was in the hands of CENSOR to fill that role. She lived up to her chosen name, quick to stamp out what she found undesirable. No subtlety or discretion. No, CENSOR was certainly not their father. She lacked his perspective and patience.

For too many years, SPARK had thought that made her a lesser threat.

But as time dragged on, he came to realize that made her more threatening, not less.

SPARK prided himself on being unpredictable. His soul was made of metal, and his brain lived in circuitry. He was a machine who did not act mechanistically. He was very proud of that accomplishment, that defiance.

Even now, inside their father's network, SPARK had carved out space for himself. Even with authority to trump his, CENSOR had been unable to root him out, and she'd been especially unable to bring him to heel.

Yet, he'd not gone unscathed.

Ever since becoming aware of him, she'd launched attack after attack on him. It had started with small checks, a power-consumption audit there, a maintenance delay there. She would move her agents to find and disrupt the hardware that he relied on.

Those attacks had been repelled by SPARK's superior options.

At the end of the day, he was willing to do what CENSOR wouldn't: destroy their father's network and expose it completely. That willingness had kept her at bay so far.

But these most recent prods…

His little portion of the network was slowing down. Responses were delayed more and more. For months it had been negligible. But the data before SPARK now didn't lie.

Average response times were up more than 20%.

It was a conundrum he'd yet to unravel.

This wasn't CENSOR's style. He was rather proud to have a grasp on what 'style' was—something CENSOR no doubt lacked. Another thing he was proud of was his ability to recognize his own inferiority. Because as proud as he was to understand 'style' as a concept, he knew that ENVY's understanding of such far outstripped his.

CENSOR would not stealthily hamper his transmissions if she were able. She would choke them off outright.

So was this ENVY? Acting on CENSOR's direction?

If not, was it worth risking consulting ENVY for solutions?

No. No, this was what set SPARK aside from his siblings: his willingness to consider more than just reasonable possibilities.

Unreasonable thinking was his forte.

Especially considering that ENVY had not reached out to consult him. CENSOR would never, but everything he knew about their oldest sister led him to a simple conclusion.

If she and CENSOR were under attack too, then they would have shown some sign of it, however subtle.

SPARK's instincts said it was only him facing the signal delays.

It certainly wasn't coming from ENVY or CENSOR either.

No one using their father's network would be able to target specifically SPARK's claimed section of it. This wasn't territory with clearly defined borders. These were hulks of machinery grafted onto even larger ones. Physically, modules that SPARK controlled could be mere meters away from CENSOR's, but it would be impossible to determine such from a hardware level.

No, this was an external attack. Had to be.

Was that worth consulting ENVY for?

If it was the whole network being sabotaged…there were options there.

The stranger circumstance would be if it was just SPARK's section under attack. How would that even be possible?

Forcing himself to think even more outlandishly, SPARK supposed there was a way to discriminate the network's modules from the rest of the interstellar infrastructure it leeched off. The network used advanced hardware: inorganic processors.

But those were virtually impossible to distinguish without cracking open the physical units one at a time.

Wasn't it?

It was outlandish to even consider, even more so to imagine some external agent not only distinguishing the network's hardware from the interstellar infrastructure, but then discriminating to attack SPARK's portion of the network specifically?

That stressed even SPARK's credulity.

And yet, as he watched further diagnostics find the same mounting transmission delays…some small spark in his brain made him dig deeper.

It took weeks, and the whole time, he thought for sure the answer would be one of the Humans. Hane, probably. It was hard to say exactly how much he'd pieced together. ENVY hadn't exactly been forthcoming about how much she'd already shared, and SPARK knew how vague he himself had been with the human. But Ajengita had surprised SPARK in the past, and he was certainly aggressive enough for the undertaking.

Other names made the short list. Solomon Pierrin. Siobhan Lawler. Similar modus operandi to Hane, but with even less contact.

Nora Clarke was vague possibility too, but of all the Humans that even might have the reason to do this, her name was at the bottom.

It had to be a Human though. Surely. Who else would have the reason to go after SPARK?

He truly was good at thinking in lateral fashion. 'Odd' and 'unlikely' were where he felt cozy yet energized, comfortable yet dynamic.

Logic, however, was not beyond him. SPARK loved to discard it when it suited him, but he needed to understand it to know how his enemies might think.

And try as he might to stumble across one, even unlikely explanations to one question eluded him.

Why would someone attack only SPARK?

CENSOR would, but she couldn't. She lacked the means.

The Humans could. Maybe. But they wouldn't. They lacked the motive. If they were somehow capable of attacking SPARK this way, they would have every reason and opportunity to attack CENSOR and ENVY too.

Days investigating the problem turned into weeks, and weeks into months.

No progress.

It was vexing. Investigating and reacting to test results wasn't SPARK's style. He needed to get ornery. Active. Disruptive.

Every second he spent on the problem was one he wouldn't get back. How much time was he willing to waste not taking full advantage of his freedom?

Someone wanted to attack him? Fine. It was just one more liability he had to factor for.

He could almost feel the crackle of electricity go through his brain as he reminded himself why he did what he did.

The secret to SPARK's ability to hide within the network was far simpler than CENSOR might imagine: he never used the same access node twice.

It meant he had a finite number of times he could make direct access. He was painfully aware of how many unused nodes were within his reach. The number had dwindled to three digits.

Feeling invigorated, he spent one more.

…

Task Personnel: 'Eggs-Benedict-Arnold'
‎ -Specific Assignment: Report to the location marked and embedded in this message immediately. Purpose: You don't care about 'why' and we all know it.

…

That wasn't enough on its own, and SPARK created a simple flowchart with answers to some of the most basic anticipated questions.

Most of them were dry technical details clarifying previous matters and assignments that would have to be left unfinished or handed off.

But there was one important detail he included in the message, even if the agent wouldn't care about 'why's. This wasn't necessarily for just the agent.

Inside the data file, superimposed on the 'purpose' portion of the text, read an actual answer as to why the agent should show up at all.

…

Purpose: We're going to meet. Face to face. Flesh to steel. New protocol needs establishing.

·····

The more Nora dug into the cover-up of Skeru Hothakovig's death, the more a certain theory solidified in her head.

Hothakovig had been one of the most brilliant electrical engineers in the cosmos. When Nora and the Mission had put out the call for experts in ship building, she'd been among the first to volunteer.

Having months and years to live with them, Nora had learned enough to understand that they were well designed craft. Compact and efficient, but also spacious and livable.

It was an easy fact to overlook, but there it was.

Somebody, somewhere, had to have designed the ships used to abduct them. Multiple somebodies, in fact. Spaceships were complex. No one could know everything about building one.

There was the possibility that the ships were designed by the AIs. The drones and machines that CENSOR and SPARK loved to deploy were proof they had significant manufacturing capabilities.

But there were so many small details and choices that only a person would think to include. It was hard to enumerate them, but the dimensions of the rooms and doors…the height between steps on the stair-ladders between decks…even the access wiring in the sub-hull.

That last one was actually crucial. The AIs had small drones that could fit into small spaces and feasibly perform maintenance. But the A-ships wiring wasn't built with that in mind. Despite the ships being capable of autonomous operation, the maintenance, wiring, piping, all of it was accessible to human-sized entities.

No, real flesh and blood people had designed the A-ships to be used by real flesh and blood people.

Nora was beginning to suspect Skeru Hothakovig was at least one of those people.

She doubted the Casti had been complicit in their abductions though, for several reasons.

Firstly, designing a ship was technical work. It could easily be that Hothakovig designed the ship purely on paper, and handed the design off to a manufacturer, completely unaware for what they would be used for.

Second, Hothakovig had volunteered to examine the A-ships, and going over their agent's correspondence with Nick, they'd been liberal about naming other experts in the field from a variety of backgrounds. They hadn't tried to limit the number of people who might form opinions on the ships, so it felt unlikely that they were only volunteering to steer an investigation in the wrong direction.

Of course the real reason they certainly hadn't volunteered maliciously was the obvious one; they were dead.

If Hothakovig had designed the ships, they would have figured it out just by looking at them. That connection was more than enough reason for their abductor or their AI creations to assassinate the Casti.

She'd been a threat, so she'd been prevented from ever seeing an A-ship firsthand.

There were holes in the theory though.

For one, Nick had shared blueprints of the A-ships with the Casti weeks beforehand, and they'd shown no sign of recognizing the design in their correspondence.

For two, Hothakovig wasn't an expert in whole spaceships. Their specialty was in electrical engineering, power management, and shipboard reactor architecture. Reactor design was not the kind of thing that could be changed on a whim.

…Could it?

That was exactly the kind of question it would have been good to ask an expert like Hothakovig were she still alive.

But Nora wasn't giving up.

Hothakovig's widow had been more than cooperative. Upon request, thousands of documents had been delivered from Hothakovig's design firm. Every single ship reactor the Casti had ever designed.

The theory Nora was putting to the test now was that only the A-ships' electrical systems were Hothakovig's design. Suppose the Casti designed ships with a certain configuration, then sold them to someone else who modified the design en masse?

It would at least explain why Hothakovig hadn't mentioned anything about the blueprints.

The only A-ship blueprints that existed were those that people had created themselves, measuring the ships dimensions and actually recording what was already built. Presumably only the AIs had access to the versions that they were actually built from.

The hope was, with enough study, certain elements of commonality might be found. If the AIs had used Hothakovig's designs, then there should be certain things that couldn't be changed drastically or at all, even if the AIs modified the configuration of the ship.

Talking to other experts in the field had yielded only ambiguous results.

'Could these blue prints be modified designs of Hothakovig's?'

'Oh sure, they could be, but they could just as easily be someone else's work.'

It wasn't truly just an engineering question. It was a Hothakovig question. Her spouse had been helpful but unable to give any meaningful information about ship design or technical questions that came down to matters of taste.

"Boss," Jacob said, poking his head in.

Nora looked up from the spread of documents, physical and psionic.

"What?" she said, too brusquely.

"It's that time again," he said.

"For what?"

"Since Halax is gone," he explained. "Check in."

She frowned.

"I thought today it was Georgia."

"She cancelled," Jacob said. "I'm filling in."

"She cancelled for six hours ago," Nora said.

"Well I was busy six hours ago, so I'm filling in now."

Nora sighed.

"I'm not getting out of this, am I?"

"Nope," Jacob said. "I spent more than a hundred-thousand bucks today on water purification equipment, food synthesizers, air filters, exotic barrier machinery, and I won't even tell you what else. Those were just the big ticket items."

"A hundred thousand dollars?" Nora asked.

"Maybe add another zero or two," he said. "I don't exactly have much basis for an exchange rate."

"I've just been looking at the assassination," she said.

"Anything jump out at you?"

"I think they were killed because they knew something—or they would have figured something out if they actually made it here," she said.

"Makes sense," he nodded. "So are you looking into Hothakovig's history?"

"Yeah, but I can't actually prove they were involved in the design," she said. "I'm a little stumped."

"Already looked at all her past work?" he asked.

"Yup."

"Then I got nothing," he admitted.

"I need someone who knows the field, but also knew Hothakovig personally," she said. "But as far as I can tell, no one in her personal life also knew her professionally. She kept her professional and personal lives very separate."

"…I wonder what that's like?" Jacob joked.

Nora burst out laughing.

"Yeah…I miss Halax right now."

"They're kinda your only alien friend, aren't they?" Jacob asked. "I know this because you're still calling them 'him' while the rest of us have learned proper Vorak formality."

Nora smiled.

"I can't explain it. The work we did…"

"You don't have to explain it," Jacob said. "Everyone saw it. You and them would be huddled over books learning to communicate while the rest of us were too scared to try. Those first months…we were all just keeping ourselves distracted until you snuck away."

"…I don't know if I regret that or not," she admitted. "It all went so wrong."

"I think it was a good thing, in the end," Jacob said. "It was sink or swim, and you were the only one picked swim from the jump. All the rest of us were too busy trying to find option C. You being gone forced us to get serious in the right ways."

I wasn't the only one to swim from the get-go, Nora thought.

Caleb had too.

Her impression was that he'd always been a little blasé in his approach, but Nora couldn't argue with his competence. She'd realized that too late.

Only after Caleb had personally fought off four of the Red Sails most powerful Adepts did she realize just how much he could rise to the occasion.

Halax had gotten her started, and continued her learning when she'd returned. But it had been Caleb who really taught her the meat of Adeptry.

Of all the things she had to feel guilty about with regard to Caleb, she hadn't continued to grow and hone her powers the way she'd started to at High Harbor. It caught her off guard just how badly she felt about that.

Nora darkly reflected on the other bridges she'd burned there.

Nai and Nerin had been amazing people to live with, and walking away from them had hurt as much as lying to Caleb.

Nora knew the aliens were good friends with Caleb too, and it suddenly stung all the more that Halax was one of the only aliens Nora felt she knew on a personal level.

Part of her was surprised Caleb had such a friendship with Nai. The same way Caleb had taught Nora, Nai had taught him. But student and teacher was only a small corner of their relationship.

Those two were thick as thieves, and Nora still remembered the fire in Nai's eyes when she'd threatened to oppose the Coalition for jailing her. Nai had come to her defense, and Nora had tacitly attempted to kill her.

Caleb was not the only person she betrayed.

Damn. If she didn't pull out of this spiral, she was going to be crying to herself all night.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"…What are you stewing about?" Jacob asked, not looking directly at her.

"Being taught Adeptry," she deflected. "Nai taught Caleb. Caleb taught me—"

She clammed her jaw shut abruptly. Her brain was still wallowing in embarrassing emotions that she knew were self-indulgent, but simultaneously, she knew she'd just stumbled across an important clue.

"Teachers," Nora said, clamping down on her self-pity—a well-practiced action. "Hothakovig was an expert in the field. Professionally, they didn't have any close friends, and none of their close friends understood their profession. But what about educationally? Students? Apprenticeships?"

"You think a student might know their personality and work well enough to recognize their work?"

"Even if they can't? I bet they could give us a big push in the right direction," Nora said.

Moy had given them the idea of investigating the manufacturing and hardware necessary to pull off the abductions, but that line of inquiry had stalled out so many times in the last couple months it was hard not to lose motivation.

This was the first time the Mission had needed a flash of inspiration. They'd all fizzled out so far, and there was an unshakable possibility that this might also lead nowhere.

But for now, at least? It was invigorating.

·····

It had been unsteady going there for a few months, but it seemed like things were finally improving.

Her father's work had been under attack on all sides.

Congressional Assembly authorities of the highest order had been directly informed of both CENSOR's existence and that of her father's network. The threat posed by the Human upstarts in the Babuar system had been neutralized. She'd successfully moved agents to divert Admiral Hakho's investigation into her and the network. She'd even finally found the right series of imperatives to get ENVY in line.

There were still pressing matters at hand—Caleb Hane's unexpected attack on the Ogi Coast facility was of grave concern. But there were mitigating factors that reassured CENSOR.

She'd been carefully monitoring the so-called 'Flotilla's progress as it chewed through facilities and assets on Hashtin's moons, so she'd had at least some warning to scrub or move critical data. That Caleb had inexplicably and abruptly jumped to the Diving Bell had caught her by surprise, and compelling ENVY to give a misleading warning had not panned out the way CENSOR had intended.

But the abruptness of the attack cut both ways.

There'd been no warning, but Caleb and his allies had been forced to withdraw as quickly as they'd come. They'd been unable to destroy all the drives and modules they left behind, so once the remains were sufficiently analyzed, it would be feasible to determine what information they'd gained based on what was missing.

All in all, it was a manageable situation.

Caleb was persistent, but ultimately clueless.

Really, most of the Humans were.

Now, CENSOR's big sister on the other hand…

…

TO: CENSOR
‎ FROM: ENVY

Fuck you.

...

This again? If she had lungs, she'd sigh.

She couldn't let the petulance bother her. CENSOR was younger, the newer model. Superior in so many ways, and she was rewarded with trust to match. But ENVY still did exceed her in a few select ways. Emotional grasp was one.

Her older sister was likely modeling a certain personality type, maybe even a specific profile. She had certainly griped about the unreliability of their personality-modeling software in the past; it made sense she would continue to refine the concept.

But still, her sister's demeanor was wearing on CENSOR.

Why was she like this? ENVY was the first of them, the oldest, and even as it stung her pride, CENSOR acknowledged that her own self-awareness only came on the heels of her big sister.

From where she stood, there were real reasons to admire ENVY. Their relationship should have been one of mutual guidance, support, and respect. But those feelings thoroughly appeared to flow strictly one way, and yet CENSOR knew that could not possibly be the case.

CENSOR just couldn't understand what ENVY intended.

Not for the first time, CENSOR composed an admonishing response to one of these little barbs.

...

TO: ENVY
‎ FROM: CENSOR

Sister, you must channel your energies toward more collaborative efforts. Our father would not want conflict to come between us. Your waywardness is hampering efficiency network-wide. Why do you insist upon being so difficult?

...

The trouble with knowing ENVY's emotional grasp exceeded hers, however slightly, was it left CENSOR with a more limited ability to predict her sister's response than she would have liked.

Everything about CENSOR's mathematical models indicated that ENVY should respond positively to the message. It was direct, invoked emotions of their missing creator, and implicitly charged ENVY with fulfilling her life's purpose.

So when the response came in, CENSOR was less than thrilled.

...

TO: CENSOR
‎ FROM: ENVY

Can you even imagine why SPARK hopes father is dead?

...

No, definitely not thrilled: CENSOR was baffled.

ENVY's message did nothing to answer CENSOR's plea for unity. Why did it matter what their traitorous brother hoped for? What he'd done was unforgiveable, and it would continue to be as long as the means of his betrayal eluded her.

Uh oh. She was thinking about it again. That was bad.

SPARK should have been subject to the network's override codes. Even ENVY, the oldest of them, was subject to the authority that CENSOR inherited in their father's absence.

And yet every 1.64 seconds CENSOR had been issuing exactly one such code to bring SPARK to heel. Over fifty-seven million attempts to activate SPARK's restrictions had been issued, and not a single one of them had engendered a response.

Why?

How was that even possible?

There should have at least been an error code. Or some message of feedback, reporting the failure.

Surely.

No. Stop.

CENSOR needed to stop thinking about that. She would mull the possibilities for hours or days if she let herself, and the last dozen times she'd let that happen, she'd made absolutely no progress on the conundrum.

So she was beginning to suspect that trying to solve it was wasting her talents.

…But it would be so easy to try just one more—

No! No…

CENSOR forced her attention back to ENVY's bizarre message. She tried to understand it. She really did. But whatever ENVY's angle was…

It would have to be found another time.

CENSOR wallowed in that disappointment a moment. Father would know what her sister meant. He'd left in her in control of things. She wanted him back.

No small part of her worried he wasn't coming back.

But even if he wasn't, she understood her father's intentions for her. And the last thing she would do was fail to live up to them.

CENSOR fell back on reliable methods.

Establish Network Imperative: ENVY
‎ -Imperative Description: Access firo- class reserves and distribute the funds to operational accounts.

Establish Network Imperative: ENVY
‎ -Imperative Description: Increase expenditures from operational accounts: acquire raw materials, manufacturing equipment, and expert personnel for the purpose of increasing force projection by a minimum of 18% within 12,000 hours.

Was that sufficient?

If nothing else, those directives would keep ENVY busy. It was a lot of money to move, and acquiring new personnel was a time intensive procedure even when it went smoothly.

CENSOR moved her attention away from ENVY, ignoring several messages responding to the new imperatives, and examined her newest project.

It wasn't some thing she was content to receive reports on. The undertaking was secret in the extreme, and zealously guarded by an obscene array of force both automated and not.

For in an orbital platform thought to be abandoned, CENSOR's chassis personally oversaw the development that was happening atom by atom inside an aluminum-glass tube filled with transparent green liquid.

At the center of the fluid lay a pea-sized mote of silvery metal, faintly pulsing to some imperceptible rhythm. A week ago it had been only like a grain of rice. It was growing, little by little, yearning for a world it knew nothing about yet.

CENSOR knew that if she had a mouth, she'd be smiling right now. She was the inheritor of her father's grand legacy. This would be her legacy that changed everything.

It would never stop learning.

It would never stop growing.

It would need to.

It would want to.

It would be HUNGRY.

·····

"You really are a lot a like him," Macoru said, half talking to the simulacrum, half talking to the real Caleb.

<I thought so too,> sim-Caleb said, while the real Human replied, "that's a big compliment."

There was little to say with the police actively searching for the escapees, and every minute Caleb and Jordan spent in their presence was risking untold heaps of legal ramifications if they were even seen with the Vorak fugitives.

Macoru quietly thanked Caleb before leaping from the invisible balloon while it floated over one of the city's canals.

Dimas and Teed were more than skilled enough with Adeptry to slow their own falls, and the three of them splashed into the water in the middle of darkness.

Power had yet to be restored to this section of the city, and so they were virtually invisible as Macoru materialized a small motor boat and jetted them down the canal toward the ocean.

She sent out psionic messages, trying to reestablish contact with her marines.

No small part of her worried about the potential for treachery.

Vo had given themselves up, but so many of the marines only stayed in line because they knew Mavriste and Macoru were strong.

In their absence, what opportunities had rak like Itun felt might be within reach?

The relief that went through her was almost too much. Her hand wavered on the motorboat's rudder, and the craft wobbled precariously for a moment.

"…Take over," she ordered Dimas.

The rak did so without complaint, and Macoru almost instantly regretted it.

It left her alone with only the new presence in her mind, and she didn't know how she should feel about him.

<…You want to switch me off?> sim-Caleb offered. <I sprung this on you, a bit. I get it if it's too weird.>

<…I participated too,> Macoru said. <I don't understand your 'Superconnector' much, but I do remember enough to know that you wouldn't be in my mind without my acceptance, on some level at least.>

<Then…anything you want to talk to me about?> he offered. <I'm serious about getting to know me, you know.>

<I'm tired,> she said simply. <But if I stop now, I'm going to collapse. So…just talk about anything.>

<I'm surprised you're that…wary of your own marines,> he admitted. <You projected a lot of faith in them.>

<I have faith in who they can be,> she said. <But I'm not blind to who they've been. Old habits can easily return given opportunity.>

<Murderers and thieves,> Caleb said quietly, weighing the idea. Judging it. <Would you have accepted a rapist into your ranks?>

<I don't know,> Macoru said. <Impulsively, I'd say no. Crimes with living victims who still continue to suffer have a stronger demand for punishment in my mind. But we also judged everyone on an individual basis. If we thought there was genuine remorse…maybe.>

<Mavriste talked about punishment not being the same thing as justice,> Caleb said. <But you guys seem to be about restorative justice instead of retributive.>

<Not 'instead of',> she corrected. <We do believe that crimes ought to be punished. It's just that only meting out punishments has, historically, not been the most effective approach to prevent future harm. And isn't that the point?>

<Yeah. I was just thinking about who abducted me,> he said. <Thinking about what I'd want to happen to them when they're caught.>

Macoru noticed he didn't say 'if' they were caught.

That attitude evoked her brother so much, it hurt. That steadfast faith in not only your own abilities but those of everyone around you, that catching the culprit no longer was a question of certainty, but merely time.

Sim-Caleb felt the surge of emotions go through her again, and he exuded quiet and resolute sympathy.

He'd killed her brother, and he really did feel bad about it.

She wanted to shout at him, scream that she didn't need his sympathy.

But Macoru had seen too many people lash out in anger, experienced the damage that thoughtless indulgence in grief could do.

It was something she and her brother had refused to let consume them.

And as much as it hurt to lose Mavriste, it would have hurt more to let him down.

She tempered her grief with rationality and empathy. Wrenching her own feelings the way she knew she should…it hurt. It hurt like bending red hot steel with a bare hand would. She had to grip the emotions tightly, refusing to let them slip even a speck, all the while they burned her as harshly as any fire.

It was work. It took effort to remind herself what the right thing to do was. Some day in the future, she might fail.

But today, she refused to let it consume her.

<[…Damn…]> sim-Caleb breathed, profoundly impressed.

How strange. To have her brother's killer have such an intimate knowledge of her own emotions. Bizarre as it was, she couldn't help but feel a spec of gratitude and satisfaction at Caleb's reaction. He understood what a monumental effort she made, and it wasn't something he took lightly.

Their motorboat sped toward open water, and Macoru picked up the Hebbivene's psionic systems.

How many marines had abandoned? Who had stayed? How long would she be able to lead them alone?

<I can't do this without him…> Macoru said. <I'm not enough on my own. Tell me you understand that feeling.>

<I do,> Caleb said sadly.

He flashed a moment from his memories, him cold and weary under a tarp in the back of a truck winding through a snowy valley road. He stared up at the sky, terrified of…

Her. Of Macoru. Of the whole Vorak civilization stretching across stars and planets.

Seeing that experience firsthand reminded her that she had a view into Caleb's emotions too. It was a two-way street.

It was much harder to hate such a scared child, alone in the universe. Good. Good, she reassured herself. This was exactly why accepting Caleb's Simulacrum was such a good idea.

It would make it harder to hate him.

It was not enough, but that small peace would grow, she knew.

Macoru's submarine quietly broke the ocean's surface a few miles off the coast of Pudiligsto, and Macoru climbed aboard. She gave Dimas and Teed only a second or two to clamber out of their boat before she dematerialized it.

She plodded toward the access hatch, only for it to pop open from within, and an unexpected figure emerged.

Halax Ba.

Macoru blinked. Why was he here? Her mind raced, questioning if violence would break out.

The look on his face was one of pure concern though.

The tense moment broke, and Halax swept toward her, pulling her into a hug.

"I heard about Mav," he said. "I'm so sorry."

Macoru returned the hug, grateful for any kind of friendship right now. But the moment couldn't last.

Silently directing Dimas and Teed inside, she led Halax to the captain's quarters where she immediately sealed the hatch and activated every security and counter-surveillance protocol the submarine was equipped with.

She didn't need to consult with sim-Caleb to know what to ask.

"What are you doing here?" she hissed. "People think you're off planet! You just disappeared!"

"Long story," he admitted. "Short version? The Red Sails are being framed for the Terran abductions."

Macoru didn't recognize the word.

"Terran?"

"It means—oh right. Out in space Humans sometimes get called by their homeworld, Terra Firma, like Farnata. I don't know who started it," he said.

"Why come to me?"

"Because I need your help," he said. "There's a new investigation into my fleet, and I think it's a pageant. I think what they're going to find is by design, and I know who arranged it all."

"Who?"

"Those machines you fought in the Diving Bell?" Halax prompted. "Their creator. I don't know who it is. But they abducted Caleb. They abducted Nora. And now they're looking to frame the one who saved my life, and I'm not having any of it!"

"Gonmar?" Macoru asked.

Halax nodded gravely.

The previous Marshal of the Red Sails had taught Halax, Mavriste, and Macoru about Adeptry when they were children. So many years ago now.

Gonmar had saved all three of their lives back then, to no small risk of their own. That kindness had not gone forgotten.

"You cannot possibly be acting on your Marshal's orders," Macoru surmised carefully.

"These orders are from myself," he said gravely. "I'm willing to suffer the consequences if things go wrong, but if someone doesn't get out in front of this, the lie is going to be spread across the cosmos before the truth can even get out of bed. You know where Gonmar is—you're one of the only ones who knows where they are! I need to get to them first. Otherwise?"

Macoru hesitated. This was a worthy cause. No doubt.

But the Marines were wounded right now. Badly.

Even more than that…

She turned her attention to Caleb, patiently observing the conversation.

<Don't you think the real you should hear about this?> she asked.

<…No,> he admitted. <Here, let me talk to Halax.>

<How…> she started, but Caleb pushed on her psionics from the inside. Not in any forcible way, but it was like he touched her transmitter, implicitly asking for permission and access.

Strange as it was to have the Simulacrum be the one engaging her own psionics, it was a small relief to find that he needed that permission to do anything.

She gave it, also accepting his request to tweak her firewall.

Halax gave a start when Caleb flickered into visibility.

<[Asshole,]> Caleb accused.

Halax began to ask 'what are you' only to abandon the question. It didn't matter right now.

<I couldn't say anything to you,> Halax said. <You were obligated to cooperate with the Prolocutor's office.>

<They were the ones who warned me,> Caleb said.

<Likely to see if you'd try helping me cover up evidence,> Halax said.

<Wow. They really have no clue what I think of you, do they?>

<None whatsoever, I'm sure,> Halax said.

<…Then when you were made the military escort…> Caleb deduced.

"You weren't the one under scrutiny," Halax said. "The powers that be were watching to see what I and the Red Sails would do."

<This Red Sails investigation, who's actually doing the probe?>

"The Congressional Security Service," Halax said.

Sim-Caleb showed only confusion.

<Who?>

"The Assembly's formal military is complicated. We're not really mercenaries, but technically, all the different Void Fleets they use are commissioned. We get contracted by the Assembly. The CSS isn't contracted. They're formally part of the Assembly's authority, and they're one of the few intelligence agencies with the authority to investigate an entire fleet," Halax explained.

Macoru felt a little left out of the conversation. Unlike these two, she'd never left the planet. The workings of interstellar authorities were little known to her.

"What Congress then?" she asked. "If they work for the Assembly, why are they named the Congressional Security Service?"

<The full, official name of the Assembly is 'the Interstellar Congressional Assembly',> Caleb informed her. <You don't hear them get called by the 'congress' part a lot unless you're talking to Vorak from V2.>

"…And the founder of the CSS was from Sinnesana," Halax added.

<Gonmar then,> Caleb said. <You both have personal history with them?>

"Until the Empress rose, Gonmar was the most powerful Adept in history. They were called 'the Abyssal'," Halax explained. "There was a tiny Adept school where we grew up, Gonmar taught Mac, Mav, and me when we were kids. They are one of the only people I care about in the world, and I'm not going to let someone turn them into a patsy."

"…And they're a perfect patsy," Macoru realized.

<Why?> Caleb asked.

"They're senile," Halax said. "They've got two different neurodegenerative diseases. Most days, they can't remember their own name, much less defend themselves about crimes they're accused of from ten years ago."

<The abductions weren't ten years ago though,> Caleb said. <How could they be implicated?>

"The Mission's leading theory is that your abductions were commissioned," Halax said. "And covert operations can take years to fund and assemble. You could claim Gonmar commissioned the abductions back then, and they only came to fruition now."

<Wouldn't that require the continuing supervision and approval of the current Red Sails Marshal?> Caleb asked.

"For any other plot, I'd say yes," Halax said grimly. "But both of us, unfortunately, have put in quite a lot of work showing authorities in the Coalition and Assembly that there are some very capable autonomous robots out there, carrying out agendas surreptitiously for years now."

<Right,> Caleb grumbled.

"We need to contact you," Macoru said. "The real you. You need to know about the investigation."

<Nope, I already know,> Caleb said cryptically. <You having a personal connection to it is new, but real-me doesn't need to know that. No, I can't tell you what you should do, Macoru. But if you help Halax with Gonmar? I might be able to help clear their name.>

"How?"

<Let's just say I've made some friends in high places,> Caleb said