“I think everybody should get back, Cap. Just in case. I’ve got a line, I think, into the system. Enough to trigger the open routine, at least, but I have no idea what security there might be and, honestly, it’d probably take me a week to figure it out. The defensive routines are heavily protected, much harder to reach than the lock controls.” She turned and looked back at the rest of the crew clustered around her. “I’m just going to trigger the routine and see if the door opens…and whatever else happens happens.”

  Lorillard stared back for a few seconds, and it was clear from the expression on his face he was less than thrilled about the amount of guesswork in the plan. But whatever went through his mind, he obviously didn’t come up with any alternatives, and he finally nodded and said, “Alright, everybody, pull back about five meters each way down the hall.” A pause. “And, Sy, you…”

  “Don’t worry, Cap. I’m setting up a five second delay on this. I’ll get out of the way, too.”

  Lorillard frowned, and Andi felt her own face twisting into somewhat of a grimace. Five seconds didn’t seem like very long.

  “Do it.” The captain didn’t sound happy, but Andi knew there weren’t many alternatives, save for returning to the ship empty handed and crawling back to Dannith with their tails between their legs. She knew enough about her shipmates—and herself—to be sure that wasn’t really an option.

  It took more than a haunted old space station to rattle Nightrunner’s crew.

  At least to rattle them enough to send them running.

  “Okay, Cap…I’m all set.” Sylene stood up and took a quick look in each direction. The crew had split into two groups, each of them standing a few meters down one side of the hall. Gregor had the massive weapon he carried in his hands, at the ready—some kind of autocannon, Andi knew, a gun intended to be mounted on a tripod when wielded by anyone less enormous than Nightrunner’s resident giant. The others simply looked edgy and ready for action, their hands hovering near weapons.

  Andi’s own hand lay on her pistol, half-wrapped around the grip, but leaving the gun in the holster for the moment. She was quick, and she knew it. She defied anything to come out of that hatch before she could pull out the gun and put half a dozen shots in it.

  Andi believed in avoiding arrogance…but she wasn’t immune from a bit of cockiness herself, at times.

  “Everybody ready?” The question was almost rhetorical. Nightrunner’s crew were all veterans, and they knew where they were. They were ready.

  Lorillard flashed a last glance at both groups, and then he said, “Okay, Sy…do it.”

  Nightrunner’s computer wizard stared down at the tablet, and then she set it down on the floor. She eased herself up, crouching forward, and she tapped the screen one last time. She was up in an instant afterward, lunging—half run, half wild dive—down the hall and away from the hatch.

  Andi stared straight ahead, watching, waiting. She imagined all sorts of threats coming out—security robots, sprays of automatic fire, even deadly beams from high-energy lasers.

  Then, the door slid open, and every muscle in Andi’s body tensed. She’d only half believed Sylene would manage to get the hatch open—and release whatever nightmare lay beyond—and the sight and sound of success filled her bloodstream with adrenalin, he body preparing itself to face whatever dire threat came out of the now opened portal.

  But there was nothing.

  The two groups of the crew stared down the corridor from opposite ends, their eyes moving from the hatch to each other and back again, silent for close to a minute. Finally, Lorillard’s arms moved out, a gesture for all of them to stay where they were. He moved forward, slowly, his eyes locked on the open doorway. Andi hadn’t noticed him pulling his rifle around, but it was there, in his hands, ready for whatever might still come out of the hatch.

  He crept forward until he was entirely in front of the door, and he looked directly into it. All kinds of images flashed before Andi’s eyes, watching the captain obliterated by a burst of hypervelocity projectiles or incinerated by a great gout of flame. That was all foolish, of course. Anything like the thoughts in her mind would damage the very station the defensive system was trying to protect. Death, if it came to any of them from the system’s internal defenses, would be far more prosaic.

  But that didn’t mean she wasn’t about to see the captain, her friend, die in the next few seconds, as he stood there, peering into the unknown. She held her breath, watching, her hand still resting on the pistol at her side.

  Nothing happened.

  Lorillard stood where he was, seeming perhaps as surprised as Andi that he was still there, unmolested. “It’s another corridor,” he said softly. “It’s long. I can’t see the end.”

  That made sense, to an extent. The crew had been moving across the width of one of the station’s rings, but the new corridor, if it was perpendicular to the one they were in now, would extend all around the ring.

  Andi stepped forward, the first of the crew to do so, and Sylene was just a half second behind her. The two peered around the edge of the opening. Andi was still on edge—she suspected she would be until Nightrunner was well on its way back to Dannith—but the sense of immediate, impending doom had receded significantly. The corridor looked similar to the one they were in, but she could see from where she stood that there were doors and hatches clearly visible at various points. It was a bit narrower, but still wide enough for them to march down two abreast.

  At least if Gregor wasn’t one of the two.

  “Alright, let’s not waste anymore time. We came out here to find old tech—and while this entire place is a marvel, we can’t exactly shove an entire space station into Nightrunner’s hull. This one’s beyond us, at least most of it is, but it looks to me like these information systems in here are working vastly better than anything we’ve run into before. A hold full of the circuit boards and processors running this place will put us all on a beach somewhere, living in mansions and boring the locals with tales of our days as adventurers in the Badlands.”

  Andi suspected the upbeat tone of Lorillard’s short speech was intended, at least in part, to bolster morale. But that didn’t mean every word of it wasn’t true. In her two years on Nightrunner, Andi had never seen old tech as well preserved and functional as the station. Digging through centuries of dust for broken scraps was more commonly the work of the Badlands prospector. She’d never even heard of anyone finding something like the space station. She’d moved forward, prowled down the corridor with her shipmates, but only as she stood there, letting Lorillard’s words sink in, did she fully realize.

  She was close to her dream, to her—so long seemingly impossible—goal of achieving truly vast wealth, and the power to protect herself that came with it. She’d always believed it, in one sense, at least…and she’d always doubted it as well, even if she’d never faced that realization. It had seemed so unattainable, but now there were standing there, in a vast imperial construct, full of technology beyond anything on the Rim.

  “Let’s go, Cap. Let’s push on and get what we came for.” Jammar was near the back of the group on the ship side of the new corridor, but his response was the first verbal one to Lorillard’s words.

  “Yes, let’s go.”

  “Push on…let’s find that old tech.”

  Most of the crew chimed in with one version or another of the same sentiment. They’d been scared, and no doubt they still were, but Lorillard had rallied them, at least to an extent. Andi wasn’t sure if anyone had really understood what had just happened but her. The Marine had told her about leading men and women into battle, about reaching them on a level that existed below their fear, and even their good sense that told them of danger. She’d always respected Lorillard as a leader, but now her admiration grew.

  She had been silent, but she stepped out in front of the corridor and looked over at the captain. “What do you say, Cap? Time to press on?”

  Lorillard looked back and nodded. “Absolutely. Let’s go find some choice tech, and then get the hell out of here. A few billion credits will do well for us, we don’t have to be pigs about it. Maybe we’ll even tip the navy off after we’re done. Anonymously, of course.”

  Andi felt a bitter reaction, for a few seconds, but it faded quickly. She had the same resentment the others did for the Confederation’s naval forces. She was a sort of patriot, to an extent at least, but she still harbored her share of anger and resentment. Certainly, for the squalor of the Gut and the abuses of Parsephon’s government and industrialists. She could believe her homeworld was one of the worst in the Confederation, perhaps even the worst, but she didn’t believe for a second that there weren’t similar places, planets where people died in misery without tasting the slightest morsel of the vaunted liberty and protection of the Confederation.

  She was furious, as well, at the harassment Nightrunner’s crew had suffered, that all prospectors had. Confederation law forbade private missions into the Badlands, and save for properly licensed research expeditions, ships heading out to explore became criminal enterprises the instant they entered an imperial artifact or scooped up a handful of crushed old electronics.

  Worse, perhaps, was the uneven way the law was applied. To a great extent, the prospectors were tolerated, and yet, at times they were chased down, boarded, even imprisoned. Andi could accept different points of view—to an extent—but uneven application of laws destroyed any justice that might have existed in them.

  “The navy can go…” Sylene spoke, but she let her words trail off before she finished. She had begun to say what Andi was thinking. What they all were thinking.

  “This isn’t a discussion to have now.” Lorillard, clearly sorry he’d added the last words to what he’d said. “But remember, you’re Confederation citizens. I have my grievances, as all of you do, but be damned glad you weren’t born in the Union…or that your ancestors didn’t live out here, where so many billions died long ago.”

  There was a spark in Lorillard’s speech Andi had never seen before. She didn’t know much about the captain’s past, and she’d certainly seen him furious at naval harassment. Lorillard knew some damned fine curse words, and he’d never been hesitant to fire a few out when the ship was hiding or running from patrols. Andi had thought she’d known just about every way to swear, a side benefit of growing up in the Gut, but she’d learned a few more since she’d signed on the Nightrunner.

  Andi was focused on the task at hand, and not on thinking about justice in the Confederation, or lack thereof, but Lorillard’s words stuck with her, hanging just behind her conscious thoughts, waiting to return to the forefront as soon as the danger had passed.

  It was hard to consider herself lucky for being born in the Gut, but she’d managed to escape it as well. Would she have in the Union? Or were the Andi’s born in that totalitarian nightmare trapped forever in their miserable serfdom?

  “Andi, take the lead with me.” Lorillard’s words sliced through the distraction, grabbing her attention like an iron vice.

  “Yes, Cap.” She’d moved forward, and she focused her thoughts on the mission. She could philosophize another day, try to figure out the Confederation, the Union, even who she herself truly was…when she was somewhere other than in the guts of a dead imperial artifact.

  First, she had a job to do. It was time to find old tech, to score riches beyond the imaginings of the masses, back in the Gut or on any of a hundred planets.

  It was time to find some juicy old tech.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Abandoned Imperial Station

  Orbiting Zensoria, Osiron VI

  Year 301 AC

  “Hold.”

  The single word rattled off the high ceiling of the vast room, stopping Andi in her tracks. Stopping all of her comrades.

  Her hand went to her side again, to the pistol, ready to draw at any second. But she waited. She had no idea what was happening, but she knew the last thing any of them needed was some kind of fight they could avoid.

  “Who are you?” It seemed Captain Lorillard agreed with her assessment. His voice was calm, controlled, even assertive. He’d challenged the command with a demand for information, and he’d delivered the words with a level of focused authority she doubted she could have matched.

  “I am Intelligence Sigma-7684, first activated Imperial Year 8,525, uploaded to Station Zensoria Primus, Imperial Year 8,526.”

  Andi stood, frozen, stunned at what she was hearing. She’d caught vague references to the old imperial dating system and calendar before, but nothing so clear and specific.

  Was the empire really over eight thousand years old when it fell?

  It was an amount of time she could barely comprehend. The three centuries since the Cataclysm had always seemed an eternity to her.

  Andi watched and listened, in fear, but also in hypnotic fascination. The artificial intelligence—and, she knew, of course, that’s what it had to be—spoke naturally, a bit of formality in its speech patterns perhaps, but then it was a military installation. Even the Marine had spoken with a reasonably strict cadence in his voice, a brittleness to his manner of speech.

  Not entirely unlike the machine speaking to them.

  Or on the verge of threatening us…

  Andi had dealt with many AIs, the first when she was sneaking into houses in the Heights to steal. She didn’t really understand the systems back then, but she’d developed enough familiarity with them to sidestep their defensive reactions, and even disable them once or twice. Later, of course, she’d become much more experienced with Nightrunner’s AI, and Sylene had taken her behind the curtain, so to speak, showed her how the thing worked, how its programming functioned.

  None of the AIs she’d seen anywhere had been as natural-sounding as this one. She’d almost have believed there was a human being at the other end of the comm line, someone watching them, talking to them.

  But that was not possible. The worlds of the Badlands were lifeless, save for small animals and insects encroaching on the remains of past human habitation. The Cataclysm had spared the Rim, if not from mass death and suffering, at least from total extermination. But the worlds closer to the galactic core, the ones that had been more populated and advanced, had fallen the hardest. The chance that Nightrunner’s crew had stumbled onto some kind of human survivor, three centuries after the Cataclysm was nil.

  They were talking to a machine, and it was one they’d never seen the likes of before. Andi was at a loss as to how to proceed, and she was grateful she wasn’t in command.

  “What should we call you?” Lorillard took a step forward as he spoke, probably, Andi figured, to test the AI’s ‘hold’ command. She caught herself holding her breath as she watched, and she forced herself to breathe more regularly. If the shit hit the fan, she wanted to be ready, not gasping for air.

  “Hold where you are. My informal designation is ‘Zensoria Control,’ and I am prepared to download a compete report on all system activities and statuses since the last human intervention. However, before we proceed, I must confirm your identification.”

  Andi’s spirits sank, and she felt her stomach tighten. It had seemed too easy, especially when Sylene had managed to pull up something of a directory leading them to a place that looked an awful lot like a control room.

  No, Andi realized, it had only seemed too easy. The control room was beginning to seriously resemble a trap, and she wondered nervously how an imperial military AI would react when they couldn’t present any credentials.

  She watched tensely as Lorillard stood still, waiting for the captain’s perfunctory effort to talk his way through. She knew he would try, but she didn’t have much hope of success. Her muscles were tight, her reflexes ready. She figured there was a good bet they’d all see action in a few seconds.

  The captain was clever and capable, but none of them had any real knowledge at all about three-hundred-year-old imperial protocols, much less any forms of ancient ID.

  “I am Captain James Lorillard, of the…imperial…ship Nightrunner, and this is my crew. We were ordered here to survey the station and take inventory of all holds and storage facilities.”

  “I have no record of a Captain James Lorillard, on the imperial roster. Neither is there a vessel, Nightrunner, on the naval ship list.” The AI’s voice was unchanged, no anger, no edge to it, nor signs of suspicion or threats.

  Somehow, that made the whole thing worse.

  “It has been a long time since any imperial personnel have been here. The perimeter defense systems have engaged and destroyed several vessels making unauthorized approach attempts in the two hundred ninety-seven years, three hundred four days, seven point six two hours since I last interacted with a command officer. Your ability to access this station and its supporting information systems suggests that you are, in fact, duly authorized imperial personnel. Nevertheless, I must confirm this. Please provide your operating number, and step forward alone for DNA scan. Your officers and spacers may line up behind you for their scans.”

  “The information I provided was correct. You just acknowledged you have been cut off for almost three centuries. Your knowledge banks are out of date, three hundred years behind. Even if I provided you with addition identification, it would be of no more use to you than my name or that of my ship.”

  Andi was impressed. She hadn’t expected the captain to come up with anything nearly as convincing as that. She still didn’t believe it would work—it wasn’t in her to be that optimistic—but perhaps uncertainty would at least delay the AI from taking any kind of action.

  For long enough to get back to the ship, maybe. Andi’s determination to gain great wealth was strong, but she wasn’t sure it was powerful enough to send her into action against an imperial AI and whatever resources it still retained. Not if getting back to the ship and getting out of there was a viable option.

  Of course, it wasn’t her choice. At least not hers alone.