“The White Raven’s long-range sensors are superior to those on Glauketas, captain,” Janice said. Callie smiled. Captain. When Janice was polite and formal it usually meant she thought you were being stupid but was exercising great restraint. “The probe is still some distance away, but it’s coming. I can’t figure out where it came from, either. I backtraced the trajectory, but there’s a point where the probe just appears from nowhere. It must have launched from some vessel that’s not using a transponder, running dark.”

  “And we’re sure it’s a probe, and not, say, a missile?”

  Janice didn’t answer for a long moment. Then she said, “That silence you just heard was my withering scorn at even being asked a question like that, captain.”

  “Understood. What’s it look like?”

  “A ball of metal the size of your head with lots of electronics crammed inside it. Someone wants to take a look at us, or – hold on, the probe just sent me a burst of unencrypted text. It says ‘first letters of first letter.’ And… now it’s sending a splintercast, but I can’t tell you what it says, because we don’t have a decryption key.”

  “Wait. Try…” Callie started to look up the Benefactor’s first letter from her terminal, then realized she knew it by heart anyway. “IDIYYFW.”

  “Pretty weak decryption key, but I guess there’s nobody else out here on the frozen outskirts to intercept it anyway… okay, that string works. The message says, ‘The Benefactor sent me to assist you.’ Huh.”

  Callie whistled. “This is a definite escalation from leaving notes on my pillow. How long until the probe gets here?”

  “Couple hours.”

  “Understood.” She flipped comm channels. “Ashok, I need you to make me something, and I need it made in about ninety minutes.”

  “Is it a perpetual motion machine?” Ashok said. “I always thought I could make one of those, as long as I had a really impossible deadline to motivate me.”

  “We have very large guns pointed at you, Benefactor.” Callie spoke from the bridge of the White Raven, transmitting on the same encrypted channel the probe had used before. Ashok had finished building the thing she wanted in about forty minutes, so they’d had time to take the ship out on an intercept course to meet the probe. If this gift from the Benefactor was full of murder, harboring secret technology that even Janice’s paranoid sensor array couldn’t recognize as weapons, they’d be able to fight back better with the Raven than on the asteroid.

  “I am not the Benefactor,” the probe replied, in a pleasantly deep but overly ingratiating tone, like an insurance salesman who saw you as his last opportunity to avert bankruptcy. “The Benefactor is my employer. He said you might be skeptical. Permission to board, so we can talk directly?”

  He said? That’s one more data point about the Benefactor’s identity than we had before. Assuming this thing can be trusted, which is a big if. “We can talk just fine from here,” Callie said.

  “That’s a bit rude,” the probe replied.

  “There’s no communication delay at all,” Janice said on private comms. “That voice must be transmitting from somewhere close by, astronomically speaking.”

  “My name is Kaustikos,” the probe said.

  “I know that word,” Elena muttered. “I think I saw it in one of the medical texts I’ve been studying. His name is… ‘one who burns’? So he’s flammable?”

  “Not quite the right translation,” Shall’s voice was apologetic. “Kaustikos means ‘capable of burning,’ but in the sense of causing burns, not burning itself.”

  “I didn’t choose the name,” Kaustikos said. “The Benefactor did. It’s a working pseudonym. A code name, if you prefer. The Benefactor has a flair for the dramatic, if you hadn’t noticed.”

  “You let your boss change your name?” Callie said. “You should have negotiated a better contract.”

  “You call me Shall,” Shall said over her private comm. “You got everyone else doing it too, even though my name is Michael.”

  “That’s because you have the same name as my ex-husband, and it got annoying,” Callie said. Shall was an AI based on a template of her ex-husband’s mind, and was very similar in personality and temperament, with notable differences, like the fact that Shall had been in space with her often while Michael was back home on Ganymede. Also, Shall had never cheated on her a dozen times.

  The probe replied, “Given what the Benefactor is paying me, he can call me anything he wants, and I’ll hop when he answers. Captain Machedo, I can be a great help to you. Without my assistance in the Vanir system, you and your crew will likely die.” He paused. “Honesty forces me to admit that, even with my assistance, you’ll probably die anyway. But at least it will be for a good cause.”

  “Go back to the part where you get paid,” Callie said. “Why don’t we get paid? If the Benefactor wants us to go to the Vanir system, he can fund the expedition. He’ll have to pay our usual ‘stupid code name’ surcharge if he wants us to rename ourselves after medical terminology.”

  “Dibs on ‘Diaphoresis’,” Ashok said. “It just sounds so pretty. Like diaphanous.” He was listening in from the machine shop.

  The probe sighed. “The Benefactor believed you were on a sacred mission to save the galaxy, and feared you would be offended he suggested you might take money in exchange for saving countless lives. It seems he overestimated your zeal. Fortunately, I am authorized to pay for any costs associated with outfitting your ship and crew for the journey, and to transfer a sizable sum to your accounts upon your successful return from the Vanir system.”

  “I prefer payment in advance. My reputation is good enough that I usually get it, too.”

  “Money won’t do you any good in the Vanir system. Even the Benefactor isn’t entirely sure what’s happening there – he knows more than you, of course – but it’s safe to say that normal economic systems are no longer in operation.”

  Callie grunted. “Pay us anyway. I plan on returning to a system where I can spend it. Or do you have to call your boss first?”

  “I have a certain amount of discretion. There.”

  “Shall?” Callie said.

  “Did you want to buy one of the minor moons of Saturn?” Shall said. “Because we could, if we pooled our shares.” He flashed her the total amount transferred to their account, and Callie grunted. She could turn Glauketas from a lightly refurbished mining station into a gloriously modern space station just with her share, and have enough left over for a pretty nice dinner afterward.

  “As far as good faith gestures go, that’s a pretty good one,” Ashok chimed in.

  “Now can I come aboard?” Kaustikos said. “Since we’re co-workers?”

  “If you’re so vital to our mission, why didn’t you come yourself, instead of sending a probe?”

  “Ah. I see the confusion. I am not transmitting remotely. I am the probe. I am a fully autonomous artificial intelligence.”

  Callie frowned. AI were rare and expensive – Shall had been an extravagant anniversary gift from her very wealthy husband, meant to keep her company with a version of his personality while she was off on long space voyages. More importantly, AI took a lot of processing power to run properly. Shall was comfortable enough on the White Raven and Glauketas, but when he ported a copy of his consciousness to a drone or probe he lost a lot of speed, cleverness, and access to data, because the hardware just wasn’t sufficient to let him operate at full capacity. “You’re AI? Don’t you feel a little cramped in that steel ball?”

  “The Benefactor has access to rather impressive microtechnology, Captain Machedo. I have a full copy of my consciousness here, with plenty of room to incorporate new and interesting experiences.”

  “Who’s your template?” Shall asked.

  All the AI in the galaxy that bothered to talk to people were built on the templates of human minds, with those personalities, thought patterns, and memories acting as seed crystals and stabilizing agents for the machine mind. Attempts to create pure computer intelligences had been unsuccessful, because while such entities could sometimes attain consciousness, they had no more interest in talking to people than people had in talking to slime molds… and just as little common ground for communication. AI based on humans weren’t truly copies of those people, at least not for more than the first microsecond, when their experiences started to diverge. Just the speed of their thoughts, and their instantaneous access to information, ensured they would become different from their models but they did retain enough humanity and memories to stay interested in people.

  “Oh, who remembers?” Kaustikos said. “My template wasn’t very interesting, and that transition was a long time ago. All you need to know is, I have qualities the Benefactor thinks will be useful on this mission – the ability to improvise, patience, and being a highly motivated self-starter.”

  “So you’ve got a code name and a secret identity,” Callie said.

  “You must admit,” Kaustikos replied, “secrecy does seem to be our employer’s preferred method of operation.”

  Callie bristled at the ‘our employer’ bit, as she had at being called a ‘co-worker,’ but, then again, she did intend to keep the money, and that meant trying to carry out the job in good faith to the best of her abilities. “You can come on board. But I don’t trust you, so first we’re going to send a drone out to meet you and fit you with a little insurance policy our engineer built.”

  “Oh, dear, any addition to my body would simply ruin my pleasingly symmetrical contours.”

  “I took aesthetics into account when I built it,” Ashok said.

  “Even so. What if I refuse?”

  “Then you can fuck off back to the Benefactor and tell them we don’t want your help.”

  “What if I tell you my accompaniment on this mission is a condition of your employment?”

  Callie laughed. The whole crew laughed, even Elena. “Shall, you have an MBA, do you want to answer that?”

  “One traditionally negotiates the terms of a contract before making payment in full,” Shall said. “For reasons that are likely obvious.”

  “And if the Benefactor demands their money back?”

  Shall didn’t have a tongue to cluck, but he made the sound anyway. “Our verbal contract, such as it was, specified that we would go to the Vanir system, funded by the Benefactor. We will do that. He has no grounds to demand repayment.”

  “Would you go to war with the Benefactor over this? Knowing the resources he must have?” Kaustikos sounded genuinely curious.

  “Would I go to war to maintain our independence?” Callie said. “To show that we can be hired, but never owned? Of course I would. It’s up there among the top five reasons I’d go to war.”

  “Fair enough,” Kaustikos said. “I assume you want to strap some sort of bomb to me, so you can destroy me if I turn out to be a traitorous villain?”

  “Now you’ve gone and spoiled the surprise,” Callie said.

  CHAPTER 6

  Shall sent out a drone with the device Ashok had made, a palm-sized curve of shiny metal that matched Kaustikos’s carapace and attached almost seamlessly. The attachment was full of inward-pointing explosives that would vaporize the probe without doing much damage to anything in its vicinity. Once affixed, the bomb couldn’t be removed with anything short of another bomb, or Ashok’s proprietary homemade nanotech solvent.

  “The constant terror of death won’t impact my job performance at all,” Kaustikos transmitted as the drone finished installing the failsafe.

  “You’ve got a copy of your consciousness somewhere else,” Callie said. “You’re way more immortal than most of us.”

  “And yet I’m very attached to this version of my consciousness, which has already diverged from my earlier state in such enjoyable ways. Why, if you blew me up, I’d lose all these deeply pleasurable memories of meeting you.”

  “That would be a tragedy,” Callie agreed. She felt better. “You have permission to come aboard.”

  Kaustikos followed the drone to an airlock, then floated inside, where Callie and Ashok waited to meet him in the cargo bay. The shiny ball of artificial mind maneuvered with spinning reaction wheels, turning to face them with an array of lenses that reminded Callie of Ashok’s.

  “Tell me everything you know about our boss,” Callie said.

  “Aren’t you going to show me to my rooms first?”

  “You’re a floating metal ball. You can live in that empty crate strapped to the wall over there. Speak.”

  “What is there to say?” The probe rotated to direct its array of lenses at Callie. “The Benefactor is a concerned citizen of the galaxy who discovered a terrible existential threat – the Axiom. My employer judged that you could be an effective tool to combat that threat, and decided to offer information and other assistance to your mission.”

  “What does the Benefactor know about the Vanir system?”

  “Our employer has reason to believe that it wasn’t a natural disaster that closed the Vanir gate, or even human sabotage, but the intervention of alien beings – the Axiom, perhaps.”

  “If the Axiom know about humans, why hasn’t he sent a million murder machines through the bridges to every inhabited system and wiped us out?” That was the big fear, and the reason the Liars hid the existence of the Axiom from humanity – because if the ancient aliens were ever disturbed, they would likely take steps to eradicate the disturbance, and they could destroy planets as easily as Callie could squash a bug.

  “That is an excellent question, and one the Benefactor wonders about as well.”

  “Damn it, spaceball, the letter your boss sent said the Vanir system would be of particular interest to people in my crew. What does that mean?”

  The probe bobbed. “I’m afraid our employer has not shared that information with me. He keeps secrets, as we’ve discussed. Believe me when I say the Benefactor wants you to succeed in destroying whatever force has closed off the Vanir system, if it proves to be related to the Axiom, or their servants. I’m sure he has a good reason for his reticence.”

  “I’m not reassured.”

  The probe bobbed, lenses shifting. “Even if the Benefactor is somehow nefarious, captain, surely you can accept that you share a common enemy? Let’s say the Benefactor is a crime boss, or a cult leader, or an aspiring warlord, or something else that would make you scowl in disapproval. Whatever his business, he can’t do it in a galaxy scoured of life, which, as I understand it, is the worst-case scenario outcome if we fail in our mission to destroy the Axiom.”

  “I’ll work with the Benefactor as long as our interests coincide,” Callie said. “But I don’t like spying, or secrets, or manipulation.”

  “Alas, those are the Benefactor’s primary tools,” Kaustikos said. “That’s how he knows so much, I’m sure. But in my role as liaison I will attempt to disguise those tools to make them more palatable to you – like a parent putting spinach into their child’s fruit smoothie so the little treasures will eat something more nutritious without screaming about the taste.”

  “The human who provided the template for you must have been a real asshole,” Callie said.

  “Perhaps,” Kaustikos replied. “Or perhaps he was a wonderful humanitarian, and my experiences as a second-class citizen since becoming an AI, discriminated against in nearly every polity despite being clearly superior to humans on every measurable axis, have made me bitter and ungenerous. I suppose you’ll never know. When do we leave for the Vanir system?”

  “We’re nearly ready,” Callie said. “Go to your crate until we call for you.” She spun and propelled herself out of the cargo hold. Once she was out of earshot she opened a private channel to Shall. “Is everything operational?”

  “The spyware in the bomb is working fine,” Shall said. “Any communication Kaustikos tries to send should be intercepted. Though if it’s encrypted, we won’t be able to tell what it says. We can also jam his comms entirely at will, but he’ll notice.”

  “Let him talk for now. I’m curious to hear how he describes our meeting.”

  But Kaustikos didn’t attempt to send any messages before they got underway.

  Callie and Elena strapped themselves in at the nose of the ship, behind Janice and Drake’s control center. Ashok and Lantern were in the machine shop, and Kaustikos was in the cargo bay, according to the transponder hidden in the bomb. “I’m sure we’re forgetting something,” Callie said.

  “We’ve got food and weapons and tools and medicine,” Elena patted her arm reassuringly. “Anything else we need, I’m sure we can get it. We’re in a warship.”

  “Skirmish-ship at best,” Janice said. “Recon ship, for sure. We’ve got enough guns to slow people down so we can run away from their superior firepower, but don’t go thinking we’re indestructible.”

  “We can always teleport out of danger,” Elena said. “The bridge generator transports us to safety automatically if we get grievously damaged, so we kind of are indestructible.”

  “Ha,” Janice said. “Except after we jump, for all those long hours waiting for the bridge generator to recharge. That’s when I’d try to kill us, if I was a horrible alien menace.”

  “Good thing you’re on our side,” Callie said. “Ashok, are the coordinates punched in?”

  “Sure are, cap. We should pop out of our wormhole on the far side of the Vanir system, about as far away from the bridgehead as we can get while remaining in the system.”

  “Good.” The Vanir system wasn’t technically inaccessible, as far as the scientists could tell. The big wormhole bridgehead out by Jupiter could open up a passage to the Vanir system just fine, and, for years, the system had been a perfectly ordinary colony, trading with its interstellar neighbors via the bridges. The problem was, for the past hundred years, no one who’d gone through the bridge to Vanir had ever come back, including military ships and probes. No one knew if the bridge had malfunctioned or if something on the other side was keeping the ships from returning. All the human-occupied systems had agreed that whatever was going on there was too dangerous to investigate further, and the Vanir system had been formally interdicted and closed to civilian traffic. The Jovian Imperative still sent occasional military vessels, packed with guns and humanitarian supplies both, but none had ever returned.