Rifka felt very little fear. If they punctured her suit she would die in moments. She concluded they must have decided they didn’t want to kill her, otherwise she’d already be dead.

  The visor on the one closest shifted from reflective to clear. Behind it was the same BE man she’d spoken to before Erasmus attacked. The one with the glowing hair and trimmed white beard. She couldn’t help but notice how similar she looked to him.

  “You’re stunning.” Gjosta whispered. His microphone picked up the rough tears at the edge of his voice. His voice firmed. “But, I am afraid you must come with us.”

  “Are you going to hurt Erasmus?”

  “The computer? Not if I can help it. This computer is a treasure, even damaged.”

  “Damaged?”

  “You didn’t notice the hole? All the reports start with hole being blown into the side of the computer. There’s an 8-meter hole a few hundred meters along there.” Gjosta gestured to the void behind Rifka. “We’re here for the data. Erasmus has not destroyed it, has he?”

  “Will you take me away from Lo … LM-25?” Wasn’t this what she wanted, to be rescued?

  “That would be the plan, sister, if you want to come with me?”

  Rifka felt tremors of relief spread from her chest out to her hands.

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Now, the others haven’t heard our conversation. So, I’m going to open the channel to them.” Rifka’s helmet pinged.

  “Gentlemen,” Gjosta said. “This is Rifka. She’s going to come with us, quietly, to Traveller.”

  “She’s not in the plan,” one of the masked spacers said. His voice sounded oily and snide.

  “Vice-President Thor, I’m sure she will be helpful, won’t you?”

  “Y-yes.” Rifka stuttered.

  “M’am,” another in a grey suit raised a hand and gestured. “I’m Leopold, and that’s Jorge. And, in the black exosuit is the Vice-President of security for Thor & Co: Robert Thor the Third.”

  “We can see you’re no threat, right?” Gjosta asked. Rifka agreed. “So we’re going to put our guns away.” The four men relaxed and slung the guns over their shoulders.

  “Um, Ok.” Rifka noticed that three similar suits had labels, so she could tell Leopold, Jorge, and Gjosta apart.

  “Now, Rifka, I know you don’t know us, and that Erasmus may even be your friend. But, again, we aren’t here to destroy the station or the computer or anything else so destructive. We just want the data from this laboratory, and some of the mineral samples. Do you know if the data is safe?”

  “Erasmus never talked about destroying data. They calls the computer data their hoard.” Rifka replied honestly.

  “Do you know where the connector to the quantum computer is?” The VP asked.

  “This is my first time here.”

  “That explains some things,” Gjosta said. “Rifka. Jorge and Leopold will take you back to Traveller, my vessel.”

  “I’m going with them. She may have more information we can use.” The VP said. “Maybe she knows a weakness that we can use to disconnect the AI.”

  “Perhaps.” Gjosta said. “We aren’t here to hurt anyone, right?”

  “Of course not.” The VP answered him. To Rifka, this VP sounded smug. The other two just agreed with him.

  “Treat Rifka well. If you have a problem, use the radio repeaters we installed to get a message out. I’ll see you as soon as I have the data.”

  Leopold lead the way back to the hub, with Rifka trailing behind. Gjosta and the others followed behind her.

  They slipped soundlessly into the hub, and floated to the exit. Gjosta separated from the group and headed in the direction of the section labelled “Research Office.”

  Other figures in space suits seemed to be searching the complex. Rifka didn’t get close, but they all seemed outfitted the same as Leopold and Jorge. Robert switched them to a smaller group channel to talk.

  “Where did you all come from?” Rifka asked as they floated toward the entry airlock.

  “The company is very resourceful,” the VP said. “We always knew we were going to come back.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh yes. The AI went silent some time ago, so we were sure it was beginning to deteriorate.”

  “Erasmus seemed active to me.”

  “Maybe you don’t know, but the lack of activity has been obvious to our analysts and observers.”

  “Ok.” Rifka felt vaguely uncomfortable. Didn’t the man know about the fight in space from just a few hours ago? Erasmus launched a terrifying number of missiles. To Rifka, that seemed pretty far from silent.

  When they reached the air lock, another two men guarded the airlock doors. They waved the group through. Rifka returned to air and gravity, and the small darkened supervisor’s station that hid the door to the lab.

  It felt dingy, and cramped. Rifka’s creative rewiring left the collections of rooms dark. She’d never noticed before, but coming from the pristine lab, the asteroid felt more like a mine than ever.

  “Let’s take off our helmets so that we can see each other a little better? Shall we?” The VP suggested.

  Rifka cautiously took off her helmet; so long as she didn’t set it down, she reasoned she would be safe enough.

  The two grey-suited men didn’t take off their helmets, but the VP removed his black helmet. Rifka’s eyes widened. Nothing about the man was as she expected. Had humans changed that much?

  “Uh, you’re gold?”

  “I have a gold-impregnated synth skin.”

  “And your eyes are black? And black hair?”

  “I will allow your rudeness, but only for so long.”

  “I’m sorry; I’ve never seen solid black eyes and hair like that before.”

  “It’s a cyber enhancement. I’m sure an experiment like you might not understand how ordinary humans need augments.”

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

  “I understand well enough. I’ve been working on a cybernetic enhancement myself.” Rifka smiled at him, although even she doubted it looked very sincere. “In fact, here they are.” Rifka found her cases, including her eyes, outside the supervisors’ station.

  “Oh? Everything here is Company property. But, I suppose we can bring this with us. Jorge, take the luggage,” the VP said. Jorge hefted the cases, one in each hand.

  ‘Is he smiling at me?’ Rifka wondered. She liked this less and less. Rifka could escape the men with a warp sprint; but now she realized her equipment was hostage to Robert’s whims.

  “This way.” Leopold said, and he took the lead. Rifka followed him, with the VP beside her, and Jorge walking behind. They strode under the flicking lights, and Rifka’s adrenaline began wearing off.

  “You know, my father worked here. He was the station supervisor.” Robert had a conversational tone.

  “Oh?” Rifka busily tried to think of a way out of this mess. She’d been entirely too naive. How many men had she seen? Three here, two still in the lab hallways, two at the airlock, Gjosta. That was too many to fight.

  “Yes. He died in defense of the station. The AI went crazy and started killing everyone. My father tried to escape, but they didn’t recover his pod. My mother and I escaped in a vessel, but when it was destroyed, we were in a liminal stasis for decades. The locals recovered us from the planetary gravity well by luck.”

  “So, you’re quite old?”

  “Physically I’m still only fifty; you’d hardly know of course, longevity treatments. But, yes, technically I’m nearly two hundred. My Grandfather hardly looks older than me, and he has run Thor and Co. since my father was a child.”

  “You know, I never could prove Erasmus wasn’t a dragon. Not that he ever gave me any real evidence.”

  “The station had an AI in charge of the research. It’s been the Company’s hypothesis that the AI suffered an accident that destabilized it. That’s where its delusion comes from.”

  “The hole?”

  “Yes; it wasn’t there before. That spot is quite close to the hanger that delivered supplies and equipment to the laboratory. It’s probably why there’s no air in that section.”

  “So, we came in a back door?”

  “Oh yes. That was just for specialty minerals to be delivered from the mine itself.”

  “They were studying propulsion?”

  “What gave you that impression?”

  “The name on the door.”

  “Oh, ah, of course.” The golden man rubbed a hairless chin, as if he’d discovered some great insight. “Yes. I suppose I can admit that much. But, you can surely see that the AI needs to die, don’t you? It killed everyone here.”

  “Hm. Where are the bodies?”

  “What?”

  “I’ve explored this whole place, and I never found any bodies.”

  “It cleaned it up. Obviously.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it likes things tidy. I don’t know. What is the AI like?”

  “Erasmus saved me from drifting endlessly through the void. They made sure I had an education, training, exercise, and medical help. They are … good?”

  “It has mislead you then.”

  “I’ve known Erasmus for ten years, and I’ve only known you for a quarter hour.”

  “You want to escape though, right? Well, we’ve already got most sections of the station locked down. Its only a matter of time before we’ll have the whole station under our control. Right now, it’s not reacting to Gjosta. He’s supposedly the only human hacker who can plug into an AI and beat it. We don’t need to destroy the computer; we just need to kill the AI. That’s what the Company hired him for.”

  Rifka looked looked anxiously back the way they’d come. They hadn’t walked far, but Rifka wouldn’t be able to run back fast enough. If Erasmus had some sort of defensive network in place, she hadn’t seen it.

  “Are you worried about us destroying it? It’s just numbers; it’s not real. You’ve been duped is all. AIs aren’t good. They’re murderers.”

  She’d been suckered. With her helmet off, she couldn’t call to Erasmus for help, or warn them. But … there was something she could do.

  “No. I just … I didn’t realize how dangerous Erasmus was. They … uh, it … nearly killed Gjosta you know. With missiles.”

  “Oh, Gjosta rigged the cameras here; we’re safe.”

  “Are you sure? I mean, Erasmus might still detect us. It, um, watched me all the time. Usually just saying its name would wake it up. And we’ve been talking about it, so its listening devices might have heard us. When I wanted some privacy, it gave me a code to use for my personal privacy. Do you think that would that help keep them from noticing us?” Rifka hoped her lie sounded convincing.

  “That sounds useful. Can you give it to me?”

  “Yeah.” Rifka moved to put on her helmet.

  “It’s on your helmet’s computer? Just give me a link and I’ll pull the file.”

  “It’s biometric. I’ll pull it.”

  “Ah.” The VP sighed. “Get out your gun Leopold. Keep it on her while she pulls this file. If you’re lying, I just have Leo shoot you.”

  Leopold readied his gun. Not quickly, but he brandished it with a smooth motion.

  “Sorry miss,” he said. “Boss’ orders.”

  “That’s fine. I promise I’m not going to do anything but pass you this file.”

  Rifka gave the series of voice commands to connect to the VP’s cyberware. Her HUD flagged the VP’s attempt to hack it, but whatever he planned, he failed. It seemed the Company wasn’t quite the security experts that they thought.

  “Here’s the file.” Rifka selected it and passed it across the link.

  “You’ll want to quarantine that file boss.” Leopold said.

  “I know what I’m doing.” VP Robert Thor III sounded irritated. Or maybe that was his default emotion. “I’ll head back and have Gjosta look at it.”

  “I really am trying to help,” Rifka lied. “The program links to Erasmus’ system and lets them know I want privacy.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Rifka hadn’t much time to set a real virus, but she did have her telescope’s encrypted image transfer program; she gave the VP a file with Rifka’s helmet cam recording as a Trojan horse. To make it work, she wrote a message and three lines of code on the fly when she put the helmet on. It was the worse possible kludge, but if Company agents loaded it into one of Erasmus’ systems, Erasmus would know what had happened. With any luck, if they saw the code was just a message, they wouldn’t consider that Erasmus would understand it.

  She hoped Erasmus would forgive her for trying to leave.

  “Take her to Traveller. I need to give this file to Gjosta. This might be the key to taking back the station.”

  “Ok boss,” Leopold replied. Gjosta put on his helmet and returned down the passages the way they’d come.

  When he turned a corner and was no longer in sight, Leopold put his gun away. He gestured and they started walking. Now, instead of leading, Leopold just walked beside her. After a few moments, as if trying to fill the silence, he sighed.

  “I’m going to assume you want to come with us,” Leopold said to Rifka.

  ”Ok. What are you saying?”

  “We’re Gjosta’s team.” Leopold continued. “I’m one of the computer specialists. And, Jorge is a exogeologist. To be fair, we’re trained to fight, if we need to. Although, I’ll be honest with you. If a fleet of engineers couldn’t beat this AI, what hope do you think we have?”

  “I don’t know anything about how Erasmus came to be here. They don’t talk about it.” Rifka replied.

  “Smart of it. Well, Gjosta is not a idiot; he’s been alive for hundreds of years. Whatever you put in the file, Gjosta’s not going to put in into a computer system. This is a smash and grab; we’re all technicians that can recognize something useful if we see it. Like these electronics. I’d already flagged to take them with me. Custom, right?”

  ”Yeah,” Rifka said.

  “Gjosta’s been talking about you though.” Jorge explained. “How you’re the first BE human he’s met in a long time.”

  “Are BE humans unusual?” Rifka asked.

  “A couple of hundred years ago, a squad of BE humans committed war crimes at the direction of an AI. It didn’t turn out so well for them. No one wants to, uh, make any more. Even though its not entirely clear how to make more anyway, and they were expensive.”

  “I wasn’t made.” Rifka said flatly. “I had a mother.”

  “Don’t know what else to call it. Design? Birth? Grow?” Jorge shrugged, even carrying Rifka’s equipment.

  “Back to the topic at hand.” Leopold said. “I don’t want you to get the idea that we’re some sort of guards or soldiers. Gjosta wouldn’t be happy if you snuck off, but I am not interested in shooting you. The VP would probably be happy to be rid of you. If you want to run, then I’m not going to stop you.”

  “That goes for me too,” Jorge said.

  Rifka couldn’t decide how this made her feel. She’d gone from certain the Company planned to kidnap her, to realizing this had become much more complex. Not that it had ever been simple.

  “How can I know you’re trustworthy?”

  “Ha! If you think about it, there’s no answer I can give that will make you trust us. Life is a risk; you have to decide whether to take it.”

  “I think I’ll come with you.” Rifka felt must less confident than she sounded. If anything, this might give her time to consider her options. “I don’t know that I can stay here anymore anyway.”

  “Fair enough. Let’s pick up the pace a bit, I’d rather be close to our escape. If the AI wakes up and find us, this might not go very well.”