Description: ONE Any government that guarantees its citizens freedom of choice exposes itself to the risk that they will choose a different government. --YIN PAN-WEI, THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SYSTEMS COMMONWEALTH , CY 11942 Deck 84 felt empty. Of course, Deck 84 was empty, as were Decks 14 through 63, Medical Deck, three out of five Hangar Decks, and the unwanted-invitation-only V Deck--better known as the brig. That''s what happens , thought Captain Dylan Hunt as he stood roughly geometric center of the Andromeda Ascendant, when a ship massing 96,410,000 kilograms carries a crew massing ...Dylan let the thought trail off. He wasn''t even going to estimate Beka Valentine''s mass. He knew that much about women. He also knew that five people rattled around in here like so many BBs in a boxcar. But Deck 84 was more than simply unoccupied. It was...uninhabited. Dylan felt like he did the time his father accidentally left him behind after work, locked in the Imperial Museum in Etashi Tarn past closing hour. He was eight, and the ceilings were ten meters high. Where''s the AI ? Dylan''s wide blue eyes did a quick, accurate sweep of the corridor. Glorious Heritage-class ships like this one were built for both aesthetics and function; the Andromeda Ascendant was as much art as architecture. The burnished copper walls, the carved moldings, the seamless integration of technology and design, so Vedran in concept--it all looked perfectly normal. And yet... "Rommie? Are you there?" Dylan spoke aloud to nothing in particular. Nothing in particular responded with nothing in return. "Andromeda? Are you off-line? Report." "She''s with me, Boss." The voice came from behind him. Dylan turned to see a face on the nearest comm screen: vaguely blond, undeniably human, with a cocky grin that made most people want to mop the floor with his brush-cut. The captain, however, had an uncharacteristic soft spot for Seamus Zelazny Harper''s decidedly unmilitary antics. If I grew up on a slag heap, starved and beaten like an unwanted dog, I probably would have turned out to be a brat myself . "Are you jealous? Be jealous!" said Harper. "If by jealous you mean annoyed, impatient, and capable of severe retaliation, then yes, I''m jealous. Harper, what the hell are you doing to my ship?" Dylan wasn''t simply being possessive; he was being all-inclusive. Andromeda Ascendant is not only the name of a heavy battle cruiser-- technically, her name is Shining Path to Truth and Knowledge, AI model GRA 112, serial number XMC-10-182--but also of the awesome artificial intelligence that inhabits it. Andromeda operated everything from her imaging sensors to her missile launch tubes to the Oracle attack drones to the microwave oven by autonomic reflex. Everything, that is, except the steering wheel. Only organics can actually pilot the Slipstream. Andromeda was also Rommie, the ship''s public interface avatar, which interacted with the crew in a humanoid form that artfully blended every Old Earth genotype into a visual amalgam Harper referred to as "babelicious." But that was Harper. It also was Harper who turned the holographic avatar into a flesh and blood (well, nanosilicate and petrolubricant, at any rate) woman, making a silk purse out of a battle-damaged utility ''bot, some human DNA, and his own lusty imagination. It was this last (the avatar, not the imagination) that Harper was currently fine-tuning--if anything in his bag of spit-and-baling-wire engineering tricks could be called "fine"--and the reason Andromeda''s attention was not currently on Deck 84. I should have known , Dylan thought. Harper''s mind ran to two things so consistently that you could see the grooves: girls and gadgets. Rommie was both. Whenever there was a brief, much-welcomed respite in the Things Go Boom general theme of their experiences since Dylan had arrived in this post-Fall dark age, Harper could reliably be found with a Sparky Cola in one hand and a nanowelder in the other. Back in the machine shop, Rommie herself spoke up. It wasn''t that she resented Harper''s constant mechanical intercession, or even minded his puppy-dog infatuation; it was just that she enjoyed talking to her captain: he was, after all, the only living thing that shared her memory of the Systems Commonwealth. Oh, and she was desperately in love with him. Not that a good High Guard officer like Andromeda would ever admit such a gaffe. Even to herself. "I can''t be everywhere at once, Dylan," she said, with an unstudied pout on her fantasy lips and a toss of her anthracite-shiny hair. "Yes, you can," said Dylan. "In fact, you''re supposed to be. Regardless, whenever the two of you are finished, meet me on the Command Deck. I need to talk to you about this Drago-Kazov situation." Calling the latest Drago-Kazov mess a "situation" is like calling Pythia''s planet-shattering hyper-earthquakes "geological disturbances." It''s accurate, but one hell of an understatement. The "situation" in question was an open revolt of the human slave worlds in the Alpha Centauri system against their Dragan overlords. Of course, this wasn''t a phenomenon unique to Alpha Centauri--as of late, humans everywhere were rising up against the Nietzschean yoke, thanks in part to the efforts of the aforementioned Seamus Harper and his cousin Brendan Lahey, who orchestrated the first rebellion against the fierce Drago-Kazov Pride on Earth itself. True to form, the Dragans responded by unleashing a litany of brutal atrocities against humans. A disproportionate number of the atrocities were aimed at a trio of planets in the Centauri colony, the foremost being the Earth-like planet Natal. There were two reasons for this choice, as Dylan saw it. One: Natal was where the Human Interplanetary Alliance had come into being, evolving from a ragtag group of freedom fighters who picked up the Bunker Hill battle cry and transformed themselves into an organized militia. Armed with little more than what they could scrounge, the HIA had nonetheless managed to severely disrupt Drago-Kazov slave-labor operations. Which resulted in reason number two: the Nietzscheans, never ones to forgive losses at the hands of any enemy, let alone these genetically substandard kludges, seemed willing to quell the rebellion at any cost. Even if the cost was reducing an entire sector of space to rubble. It was time to bring the HIA and the Dragans to the negotiating table, whether they liked it or not. Dylan sighed. A nice quiet slag heap is actually beginning to sound rather appealing . Dylan walked to a ladderway. He activated the AG unit on his belt and stepped out over the opening, free-falling toward Command Deck. Andromeda hated when he did that; it was, after all, a distance of two hundred meters, and what if the artificial gravity field failed? But Andromeda was in the machine shop, and Dylan delighted at the forbidden sensation of flight as he plunged weightless through space. "I saw that." Rommie''s voice came out of nowhere and everywhere. Dylan smiled wider. Yup. I definitely would have been a brat . * * * "You''re watching me again, aren''t you?" Tyr Anasazi didn''t look up from his kata as he addressed the seemingly vacant space precisely two and a half meters to his left. There was no response. Tyr put down the extended force lance that served as his bo and stared at the hydroponics garden. The nictitating membrane of his eyes blinked; the vertical pupils contracted. Tyr''s genetically enhanced vision wasn''t likely to miss the sight of a pointed, purple ear peeking out from between the translucent leaves of an Infinity water rose. He waited, perfectly still. If he was breathing, no one could have heard it, be they hunter or be they prey. Trance held out as long as she could, then she began to giggle. The colorless, fluid-filled globules that passed for flowers on Infinity Atoll jiggled as she laughed, which made her laugh more. The corners of Tyr''s mouth turned up, but he stopped short of actually smiling. Unlike some Nietzscheans--the Drago-Kazov, for instance, practiced their menacing looks as children, and were punished for laughing--Tyr valued his smile. It was beautiful, and powerful. Which is precisely why he hoarded it. Tyr''s opinion of Trance was this: he liked her. She was useful and amusing and had a feel for living things. He understood that she was far more than she appeared to be, and he approved of that. He also feared it. So while Tyr Anasazi--of the Kodiak Pride, out of Victoria, by Barbarossa, etc., etc., etc.--was willing to kill for Trance Gemini, he was also prepared to kill her. Which is pretty much how he felt about every member of the crew of the Andromeda Ascendant . Don''t look for sentimentality in a Nietzschean. It was bred out of them, along with sickle-cell anemia and male pattern baldness. Trance stood up behind the hydroponics vat, and the rest happened rather quickly. Her tail got caught in a feeding tube, which pulled free of the watering system, which toppled the ultraviolet bar, which short-circuited the timer, which sent Tyr diving across the room to pull her out of the vat before she electrocuted herself, just as Andromeda''s face appeared on the comm screen to warn them that she detected a surge in the force lance''s power pack, which at that moment exploded...just as Tyr put a full body length between himself and the time bomb. Water roses splattered, klaxons blared, and a burst of undifferentiated laser light painted stark shadows on the walls. Tyr helped Trance up, but didn''t let her go right away. He held on, maybe a little too firmly. Trance didn''t squirm or flinch. S

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