She took a cautious, placating step backwards. One step closer to the voice-command pickup for Miri's defense systems. One step away from trouble.

Trouble stepped after her.

"It doesn't work like that," Taka said softly. "The resistance is already in your cells. Putting it in again won't do anything. I guarantee it."

For a moment, she thought he might back off. The words seemed to penetrate; the tension ebbed a bit from his posture. The lines around his eyes seemed to twist somehow, some less-volatile mix of confusion and hurt replacing the fear and anger that had been there before.

And then he removed all hope with the hardest smile she'd ever seen.

"You're cured," he said, and moved.

It was an occupational hazard. Out here, some believed that resistance could be transmitted through sexual contact. That made it easy to get laid, if you were into such things: there were those who held the Immunized in almost cultish esteem, begged sexual congress as a form of inoculation. It was something of a joke among Taka's peers.

Somewhat less amusing were the tales of field medics held prisoner, raped repeatedly in the name of public health. Taka Ouellette had no intention of offering herself to the greater good.

Neither did the thing she unleashed.

The password was Bagheera. Taka had no idea what it meant; it had come with the van and she'd never bothered to change it.

The chain of events it was supposed to trigger stopped far short of total commitment. On hearing its master's call, the MI's defenses would snap to attention: all ports and orifices would slam shut and lock tight, with the exception of the cab door closest to the authorized operator. The weapons blister on Miri's roof —a sunken, mirrored hemisphere when at rest— would extend from its silo like a gleaming chrome phallus, high enough for a clear shot at anyone not flattened defensively against the sides of the vehicle itself. (For any who might be, the chassis itself could come alive with high-voltage electricity.) Primary weaponry started with a tightbeam infrasonic squawkbox capable of voiding bowels and stomachs at ten meters. Escalation would call on twin gimbaled 8000-Watt direct-diode lasers which could be tuned to perforate or merely blind; nonprojectile weapons were always favored because of the ammunition issue. However, to guard against the risk of laser-defeating mirrors and aerosols, ancillary projectile weapons were usually made available to the savvy field doctor; Taka's rig also fired darts primed with a conotoxin tweaked for ten-second respiratory paralysis.

None of this was supposed to fire automatically. Bagheera should only have brought those systems into full alert, countered one threat with a greater one, and given any aggressor the chance to back off before anyone got hurt. There should have been no escalation absent Taka's explicit command.

"Bagheera," she growled.

The lasers cut loose.