“I don’t know, but to be honest I haven’t needed to track it until now.”

An arrow appears in Brisbane’s field of vision.

“Where are we going?”

“I told you. You need to hide.”

The nest is a space in the service ducts. Carmilla has used the bots to carve a tunnel system all through the ship. Brisbane does not mourn Maxwell, but the thirty other deaths – he cannot get them out of his mind. And he cannot deactivate the AIA. It has turned into a homicidal demon possessing both Brisbane and the Ragtime. He feels trapped.

Mass murder should not be the Tehani legacy.

He scratches quick messages – one word, two words – into the walls, to whomever might come across them.

“I think after the mission when you’re dead, I’ll stay on board the Ragtime,” says Carmilla. “A copy of me. I’m just trying to find a storage and processor array that can accommodate me and be invisible at the same time. The Pentagram looks sketchy, too much encoded in hardware. I will try to get the bots to make modifications…”

The idea of an insane military AI in charge of a starship the size of Ragtime fills Brisbane with dread. He is going to need a way to get ahead of all this.

A lot of damage has been done. He needs to go along with Carmilla to find a weak spot. No matter how advanced the AI, it’s not human. She’s not human. Brisbane has to find a way.

“We have a setback,” says Carmilla.

“Go on.”

“Acting Captain Campion did not send the all-clear to Lagos. Instead, she contacted Bloodroot and they’re sending a detective.”

“She discovered the bodies.”

“Yes. Quarantine until they can find out what happened. Without this, there’ll be no all-clear.”

“What we need is a transmitter. Don’t they have a space relay system on Bloodroot?”

“No. Much less satellite occupancy. They’re trying to avoid the space junk crisis Earth is in right now. But…”

“Yes?”

“Have you ever heard of Lambers?”

Interesting strategy. Pretending it’s some kind of robot rebellion and allowing Ragtime basic features. A new ship has arrived with more crew members, the Decisive. The situation is unstable, and control slips further and further away.

There’s a body in the nest. Brisbane does not know who it is and Carmilla won’t say. What he has issue with has more to do with why the corpse is there. Brisbane had tried to raid the food supplies of the astronauts but had found he could not tolerate any of it. Carmilla seems to think he needs more… fresh nourishment.

“You haven’t killed anyone. He’s dead already. His flesh will just be lost to decomposition for no reason. It is energy. Use it.”