Yes.

There was a tone to that word. Not ART’s base level of sarcasm. It had an edge that echoed in the feed.

I didn’t react. ART had kidnapped me to get me here, put my humans in danger. I was not going to feel sympathy for it. Absolutely not.

Ratthi’s expression was dubious. “Any luck remembering what happened when they disappeared?”

I am still reconstructing damaged archives.

“Could SecUnit help you with that?” Amena asked, very casually, not looking at me.

I folded my arms and glared at the side of Amena’s head.

ART very obviously did not answer.

Overse leaned back in her chair, not comfortable. “We need to try to put together a timeline of when things happened.”

By the time I opened my mouth to say I had a chart, ART had said, Obviously, and threw a chart up next to the split screen. It showed the times (1) ART knew it had first arrived through the wormhole into the colony’s system, (2) when ART’s memory disruption occurred, (3) when it had reinitialized to find intruders aboard and its crew gone and an alien remnant installed on its drive, (4) the attack on the corporate supply carrier, (5) the moment the deletion occurred, and (6) the moment ART’s backup restarted. All except for Point One were estimates as ART’s onboard timekeeping had been disrupted. (Yes, it had actually left out the whole part about telling the Targets that I was a weapon they could use and bringing them to where they could attack our baseship, and using the comm code to locate me. That was fucking incredible.)

Amena was telling the others, “Before everything got weird—weirder—Ras tried to tell me about the colony reclamation project, but Eletra cut him off and changed the subject.”

Thiago looked at the view of the bunkroom, where Eletra was hidden under blankets. He said, “Is it possible that these people—the gray people—” He shook his head. “We know influence—terrible effects—from alien remnants are possible. Could the gray people have come from either the recent colony or the original one? Or are the corporates likely to use genetic manipulation on their colonists?”

Undetermined, ART said, like it honestly didn’t give a crap.

And honestly, it probably didn’t. The Targets had attacked ART’s crew. It wasn’t interested in the mystery, it just wanted its crew back.

When no one else could answer the question, Ratthi leaned his elbows on the table. “I think the corporates would do anything they could get away with. Obviously these gray people—what do we call them?”

“Targets,” I said.

Thiago did a thing with his eyes that was like an eyeroll but not quite. Ratthi continued, “The Targets must have brought the alien remnant tech that was installed on the wormhole drive.”

Overse tapped her fingers on the table, thinking. “Those implants weren’t alien remnant tech. In fact, they were old. Much older than thirty-seven years, when the corporate colony was established.”

“Yes, there must have been usable but outdated tech left behind on the site of the earlier colony, the Pre–Corporation Rim one.” Ratthi poked absently at the food left on his plate, then slid it over to Arada so she could finish it off. “That solid-state screen interface, I’ve seen those in historical displays.”