She studied him. “We all make mistakes, Salvo.”

“And they have consequences.”

“… Yes, and we might need Gregorovich when we get to the Jellies. Morven is all well and good, but she’s only a pseudo-intelligence. If we run into trouble, she won’t be much help.”

“No, she won’t.”

Kira put a hand on his shoulder. “Besides, you said it: Gregorovich is one of you, same as Trig. Are you really going to give up on him that easily?”

Falconi stared at her for a good while, the muscles in his jaw flexing. At last, he relented. “Fine. Talk to him. See if you can knock some sense into that lump of concrete he calls a brain. Go find Hwa-jung. She’ll show you where to go and what to do.”

“Thanks.”

“Mmh. Just don’t let Gregorovich get access to the mainframe.”

Kira left him then and went looking for Hwa-jung. She found the machine boss in engineering. When told what Kira wanted, Hwa-jung didn’t seem surprised. “This way,” said Hwa-jung, and led her back up toward Control.

The halls of the Wallfish were dark and cold and eerily quiet. Condensation beaded the bulkheads where the chilled air blew, and Kira and Hwa-jung’s shadows stretched before them like tortured souls as they floated through the ship.

One deck below Control, close to the core of the ship, was a locked door Kira had walked by before but never made much note of. It looked like a closet or a server room.

In a way, it was.

Hwa-jung opened the door to reveal a second door a meter within. “Acts like a mini-airlock, in case the rest of the ship gets vented,” she said.

“Gotcha.”

The second door rolled open. Past it was a small, hot room busy with whirring fans and walled with banks of Christmas-light indicators: each bright point marking a switch or toggle or dial. In the center of the room lay the neural sarcophagus, huge and heavy. A metal edifice twice the width and breadth of Kira’s bed and standing as high as her mid-chest, it had an imposing presence, as if designed to warn off any who came near—as if to say, “Meddle not, lest you regret it.” The fittings were dark, nearly black, and there was a holo-screen along one side, as well as rows of green bars marking the levels of different gasses and liquids.

Although Kira had seen the sarcophagi in games and videos, she’d never been close to one in person. The device, she knew, was hooked into the Wallfish’s plumbing and power, but were it to be separated, it was perfectly capable of keeping Gregorovich alive for months or even years, depending on how efficient the internal power source was. It was both artificial skull and artificial body, and built so securely it could survive reentry at speeds and pressures that would shred most ships. The durability of the cases was legendary. Plenty of times a sarcophagus (and the mind inside) was the only intact part left after the destruction of its parent ship.