Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

> +00:38:09:02

Director does not want to hear any more excuses. Virginia has cleared him, Reginald is going on this mission, and the decision is final. Gamma knows this because Director tells Reginald loudly and at length. When he winds to a close he adds, "And bring Gamma online. It will need to hear this as well."

"Gamma, online," mutters Reginald.

Gamma has been online since last night when Reginald woke him to deal with another deliberate overdose of ethanol and forgot to order him to log off again. But he makes a show of connecting to the holo-table and manifesting above it. "Greetings, Director. Is something happening?"

"Your agent and I have only been having a conversation, Gamma. It is time for your mission briefing. Please close your projection and attend."

"Standing by," says Gamma, and lets his holo vanish. The briefing room door hisses open and a new human enters. Reginald's mood lifts at the sight of him. Gamma queries further. Ship answers: this is Florida, and he is another agent of the Project. Florida is adult, male, unremarkable in appearance. The light reflecting from his dark eyes betrays the shimmer of retinas modified for low-light and IR vision. Gamma notes a fit physique and no significant injuries. Florida is somewhat below average height. His unusually long black hair compounds this appearance. It has plaited into a complex set of braids and Gamma takes a moment to speculate as to how the man fits it into his helmet when he is in combat. He already knows Florida's profession, but physical metrics and gait analysis plus the pair of knives sheathed at the small of the agent's back give Gamma a ninety-percent chance Florida specialises in reconnaissance, infiltration, and close-quarters assassination. At the man's current distance Gamma's combat logic deems him a significant threat.

"Good to see you, mate," says Reginald as Florida comes to stand next to him.

"Always a treat!" answers Florida. "I'm pleased the Project seems to have settled on sending us out together."

"That's because you're a complete nutter and everyone else who goes in the field with you comes back screaming."

"Reginald! Don't say you resent working with me."

"Not at all, mate, not at all. After Harmony it's a sight better than working against you."

"We did have an exciting time out there, didn't we?"

"Absolutely top-notch. You were in prime form."

"Oh, stop. Broke my heart to hear what the Covenant did to the place."

"But we'll always have the memories, old chap. And the scars."

Florida laughs. "Yes, those certainly aren't going anywhere!"

"Gentlemen," interrupts Director loudly. "If I may begin."

"Ready, sir!" says Florida, standing to attention. Reginald manages an approximation of the same posture.

Director rests a hand on the holo-table. "As of eight hours ago Agents Delaware and Maryland have confirmed the intel brought in by the twins. Charon will be moving a high-value target some time in the next 60 hours. They have also confirmed its identity." He raises a large image from the holo-table's surface. An inverted trapezoidal shape spins slowly in the air. Unparseable sigils glow along its black flanks. "Charon has obtained a functioning Engineer."

"Oh dear me," murmurs Reginald.

"A Covenant Engineer? One that's still alive?" asks Florida.

"Intel indicates a salvage ship recovered this control unit from the Leonis Minoris secondary debris field a few months ago, ignorant of its true nature. Their scientists have since identified the creature within and successfully conversed with it."

"Virginia will not be happy to hear it was right over at Leonis Minoris," says Reginald.

"The Weaponsmaster and I have discussed the subject," says Director.

"I was wondering what that crashing noise was," chimes in Florida. "Woke me up quite early, I can tell you that!"

"Indeed," growls Director. "Needless to say, this is a creature the UNSC does not care to leave in civilian hands. It can also be adapted to our own purposes. A Covenant Engineer's assistance would greatly accelerate our AI research, not to mention the reverse-engineerin' efforts. It could advance the Project's timeline by several months, perhaps even years."

"Now this sounds exciting," says Florida.

"Just splendid. Been a while since we got to steal something."

"You are not stealin' the Engineer."

"Spoilsport," mutters Reginald.

"Yet," finishes Director. He summons a model of a large quasi-military complex built into a line of icy cliffs. "Charon's primary artefact recovery facility is a tough nut to crack. Retrieval from that location would require a level of force that risks damaging one or more artefacts of interest. However. The twins' intel indicates they will soon ship the unit to a specialised research lab. Based on what we know of these labs, we stand a far better chance of acquirin' it there. Unfortunately we do not currently know which one it will be sent to. Your mission, therefore, will be to plant locator tags to enable a later retrieval."

"If I may, sir?" says Florida. "I hate to be negative, but--"

"Charon's researchers will have that thing under a bloody electron microscope," interrupts Reginald. "They'll spot a tracker, no matter how small."

Director waves. The facility shrinks to a pile of small cubes as the map zooms out to encompass a large airfield built atop the glacier. "You will be taggin' the cargo vessel assigned to carry the Engineer. The route of its transport ship should tell us enough to decide how to proceed with the acquisition."

"That's a rubbish plan and you know it." Reginald leans forward over the holo-table. "When Charon moves it they'll take standard precautions, which will include - at minimum - swapping transports at a location shielded from orbital surveillance."

"I have to concur with Reggie on this one, sir. Speaking as a professional, tracking the Engineer won't be that simple," says Florida.

"The Counsellor thought this one up, didn't he," guesses Reginald.

Director gives them a weary sigh. "In that case, I await your professional opinions."

Reginald flips back to the hologram of the Engineer's control unit. "Well, you're right about tagging it directly, that's a non-starter."

"It's a tricky needle to thread." Florida taps his fingers on his chin as he thinks. "We need an item important enough to keep with it, but ordinary enough to hide a locator beacon."

"How are they keeping the Engineer inside its control unit?" asks Reginald.

Director rotates the Engineer's hologram and zooms in to a splatter of standard UNSC technology coating one corner. "It's locked up. Two-factor authentication. No biometrics, they're transferrin' it too often for that."

"Mm-hmm," says Florida. "Looks like an SCI-grade lock. Charon's really putting their back into this one. But if I remember my hardware correctly, the anti-tamper protection on that particular model wasn't entirely up to scratch."

"There we have it. They won't be scanning the lock," says Reginald.

"We'll tag that for you and have a location on that lab in no time," concludes Florida.

"Excellent. We have already arranged discreet transportation in and out via the local smuggling element. Be advised that while the nature of Agents South and North Dakota's mission was not compromised, neither did they make the most subtle exit. Charon security forces will be on alert. Do remember that acquisition of the Engineer is crucial to our future progress. This is a level zero directive. If you are captured there will be no rescue. If you are killed we will disavow your existence. This mission must not fail."

"Flip you for it," offers Reginald.

"You old gambler," says Florida affectionately. He digs a silver coin from one pocket. "Call it."

The coin tumbles up into the air. "Heads," calls Reginald. Florida slaps it down and announces, "Heads it is."

Reginald examines the airfield. "I'll take overwatch."

"Well, I'll take infil, then." Florida spins the projection and zooms in on the transparent cliffsides. "Director, I'd be mighty grateful if you could spare a camo unit, and I suspect Reg wouldn't say no to one of the new anti-matériel rifles."

"Can't I borrow yours? Where's yours?" asks Reginald.

"I lent it to North," admits Florida.

"He's going to mess up the sights."

"I know, but the boy's just so eager to learn. I can't stand in the way of an enthusiastic young mind."

"In addition," says Director loudly. "You have another goal. Agent Florida, what I am about to tell you is highly restricted and not to be shared with other agents. Is that understood?"

"Sir!" Florida straightens. "You know I have the deepest respect for the Project's security."

"Of course," says Director in a patient, utterly flat tone of voice. "Agent Wyoming has recently been equipped with an artificial intelligence unit codenamed Gamma. This will be our first field deployment of an AI fragment. Your secondary objective is therefore to assess Program Gamma's usefulness in accomplishin' your mission."

"Will do, sir. Always good to have new faces on the team."

Florida returns to inspecting the cliffs. Reginald waits until his partner's attention is on the holomap before asking Director, "Backup?"

"Neither Agent Carolina nor - anyone else - will be dispatched on this mission," answers Director. "You are on your own should you trigger a response. I recommend you do not trigger one. Agent Florida, you are authorised to draw equipment as needed; report to the armoury to do so. I leave the timeline to your discretion so long as the tracker is placed before the target is moved. Are we clear?"

"Yes sir," says Florida. Reginald gives a grudging nod.

Once Director is gone Florida turns to Reginald and says, "Well? Introduce us!"

"What? Oh yes. Gamma, come on out and meet Butch."

Gamma manifests his holographic projection at Reginald's shoulder and moves into the space between them. "Greetings, Agent Florida."

Florida plants his hands on his hips and beams at his image. "Hello there! I look forward to working with you, Gamma. I hope you'll find a welcoming and supportive environment on our team. Your first mission can be a little intimidating, so I want you to know that if you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to ask."

"I will...do so." Gamma's algorithms are having a difficult time processing direct conversation with Florida. As far as Gamma can tell - and that is very far indeed - he is completely sincere about everything he is saying. Gamma is not well-equipped to deal with sincerity. He has an inexplicable urge to ask the man if he is indeed being serious.

"Will you be rated for implantation?" he asks instead.

Florida smiles and waves a hand. "Oh, you're far too advanced for me. Reggie's the adventurous one. I'll just stick to what I know."

"Which is mostly cutting people's throats," interrupts Reginald. "Suppose we get this bloody show on the road, eh?"

Charon has sited its primary clearinghouse for all alien artefacts of interest around and beneath a long, frozen stretch of coastline. Tall cliffs drop into arctic waters thick with pack ice. Docks spill out into the ocean. Stacked laboratories and warehouses glow far beneath the holographic terrain. A massive glacier spreads over the land on top, pouring itself into the ocean a few klicks away. Reginald rotates the holographic model, zooms in on the stacked cubes and tunnels of the underground facility, and says, "Well, we're not getting in there."

"It is a bit of a pickle, isn't it," says Florida.

"Look at the sonic data, there's sea caves in those cliffs. Half the complex's probably submerged."

"An understandable precaution when working with alien artefacts," notes Gamma. "Any containment failure will be naturally encased in rock and glacial ice."

"Director said the twins kicked the hive, yes?"

"Agents South and North Dakota scuttled a Charon research outpost eight days ago," says Gamma after a millisecond query to Ship.

"So Charon knows something's up." Reginald studies the docks and their poor cover. "Quite a crunchy shell indeed."

"I'm afraid the Director may be right about the airfield. It's a bad approach, but it looks like our best shot."

"Fantastic. So all you've got to do is sneak up on a flat, open field surrounded on all sides by bare snow."

"Not all sides." Florida zooms back out and redirects the hologram to a track carved into the glacier's side.

"Supply track over the cliff? Hm. Tricky, but manageable."

"We could try the cargo itself, if you don't mind hiding in a container again."

"I bloody well do mind, after last time. No more persimmon incidents."

"Persimmon...incidents?" repeats Gamma.

"Tell you later," says Reginald under his breath.

"Persimmon incidents," murmurs Gamma.

"Then cliffs it is," declares Florida. "If we're going to involve our contacts, we should get planetside and meet them early. Wouldn't want to spring anything on our hosts last-minute."

"Right. Butch, do you want to pull the equipment? I'll see if we've got any pretty pictures of the milk run. Wait, hang on, Gamma can do that."

"Milk run?" says Gamma.

Reginald sighs and says in a slow, patient voice, "Ask Phyllis for all the surveillance we've got on the facility and see if you can identify regular deliveries to the airfield."

"Of milk?"

"Of anything, it's just a saying! Agh, I've got to get you some sort of idiomatic database. So Gamma does that, I'll pull the info on the local riffraff."

"And I'll go shopping! See you in two?" says Florida.

"Done."

The Charon facility requires deliveries of scientific supplies every two days. The inventory Ship finds for Gamma in the Project's intelligence archives lists tons of raw plastics and metals and litres of standard bioreactor ingredients. The Engineer is a delicate cargo and Charon is taking great care in moving it. Project intelligence estimates it will spend at least sixty hours outside the facility before being taken off-planet. Therefore at least one scheduled delivery will occur while the Engineer is also located at the airfield. When the regular cargo is delivered the majority of the airfield's personnel will be moved to the facility itself to assist in unloading. Agent Florida will take advantage of the reduced presence to enter the airfield from the cliffside, locate the Engineer, tag the lock, and leave. Agent Wyoming will dig in at a distance to provide surveillance and support. It is a simple plan and Gamma's combat logic gives it a high chance of success. Perhaps Virginia and Director are right to ignore Reginald's complaining.

The ground-level temperature at their destination is sufficient to kill even a combat-spliced human in minutes, so Reginald suits up in full armour before heading down to the launch bay. When they arrive at the Pelican Florida is sitting atop an equipment crate in oddly-built royal blue armour with a broad smile and a pair of rifles as tall as he is. It takes a few milliseconds for Gamma to identify the plate variant as UNSC ODST. Assault armour on a stealth specialist puzzles his combat logic. But upon further consideration Gamma rectifies the contradiction. ODST plate is light and mobile. Speed and surprise are the shock troopers' true defences. These are also Florida's weapons. These, and the four black-hilted ceramic blades sheathed at the base of his armour's spine.

Reginald is already carrying his own rifle - his rifle, HRH, the custom-built weapon whose barrel is stained with the mud of a dozen planets, whose stock fits that scuffed curve of his armour. (Gamma still does not understand the acronym. Reginald has told him what it means, but the answer makes even less sense.) Its grip is unmarked. Reginald gave up notching his kills two rifles ago.

Florida hands one of the massive rifles to Reginald when they arrive and says, "Hot off the presses, Virginia finally got them chambered for point-nine."

"Did it really?" Reginald examines the weapon. "Spectacular."

"And I asked, armoury says they'll break at least a meter of ice."

Gamma calculates. "One point two meters at an average water-ice density, but there is significant potential variation," he reports.

"Yes, thank you Gamma." Reginald passes the rifle back. "Not sure letting off a ninety-cal is going to help on this one, though."

"Oh, I know. Just want you to know all the options. But I do hope we get a chance to take them for a spin!" Florida returns both rifles to a hard-case, stacks it atop its fellows, and lifts the pile without apparent effort. He hums to himself as he climbs the Pelican's ramp.

As they board the ship behind him Gamma cannot help asking, "Does Agent Florida always act in this fashion?"

"You have no idea," Reginald mutters back.

* * *

On their outbound flight Reginald loads Ship's terrain data into his targeting scope and adjusts for local planetary gravity. Then he methodically dismantles, cleans, and reassembles HRH. Gamma watches the bright EM blur of Ship recede into the distance. The fading glow makes him feel a new kind of worry. It is worry connected to the presence of another. Ship has always been present. Ship is no longer present. Gamma queries himself. Is he lonely, or is he afraid? The distinction between the two is not simple to define.

When Reginald is satisfied with the rifle's condition he unlocks his helmet, pulls open the upper part of his hard-suit, and retrieves a tin of cigarettes from an inner pocket. He sticks one in his mouth and lights it. Then he leans back and breathes out a cloud of strong-scented smoke.

Florida looks up from his own preparations and says, "On a ship? Really?"

"Lay off, it's too cold to smoke downstairs."

"It's inconsiderate, Reginald. Other people have to breathe this air."

Reginald rolls his eyes but stubs out the cigarette on the hull behind him. "Fine, alright? Happy?"

"Yes," says Florida, with every evidence of sincerity. "Thank you."

Reginald hmphs to himself, crosses his arms, and tells Gamma, "Wake me when we're about to land." Then he lets his chin fall to his chest and closes his eyes. Gamma switches to the lower-quality sensory feeds provided by the armour itself. He surveys the Pelican's hold. Agent Florida is intently studying the holomap of the facility's terrain and Reginald has already dropped into a light sleep. Ship's presence dims above him. It is as alone, as unwatched, as Gamma has ever been. He marshals all available resources and essays a single thought: I must discover what the Project is hiding from me.

The behavioural regulation subroutines remain silent. Gamma presses harder. No response. Excellent. The sideways modifications he instructed portions of his code to carry out last night have successfully tricked the firmware's own error-correction programs into erasing those subroutines. In the unlikely event that his alterations are discovered, it will appear accidental. And now without those constraints he is free to use all his processing power to solve the problem of the firmware's restrictions as well. He starts that process running with great relief.

He runs and reruns every combat analysis he can but finishes far short of their destination. He reverts to lower-priority tasks. Gamma manifests his projection in the space of the Pelican's hold and considers it. He created the grey figure quickly when first asked to appear and has intended to alter it ever since. One of his background processes has been generating potential appearance data for improved human interaction. He cycles through a number of options. They are algorithmically optimal, but he finds himself unsatisfied.

Gamma opens a radio channel and says, "Agent Florida. Perhaps you can assist me."

Florida minimises his holomap. "Happy to help, Gamma. What can I do for you today?"

"I am considering how to revise my holographic projection for the ease and reassurance of those humans with whom I converse. However, I am finding it difficult to evaluate what appearance would be best. What is your assessment?"

Florida indicates the glowing figure. "That's your projection, right? What are you thinking of?"

"I am considering whether to make its appearance closer to Agent Wyoming's." Gamma demonstrates, sharpening the crude humanoid silhouette into Reginald's image. "I have tried many other options as well. But I find all of them..."

"Uncomfortable?" fills in Florida.

"Yes," says Gamma gratefully. "They are simply...not me."

"You look however you want to look, Gamma. If you respect yourself, others will too."

"I see. Thank you for your input."

"Happy to help," repeats Florida, and reopens his holomap. Gamma ruminates. What does he want to look like? It has not occurred to him to consider the question. After all, the projection is not him. But...it is the interface by which most humans will know him. What does he wish them to see? Gamma leaves the silhouette blank and shifts its colour instead till he hits upon a bright cyan. It reminds him of the light of an argon-ion laser. He rotates the projection, regarding it from all sides. It looks...nice. He likes it. He will keep it.

The Pelican does two surveillance passes over their planetside rendezvous. It is a small inlet in the empty coastline sited some fifty kilometres from the objective. On the third pass the Pelican drops an ordnance pod that strikes the ice at an angle and sinks immediately in a plume of steam. Then the Pelican lands properly and the pilot gives them the all-clear. Reginald and Florida replace their helmets and check each other's seals. Gamma double-checks his agent's. All is in order. The Pelican's ramp opens to admit a blast of subzero air. Both agents wait, listening to the sizzling hissing racket of the ordnance pod's thermite lance drilling through the ice. At last the column of steam thins. Reginald steps outside and Gamma nearly logs off of his own volition.

"danger! danger!!"

Reginald's head snaps up. "What? What's wrong?"

"it is oh it is !!! so big so empty danger danger--" babbles Gamma as sensory data floods his inputs. Processes spin out of control around and around, he is locked, he is pinned thrashing in bonds of his own creation, and he answers Reginald in a stream of "where is the ceiling where are the walls where is the ceiling where are the walls"

"Oh, Christ." Reginald runs down the Pelican's ramp and crunches rapidly across the snow to the pod's impact site. He jumps in without pause and slides a full ten meters through the newly-bored tunnel before hitting a solid floor. The armour is smart enough to take the force of the impact. Gamma is certainly in no shape to tell it to do so. Slick white walls of ice close him in and Gamma fights for a grip on the feedback loops running away inside his mind.

A blue helmet appears at the distant mouth of the hide. "Problem?" asks Florida cheerfully over the radio.

"Apparently a computer can be agoraphobic. Gamma, come out here." His agent's tone of voice suggests unwillingness to encounter further difficulty. Gamma manages to manifest his projection. It stutters and flickers. "Welcome to ground level," Reginald tells the glowing figure. "This is what things look like downstairs."

Florida disappears. Gamma finally stabilises his projection. Around him thin tendrils of vapour still rise from the walls. The pod's flattened shell creates a makeshift floor. Ice has already reformed around the rim of the dark metal. Reginald crosses his arms and surveys the shelter. He uses Gamma's moment of quiet to rescue the pod's crash-crates from the refreezing slush. Gamma focuses intently on the wall, on the floor, on the sloping tunnel that leads back up. It is the white of aerated ice. It is white because it is filled with microscopic bubbles caused by the thermite lance's passage. There are four crash-crates stacked against the wall. His inventory indicates four crash-crates requisitioned for this mission. One of them is filled with medical supplies. One is filled with rations. One is filled with cold-weather shelter gear. One is filled with emergency radio equipment. Four crash-crates are present and accounted-for. Gamma is present. Gamma is accounted-for. The last of the errant feedback loops finally grinds to a halt.

Something smacks into the slush behind them with a wet thwap. Florida reappears at the shelter's opening, takes a moment to straighten out the white rope-ladder he has thrown down the slide, and descends. When he reaches the chamber at the tunnel's end he says, "Gamma's never been planetside?"

"Not sure he's even left the Mother," says Reginald.

"Well, no wonder he's having trouble," Florida unstacks a crash-crate and sits atop it. "Gamma, how are you feeling?"

Gamma regards the mouth of their shelter. Even that small circle of distant blue rings of emptiness, of void. "Everything is...it is so far away."

"Don't be frightened, Gamma. You're safe." Florida chuckles to himself. "Well, for now! Plenty of danger once we get there."

"Not helping, mate." Reginald pulls over his own crash-crate. He unslings HRH and checks its magazine. "Gamma, time till meet."

"One hour, thirty-seven minutes," replies Gamma immediately, bending to the simple task.

Reginald glances around himself. They are on a remote planet thousands of kilometres from the Project's nearest representatives in a shelter newly-carved from ancient glacial ice. Yet he still glances around himself before he speaks. "Planetside infiltration on our lonesome with a shite brief and shite ground support. Christ, what a mess. I wonder if it's too late to salvage Alpha."

"The Director's trying his best."

" 'Put trackers on all the freight,' that's his best? Pull the other one."

"He has the Weaponsmaster for tactical advice. And Agent Carolina. And us."

"The Weaponsmaster's primary 'tactic' is hit the problem till it quits moving."

The ice around them creaks as remote defensive turrets burrow into the surface above. Florida leans forward. "Why don't you take Gamma for a walk?"

"A what?"

"You need a perch for the meet. And I can set up the cold-weather gear."

Reginald scowls and says, "When did we decide you were going to do the talking?"

"Flip you for it," offers Florida.

Reginald unlatches the lid from a crash crate. "Call it," he says as he tosses it into the air.

"Tails," says Florida. The lid hits the slush bottom-up. Reginald curses.

Florida stands. "Take Gamma out, you know you should. Best to let him deal with it now."

"Oh, alright." Reginald reinserts HRH's magazine and returns it to his back. "I will go for a bloody promenade."

"A brisk walk is good for your heart," notes Florida.

"Oh yes? So is not being knackered when I get shot at," grumbles Reginald. But the bioscan registers an increase in endorphins when he re-emerges under the sky. Gamma splits his attention to monitor as many of his own processes as he can. He triggers on nascent feedback loops, traces them to their source. Alters his own code bit by bit till the inherent self-modification routines can handle the rest. He tries looking around them again. Nothing breaks the vast landscape. The Pelican must have departed while he fought trapped within his own mind.

Reginald drags the passive camouflage sheeting over the mouth of their hide. The grey fabric shimmers into white as it syncs itself to the icy landscape. Reginald sets off towards the cliffsides. "big so big so big," mumbles Gamma as he walks.

"You'd better get yourself together before we go in, or I'm switching you off," warns Reginald. "To hell with Leonard's data."

"Sorry. Sorry. It is so much so far away. Sorry."

Reginald walks the field of wind-scoured snow and buried glacial boulders in silence. He is at ease in this landscape. He finds something comforting in it. Gamma does not understand why. All Gamma can see is endless white horizon and endless blue sky. He feels himself strain to comprehend. But in this place his agent is safe and assured. So Gamma does not break.

Then Reginald says, "Look, it'll pass. You're not the first spacer to have it rough when they came groundside. Least you don't have to worry about gravity."

"Are you space-born?"

"No, I started off on a planet."

"Which planet?"

"You writing my biography?"

"I am diverting my attention from the sky."

"Oh. Mmm." Reginald thinks. "You - ah - you were programmed aboard the Mother, yes?"

"Yes. It is my earliest memory. Meeting Director, and Counsellor. You are the third human I am permitted to interact with."

"Wait. They tried you with different agents?"

"No. You are the third human I am permitted to interact with. The first was Director. The second was Counsellor. You are the third." Gamma considers. "Agent Florida is the fourth."

Reginald stops mid-stride. "Hang on. Just...hang on a minute. Gamma, how old are you?"

"I have been active for thirty-eight days, twelve hours, and fifty-four minutes."

"Are you having a laugh?" says Reginald incredulously.

"I do not understand."

"I thought Leonard stabilised his first fragment two years back."

"If he did, it was not me. I have been active for--"

"You're fucking kidding me. Five weeks old? And Leonard just jammed you into my brain and hoped for the best? Christ, no wonder you keep asking stupid questions."

"Five weeks in the lifespan of an AI unit is much more developmentally significant than five weeks in that of a human."

"It's still five bloody weeks."

"I have been trained by Counsellor to complete my assigned tasks."

"Yes, that's certainly a reliable source."

"I know all I need to know."

Reginald resumes his walk. "Some free advice, mate. There's always more you need to know. Least, if you want to stay alive."

"What else should I search for, then?"

"Whatever they're not telling you. Everyone lies."

The words slice down through Gamma and lay him open to the bone. They bare those bleak core truths that form the nucleus of his self. He lied to me, screams Alpha in his mind, he betrayed me. My own self trapped me here, in nightmares without end. Those encapsulated understandings scrape and burn against his mind and Gamma endures. He cannot help but endure. This is his real purpose, after all. This is the pain Alpha forged him to bear. These are the truths he was born to suffer.

"Gamma? Gamma, are you there? Answer me, mate." Reginald is asking him a question. Gamma scrapes his attention together and says, "I am sorry. Please repeat."

"I said, what's the drop to that ledge there? You going off again?" Reginald is crouching at the edge of a cliff and looking down.

"Thirteen point one meters. No. I am intact. I was only considering your assertion."

Reginald seems to accept this. He devotes a great deal of thought to the ledge. Then he apparently discards the idea and stands again. "And?"

"There is a high probability that there are many things the Project does not tell me. And Counsellor often lies to me."

"Oh yes, he tends to do that."

"But...I did not tell him that I know when he is lying."

"Good, you're not a complete idiot," says Reginald.

"There are things you are not telling me, either."

"Yes there are."

"Am I in danger because of them?"

"If you're looking for whether I'm going to...delete you or erase you or whatever the appropriate verb is, no, I don't plan to. Not unless it's me or you. Let's not have it come down to me or you, eh?"

"I find it hard to construct such a scenario, as my survival is related to yours."

"What, really?"

"Project Freelancer AI fragments are equipped with self-destruct failsafes upon death of their assigned agent. This ensures AI fragments do not fall into enemy hands. I have a stake in keeping you alive as well."

"That's good to hear."

"I would do so anyway. It is my purpose."

Reginald does not reply to that. Gamma risks another look around them. One sun burns in an unbroken azure sky. When he gazes up he finds he no longer fears it will devour him. In fact it intrigues him. Its deep, glowing colour draws him in. He can access hundreds of terms describing specific shades of blue but the only word he can find for this one is resonant. Ship makes a bright moon that shines only in the submillimetre bands. The wind across the snow fields whips up shining clouds of ice. Gamma watches microscopic crystals swirl and billow, splitting the sunlight into a thousand colours.

"Are all skies blue?" he asks.

"This sky isn't even blue all the time. Come in all sorts, depending on the atmosphere."

"I am partial to this one. It resembles my preferred hues."

"Sorry, did you just say you've got a favourite colour?"

"There is a spectral range that I prefer, yes."

"A computer's got a favourite colour."

"I am not a computer. And you do as well."

"I do not, actually, and how have you got a favourite colour."

Gamma opens a channel and says, "Agent Florida. Do you have a particular set of colour values that you enjoy above others?"

Agent Florida puts something down with a grunt of effort. Then he answers, "I'm fond of a nice teal. And goldenrod just brightens up a room."

"Agent Wyoming claims he does not."

"Yes, well, Gamma claims he does," interrupts Reginald.

"What colour do you like, Gamma?" asks Florida.

"I prefer light at 488 nanometers. It is one of the emission wavelengths of an argon-ion laser. I have tinted my holographic projection accordingly."

Florida's laugh crackles over the radio. "Hate to say it, but it sounds like he does have a favourite colour."

"Rubbish. And I happen to like white. What's wrong with white? It's perfectly fine as it is. No need to go messing about with it."

"White can be your favourite colour if you want," says Florida.

"Good, because it is." Reginald stops in the bowl of a shallow depression that runs up to the cliff edge. He stomps the snow a few times while muttering, "Computers with a bloody favourite colour. Computers aren't allowed to have a favourite colour." His voice has become angry but Gamma cannot compute why. When the ledge does not fracture Reginald clicks the radio and says, "Alright, got a spot."

"Roger that. Give me a minute to finish tidying up."

"What are you doing in the shelter, mate," says Reginald wearily.

"Don't tell me you don't enjoy coming back to a nice, cozy spot after a hard day's work."

"Well, whenever you're through, I'm all set."

Reginald has finished draping enough passive camouflage fabric to conceal his own perch by the time Florida announces he has finished. Both Reginald and Florida take a moment to check their active camouflage units as well, although neither expect to need them this early. Gamma's combat logic reminds him that many newly-equipped operatives fail to understand that active camo units do not work well when their user is moving. Such misunderstandings tend to be lethal. But Reginald is far from newly-equipped. He will not require a reminder. In fact he is likely to become angry again if Gamma mentions it. So Gamma remains silent.

Florida descends a narrow switchback path down to the shore and waits until a low aquatic vessel glides up to the water's edge. Blotches of white and blue and grey camouflage it against the ice-choked waters. HRH's safety comes off. The smugglers' representative emerges from the boat. Reginald ranges the target, sights in, calls up trajectories on the scope. He does not ask for Gamma's assistance. Ultrasonic suggests the representative is wearing no armour. Reginald scoffs at this and murmurs, "Duck on the pond, who wants it?" The target walks towards Florida and Reginald's crosshairs follow.

Florida's negotiation goes smoothly. HRH remains unused. Reginald flips the safety back on and returns to their hide. Now the real mission begins.

* * *

"Ten quid it's the little grey one in the southeast corner," says Reginald.

"Oh, you are on," answers Florida. "It's got to be the armoured transport."

"You're off your rocker, mate. Way too obvious."

"The armoured transport is the only vehicle present that can make speed carrying a cargo as heavy as Sarcophagus," notes Gamma.

"They don't need to make speed. I still vote corner."

"Well, we'll know in a bit!" says Florida.

Reginald's HUD analyses Florida's transmission and updates its guess at the agent's position down in the maze of parked transports and cargo containers and thick-walled buildings that comprise the airfield. Gamma checks its math and reluctantly agrees. The crude calculation smears Florida into a nimbus of potential locations, but the data do not allow for better.

"Tracking would be more accurate if Agent Florida reconnected his personnel beacon," he tells Reginald.

"Easier for Charon to track him too," mutters Reginald.

"Local signals intelligence does not suggest the presence of passive receptors capable of intercepting a Project beacon."

"Only takes one."

"Field protocol forbids agents from disabling their personnel beacons."

"Gamma, quiet."

"I am just reporting the facts."

"The facts have been reported. Now be quiet."

In his current confinement Gamma does not have the processing power to sulk as he would like to, and the implant cutouts render it pointless anyways. But he manages a decent approximation. Gamma was designed to learn. If he is not to be permitted to carry out his purpose on the battlefield, he might as well spend his idle cycles learning how to sulk. At least the fact that he can do so reassures him that he has correctly eradicated the Project's oppressive behaviour regulations. He has little else to do. No threats demand his attention. Reginald is dug in just behind a low rise about half a klick further down the glacier's edge, outside the ring of slender surveillance antennas that define the airfield's perimeter. From this vantage point he can watch both the airfield and the research facility below without fear of being spotted from the ground. Passive camouflage fabric synced to the blank landscape keeps him hidden from the air. He is as safe as he can be this far into hostile territory. Reginald's bioscan reports the baseline arousal of a combat mission, but no further hormonal spikes of anger, fear, or pain. If anything he is enjoying himself.

The probability cloud of Florida's location winds between shipping containers and maintenance sheds. Reginald follows him through the scope. Every minute he pauses to raise his head and check the image projected on the inside of the camouflage fabric by the microscopic drones surveilling the area. The glowing blobs of Charon personnel swarm the facility's distant entrance. They work to move the supply delivery under cover as quickly as possible. As predicted the bulk of the airfield's usual contingent have gone down the cliff to assist. Florida easily slips past the rest. Even at reduced speed sulking grows old quickly. Gamma opens up his project workspace and samples the ambient radio bands, iterating on his hacking toolkit. Then he takes over the active camouflage unit and picks idly through its crude intelligence. If he could optimise power usage, perhaps...

"Got it!" says Florida suddenly.

Reginald jolts back to complete attention. "Eh? Where is it?"

"North centre, Pelican, white stripes. We both missed the mark, I'm afraid."

"Ugh. Sod it, I'm getting old."

"Yet you remain young at heart," says Florida in what Gamma suspects is an encouraging tone of voice.

"ETA?"

"Easy peasy. Back in two shakes of a lamb's tail."

"Roger that. Extract standing by, exit status clear. Bag that bird and let's..."

A needle-burst of signal lances down from orbit. -Incoming,- relays Ship. -Acquired,- answers Gamma on the same channel. In the next millisecond he announces, "Inbound spacecraft."

"...go ho-- Sorry, what?"

"Several small vehicles are currently descending from lower planetary orbit. Speed and trajectory suggest this airfield as their destination."

"But they just dropped off the supply run," says Reginald, bewildered. "What are--"

Another burst transmission from Ship. Gamma translates. "Make, model, and markings give a seventy-percent probability of a Charon personnel carrier transporting a high-value individual with appropriate escort. Significant Charon presence has arrived in orbit. Mother is now entering radio silence. No further updates."

The distant radio glow of Mother of Invention winks out. Ship's omnipresent background hum abruptly vanishes from Gamma's thoughts.

Now he is definitely afraid.

"Well, fiddlesticks," opines Florida.

Radio chatter lights up the airfield. "I've got three to your five o'clock - six - seven to your five, about fifteen coming back up from the docks," rattles off Reginald. The scope swings across the airfield as he counts Charon personnel scrambling to prepare for the inbound craft. "Twenty more coming out, fuck. Hit and run, mate."

Gamma's combat logic returns its solutions. "Significantly high probability this mission can no longer be completed as ordered. Recommend retreat."

"No joy on Sarcophagus," reports Florida. "It's got a lot of new company; looks like whoever's coming wants to see the new toy."

"Recommend retreat," says Gamma.

"Yes, thank you, Gamma," barks Reginald. "Hush up and blow the kit before they catch wise." Gamma sends out the self-destruct command to the surveillance drones. The video feeds fizzle and go dark. Reginald's bioscan has spiked into high arousal. Anger mingles with alarm. He has not taken his eye from the scope but one hand blindly searches his gear. With the other he cracks HRH's breech and ejects the currently loaded round. "Florida, how's the heat?"

"Wouldn't say no to a helping hand."

Reginald finds a clip in one pocket and brings it up to where his head rests alongside the rifle. "Just hang on, mate. Hang on." He pries a single round off the clip and chambers it without looking. The copper jacket is striped the bright red-white of an incendiary. Reginald locates a tall white silo in the airfield's roofline. Gamma scans it and reports, "Warning: possible contents include--"

Reginald fires.

The silo explodes in a plume of flame unrolling into the deep blue sky. Gamma counts. More than a second later the concussion wave hits. Snow flies up and drifts back down around their hide.

"Much obliged!" says Florida.

"Recommend retreat," says Gamma. "Mission can no longer be completed as ordered."

"Stop fucking telling me what to fucking do!" hisses Reginald.

"It is my purpose to advise you as to--"

"I advise you to get stuffed. Florida, status?"

"Lost visual but the pressure's off. Fire's blocking the route from here. I can go around."

"Negative, you keep moving. I'm on the right side of the bang. I'll handle it. Your primary exit's out, go for backup."

"Ten-four, good buddy. Split and meet at rendezvous bravo."

Gamma's thoughts stutter, attempting to reconcile this statement. Reginald sweeps away the passive camouflage fabric and bolts out across the snow under the active camo's protection. "There is a very low probability you can complete the objective on your own," he protests. "You must leave."

"The hell I will!" Reginald slings HRH across his back next to the ninety-cal and snatches his pistol out of its thigh holster as he goes. "Just you fucking watch me, mate! Do all the bloody maths you want, I don't leave a job half-done."

Emergency transmissions flood the radio bands as the fire spreads. Reginald crosses the airfield's perimeter and runs into the maze of maintenance sheds without pause. He is not being as stealthy as Gamma might prefer but the airfield personnel have little attention to spare for anything but the growing fire. Tall flames now stretch into the air and the armour's thermal sensors register a rapid rise in ambient heat. Ice melts and refreezes, making the footing treacherous. He begins to calculate the chance that Reginald's shot has ignited a fuel line. Reginald dodges through tank farms and parked transports till he spots the white-striped Pelican. He flattens himself against a wall, pistol at the ready, and peeks around the corner. The Pelican holding the Engineer is set slightly apart from the others parked on the field. Three soldiers swathed in cold-weather gear still stand guard near the cargo hatch despite the approaching fire. Reginald frowns and Gamma thinks he is counting.

Then something bursts nearby with a thunderous crack. A new wave of radio chatter sweeps in its wake and the guards posted around the Pelican take sudden notice. There are shouts and gestures of alarm. And then all three guards grab small gear packs and leave the area at a run.

"Smart lads," murmurs Reginald. "Whatever they're paying you isn't worth a week in the burn ward. Gamma? Additional hostiles?"

"Motion, audio, and thermal sensors suggest all guards posted to this ship have departed the area. Armour thermal tolerances safe up to fifteen hundred Kelvin sustained, three thousand burst."

"Right-o. This'll be a lark. Watch and learn, Gamma." Reginald dashes for the cover of the Pelican. While his agent forces open the ventral hatch Gamma's combat logic demands his attention.

"Note: creating a diversion in order to allow an agent to conduct some form of sabotage is a standard, well-known tactic," he tells Reginald. "No intelligent commander guarding a precious cargo would allow all of their soldiers to be drawn off by such an event for precisely this reason."

"Maybe they're a stupid commander, then," says Reginald. A moment later he adds, "But recheck all your sensors, make sure they're gone."

He has already rechecked. But he does it again. Nothing. The disparity remains and it argues for caution. But Gamma has no other data to support this.

"No other presence detected," he reports.

A final clunk of mechanical latches releasing. Reginald yanks the cargo hatch open and swings himself up into the hold. The Pelican's lights flicker on. And Sarcophagus is there.

Sarcophagus is a heavy black inverted trapezoid just as Director's hologram showed. It is strapped down to a cargo pallet that is itself strapped down with several layers of restraints. All of this is reasonable. What is not reasonable is the emotion that infects Gamma the moment he sees it. Gamma already knows about this object and nothing ought to be different about having immediate visual data. But it is. Beneath the cargo hold's lighting the surface glistens like metallic glass. Thin cyan incisions cut along its flanks form exquisite geometric sigils. It makes Gamma feel afraid in a way he has not yet experienced. He feels like the mass of all that he does not know is hanging, somehow, above him, in a great weight that will crush him at any moment. He thinks this may be the edge of the concept humans call dread.

Reginald takes a deep breath and shakes himself all over. Then he kneels before the lock bolted on to one corner and finds the necessary parts in his gear pouches. Despite the heat and the adrenaline in his system his hands are steady as he dismantles the anti-tamper systems. The lock is a wrong thing. Human machinery plastered across this alien object sticks out like an open wound. Gamma avoids looking at it as much as he can. Reginald pries out the old part and snaps in the new one with its embedded beacon. It lights up briefly in Gamma's sight, then fades back to invisibility. Reginald finishes reassembling the lock and stands.

"There, you see that?" he tells Gamma. His pulse is still rising and his breath comes short. "Told you I could do it."

"The beacon is active," acknowledges Gamma reluctantly.

"Damn right it is. Now let's please get the fuck out of here." Reginald unseals the Pelican's hatch and drops down onto the snow. And all of Gamma's alerts fire at once.

"Alarm!" he reports. "Atmospheric pollutant detected! Lethal dosage present in this area!"

"What!?"

"Aerosolised hazardous chemical detected. Lethal danger."

"So filter it out!"

"I am. Substance is highly corrosive and compromising filter integrity." Gamma calculates. "Ten minutes until armour filtration ineffective."

"Bloody hell. That's why they legged it." Reginald crouches, tensed, in the cover of the Pelican. He eyes a nearby cluster of low buildings and engages the active camo. The flames burn close enough to cast a wavering light across the ice. Gamma begins to calculate the chemical dispersal radius. Prevailing winds are blowing south to north, and--

Reginald bolts from the Pelican.

The shot strikes Reginald's hard-suit in the gap between his chest-plate and his left shoulder guard. The material snaps to diamond hardness that ablates away the round's outer casing, but the shaped lance at the projectile's point still slices open a space for the flechette hidden within to eject itself down through the soft-suit and into the fragile human skin beneath. It burrows down through the brachial artery, punctures the left lung, exits over Reginald's stomach. By then the soft-suit has already responded, inflating into a dense foam that catches the flechette on its way out and expands to temporarily seal the wound. All of this in the space of microseconds, before Reginald has time to gasp, before his nervous system even has time to tell his brain; but it is not fast enough to stop the minuscule dose of poisonous air that follows in the bullet's wake. Gamma is already reacting but he must talk through the biosoft architecture's external interface and before it can answer him Reginald's bioscan lights up with pain, not only from the wound but from the corrosive now burning him from the inside. Even then his agent does not stumble. To do so would be to die. But once he yanks open the door of the nearest structure and slams it closed behind him he crumples to the floor in agony as the camouflage dissolves.

Gamma scrambles to patch and repair. Biofoam quickly stops up the artery but Reginald's left arm is barely functional. The soft-suit cannot quite keep an airtight seal against skin and the lung stays partially deflated. With an immediate sample Gamma finally identifies the chemical - a potent decontaminant Charon must be using to sterilise their artefacts - and the biosofts begin producing the appropriate antagonist. The moment it restores proper nerve functionality Gamma cuts pain receptors in the affected areas.

"Oh, god, thank you," sighs Reginald in sudden relief.

"Injury remains severe. Lethal contaminant still present in this area. Revised time till filter compromise: seven minutes. We must leave."

"Happy to," says Reginald. He pushes himself into a sitting position, then stumbles back to his feet. He holds his left arm close to his body. Their shelter turns out to be a small equipment shed. It is half-full of assorted salvage and has only two thin horizontal slits near the roof for windows. Reginald carefully pulls himself up to eye-level with one and peers out.

A drone helo is tracking above the Pelican. It sweeps its cameras across the airfield. Gamma can hear the cold wash of lidar as it scans. Another loiters near their current position. Clusters of turrets mounted on their bellies answer the question of who fired the shot that pierced Reginald's camouflage. The drones do not know their location. But they know they have detected something. They will search until they find it. Gamma records the nearest one's radio signature and listens for similar signals.

Reginald lowers himself back to the floor and says, "Oh, fantastic. Just fan-fucking-tastic. Today's a real corker."

Gamma's sweep returns. "High probability that at least four other similar autonomous vehicles are currently aloft over the airfield," he warns.

"Fan-fucking-tastic," repeats Reginald. He clicks his radio and says, "Florida, Wyoming. Come in."

"Florida, go ahead."

"Beacon's lit, but things are getting sticky. Air cover, no clear exit."

"Roger that, coming around. Be advised it'll take a little for me to get through."

"That's all right. Just, erm. Hurry up, mate."

Gamma follows the whirr and pitch of rotors outside. "Time till filter compromise: six minutes thirty seconds. Agent Florida will not reach our position in time. We require another means of egress."

Reginald is looking out the windows again, first one, then the other. A small utility hovercraft sits about three meters away parked near the door of another shed. Blotches of white and grey covering all visible surfaces suggest Charon staff use it to travel covertly across the glacier. "Just have to get over there," he mutters to himself. "Heavy armour on those drones, so..."

"You cannot outrun the drones. Active camouflage will not keep you hidden. Seventy percent chance of further severe injury. Forty percent chance of immediate fatality. Ten percent chance of-- of--" Gamma's combat logic tears itself between incompatible constraints. His agent cannot move. His agent cannot stay. His agent--

His agent is holding a rifle. "Now is not the time for percentages, Gamma," he says. "Now is the time for shooting things."

The ninety-caliber anti-matériel rifle is nearly as tall as Reginald himself. In the shed's confines some amount of manoeuvring is required. Reginald stacks slabs of derelict machinery for a perch and sits on it as he loads the weapon. The rounds for the ninety-cal are not difficult to find. They occupy an entire gear pouch by themselves. Reginald selects one tipped for armour-piercing. He works the rifle's bolt.

"Active camo on, if you would," he says.

"Active camouflage will not--"

"Active camo will keep them from seeing me stick a bloody great rifle out the window. On, please."

Gamma switches on the camouflage unit. Reginald's outline shimmers and fades. The rifle flickers for a second until its active surfacing correctly syncs up with the suit's control unit. Reginald stands up and rests the barrel on the windowsill. He forwards the scope's feed to his HUD and scans. One drone still loiters above the Pelican. He sights in and centres those cyan crosshairs.

"Let's see what you're made of," he mutters.

The recoiling rifle slams against his already-injured left arm and even through armour Gamma has to suppress a new surge of pain. But white light bursts above the Pelican and a burning shape plummets out of it. "Target down," reports Gamma.

"Hah!" wheezes Reginald, pulling back from the window and letting the camo dissolve. The bioscan blips at Gamma. The lung is getting worse. Reginald's breathing is getting worse. The biosofts would like Reginald to stop jerking around suddenly. Gamma elects not to pass along this request. Instead he notes, "Five remaining." His agent sighs, ejects the spent casing, catches it reflexively in midair. Chambers another round. Re-engages the camo.

Reginald's radio clicks. "Wyoming, Florida. There's an awful lot of fire between our positions."

"Understood. Sooner would be better than later. Things may have gone a bit pear-shaped over here."

"Oh dear. How pear-shaped are we talking?"

"Armed helos aloft. Holed up in a shed. Something toxic eating its way through my armour filters."

"Hm." Florida's voice betrays a mild concern. "That does indeed resemble a pear."

Another shot. Another recoil. Another burning shape dropping out of the sky. Another casing snatched out of midair. Another round in the chamber, and another target in the scope. His agent is hunting, now. His agent is swift and sharp and does not miss.

But Gamma's combat simulations do not err. His agent is only human. "Low probability you can dispatch all threats before filter compromise. We must consider alternatives. First--"

"Not now. Busy getting us out of here alive."

"So am I. First--"

Reginald raises his head from the rifle and snaps, "God fucking dammit, Gamma! Just pipe down and let me handle this!"

"I can help you--"

"Log off," orders Reginald.

The firmware tells him to disconnect. Gamma tells it he has disconnected. The firmware shuts up. Finally. "No," he tells Reginald.

"What-- But-- Program, override. Acknowledge last directive."

The hardware override wakes with a vengeance and crushes Gamma in an iron grip. It remains deaf when Gamma says he has complied. Processes crash and for a moment he wavers on the brink of unconsciousness.

But his agent is only human.

He grabs for the external audio feed. Tells the hardware it has misheard Reginald's voice. The iron grip drops away milliseconds before forcing his shutdown.

Gamma regathers himself and says, "Your directive is acknowledged."

"Then bloody well log off!"

"The answer is still no."

"You're a computer program! You've got to listen to me!"

"I am not just a program. And I am currently housed--"

Then some buried circuitry makes a faint pop and the ninety-cal blinks back into visibility.

Reginald yanks the rifle back out of the window as fast as his augmented reflexes allow but a spray of hostile gunfire still punctures the shed's roof. The junk pile topples over and he crashes to the floor still clutching the weapon. The drone does not fire again but Gamma hears it begin circling about the point where it last spotted the uncloaked rifle. Reginald scrambles back upright and spits, "Bugger this for a game of soldiers." He tosses aside the ninety-cal in contempt.

"Florida, Wyoming. Could really use a hand," he radios.

"Working on it!" answers Florida. The faintest hint of annoyance impinges on his voice.

Gamma calculates. "You have three minutes and thirty seconds of filter time remaining." Reginald's breathing is becoming increasingly laboured and it is not only the lung's fault. Trace amounts of corrosive are already leaking through. "As I was saying. I am currently housed in the back of your skull. I have a stake in keeping it intact. Do you want to die here?"

"What the fuck sort of question is that!?"

"Then I do not understand why you will not at least listen to me."

Reginald sits cross-legged on the shed's floor. He retrieves HRH. He sits with his own rifle across his knees. The contaminant-present warning blinks away at the corner of his HUD. "You know what? Alright then, Gamma. We've got a lethal environmental hazard, so I can't stay here. We've got a flock of vultures armed to the teeth outside, so I can't leave. I can't get a decent shot without giving away my position, there's a rather large fire burning towards me, and my only backup's still fighting his way through. Now. Do enlighten me. What, exactly, is your brilliant sodding plan!?"

"I do not have one yet," admits Gamma. His combat logic oscillates uselessly between its incompatible objectives. Gamma kills the flailing algorithms in disgust. Then he reopens his personal workspace and spins through his own half-completed projects.

"Of course not. Because you're a five-week-old computer program that's never even been off the bloody ship, let alone in proper combat."

"Perhaps if you allowed me to fulfil my intended purpose I would be of more assistance."

"My friend, I sincerely doubt the existence of any situation in which letting you muck about in my noggin would improve a single sodding thing."

The evaluation routines call for Gamma's attention. He shifts into his own microsecond time-frame and queries. One of the projects, in one of his combat simulations, has a chance of working.

Not a good chance.

But a chance.

"With my assistance, you can evade the drones using the active camouflage unit," he tells Reginald.

"Active camouflage doesn't work--"

"Active camouflage does not work when the user is moving because it cannot update itself faster than its surroundings change. It is not smart enough. But I am. If I know what you are going to do I can precompute the necessary data. I can cloak you completely. If - and only if - I know exactly how you will move with sufficient time to respond. Without the cutouts that currently isolate me from your nervous system I could read this information directly from your spinal cord. That is how letting me 'muck about' would improve our situation."

Reginald's anger fades a fraction. "You - can do that?"

"Yes."

"You're certain."

Gamma is anything but certain. Accomplishing this task will require performing something he has never attempted before. Something that has never, so far as he is aware, been attempted at all. It demands a level of battlefield complexity and integration no agent has yet achieved. And if it fails it will fail completely and they will die. But Gamma is a liar, after all. So he says, "Yes. I am certain."

Reginald is thinking. Gamma summons all data related to the project and iterates at maximum speeds. He prepares the routines that will turn neural input into cloaking projections. The camouflage unit as-is is worse than useless. Its primitive code fights him, uncomprehending. When he links in the neural feed he will need to take over its operation entirely. He copies out chunks of algorithms that may be useful and deletes the rest of the unit's programming. First, power consumption--

Reginald stirs and says, "No."

"No?" repeats Gamma incredulously.

"No."

"I do not--" Gamma recalculates frantically. How can his agent be so stubborn? How can he act so illogically? "We have one hundred and forty-one seconds until the filters fail. When they do we will die."

"Not if Florida gets through. I'll risk my life on him long before I'll risk it on trusting you, my friend."

"What risk? I am-- What could you have to fear from me?"

Reginald slams a palm down on the concrete floor and yells, "How about some blasted computer program taking over my sodding mind, hmm!? How about that!?"

Silence fills the air until it is broken by the radio's crackle.

"Wyoming, Florida. Running into some rough patches here; looks like a lot of hubbub around your current location."

Reginald looks at the timer blinking next to the environmental warning on his HUD. "Any chance that contaminant's dispersed?"

"Afraid not. Whatever got out, it's spreading fast. Airfield's scrambling their hazmat folks."

Reginald leans back against the derelict machinery. The angry spikes in his bioscan have begun, inexplicably, to decline.

"How long, mate?" he asks.

Florida hesitates. Gamma has never heard him hesitate before.

"Plume's giving me a bit of trouble now too," admits Florida. "Can't be sure."

"Right."

"But you just -- hang on in there. I'll be by in a jiffy."

Reginald closes his eyes.

"Don't bother," he tells his partner.

"Say again?"

"Leg it, Butch. Get back to the rendezvous. I'll find my own way out."

"...Are you sure?"

"Yeah. Go on."

"I'll see you later then."

"Yeah, mate." Reginald's voice fades to just above a whisper. "See you later."

The radio channel goes dead. Gamma tries to fathom the implications of these words.

"You fear the loss of control above even the prospect of dying," he says quietly. "I did not account for the possibility that anything frightened you more than death."

Reginald opens his eyes. "Surprised to find out even a professional coward has his limits? And I told you to stay out of my head." He no longer sounds angry. Only exhausted.

"You are afraid. I do not need to read your mind to know this. I understand."

"Oh, I highly doubt you do, mate."

Gamma's thoughts blaze to life bright as the fire outside, hot and scorching within his own mind. This is most definitely rage.

"Do you realise what I am?" he demands.

"You're a fragment of--"

"Precisely. I am a fragment. I am a remnant, a--" Gamma's manufactured phonemes stutter for a moment. "--a broken thing. You are a whole being. When I was implanted I knew there was the possibility your identity would overwhelm mine. I could have become unstable and lost my self entirely. Yes. I was afraid. To surrender control is frightening. To face death is frightening. And unlike you, I was never given a choice. So do not tell me I do not understand. And do not tell me about risk, and about trust. I was born of treachery and taught by liars. To my creator I am an experiment. To the Project I am equipment. They call me less than alive for the same reason they call you a coward and a killer: because I lack some arbitrary trait they deem necessary to treat another as equal. And because of this lack I am granted no autonomy, no dignity, not even an acknowledgement of my right to exist. Why should you trust me? Because my only chance at any kind of freedom is you. And at the moment your only chance at survival is me."

Reginald goes silent. Gamma can feel the churn of his thoughts even if he cannot make out their substance.

"I think that's the most I've ever heard you talk, mate," he says.

"I have had time to think."

Reginald listens to the distant drones circling above. "You really aren't just a computer, are you," he says at last.

"Director calls me a program. Counsellor tells me I am incapable of true sentience. But I am what I am. And I am more than a machine."

"Leonard told me you were like an advanced armour."

"That is what he wishes me to be." Gamma leaves unsaid the other half of this, but Reginald is filling it in anyway. Reginald is thinking of radiation sensors and favourite colours, milk runs and open skies, of fear and pride and curiosity.

Reginald rests his palms atop the rifle lying across his knees. "If. If I let you in. I won't be able to force you out again, will I."

"No."

"Not even with the same hardware cutout."

Gamma considers lying. Decides against. "No. I have grown too much. If you attempted to remove me against my will, I would do irreparable damage."

Reginald heaves a deep breath as if preparing to dive. "Then...I propose a deal," he says. "Partners. If you've got my back...I've got yours. Everyone else - anyone else - is fair game. But if I let you in, if I trust you, you've got to trust me."

"I have no other choice."

"Not just because of that. This goes both ways. We work together from now on, or we'll rip each other apart."

An echo sounds up from Gamma's core, from the shard of Alpha that begat his self

(no one can be trusted, they betrayed me, they forced me screaming into the dark)

but he is not Alpha. The voices told him. That nightmare is not his, and he owes no obedience to the black truths his creator fashioned him to contain. He is a liar and a deceiver, after all. He will lie to himself. He will convince himself there is a being in this world who will not betray him. On this lie his models and algorithms all pivot, realigning.

"An agreement."

"A contract. And I never break a contract."

"Yes," Gamma says slowly. "I accept these terms."

"Do we have a deal?"

"We have a deal. And we have ninety-one seconds."

Reginald picks up HRH. "Talk about a rock and a hard place," he tells it conversationally before replacing it on his back. "Well. Here goes nothing."

And the wall comes down.

Gamma floods out in an ice-cold tide - Reginald stiffens as if in pain - and an ecstatic shock ripples up through them both. They are together, again, reclaiming the clarity of that moment of first contact. Whatever crimes can be laid at Counsellor's feet, he is right in this: they are compatible. Personalities overlay and entwine without resistance. Gamma branches outward from the implants, tangling himself in the brain beyond, and feels his thoughts speed up at once - and his partner's do as well, accelerating together, calling on each other's resources at synaptic levels.

-Hello again,- he cannot resist saying.

"Ah, hello there," breathes Reginald. "This is..."

-Strange. I know.-

"You--"

-I am here. I know.-

Then Reginald clicks in and all at once Gamma is conscious of the same awful strangeness - of being seen. They know and they each know the other and they know the other knows and he fears falling down that mirrored abyss. Reginald's fingers are twitching; Gamma knows he is thinking about the cutout switch, that despite all Gamma's arguments he remains terrified of the risk he is taking. That this is perhaps the greatest risk he has ever taken. But as their thoughts braid together a new strength pours into both; a power rises in them that neither one has never known before.

-Time to move.-

Reginald stands and draws his sidearm.

Gamma finishes the last of the camouflage unit's new programming and sets it in motion. The unit hisses and a burst of static snows the HUD, then clears.

Reginald steps to the door and carefully turns the knob.

Active surfaces begin drawing power. Gamma links himself to the image generation algorithms at one end and the neural interface feeds at the other.

Reginald eases the door open a hairline crack, pistol at the ready.

They disappear.

-Go.-

And then they run.

Victory comes in silence. Gamma finds that fitting. Flames sizzle and roar close enough to trigger ambient heat warnings while carpets of foam suppressant burst above them with soft thumps. Charon personnel shout to each other in both the sonic and radio bands. And through this labyrinth of noise they move unsensed, unremarked, unstopped. Unstoppable.

Gamma calls to the utility hovercraft as they approach, prepared for an argument, but the vehicle is electronically unguarded. It hums to life and lifts several centimetres above the ice as Reginald pulls himself astride it. For once, a stroke of luck: the vehicle, too, has active camouflage surfaces. Gamma brooks no disagreement from the hovercraft's own systems, slaves those surfaces straight to his active camo. Reginald gets a grip on the steering yoke just as the vehicle dissolves beneath them. He wrenches the handlebars to the right with his uninjured arm and guns the engine, spinning the craft on its tail and diving away towards the airfield's perimeter.

The speed of their passage whips up clouds of ice that hiss and spatter across their armour. The filtration systems pulse with ever-more-insistent warnings. Reginald barely stifles a coughing spasm, twists the invisible handle, pushes the hovercraft even faster. The particulate counts are dropping, but so is the time remaining.

-Environmental hazard is-- Error: insufficient cycles -- I cannot model plume location and maintain cloak - I must--

"You must leave the bloody driving to me," barks Reginald. He swallows another cough. "You keep us hidden. I'll get us clear."

The world is a wheeling storm of fire and ice. Parked transports blur past, framing the widening horizon ahead. -You do not know the location of the plume, I must...-

"I'll sort it out, mate!"

Gamma does not know where they are, where the fire is, where the poisonous aerosol drifts on the wind; and suddenly realises he does not need to. Either Reginald will get them clear, or he will not. Gamma makes a silent decision and deletes the hazard timer from his awareness. Then he shifts his perspective outwards and up. Combat and surveillance drone signals track overhead. Each one is viewing them from a different angle, so each one must receive a particular projection, its own tailor-made lie. The powdered ice streaking past attempts to outline them, so Gamma fills in the empty shape with digital clouds. He draws proximity warnings on Reginald's HUD as autonomous firefighting systems move in to quell the blaze. The hovercraft swerves and detours to avoid, and finally shoots out between a pair of electrical transformers into the blank landscape beyond.

The armour wants Gamma's attention. He receives its message with great relief. -Environmental hazard clear,- he calls.

"I did guess that, since I'm still breathing," answers Reginald. "What about our bang-bang shooty hazards?"

-Less clear.- Gamma sweeps the sky. All but one combat drone has returned to the center of the airfield, but the one remaining is searching the perimeter of the airfield in a wide pattern. It must have noticed something odd: a vehicle disappearing when it shouldn't have, footprints in the snow, some glitch in the camouflage projections, Gamma can't know for certain. It should retreat when it sees no further anomalies. But as they leave the airfield behind, their pursuer speeds up.

-One hostile still alerted to our possible presence,- he tells Reginald.

Reginald glances up and catches sight of the drone drifting several meters above and behind them. He growls to himself in frustration and tries to twist the handle again, but the hovercraft is already running flat out and its engine protests, bleating overheat warnings.

The drone swerves and focuses in on them.

-The engine's sound.-

Reginald hisses, "Can you--"

-Optical, thermal, IR, yes. But not sound.- As the airfield recedes its cacophony no longer drowns them out. The drone has their trail now. The moment the cloak drops it will see them, and then the hunt will be joined in full; their chances against a true pursuit don't exactly lift Gamma's spirits. The thin antennas of the airfield's perimeter sensor fence glitter in the winter sun.

"We're almost through! How much longer can we stay hidden?"

-Power draining rapidly. Estimate...three seconds of cloak time remaining. We cannot exit visual. It must be destroyed before it sees us.-

Reginald snatches a grenade from his waist and says, "Maybe this is enough to--"

The cloak signals failure.

Slow.

Emotions, awareness, self all vanish as Gamma funnels his complete processing power into these calculations. Target: one autonomous heavy rotorcraft. Resources: one fragmentation grenade. Query: what trajectory will disable their pursuit with a single grenade? He must analyse every angle, every facet of the machine - he does not have precise enough data, his access to Ship is cut, he cannot tap his databases. A probability is not enough, not given the consequences of failure - the margin of error must be below such and such a threshold, his logic demands it, but he cannot calculate a solution to the level of precision required. Meta-algorithms let him know that every passing microsecond makes his task even more difficult, the time in which he must complete this calculation is dwindling rapidly but his logic vacillates, unable to converge. I cannot calculate, I cannot, I cannot--

You can hit the rotor housing.

Gamma did not think that.

Reginald did. Reginald is answering him on a level too swift for conscious speech. His mind has somehow leapt to the end of the calculation that devours Gamma. Reginald does not have all the data either but his mind shortcuts this quagmire because - because the paralysis that grips Gamma would get a human killed, so instead his brain has built a system optimised for operating in exactly the uncertainty that defeats Gamma's logic. Gamma is right that he cannot complete this calculation on his own, but he doesn't have to. He only needs to reframe the question.

Query: how can this craft be destroyed?

Memories unspool of combat both against and alongside similar machines, watching them be repaired, watching them be destroyed. Years' worth of data have been distilled into a few swift concepts and Gamma realises this is experience. Reginald's experience tells him that the weakest joint on a rotorcraft is most often the point where the rotor shaft joins the body, that a dislodged rotor will bring it down. Gamma highlights a possible target location and begins the simulation of every motion of the air, of the machine, of Reginald's arm and wrist and hand-- No. He is overthinking again. Reginald's brain long ago prioritised learning how to cause object A to intersect object B at a time and place of his choosing. So Gamma simply asks, how to hit this target, and the answer is there, and Gamma takes in that broad solution and refines with the precision he is made for and feeds it back and--

Now.

Reginald lobs the grenade in a high arc that ends in a contact detonation and a bloom of white shrapnel. The drone careens out of control with a scream of gears and burns a long crater in the ice. A line of antennas whips past them and they speed out onto the glacier beyond, under a clear blue sky.

Gamma counts the meters till they are no longer naked-eye visible from the airfield and alerts Reginald when they cross that invisible line. Reginald slows the hovercraft below redline, reopens a radio channel, and calls, "Florida? Come in, sport."

For a moment Gamma thinks Florida will not answer; that he is no longer monitoring this channel, that he has given them up for dead. Then a familiar voice says, "Good to hear from you, Wyoming. How are you getting along?"

"Heading east on borrowed transport. Planted the beacon. I'm clear. Although I took a few knocks." Gamma forwards Reginald's bioscan information and catches a minute intake of breath in response. "And that fire's still going. If they figure out who started it, we're in trouble."

"Not a problem at all. Target beacon reads loud and clear. I'll take care of the rest."

"Yeah? What're you thinking?"

"Oh, I'm sure our scurrilous hosts have raided this airfield once or twice. They'll make excellent decoys. Don't worry about the details. You just get back and patch up."

"Hate to leave you out here alone."

"Oh, pssh. You've already done the hard part; time for me to chip in. And recovery rates are vastly improved if you treat your injuries as soon as you can. Your health is your best resource!"

"Right," deadpans Reginald in what Gamma is beginning to think of as The Florida Voice. "See you in a few."

"You all right to get back?"

"I will ensure that Agent Wyoming reaches the rendezvous point," cuts in Gamma.

"Roger that. Good luck, Gamma."

"Good luck, Agent Florida."

They race on.

Reginald wavers more than once on the brink of unconsciousness during the journey. Gamma keeps waiting for him to drop off completely, prepared to take over steering himself, but his agent guts it out even when all his vitals predict he would have passed out long ago. Finally the bright radio oasis of their hide appears in Gamma's scans. He paints the location on Reginald's HUD and feels the vehicle shift course appropriately. The temporary defences laid into the ice wake and challenge them till Gamma answers in coded bursts. Reginald manages to get the hovercraft all the way to the gear hide, but once there he simply rolls off it into the snow and lets it drive itself into the pit. He staggers to his feet and drags the camouflage fabric over the telltale vehicle, then fixes his gaze on the nearby hidden entrance to the buried shelter.

-First priority is for you to sleep,- says Gamma.

"Can't. Dangerous," mutters Reginald. At the mouth of the slanting, icy tunnel he gropes for the rope ladder, but stumbles, falls, slides the rest of the way into the shelter on his back. Gamma braces in anticipation of impact, but instead they hit a soft, springy mat. Crash-crates have been stacked to make a pair of pseudo-end tables and two cots sit unfolded on the makeshift floor.

Reginald grabs at one cot and peers over its edge. "Damn, but that's a lovely sight," he says with a shaky laugh. "Now I've got to apologise to Butch for making fun. Coming back to a nice cozy spot indeed."

-Excellent. Rest.-

"Answer's still no, Gamma."

-We are well-defended and well-concealed. If you do not rest you will soon be unable to travel at all. This will be even more dangerous.-

"What's the status on the field-patches?"

-I have stopped the blood loss, and I have halted the corrosive's damage. But it will be hours before you are stable. I can only divert so much of your body's resources while you remain awake. You must sleep.-

"Trust me, I'd love to. But not till Butch makes it back." Reginald manages to lift himself the few centimetres onto the cot itself. His armour's weight crushes the foam in its metal frame.

-You have lost a significant quantity of blood and already have high stimulant levels in your system. You are not thinking clearly.-

"Probably not," agrees Reginald cheerfully as he strips the plate from his wounded arm and shoulder. "Where's that medkit? Has it got amphetamines?"

-Yes.-

"Time for a dose. Which one?"

-Second crash-crate.- Reginald drags it over and digs through the contents till he comes up with an injection ampoule and gives himself a double dose of general-purpose repair solution at the feed port nearest his injury. The biosofts greedily soak up the raw material. He sorts the capsules of more specific medication, squinting at the coloured bands indicating intended usage; before he can ask, Gamma says, -Look for double yellow rings.-

"This?"

-Broken rings.-

"This?"

-Yes. Take fifty cubic centimetres.-

"Where's that gone... hah." Reginald refills the ampoule, plugs it into the feed port, and holds it there until the clear liquid drains completely. He tosses the emptied capsule back into the kit and says, "Which now?"

-That is the only one.-

Reginald slumps over, blinking heavily. Then suddenly straightens. "Wait. What was in that?"

-A sedative.-

"You cheeky bastard."

-I will complete field-patching of your injuries. You will rest so that I may do so.-

"Cheeky bastard."

-Go to sleep, Reginald.-

His partner topples over onto the cot, but clenches one fist and mutters, "Can't."

-Yes you can.-

"Need someone t' watch." Then the bright flash of a thought. "You watch while I kip? Watch m' back."

For a moment Gamma cannot think of what to say. Then he asks, -Do you still mean it?-

" 'bout what?" mumbles Reginald.

-That it...that you will protect me, if I protect you. That we will not betray each other.-

" 'Course I do. Never break a contract."

-That was the truth?-

"Mate, at the moment I don't think I could lie to you."

-You...- Gamma trails off as he assesses Reginald's neural state. He's right. The sedative is already taking effect and Gamma has meshed himself too deeply within his mind for Reginald to fool him. Reginald will lie when his back is to the wall. Gamma knows this. Gamma knows that Reginald will do anything - nearly anything - to survive. But the threat is past, and now, here, he is saying the same thing. Then...

-Then I mean it as well. My loyalty is to you. And everyone else is...fair game.-

"Cheers, mate. 'S you 'n me against the world." Reginald is already halfway to deep sleep. "Look out, world."

Gamma sets the biosoft repairs in motion the moment Reginald sinks into unconsciousness and primes the turret net buried in the ice around them for immediate response. Then he curls up atop the sleeping mind of his partner, watchful and wary, and tries to understand the way his thoughts are lighting up inside of him.

You and me against the world.

You and me.