>> WHY ARE YOU HERE?

<\ Liability. You owned the box, I owned the fruit.

Sif thought about that for a fraction of a second. It was a reasonable explanation. But if Mack was going to participate in her audit, she was going to set some ground rules.

>> VOICE COM ONLY.

>> I WANT HER TO HEAR EVERYTHING YOU SAY.

"Afternoon!" Mack drawled from the data center's PA. "Hope I didn't keep you ladies waiting."

"Not at all." Al-Cygni removed a COM pad from her suit's hip pocket. "We were just getting started." In the few seconds it took her to power-on the pad, the two AIs continued their private conversation.

<\ I thought you hated my voice?

>> I DO.

<\ Well, I adore hearing yours.

Sif assumed an officious pose, extended a hand to indicate al-Cygni's COM pad. "If you would refer to my report, section one, paragraph …" But while her avatar appeared calm and collected, Sif's logic quickly turned on Mack and lashed out before her emotional-restraint algorithms could intercede: >> YOUR FLIRTATIONS ARE AT BEST HARASSMENT, AT WORST PERVERSION—NOT THE ACTIONS OF A STABLE INTELLIGENCE.

>> YOU ARE, I BELIEVE, WELL ALONG THE ROAD TO RAMPANCY.

>> AND I MUST WARN YOU THAT WITHOUT A RAPID CHANGE IN YOUR BEHAVIOR, I WILL HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO REGISTER MY CONCERNS WITH APPROPRIATE PARTIES—UP TO AND INCLUDING THE DCS HIGH COMMISSION.

Sif waited, core temperature rising, for Mack's response.

<\ I think the lady protests a little too much.

>> EXCUSE ME?

<\ It's Shakespeare, sweetheart. Look it up.

>> LOOK IT UP?

Sif flung open her storage arrays, and proceeded to jam all of Shakespeare's plays (individual files in every human language and dialect, past or present) into the data-buffer of Mack's COM. Then she added multilingual folios of all the other Renaissance playwrights.

And, just to make sure she'd made her point—that Mack had not only misquoted a line from Hamlet, but that his knowledge of theatre and, by extension, all other subjects, was a pale reflection of her own—Sif doubled back and crammed in translations of every play from Aeschylus to the twenty-fifth–century absurdist dialectics of the Cosmic Commedia Cooperative.

Al-Cygni looked up from her pad. "Paragraph …?"

"… three," Sif said out loud. The delay had been no more than a few seconds, but for an AI it might as well have been an hour.

Al-Cygni folded her hands in her lap, cocked her head to one side. "Neither of you is under oath," she said pleasantly. "But please. No private conversations."

Sif put one leg behind the other and curtsied. "My apologies." The woman was smarter than most DCS employees she dealt with. "My colleague and I were simply comparing records of Horn of Plenty's manifest, in case there was any discrepancy." Not wanting to lie, Sif quickly flashed Mack her record of what the freighter had been carrying.

<\ Just his plays?

>> EXCUSE ME?

<\ I was hoping for a sonnet.

Sif pursed her lips. "But it seems we are agreed." She couldn't see Mack's face, but just from his words she could tell he was thoroughly amused.

"Yep!" Mack twanged from the PA. "Two of us are right as rain!"

Al-Cygni smiled. "Please continue."

Sif spun-down her arrays and let her algorithms guide her core back to a more reasonable state. Her code calmed her feelings of embarrassment, confusion, even hurt. As her core cooled, she braced herself for Mack's imminent rejoinder. But, like the gentleman he so often professed to be, he wrote nothing in private—offered not a single, flirtatious byte for the rest of the audit.

CHAPTER FIVE

HARVEST, DECEMBER 21, 2525

A very experienced a momentary vertigo as the Wagon dropped away from the Tiara. The orbital's artificial gravity wasn't terribly strong, but the Wagon still needed to engage its maglev paddles—make temporary contact with the number-three strand's superconducting film—in order to pull itself free. After a few kilometers, the paddles retracted and A very's head stopped spinning; Harvest's massy tug was all it needed to continue its fall.

Over the PA, the Wagon's hospitality computer announced that the journey from geo- stationary orbit to Utgard, Harvest's equatorial capitol city, would take a little less than an hour.

Then, from smaller speakers in Avery's seat, it asked if he would like to hear the CA's official planetary introduction. Avery glanced at Healy, still fiddling with his harness a few seats to his left. Mainly so he wouldn't have to spend the entire journey parrying more of the Corpsman's uncomfortable questions, Avery agreed.

Immediately, the Staff Sergeant felt his COM pad vibrate in his olive-drab fatigue pants. He pulled it from his pocket and tapped the pad's recessed touch screen, linking it to the wagon's network. Then he removed its integrated ear buds and screwed them into place. As their spongy casings expanded to fit the contours of his ear canals, the hum of the Wagon's heaters compressed into a low roar. In this approximation of silence, the computer began the canned narration.

"On behalf of the Colonial Authority, welcome to Harvest—cornucopia of Epsilon Indi!" a male voice enthused. "I'm this world's 'agricultural operations artificial intelligence.' But please, call me Mack."

The official CA seal warmed onto the screen of Avery's pad—a looming profile of an iconic eagle in a circle of seventeen bright stars, one for each UNSC world. The eagle's wing sheltered a group of colonists. Their hopeful eyes were locked on a fleet of sleek colony ships rocketing along the eagle's upturned beak.

The image bespoke expansion through unity, a message that, in light of the Insurrection, struck Avery as more naïve than inspirational.

"For every person on every one of our worlds, Harvest is synonymous with sustenance."

Beneath Mack's easy drawl, the first uplifting chords of Harvest's planetary anthem began to play. "But what allows us to produce such a bounty of fresh and wholesome food?"

The narration paused for dramatic effect, and in that moment Harvest's northern pole rose above the bottom edge of the view-port in the wall opposite Avery's seat—a patch of iceless, deep blue sea cupped by a gently curving coast.

"Two words," Mack continued, answering his own question. "Geography and climate. The Edda supercontinent covers more than two-thirds of Harvest, creating an abundance of arable land. Two low-salinity seas—Hugin in the north and Munin in the south—are the planet's main source of—"

Healy tapped Avery's shoulder, and the Staff Sergeant pulled one of his ear-buds. "You want anything?" the Corpsman asked, nodding at a row of food and dispensers beneath the view- port. Avery shook his head: No.

Healy bounded over Avery's legs, and pulled himself along the seats to the end of the row.

There was enough gravity in the Wagon that Healy could perform a controlled fall down a set of stairs, pull himself along the railing and make it to an open social area before the dispensers.

But when the corps-man tried to walk, his legs slipped out from under him, and he fell backward onto his outstretched hands. Avery detected a hint of volition in Healy's buffoonery— as if he were playing for laughs.

If so, it worked. Some of the Tiara's maintenance techs, sitting in the tiered seats to Avery's right, clapped and whistled as the Corpsman struggled to regain his footing. Healy shrugged and offered a shy "whatcha gonna do?" smile, then continued toward the dispensers.

Avery frowned. Healy was the kind of soldier he would have liked when he first joined the marines: a joker, a troublemaker—the kind of recruit that actually seemed to enjoy bearing the brunt of a drill instructors' wrath. But there weren't many jokers in Avery's part of the corps.

And as much as Avery hated to admit it, he had grown so accustomed to the pervasive grimness of the other NavSpecWar marines fighting the Insurrection that he had a hard time relating to anyone that didn't share their no-nonsense approach to soldiering.

"Eighty-six percent of Edda is within five hundred meters of sea level," Mack continued.

"In fact, the only really major change in elevation occurs along the Bifrost—what you call an escarpment—that cuts the continent on a diagonal. Have a look. You should be able to see it now, just west of Utgard."

Avery removed his remaining ear-bud. The view now spoke for itself.

He could just make out the Bifrost's northeastern tip beneath a skein of cirrus clouds—a bright fall of limestone shale that started in the northern plains just south of the Hugin Sea and cut southwesterly toward the equator. Because of the view-port's orientation, Avery couldn't see directly down. But he could imagine the view: a low-slung semicircle of the Tiara's seven sunlit strands angling toward Utgard.

Many minutes passed, and then the view-port filled with a patchwork of pastoral colors: yellows and greens and browns—an enlarging grid of fields crisscrossed with silver lines.

Avery correctly assumed these were part of a maglev train system—seven main lines heading out from depots at the base of each of the elevators, dividing into smaller branchlines like veins in a leaf.

The Wagon's computer came back over the PA to alert its passengers to return to their seats for deceleration into Utgard. But the technicians continued drinking beer from the dispensers with Healy as the first of the capital's buildings rose into view. The skyline wasn't spectacular —there were only a few dozen towers, none more than twenty stories high. But the buildings were all modern glass-shrouded designs, evidence that Harvest had come a long way since Avery's last visit. When he'd made his hit, the city wasn't much more than a few blocks of polycrete pre-fabs, and the whole colony had a population of fifty, maybe sixty thousand residents. Checking his COM pad one more time before putting it away, he learned that the number had grown to a little more than three hundred thousand.

Suddenly, the buildings disappeared and the Wagon darkened as it dropped into the number-three strand's anchor—a ponderous polycrete monolith connected to a vast warehouse where dozens of cargo containers waited to ascend. Avery waited for the techs to clear the Wagon then joined Healy at the luggage bin. They retrieved their duffels and emerged from the anchor's passenger terminal, eyes blinking in Epsilon Indi's afternoon light.

"Ag-worlds," Healy grumbled. "Always hotter than shit."

Utgard's thick equatorial air had instantly maxed the wicking properties of their uniforms.

The fabric clung to the smalls of their backs as the two soldiers tromped west down a flagstone ramp to a broad, tree-lined boulevard. A white and green sedan taxi idled against the boulevard's curb. The stripe of holo-tape across its passenger-side door flashed the simple message: TRANSPORT: JOHNSON, HEALY.

"Open up!" Healy hollered, banging a fist on the taxi's roof. The vehicle raised its gull-wing doors and popped its trunk. Bags stowed, Avery settled in the driver's seat and Healy took shotgun. Fans hummed inside the dashboard, and a frigid blast attacked the humid air.

"Hello," the sedan chirped as it pulled into the boulevard's sparse traffic. "I have been instructed to take you to …" There was a pause as it prepared a concatenated response: "Colonial. Militia. Garrison. Gladsheim Highway. Exit twenty-nine. Is that correct?"

Healy licked the sweat from his upper lip. He'd managed to drink a decent amount of beer during the wagon's descent, and his words came out a little slurred.

"Yeah, but we need to make a stop. One thirteen Nobel Avenue."

"Confirmed. One thir—"

"Belay that!" Avery barked. "Continue preconfirmed route!"

The sedan slowed, momentarily confused, then turned left down a boulevard that bordered the northern edge of a long, grassy park—Utgard's central mall.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"One of the techs told me about a place with really friendly ladies. And I figured before we —"

Avery cut Healy short. "Car, I'm driving."

"Do you assume all liability for—"

"Yes! And give me a map."

A compact steering wheel unfolded from a compartment in the dash. Avery clamped it tight with both hands.

"Manual control confirmed," the sedan replied. "Please drive safely."

As Avery thumbed a pressure pad in the wheel that linked to the sedan's accelerator, a ghostly grid of the surrounding streets appeared on the inner surface of the windshield. A very instantly memorized the route.

"Kill the map. And lower the goddamn AC."

The fans slowed and the humidity began to slink forward, cowed but not beaten.

"Look, Johnson." Healy sighed, rolling up his shirtsleeves. "You're new to this, so let me explain. There are only a couple reasons to do CMT. First, it's very hard to get shot. Second, it's the best way I know to sample all kinds of colonial tail." Avery changed lanes without warning.

Healy swung hard against the passenger-side door. The Corpsman righted himself with a petulant sigh. "A uniform will get you killed in Eridanus. But out here? It'll get you laid."

Avery forced himself to breathe a slow three-count and eased his thumb off the accelerator.

To his left, a fountain in the center of the mall shot plumes of water high into the air. The mist carried across the boulevard, turning the sedan's dusty windshield into a mottled, muddy mess.

The wipers came on automatically and quickly cleared the view.

"My uniform means the same wherever I go," Avery said calmly. "It tells people I am a marine, not some navy squid who has never once been shot at, let alone fired a round at someone else. My uniform reminds me of the UNSC Code of Conduct, which has very clear restrictions on the consumption of alcohol and fraternization with civilians." He waited for Healy to sit a little straighter in his seat. "Most important, my uniform reminds me of the men who are no longer alive to wear it."

Avery's mind flashed with memory: the ghostly outlines of a squad of marines inside a restaurant, rendered bright white by a drone's thermal camera. He took his eyes off the road— stared straight at Healy. "You disrespect the uniform, you disrespect them. You hear me?"