"Over here, Ziggy!"

As MOMO's voice drifted through the trees, Ziggy's sensors picked up her signal ahead, nearing a group of moving objects. "Careful, MOMO," he called back to her. "There are several target drones headed in your direction."

"Don't worry, I can detect them too." By now she had stopped moving, and her signal hovered in his field of vision, a stationary point before the approaching cluster of units, but the trees blocked his view of them.

He pushed himself to catch up with her, feeling resistance as something within him strained to its limit. Even with regular maintenance his systems hadn't been performing up to their usual capacity lately. I really am getting old.

It was difficult for him to maneuver here anyway; the forest floor was rocky and uneven, an obstacle course of boulders and tree roots and shallow ditches. MOMO had designed it, and the scenery reflected her peculiar aesthetic: the trees blossomed in pastel clouds of pink, lavender, and blue, and hazy golden light spread between their branches from a sky like a runny watercolor painting filled with stars. The mossy ground underfoot teemed with flowers, which he tended to notice with regret only after he had stepped on them. Once, in a clearing off to the side of the path, he thought he had seen a creature like a horse with a horn on its forehead, but he decided not to ask MOMO about it.

It struck him as a slightly inappropriate design for a battle simulator, but they were only using it to test the system's programming capabilities. Up ahead, he finally caught sight of MOMO standing in another, wider clearing, and reached her just as the first of the target drones crept from the shadows under the trees on the far side. "You ready?"

"Ready!" MOMO gazed along the sight of her new ether bow. She had uploaded data from the real weapon into the simulator program to construct a virtual replica that she could use for practice. She aimed and shot at the nearest of the units. The projectile connected in an explosion of blue-white sparks, flipping the tank onto its back with its legs scrabbling at the air. MOMO frowned and fired another shot; this time the explosion ripped the tank apart. "I hate when they go upside-down like that," she said. "I know they're just programs, but I feel sorry for them."

"Stay on guard," he said. "Here come the rest of them."

"Right." MOMO drew her bow again. Together they fought off the remaining units, littering the clearing with warped plates of scrap metal and burned-out circuitry that smoked ominously among the flowers. Still catching her breath, MOMO lowered her weapon and turned to Ziggy. "Are you okay?"

He nodded. "Were you able to get any readings?"

"Yes, everything appears to be functioning normally. My sensors detect no errors in the battle program."

"That's good." He stared across the clearing, distracted by a sudden flicker of apprehension. The soft light had begun to fade, and purple shadows lengthened under the trees. A scattering of fireflies blinked into existence over the clearing, hovering with no apparent distress among the junked machine parts.

MOMO touched his arm, startling him, although he didn't flinch. "Is something wrong?"

"I don't know," he said, still gazing into the deeper shadows across the clearing. "Do you sense anything?"

"Well, no, but ...." She gasped and pointed. "Over there! What's that?"

He looked, and after a moment saw what she had indicated--a movement along the edge of the clearing, no more substantial than a mirage or a shadow. His sensors insisted nothing was there at all; he and MOMO were the only two life forms within range. But then he began to notice more of them, until the shadows of the forest all around them swarmed with mirages as if the landscape itself had come to life. He stepped forward, shielding MOMO with his arm. "Whatever it is, it looks like we're surrounded."

"What should we do?" She drew closer to his side, trying to keep her voice from wavering.

"I suggest we end the simulation now and file an error report. Maybe try to run some diagnostics from outside the system. In any case, I don't think we should stay here. I'm not sure what's going on, but if it continues, the structure might become unstable."

"All right," said MOMO. "Commencing logout sequence."

A few moments later, he opened his eyes in the dive lab in Fifth Jerusalem's AMN headquarters. In the adjacent dive unit, MOMO sat up and pulled off her headgear as if it had suddenly transformed into something repellent, like a giant insect. She stood and walked over to one of the monitoring terminals along the wall, and he followed a few steps behind her.

"That's strange," she said, frowning at the screen. "This isn't showing any errors in the program at all."

"I wonder what it could have been."

The terminal sounded an alert, and a symbol in the corner of the screen lit up. "There's an incoming call. Oh, it's from Mommy! Maybe she'll know what the problem is." She accepted the connection.

"Good afternoon, MOMO. Jan," she added, noticing him behind MOMO. Her voice sounded tense and slightly breathless. "How was the test run?"

"It went okay," said MOMO, "except we noticed something weird at the end. We couldn't tell what it was, but we thought maybe you would know."

"If you send me a copy of the error report, I'll take a look at it later." Juli's eyes moved restlessly. "Right now, Jan, I'm afraid I have a rather large favor to ask of you. Are you both alone over there?"

Ziggy glanced around the room, half expecting to see shadows at the edges of his vision, but the scenery remained inanimate. "Yes, we're the only ones using the sim lab today."

"All right. What I'm about to tell you is confidential until further notice. I'm in an emergency conference at the moment, but I've been granted permission to speak with you privately, so I'll make this brief." She glanced down, and a troubled look crossed her face. "Would you ... be willing to consider taking on a potentially dangerous assignment on behalf of the Federation government and the Department of Interplanetary Reconciliation? You don't have to accept," she added before he could reply. "I want you to understand that this is entirely voluntary, and you have my permission to refuse." She shot him a look that was half apologetic and half imploring, almost as if she hoped he would refuse.

"I understand. What is the assignment?"

Juli hesitated, her gaze skirting to the side again. "It's a hostage situation. Some members of the DIRE were captured en route to the Patmos system and are being held by a terrorist group with suspected ties to Ormus. You'll receive the full briefing if you decide to accept, but basically, we need someone to infiltrate the terrorist headquarters and rescue the hostages as soon as possible. If you're not up for it, I'm sure we can find someone else."

"No, it's all right. Should I report to the DIRE immediately for further instructions?"

"Are you sure about this?" A note of desperation had entered her voice, and when their eyes met again, hers conveyed things they hadn't discussed with MOMO--things like his recent maintenance reports, for instance.

MOMO leaned forward. "Mommy, let me come too! We can rescue the hostages together!"

Juli and Ziggy exchanged more unspoken communication, and then Juli turned to MOMO. "I'm not so sure that's a good idea, MOMO. Your database contains information vital to the government and the AMN Project. The terrorists might be after those data as well. If you should fall into their hands ...."

"Oh." MOMO's head and shoulders dropped. "I just wanted to help Ziggy."

"It's all right," he said. "I appreciate the offer, but I'd rather you kept yourself safe here. I should be fine on my own."

"MOMO, would you mind waiting outside for a minute?" said Juli. "Ziggurat has to talk to the DIRE about his assignment."

"All right." MOMO shot a last worried look at the two of them and reluctantly left the room.

"There is one other thing I'd like to tell you in private," said Juli after MOMO had gone. She sounded hesitant to mention it, as if she had been afraid it would sway his decision. "I just spoke with Doctus of Scientia a few moments before I called you. She expressed an interest in your mission and offered additional support should you require it. You'll have to enter the base alone, but Scientia will provide an escort and assist your escape if necessary."

"Understood. I accept the offer."

"Jan ...."

"What is it?"

Juli sighed. "Nothing. Just ... be careful, all right?"

"Don't worry, I plan on it."

But she had already turned away from the screen, leaving the transmission open while she faced a series of other windows projected in an arc across the room. "He's agreed to do the mission," said Juli. "I have him on the line now if you're prepared to speak to him directly." She gestured over the keyboard, and the view into the room shifted as the screen snapped into alignment with the others.

For the next half hour he sat through a briefing containing rather more information than necessary about the Patmos autonomous state, including its relatively negligible history as a member of the Federation prior to the collapse of the UMN. Ziggy had seen enough emergency missions like this one to know that the history lesson was probably intended to cover up a lack of information relevant to the assignment itself. That made him nervous, but--he had seen his share of emergency missions, and he had completed most of them with some degree of success in spite of the odds against him.

Even so, he left the briefing with a vague sense of disquiet, which he suspected was due to something he had seen or heard in the last half hour, but now he couldn't remember what had triggered it. He dismissed it as a case of the groundless anxiety he sometimes experienced prior to a mission, an instinct left over from his previous life, and one of the many human instincts he'd long since learned to ignore. After the briefing, he received the equipment and upgrades he had requested from the DIRE and departed at once from the orbital space port. He stopped once at a docking colony to meet up with the escort from Scientia, and the two ships continued together along the newly constructed hyperspace route to Patmos.

Hours later, they gated out at the edge of the Patmos region. The ship he had received on loan from the DIRE was the smaller of the two, and had room for only a few passengers besides himself; Scientia's was considerably larger and was equipped with a device that concealed it from radar detection. Both of the ships had visual camouflage that rendered them nearly invisible except for the faint blur of their passage against the stars. Scientia had developed much of its own technology independently, at times illegally, in the hundred years since its founding, and the de facto merger between Scientia and Vector had united two widely divergent paths of research. Ziggy hadn't been surprised to learn that Scientia had an entire department committed to developing equipment for covert missions. Their contributions had proven useful on a number of his own assignments in the last two years, and many of the same technologies had found their way into government and consumer use through Vector, although a far greater number remained classified and had never been released to the public.

He piloted the smaller vessel toward the battered remains of an Immigrant Fleet colony which looked as though it had drifted in space for years, abandoned perhaps even before this area lost contact with the Federation. In that time it had become a reef of garbage and debris, its outer hull scarred with craters from the impact of various objects.

"Looks as though they're not exactly running a tight ship here," said Doctus from aboard the larger craft. Her voice came in over the interlink device he had installed temporarily at the supply depot, and he had the unnerving impression of hearing her speak as if from inside his head. "Well, you're less talkative than usual," she said after he had been silent for a while. "If that's even possible. Aqua profunda est quieta. Something on your mind?"

"I'm just trying to figure out a strategy."

"Of course you are." The interlink only transmitted visual information from his end to hers, and not the other way around, but he could hear the mocking smile imprinted on her voice.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. I expected as much from you."

They were both silent as he considered his approach. His target was an open docking bay used for loading and receiving cargo. With the smaller ship's camouflage and his cloaking device activated, he could land with a relatively low risk of detection; after that, he would have to improvise. The DIRE had been unable to provide any information on the interior layout of the base at the time of his briefing. He steered the ship closer, wondering if he was heading into a trap. It wouldn't be the first time, and he had sufficient confidence in his ability to figure a way out if that happened, but something about the mission still left him unsettled. The feeling was worse than it had been a few hours before; merely dismissing it as irrational hadn't worked this time, and he hadn't felt this way since Michtam, as if there were something he needed to remember that kept slipping from his grasp.

In the distance, the transparent greenish blur of Doctus' ship settled into a solitary holding pattern around the base, where it would remain on alert for backup while he was inside. Along with his apprehensions about the mission itself, he had the feeling there was more to her being here than the reasons she had given. Perhaps she also suspected a trap, but that didn't explain why she seemed to have taken a personal interest in his well-being lately, or why he felt strangely reassured by her presence. Even her access to his mind through the interlink didn't bother him as much as he thought it would. He would be relieved when the mission was over and he could have the device removed, but at least it was programmed with inhibiting mechanisms that blocked direct access to his emotions and certain areas of his memory, so it wasn't as if she could read his mind. Any infringement on his privacy made him uncomfortable--perhaps because, as property of the government, he had so little of it to infringe on in the first place--but Doctus, in spite of her condescending attitude, seemed to have a genuine respect for the integrity of his thoughts. She hadn't tried to pry any further when he fell silent, and he wondered if that was because she had something of her own to hide.

At any rate, he could wonder about it later, after the mission; he couldn't afford the distraction now. The base looked even more derelict from up close, as if it only remained intact out of habit, resisting disintegration by some invisible force of will. For a moment he entertained the hope that a ship so poorly maintained might also be poorly guarded, with too few personnel trying to patrol too large an area, but he didn't count on it.

"All right," he said, "I'm heading in." He guided the ship into the docking bay, preparing himself mentally in the last few moments before he landed.