Sharon Lee - - Prologue

"So, grasping the key, I inserted it, firmly, and turned it to the right."

He paused to attend to his tea, raising the cup in two hands and sipping uncertainly.

Theo sighed. "It did occur to you that this wasn't smart, but you did it anyway."

He lowered his cup to the tabletop and looked into her eyes. "I cannot help myself, Theo. The curiosity overrules sense, which is ridiculous."

She nodded. "Then what?"

"Then, the ship asked for my palm on an outlined reader surface. I did as it asked, and felt several tingles of low-dose static, and then the screen turned several colors under my palm. I was even sampled for blood, I believe, as I got nicked! A light went on, and a nice musical note sounded.

"I raised my hand and the ship truly woke. The screen displayed a new message: ' Bechimo welcomes our copilot. Registry in progress.' Then, it proceeded to detail to me the state of the vessel, which considered itself fully fueled and at one hundred and thirty-seven percent of rated power. It showed condition of airlocks, of scan cameras and radar and vision checks, rated the meteor shields and defense screens, and proceeded to offer six different weapons systems.

"At that point, I thought it best to call in the experts. The tech which the Scouts had stored at this site was all Old Tech, and I had no reason to consider this ship anything but more of the same, despite it telling me that it was willing to fly; despite that it was suggesting courses, despite that it was updating star charts and energy field information to match current observations.

"Cautious too late, I turned the interlock, and turned the key to off."

He demonstrated at the nonexistent console in front of him.

"The ship noted this, and requested that I remove my key."

He waved his hand at the screen that was not there.

"This, I did." He shook his head, slowly.

" Registry complete , is what it told me, Theo, registry complete ."

She shrugged. The ship would have had to acknowledge, after all . . .

"Ah, but you see, the ship continued with its work. Star chart systems continued to function. Air gauges proved the ship habitable. Defense systems were now on ."

That was wrong. Theo opened her mouth to say so, then simply shook her head.

"Yes," he said wearily, "overstepped, and an idiot besides. And now, rather than having only my single ship to worry about I had two live ships on the surface, and one of them I knew nothing about. Surely the systems were close enough that I might fly Bechimo , if I dared, but what then of the remainder of my assignment?

"Thus I hit on the plan of removing the keys, both copilot and captain, locking the ship behind me, and continuing my rounds."

Theo touched the chain around her neck.

" This? You sent me a ship's key to an antique ship sitting on a planet in the middle of nowhere? Why?"

He lifted his hands limply.

"Because I had realized—not my error; that came later—say that I realized I had awoken something best left drowsing and sought to be certain that no one else found it aware. However it was, I took possession of those keys, the B key and the A key, and I sent in my reports, with images, as I continued my run, expecting at every turn to be asked to bring the keys in, or to take them to someone, or to leave them somewhere.

"No one got back to me, and I was near the end of my interim mission, arriving on what would be a long mission. So I sent you the captain's key, knowing you would keep it safe. And I kept my own key, knowing that I would keep it safe."

Theo stared at him, hard.

"This is true? All of it?" Her hand-signs alternated between full power and one hundred percent .

"One hundred percent," he said, and again lifted his cup in two hands.

"So that's the problem?" she asked. "That you acted hastily? That no one cared about your work?"

"Eventually someone at Scout Headquarters did read the report," he said, looking at her over the rim of his cup. "It had been misfiled . . . perhaps even purposefully hidden—altered. I refiled the complete report, at the direction of Headquarters."

He drank the last of the tea, sloppily, and lowered the cup to the table.

"Theo, there are people after what I carry—what we carry. They want the keys to that ship."

Theo took a very deep breath.

"If it belongs to them, then we should—"

Win Ton raised his voice, or tried to: "It does not belong to them."

He paused, his eyes downcast, then looked into her face.

"There are rogues, rogues working from Liad, and even from within the Scouts. They want that ship because it is a hybrid of Old Tech and more current technology, and because that ship has already cost them dozens of agents. Dozens."

"I don't understand this, Win Ton. You've lost me here."

He sighed, looking exhausted and frail behind his scars.

"Yes, because I have not told it all. Your pardon, Pilot." He took a moment to recruit himself, again daring to look into her face. "To continue, Headquarters is very concerned about that ship. Bechimo was built at a period when the Terran trading families were trying to reassert their trade routes; it used Old tech, stolen, perhaps dangerous tech. The ship owners and the ship builders hid it because they were under pressure and then they were . . . suppressed."

"Suppressed?" She shuddered, remembering some of the histories she'd read at the academy.

"The regional Terran trade cartels had them hounded, drove some into bankruptcy, them and their families, some perhaps were forcefully removed and blackmailed.

"This was several centuries ago, you see, and the Bechimo was never flown beyond proof flights; never in actual service. According to the stories, the crew meant for Bechimo was raided and arrested, and a lien put on the ship. Whereupon, the ship disappeared. Rumor said it could fly rings around other tradeships of like capacity. It was all that was better—and more dangerous because its builders dared to use some of the Old Tech that went into the original Terran fleets, that destroyed each other in the big war, and things even older and more dangerous.

"My research says that Bechimo has an onboard AI. More likely, it is an AI. Bechimo the ship—it can fly itself."

"Well, there are ships now that—"

"No. Well, yes. I can program a ship to take me somewhere, and if I fall over dead with poison it will still get there, in some case even over multiple Jumps. Lacking a pilot, Bechimo will itself decide where to go, and what to do when it arrives. With owners dead, perhaps it owns itself!"

"What was it doing at the Scout site?" Theo asked. "Looking for a party?"

He smiled, palely.

"Very close to that, I think. I gather that what it was doing there was that an agent from the Department—one of the rogues—had been last on the garbage run before me—several Standards before me, in fact. Given leave to look about, that agent investigated the cache of old equipment. They were testing and trying things, copying things, copying records. Inadvertently or not, they had activated the call signal, and did not know that it had finally been answered. I was first on the scene, after it had waited . . . and it imprinted on me."

Theo thought back to school, wagged her body from side to side in the chair and said, "Quack, quack, quack, gooselets on parade?"

Win Ton gave a bow so light it was barely a nod.

"Indeed. But then the rogues saw the report, hid it, shared the information among themselves, and went back for the ship."

"Which didn't acknowledge them?" Theo said helpfully.

"In a manner of speaking."