Attanasio, AA - Solis

In brief glimpses as she slashes through gaps in the slag fumes, she spots the prospector vessel. It is indeed large-a fifth the size of the asteroid

itself-and luminous, guidelights and floodbeams shining from its bubble turrets, scaffolds, and conning towers, a huge phosphorescent arachnoid perched on the cratered and jagged rock. Then her flight takes her behind the asteroid, and

with one tiny burst from her jetpak, her course deflects away from the mute stars and into the darkness of Phoboi Twelve.

She alights on the pitted surface and begins her search under the eternal night for a way in. Soon she finds a vapor duct and with a wrench from the utility tools stored in her jetpak removes the wire-mesh screen and drops herself into the lightless maw. The lack of vibration in the metal panels assures her the machinery below has shut down, and she descends swiftly.

By the glow of the light projectors she has activated in her statskin cowl,

she moves toward the interior of the ore processor. She knows this factory well, having helped install scores of them during her tenure with Apollo Combine, and she nimbly makes her way among scorched, dormant furnaces and smelter chambers with their gargantuan cauldrons. Following command cables through a colossal

bore tunnel, she approaches the nucleus of the ore processor, the core chamber.

A dull vibration in the rock alerts her to a presence approaching from behind. Urgently, she scans the rock-face, searching for the vapor ducts she knows must be nearby. She finds one thirty meters above her and claws hurriedly up the concave wall, employing the dim gravity to bound feetfirst into the opening.

Moments later the quaking intensifies, and the lightless tunnel below her brightens suddenly. Floodlights gouge the darkness, and with a rumble Mei hears through the rock, a lithe yet heavily armored figure strides into view. Six meters tall, outfitted with serrated appendages, rock-saw talons, and

strap-blade tentacles, the spike-studded androne pauses directly below her and

swivels its hammer-long head, alert to the heat trail Mei has left in her wake.

With a reptilian rasp, its tentacles score the wall she had climbed moments earlier, tasting her path. The floodlights dim, and only the ruby purple of its heat-seeker eyes shines in the gloom. A viper's hiss scalds the remnant nitrogen gas that the processor has used to lubricate the bore hole, and the demolition androne concludes it has detected relict heat lingering in the ducts from the recently shut-down factory.

Mei slowly and quietly backs her way through the duct. The sight of Aparecida has left her heart slamming in her chest, and when the duct opens above a large cavern, she leaps gratefully into the darkness. Knees bent, she floats downward, waiting for the bottom to arrive. She is glad when she lands in a soft, dusty mound that swallows her. This, she knows, is a soot dump, and after routing around in the heaped cinders for a while, she finds her way up the opposite rock wall to a conveyer chute that will lead her by an alternate path back toward the processor.

She ascends along the steep track, clambering over trucks filled with charred dross. An azure shine leaks through the darkness from ahead, and she kills the glow of her statskin cowl and edges forward crouching between the trucks and the rough-hewn rock wall of the chute. Ahead, the core chamber comes into view, a luminously transparent geodesic under a mammoth vault of groined stone.

Feeling the wall for vibrations and peering cautiously out of the chute without detecting any sign of Aparecida, Mei enters the huge vault and approaches the bright geodesic chamber. She goes directly to the access panel and uses her jetpak tools to begin loosening the sealing bolts. Peering inside as she works, she sees the gleaming twin towers of the giant power coils, dormant now but still radiant with seething energy. A gauzy aura of blue force

illuminates between the towers the command pod, a compact, iridescent complex of fused mirror spheres, silver-gold vanes, and ribbon antennae. That is the

nucleus of the factory, where Charles Outis is installed.

Mei turns the last bolt, but when she tries to pry loose the access panel, abruptly all the bolts spin back into place.

A mechanical voice shouts from the tiny comlink speakers in her cowl: "Halt! If you proceed any further, I will detonate the bore-drill explosives!"

"Mr. Charlie?" Mei calls and turns on the light inside her cowl so that her face can be better seen from outside. Arms outspread, she presses against the clear panel. "Can you hear me?"

"I hear and I see you." A psybot half her height trundles out from behind the nearest of the towering power coils, a swivel-turreted torso of green metal sliding toward her on tractor treads. Mounted atop the pincer-armed torso, two stalk-eye lenses watch her. Though the device appears crude, Mei knows otherwise, for it contains a neural mesh and psyonic receptor that allow it to

interface with Charles Outis's brain, extending his senses into the environment. That Wolf Star would deploy such an expensive machine, which is usually reserved for clandestine work with dangerous rival companies, attests to their eagerness to salvage this wetware. "Are you Aparecida?"

"No." She glances apprehensively over her shoulder, afraid to be caught in the open by the demolition androne. "My name is Mei Nili. I'm here to warn you that Aparecida is not your ally. I don't know what you've been told, but she is here to salvage your brain for wetware. Do you understand?"

"Who sent you?"

"No one. We heard your transmission-that is, Munk did, the androne I work with. He's waiting in a magjet cruiser not far from this rock. If you broadcast that I'm here, he'll break radio silence and announce us."

The psybot stares silently at her with its faceted lenses. Though Charles is apparently controlling the machine, she is well aware that it is an Ares Bund device and will certainly respond to their commands as well. The hopelessness of Munk's scheme suddenly presses heavily on her, and she feels trapped between the Bund's psybot on the other side of the geodesic wall and Aparecida behind her. Nervously, she stares across the amply lit vault to the dark tunnel rutted by

the passage of numerous drilling machines.

Munk's broadcast echoes dimly, like cricket noise, from her comlink. She

distantly hears him declare the Bund's true intent and the willingness of The Laughing Life to take Charles away from here to Solis, where a new body may be cloned for him. Munk tells him about the Maat's C-P programming and how Mei Nili and the androne need the archaic brain to gain entry to Solis for themselves but says nothing about controlling the function codes of Phoboi Twelve.

This new input bewilders Charles, and he paces back and forth in the psybot.

So long in the virtual space of the ore processor's core chamber, he is grateful simply to be able to move about and see the grainy, blue-and-white images the psybot affords him. But right now he wants to close these eyes that cannot close and diffuse his consciousness so that he can think through what he has been told and decide how best to respond to this woman-the first human he has seen since

he died.

But events are not waiting for him. At this very moment, Wolf Star is also receiving the news of their trespass, and Mei dreads-the commands that will be sent to Aparecida. A grating sound commences from inside the tunnel, and as she is considering edging back toward the conveyer chute while Charles ponders Munk's message, the psybot swivels alert.

"I'm confused," the mechanical voice says.

"Of course," Mei replies in the most compassionate tone she can muster. "That's why I've come to you. I'm human, too. These others are