The light frightened Sensus. It meant another of his squadron was shot down. He banked hard to the right, and the klaxon sounded the instant his fighter turned.

“Damn them!”

The kzinti fighter vanished again. Sensus put his thrusters into a full vectored rotation and opened fire, spraying depleted uranium shards in a wide arc. He sent layers of the kzinti ship’s armor into space, causing it to veer away, and he followed up with a rocket. What was left of his enemy glanced harmlessly off his fighter’s regenerative shield. He was about to end the simulation when he saw a blip on his scopes.

“Eno, end sim, please.”

Before Eno could log him out, one of their own fighters, unmarked, strafed passed him and drove him forward with a volley that almost clipped his engines.

“Eno, end sim please.”

The ship turned hard and strafed him again, herding him down the Z axis.

“Eno…”

He took a hit to his port battery. His ship rocked to the side, bleeding ammo stock from his left coil cannon. He dropped straight down, banked his nose up, then hit his thrusters and shot up towards the rogue ship. The rogue dodged at the last possible second, and Sensus growled as his remaining gun missed. Then he felt the jarring pain from the sim as the rogue landed a killing blow.

“Are you okay, General?” asked the floor chief.

“Of course I’m okay,” he said tersely. “Eno and I are going to have a talk.”

“Did it happen again?” asked Daena.

“Yes. I had to see it for myself.”

“I’ll get more techs to work on it, sir.”

He waved a hand to the floor chief. “This is too deep for them. I’ll talk with Director Omri. Something’s seriously wrong with this program.”

“Yes sir.” The floor chief saluted.

Sensus lazily returned the salute as he turned to leave, almost crashing into an adjutant carrying a crate. He felt more like he was in a dog fight navigating the bustle that was Talos than he did in the training sim. He paused to catch his breath when he and Daena finally exited.

“It’s coming together, General,” Daena said. “Using the arcade for fighter training was a stroke of genius.”

“Thank you.”

“About the expanded HQ, I’ve got a list of possible facilities to repurpose.”

“Daena, we’ve been over this.”

“General, our current facilities won’t be enough. We’re going to need to keep expanding our staff as we continue to militarize the ship. You’re used to working with your kind, and I’m used to working with mine, and I’m telling you, we’re going to need more space.”

He sighed, then nodded. “What do you recommend?”

“There’s several hotels operating at minimum capacity, two of which are going out of business. We can offer them compensation that will save them from going bankrupt.”

“Will we really need them both?”

She nodded thoughtfully. “I think so. There’s a number of ways we can divide them up. I imagine you’ll want a space where you can discuss classified operations with your inner circle, while mid to low level admin work is done in another building. They’re even fairly close to each other.”

“Very well.” He took her pad and signed off on the order.

“Thank you, General.”

“Thank you, Daena.”

“Don’t mention it. Are you good, sir? Or do you still need me?”

“No. I’ll be with the director for the rest of the day. Go on back to HQ and start planning the move. I want everything to be in position as soon as possible.”

“Sir, yes sir.”

He smiled at her salute and returned it crisply, then went to the transit lot and got in his car. His driver, a young military woman, greeted him with a salute, much more to his liking than the overly familiar old man he had before.

“Where to, sir?”

“The Artifexus.”

She raised the car into the transit channel and wasted no time getting him where he needed to be.

The director was in her office, staring at her computer screen like a zombie.

“General,” she said, not looking away.

“It happened again. I saw it this time.”

Then she looked at him. “Tell me every detail you can remember.”

“The sim had me leading a squadron of Iratus class D-9 fighters...”

“Those are patrol craft?”

“Yes. Light armament, jump capable recon fighters.”

“And the pilots?”

“Human. Two wing squadron, novice skill level. Enemy was a wing of kzinti assault fighters. Heavy guns, heavy armor. Intermediate skill level. I cycled through attack patterns, kept the kzin on the run, picking them off one at a time. When half their wing was down, my ships started exploding. I didn’t see the rogue until I was alone.”

“What kind of ship was the rogue?”

“Iklwa class long range assault fighter.”

“Iklwa?” She tightened her jaw. “We don’t even field those.”

“Could never get them to launch. But then, we’ve never been so threatened as to need any of the ships or vehicles stored in Gehenna.”

She chuckled. “You mean deck three-hundred thirty-three.”

“Whatever you’re comfortable calling it.”

“Which machine were you using?”

“Eleven. Clear across the room from the last machine the rogue attacked.”

She shook her head. “The location wouldn’t matter.”

“Of course.”

“Okay. I’ll pull its memory and analyze it. Can I send some people to Gehenna and have them examine the equipment stored there?”

“Certainly. Tell me when you’re sending them, and I’ll arrange an escort.”

“Thank you.”

Sensus sat down on the sofa opposite her desk. He found her office welcoming. Warm lighting, just the right amount of clutter, a couple of plants that would likely have died if it weren’t for her PA. It felt homey.

“What do you expect to find down there?”

She cocked her head. “What do you think I expect to find there?”

He chuckled. “The pattern. Have you come up with a name for it yet?”

“I’ve heard it called the tangent wave.”

“I see. I hope it’s something we can use.”

She shook her head. “No. I don’t think it’s something we can use. But I think we can learn from it. A lot of my people are missing the point, but some of us see it.”

“And what point is that?”

“It’s on both sides of the Verge. Our research ships brought back samples from the Phrastus Belt, and we didn’t find it. So that tells us it’s limited to certain objects. The hypothesis is that it only occurs on engineered objects.”

“Residual energy from some manufacturing technique?”

She shook her head. “Albion’s too old for that. General, what do you know about Bastion?”

“It was a cosmic Eden.”

“Some people call Albion the wandering Eden. This wave... it reminds me of something, but I’m not sure what. I’m expecting to open up some old textbook from when I was in college and find it hidden in a watermark or something.”

Sensus grunted. “You did fifteen years of school in eight. How did you manage that?”

She blinked, as if the change in topic woke her from sleep. “I multitasked and had no social life.”

“There’s more to it than that.”

She shrugged. She almost looked pretty when she tried to play dumb.

“I worked hard, General. That’s all there is to it.”

“Having an IQ of two hundred didn’t factor in?”

She shrugged again. “I do my best with what I have. Same with you, right? Not many of you have specialized abilities like yours. So, you have a high... RQ?”

“Heh. A radiance quotient. If there were such a thing, Sol would make us all look like idiots.”

“Have you seen him?”

“No. But I’m certain he’s still around.”

She bit her nails. “I really want to speak with him.”

“He’ll resurface soon enough.”

“No one on the ship has seen him. He hasn’t even shown up on life sign scans. You guys all have a unique signature, in case you didn’t know.”

“And each of us are on file. I’m aware.”

“So, is Mr. Solomon able to hide himself then? Like how you can mask sound?”

“I can do a few things besides that. And no, Sol never cared much for stealth. You may have noticed that he’s a little on the blunt side. I assume his companions are helping him hide.”

“You know,” she spat out a nail, “I’ve gone to their habitat a couple times, thinking he’d be there. No one can get an exact count on them.”

“If it were up to me, they’d be officially free to roam. That habitat is only an illusion. I saw them in action on Bindhu Prime. They go where they want. Speaking of stealthy individuals, how is our mutual acquaintance working out?”

She nodded towards one of the plants. Sensus looked behind it, and other than the shadows one sees in the corner of a room he saw nothing. He extended his aura, and while he did see a faint shape between the far wall and the shadow of the plant, he felt nothing.

“Hello, Samuel.”

“It’s Zekog’deherpst, Dwi... oh never mind.”

Sensus flinched at the harsh clicks that came from Sam’s mouth. “Thank you for keeping the director safe. She’s venturing into dangerous territory.”

Sam just nodded. Or at least it seemed from the slight warping of his shadow that he nodded.

“So, tell me about Bastion,” he said. “Why did you ask me about it earlier?”

She rotated her computer monitor and he leaned forward on the sofa. She typed a line of commands and an image of a planet appeared. It was grey, with multiple layers of clouds. It reminded him of the Temple of Fiends.

“Over eight hundred years ago, a team of planetologists claimed to have found Bastion. They brought back various samples, mostly geological. There was no way to prove they came from a fabled garden world, but there was...” She typed hurriedly on her keyboard, then an image of the tangent wave appeared, “this.”

“On?”

“Machinery. No one knows what kind, just that mechanical components of some sort were found. Again, this pattern does not appear in naturally designed constructs.”

“Are you sure? Is there any way you could examine the other samples?”

“I’d have to go back to Earth and find the museum they’re curated in.”

Sensus raised an eyebrow. “No time for that, obviously. I assume those planetologists offered coordinates.”

“No. They claimed they wandered into a naturally occurring wormhole.”

“And came out alive on the other side?”

She shrugged. “The samples are real, and some of them are marked by the tangent wave. I ask because Eno’s records say Albion was built on Bastion. I need to know some things for me to put all this together, including how credible Eno’s historical archives are.”

“I imagine they’re as credible as the sources they originate from.”

She spit out another nail. “That’s just it, General. Eno is her own source for all her historical information. This ship wandered for millennia before she drifted into the Sol system. Other than how to fire up her engine, turn on the lights and steer, we know nothing about her or Albion. We’ve taken this ship for granted, but it’s a miracle. Have you looked at the specs for Albion’s weapons and defense systems?”

“I know we can’t activate any of them.”

“Yeah. So we slapped a bunch of rail guns and missile launchers on its hull and called it a day.”

“There’s some crunch guns and PDCs in the mix as well.”

She rolled her eyes. “We’ve barely scratched the surface of what this ship can do. Mr. Solomon was right. Eno is the key.”

“But the key to what? We beat the tangents before. We can beat them again, but will that be enough?”

“Well, now you see why I want to talk with him.”

“He’ll be around. And I’m sure when he shows himself again, he’ll want to speak with you about all these things. For now, we have to focus on what do know and can do.”

She nodded grudgingly, then leaned suddenly forward, knocking an empty coffee mug onto the floor. “I want exclusive access to Oak.”

Sensus thought for a moment, then nodded. “I can manage that. But not indefinitely.”

“I’ll take as much time as you can give me.”

“Very well. I’ll post guards and have it locked down for as long as possible. It won’t be forever, though. At some point we’ll need direct access to Eno’s mainframe to open up more sections of the ship. Especially if we’re going to start dusting off the gear stored in Gehenna.”

“I understand. Thank you, General.”

He left her there and went to his apartment. He studied Eno’s historical archives, reading everything written about Bastion, which was very little. When he slept his rest was shallow, and he found himself struggling to keep his temper when his fighter was destroyed by the rogue again. Melody was there that time, watching the simulation from one of the trainers’ computers. Computer science was her specialty, and holographics her passion, so Sensus had high hopes she would come up with something. When he stood behind her, after a third run through the sim, she was looking at code. Sensus had expected to see the tangent wave, but what he saw was pure gibberish to him.

“Oh my god,” she said after a half hour of scrolling through pages of code.

“What is it?”

“This is a sentient program.”

“You mean...”

She turned her chair, looked up at him and took over her glasses, and looked like a child who’d come home to find out their parents bought them a kitten.

“Yeah,” she said. “Eno’s not alone in there.”