ByteMe: do my best. Alexander or Hypatia? tell me what u know?

Mason, E, LT 2nd: Alexander. I dunno if you can even find out this stuff. he’s a marine named James McNulty. Crazier than a churchful of dustheads, but he’s a good guy.

Mason, E, LT 2nd: he got called to a code blue alert 17 hours ago. Nobody’s seen him since. Can you sacrifice something small and fluffy to the bloodgod (or whatever it is you do) and find out where he’s at?

ByteMe: seems weird he’d be gone that long and no word. I thought u guys specialized in rumor

Mason, E, LT 2nd: his squad is locked down in quarantine. But he’s not with them

ByteMe: I can hunt around but u guys locked down your servers when u took down ship 2 ship comms

Mason, E, LT 2nd: So what does that mean? you can’t get in at all?

ByteMe: lemme think

ByteMe: how worried are u?

Mason, E, LT 2nd: capital W.

Mason, E, LT 2nd: hearing real bad stuff on the scuttlebutt. like, u would not believe bad

ByteMe: i might be able to get in, but only if ur up for helping. this is going to take a few hours

Mason, E, LT 2nd: I’m on lunch break. Back to more sims soon. 8 more hrs. I will die in that VR machine. Sweaty and unloved

ByteMe: u don’t know that for sure, there are lots of ways to die here. Go work, i’ll have this ready when you’re done. Don’t do anything dumb(er than usual)

Mason, E, LT 2nd: Roger that

Mason, E, LT 2nd: cold btw :(

Mason, E, LT 2nd: Kades?

ByteMe: i’m ready. sending u file. broken into 5 pieces so the size doesn’t raise an alert. put all 5 on a mem-chit and you will need to physically plant mem-chit for me. then i can access security

Mason, E, LT 2nd: *raises hand* Um, what do you mean “physically plant”? In my console, you mean?

ByteMe: i mean onsite. direct access. wouldn’t be much of a security system if u could hack it from ur bedroom.

Mason, E, LT 2nd: u shitting me? They just shot 4 people here a few days ago for disobeying orders from a fucking insane AI, what u think they’ll do to me if they catch me fiddling in its brainmeats?

ByteMe: ur call. would suggest either not getting caught or upping the prayers for ur buddy.

Mason, E, LT 2nd: goddammit

Mason, E, LT 2nd: stupid bastard’s in the shit, I know it

ByteMe: don’t really want to find you again just to lose you, Ez, but if this matters to u then i’ll help. i can help from here.

Mason, E, LT 2nd: so what does this mem-chit do? install something? Virus or what?

ByteMe: u wouldn’t understand. it’ll take down some fences so i can get through and extract security feeds for u

Mason, E, LT 2nd: and that’s all ur gonna do, right? Ur not gonna poke around in black bags and get yourself shot too?

ByteMe: would hate to think of u sobbing into ur pillow every nite. just there to help you out.

Mason, E, LT 2nd: …

Mason, E, LT 2nd: shit

Mason, E, LT 2nd: alrite, what i gotta do?

This kid ain’t cut out for this line of work.

I’m not shitting you. He might be masterclass-pilot material, but I’ve seen better candidates for covert ops floating in the head after I’m done with the morning news. If he ain’t religious, he oughta be. Someone up there sure as hell is looking out for him. Just saying.

Damage from the Kerenza assault rendered many of the Alexander’s exterior intellicams inoperative, so the first we see of the subject is at 01:10, 07/21/75, when he enters deck 231 through a rent in the outer hull. Subject is fully suited for space walk, moving like he’s not spent more than 10 minutes inside one. Squinting his baby-browns through the blastspex visor, we can ID one Ezra Mason, conscript UTA Cyclone Pilot (UTN-966-330ad). He looks like he’s about to blow breakfast all over the inside of his helmet. Green as a fucking blade of grass, I swear.

He cracks his head on the same stanchion twice getting inside, punches it once he’s finally through the hole (yeah, that’ll teach it kid) and spends another four minutes getting his rig untangled. There’s not much to see him by, once he’s past the starlight spilling through the breach. At least he’s sensible enough to have brought glowsticks. The red does a little bit to offset the green in his face.

Deck 231 is situated in the Alexander AI cluster—just banks of damaged towers and cables, some of them still spitting live current. That this kid made it all the way across deck 231’s sprawl with a BRIGHT RED GLOWSTICK IN HIS HAND without getting picked up by the Alexander’s sec teams shows how stretched they were monitoring their camera feeds. That’s the problem with running in one of these AI boats—gets to the point where the computer does everything for you and you forget how to wipe your own exhaust pipe.

He takes almost thirty minutes to thread through the debris, even bouncing with those big zero-grav strides. The server towers are twenty feet cubed, some have broken loose from their brackets, and there’s always the death-by-electrocution problem to worry about. He reaches the airlock leading up to deck 230 and pulls out a datapad, typing with one finger and chewing his lip. Not a pro console-jockey who daily threatens the security of our glorious alliance, I’m thinking. Whoever’s on the other side of that screen knows how to romance the security console, and working in 7-minute bursts, it only takes the kid another 49 minutes to get the door open. Record time, no doubt. Shame he didn’t pack any confetti.

The airlock doors open and he fumbles his way inside.

Next we see of Lieutenant Twinkletoes, he’s in corridor 230 G-13 and out of his envirosuit (dumped it in the airlock, I’m thinking). He’s wearing a rucksack, urban gray camo cargoes and a muscle tee. His face is flushed scarlet and his sinuses look clogged—his body is used to pumping blood up to his head against the pull of gravity and without gravity to drag it back while he was treading black, his dome is red as the underwear Elizabeth Andretti wears in the finale of TERMINUS (don’t pretend you don’t know the part I’m talking about, chum—ain’t a man alive who hasn’t simmed that scene thirty times). The guardian angel behind that pad is at work again; he’s stopping to ask for directions every second junction.