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TEN
When it came to perso
In the days that followed, he came to understand the wedge that Nau had slipped between duty and loyalty. Ezr was home and yet he was not. Every day, he saw familiar faces. Be
And then one day, more by luck than pla
Be
Ezr glided out of the radial tu
Wen looked up from his work and nodded courteously. "Fleet Manager." The formality was familiar now—and still as painful as a kick in the face.
"Hi, Be
Wen looked briefly down the length of the volume at the Emergent gang boss. That guy really stuck out, his work clothes gray and stark against the rampant individualism of most Qeng Ho. He was talking loudly to three of the work crew, but at this distance his words were muffled by the balloon fabric. Be
"Replacing the comm inputs." One of the Emergents' first moves had been to confiscate all head-up displays. The huds and their associated input electronics were the classic tools of freedom.
Wen laughed softly, his eyes still on the gang boss. "Right the first time, Ezr old pal. You see, our new...employers...have a problem. They need our ships. They need our equipment. But none of that will work without the automation. And how can they trust that?" All effective machinery had embedded controllers. And of course the controllers were networked, with the invisible glue of their fleet's local net that made everything work consistently.
The software for that system had been developed over mille
"Their own work gangs are going through every node, you know. Not just here, but on all our surviving ships. Bit by bit they are rehosting them."
"There's no way they can replace everything."I hope. The worst tyra
"You'd be surprised what they are replacing. I've seen them work. Their computer techs are...strange. They've dug up stuff in the system that I never suspected." Be
"Lord, that looks ancient."
"Simple, not ancient. I think these are just backups the Emergents had floating around." Be
On the wall behind him a light grew and grew, shifted slowly sideways. A taxi was approaching the docking bay. The light slid around the curve of the wall, and a second later there was a mutedkchunk. Shallow ripples chased out across the fabric from the docking cylinder. The lock pumps kicked in. Here, their whine was louder than at the dock entrance itself. Ezr hesitated. The noise was enough to mask their conversation from the gang boss.Sure, and any surveillance bugs could hear through the racketbetter than our own ears. So when he spoke, it was not a conspiratorial murmur, but loud against the racket of the pumps. "Be
For a moment, Be
Be
The whine of the pumps died. Somewhere beyond the plastic of the docking cylinder, people and cargo would be debarking.
Wen swung close to the open hatch of a utility duct. "They're bringing in lots of their own people, I hear."
"Yes, four hundred soon, maybe more." This temp was just some balloons, inflated a few Msecs earlier, upon the fleet's arrival. But it was large enough for all the crews that had been packed as corpsicles for the fifty-light-year transit from Triland. That had been three thousand people. Now it held only three hundred.
Be
"I—" The gang boss was almost within earshot.But this isn't conspiracy. Lord of Trade, we have to be able to talk about our jobs. "I think they lost more than they're letting on."I think we came within centimeters ofwi
Be
"Oh?" Be