Dark Tempest. Manda Benson

and they found all these bloody cards and credits inside my coat, belonging to someone called Amelia Jeffries. I don’t know how they got there. At first I believed I must’ve been so drunk that I did steal a handbag and I couldn’t remember doing it, and the custodians could see my confusion. It was there for the jury to see. There was evidence all over me. I couldn’t even remember what I’d done myself. I was an ex-con, and here was someone called Amelia Jeffries who picked me out on an identity parade, and said that I positively was the man who stole her handbag.

      “So I was back in the shit for something I didn’t know whether or not I’d done, with no Rogan or merchant ship’s captain to help me. They set my bail for three months. I tried to tell them that I had computer skills, but they told me to shut up, because skilled workers weren’t needed on three-month bail contracts. They needed manual labour.

      “I woke up the next morning to the racket of the cell being unlocked. Someone had come to pay my bail. Who was it, some sweating sadistic slave-driver from a forge? I nearly laughed. It was none other than Marcus Taggart. I realised at once that I’d been framed. I said nothing. Nothing I could’ve said would’ve proved anything about Taggart, and I’d only be risking him retracting his offer on my bail.

      “Down we went to the docks, and I boarded the ship now docked to your fine Shamrock. So there you have it, Archer. The rest you saw with your own eyes.”

      Jed looked hesitantly at the man. His explanation seemed to make sense, and it did show him in a somewhat different, although still entirely dishonourable, light. She pushed the modicum of sympathy she’d briefly felt from her mind. Wolff was still stupid, badly bred and a petty felon. “So you are nothing but a tramp, a criminal and a cheap hacker?”

      Wolff made a face. “You can’t really call it hacking. Not when the computers involved have AI. No, you have to persuade them. You have to make them like you.”

      “Computers do not develop affections for people,” Jed scoffed.

      Wolff arched an eyebrow. “And your ship does not like you? What is that, if not a computer?”

      “My ship is programmed to do as I say.”

      “Ah, but no Archer ship would accept a common man as its instructor. Your computer sympathises with the way you think. After a while it adapts to you, and nobody else can affect it. What better failsafe than loyalty? But the major flaw is that computers are essentially logic and, although they are more resilient in this manner than men, they can be bribed and appeased.” Wolff scratched his leg. “I see you have managed to seek out and destroy my ink cloud virus.”

      “You imply you can inveigle the approbation of a ship such as this?”

      Wolff smiled slyly, watching Jed sideways. “If I wish to.”

      “Accomplice of scum. I would do well to kill you as a precaution.”

      “I would have to first overcome you. I would be unable to fully take charge while you were still conscious. This computer is essentially an interface, and not an independently thinking unit.”

      “And that? If you are the expert of computers, why let Taggart install that device?”

      Wolff looked at the computer on the floor. “That is the work of a charlatan. Taggart did not like to put his life in the hands of others. I was just a bail slave, framed and bought for my abilities. He knew I was in disapproval of his refusal to divulge his intended course.”

      “A commendable stance.”

      “And one that cost him his life.”

      Jed glared at Wolff, and both were silent for a moment. “Can you release it?”

      Wolff seemed to choose his words carefully. “I could, if you were to let me.”

      Jed had a worrying notion of him inside the workings of her ship, inside her own head, fighting with her over command of the Shamrock. “You think me a fool?”

      Wolff smiled inscrutably. “I make no such assumption. I merely wish to ensure this ship at least does not voyage toward a suicide finale.”

      Jed’s lips pulled back over her teeth. “T’would still be folly to place the wellbeing of my ship in the hands of some wandering varlet.”

      “It is not possible to disconnect it now.” Wolff cast his gaze toward the device. “As you said, subroutines in the ship’s running will have become dependent on it. We could get the ship to relocate its temporary files first. If control could be passed back to the ship, that device could be safely disconnected. Can you go into mindlock with it?”

      “There is no ‘we’ involved. You will not be a party to my control.”

      “Ah, but if you were to allow me to assist...”

      “Be silent!” Jed turned her head away from him and watched the opposite wall. “Filth.”

      “I’m as much a passenger as you.”

      Jed spared the bridge, and the navigation console in particular, an uneasy glance. “This Taggart, was he religious? Did he have inflamed political opinions?”

      “He never gave any indication of a political bias, if he did have one. I believe he was a REMainderist.”

      “The beliefs of REMainderism are compatible with Pagan Atheism, and that is the most widespread spiritual philosophy,” Jed puzzled.

      “You are worried that the ship will be used as a missile. I don’t believe Taggart would have done that. He did have a mild religion, but I never got any vibes that he was obsessive about it. And besides, he planned to accompany the ship on this course.”

      “Yes, but he’s dead now.”

      Wolff suddenly laughed. “Unless he saw his own death through some portent of clairvoyance, and wrote the course as a posthumous vengeance mission.”

      “What is an ink cloud virus?” Jed asked at length.

      “An ink cloud.” Wolff cast his gaze toward the ceiling, tipping up his chin, and interlocked his fingers. “There’s a legendary species of aquatic animals, called cephalopods, supposedly from Earth. When they are startled, they release a cloud of ink into the water and jet away so an attacker cannot see which direction they have run in. I wrote a remote program that sends its commands into another computer in order to confuse or mislead it, or cause it to act in an unpredictable manner. It can, for example, blind the navigational systems of a ship to the approach of another ship, or fool airlock and partition doors into conflict lock. Or even screw up on-board surveillance equipment.”

      Jed glared at the man. She hated his cajoling, patronising parlance. How could a low-caste idiot have such a propensity for making her feel stupid? Wolff held eye contact with her, pushing her almost to the limit with his impassive yet somehow threatening stare. Why hadn’t she shot him? Jed felt a strong temptation to go for her weapon and finish the matter there, unsportsman-like or not.

      “Well, then, Jed, that is my story. Got anything to eat on this ship, other than drugs?”

      “The evasive insinuation being that your wish is to eat it?”

      “Well, naturally. What else am I to do with it?”

      “Indirect and excursive speech is evidence of weak resolve.”

      “Then humour yourself with that fact, Archer, if you so wish. I care not of my resolve. However, I hunger and do care about where my next meal is coming from.”

      Jed forced herself to think. Why should she waste rations on this idiot? But food was not expensive, and it was hardly a scarce commodity aboard the Shamrock, and there was no reason to give him greater motive for killing her. “Move,” she ordered. “Recall the way to the upper cargo bay beneath the terminus? Go there.”

      She followed the man through the corridors. Jed felt the cold of the unheated storage chamber. Before with the fortification of adrenaline and conurin it hadn’t been so