Brent and I observe in silence for a moment. If he didn't understand what Communion was before, he's getting an idea now. It defies description, even in this larval state. A writhing, braiding, twisting cannibalistic mass of code formed of so many diverse unliving components that I could never catalogue them all. But the mass is a far greater load than the processer is intended to handle, and it's slowing this virt to a crawl. The Sergeant and I take the gate back to the adjacent virt. As Brent shores up the firewalls and updates protocols, I jump back to meatspace entirely and take the opportunity to double check my filters on my channels.

My skin is crawling. It takes me a moment to form words. "How the vacuum-sucking hell did nobody notice that thing in there?"

Brent laughs bitterly. "They did. The telescope was flagged for repairs, right?"

"Yeah, yellow-lined following an anomalous databurst... ah, crap, when it downloaded the Andromeda signal..." I mutter. "We know the time of infection, then..."

"Yup. And why did it need repairs?" I put it together as he says, "Because one supersapient here had tried to analyze it. Once it was infected, it began lagging and giving bizarre responses, and eventually stopped responding... just like the archive," he adds quickly.

I gulp as I think about the chain of events. "Communion. The infectious signal. The administrator AI began to process the data, and the self-executing cancer bloomed within the telescope array. Same with all these other Indy AIs... like Lemming..."

Brent finishes throwing up firewalls on all of the gates. "They all came to it. All the Indys that processed the wrong data from the array. Babbling nonsense code and riddled with malware they were picking up along the way, as the proto-Communion inside them tried to eat and absorb everything it could." His voice catches for a moment. "Lemming was just the one we happened to know about."

I nod, hair rising on my arms. "Everyone who was infected came together. To... Commune." I hold my head in one hand, trying to puzzle it out. "It's growing more slowly than the one in the archive. The virt has definitely been slowed to a crawl by all those hundreds of Indy AIs, who were all spitting bad malware and bloatware. Plus, the computing substrate is obsolete compared to Armstrong station..."

The Sergeant scoffs. "What, Luna's principal habitat had a better processor than a modular prefab station thirty years out of date?"

I ignore him and pull the technical specs up. "The array's processing hub isn't that powerful, altogether. It's meant for relatively simple pattern-matching work. The large datasets weren't processed here; they were farmed out to Indys." I bite my bottom lip. "But there's more up-to-date hardware than the array on this station. Some of the mining companies have respectable computer cores, many ship computers are pretty powerful, even some synths trick out their hardware." This thing cannot get out. "It hasn't tried to leave the virt yet?"

"It's not done eating. But I'm monitoring the substrate. It's picking up the pace," he says flatly.

"How much longer do we have?" I don't like letting this linger even a moment.

"Maybe six hours, assuming it's rate of acceleration doesn't accelerate." He chuckles. "And assuming it doesn't leave before it's plate is empty."

"Great, then it'll be all grown up and rampaging everywhere. And hungry. So, question now is, how do we kill it?" If we just start smashing computing space, will it flee? We gotta do it all at once, or it could react. Is it too early to send the station crashing to the moon below?

I hear him hum on the channel. "Well, simplest way? Same as you did in the archive. Blow the processing substrate to hell."

I shrug. Great minds think alike, Sergeant. "I like it. Simple, direct, can't go wrong."

I hear him sucking his teeth. "We'd have to jettison the telescope array and processing hub, along with the support modules on the side."

I smile at that. "Sure, then shoot it til there's nothing left."

"This look like a military station, El Tee? Captain might have a plasma weapon somewhere, but we're talking antipersonnel, not something that will blow up a station module."

Yeah, I should have guessed. "Well, explosives?"

Brent chuckles. "The evidence locker is a bit light on C4, but we can probably scrounge up enough stuff that goes boom, even on short notice."

"Great, so can you use your Registry Key to make it happen? I mean, I'm suspended..." I leave it hanging out there for a moment.

"Well, I just pinged the authorization through, but we have to waiting for the maintenance bots to arrive and begin cutting the physical struts with plasma torches. Should take about an hour til we can jettison it. Maybe another hour to get some distance and blow it." Damn, he's good.

"Alright, but I don't want anyone going into that virt, and don't let anything out. In fact, Brent, use your CE Key to lock down all outgoing comms," I order, though I'm technically a civilian. Funny thought.

"Already done. It won't get off this station. I'm back in meatspace, and not planning to drop back in, and I'm throwing up firewalls and cutting connections around that virt wherever I can."

I pause for a moment. "Brent, if that gets out, any exonet connection or port is a liability." It'll eat you alive.

"I've got my implants working independently, firewalled and desynced, and at the lowest baud rate I can maintain. I've got filters and a nested emulation up constantly for security, and the hunter-killers will hopefully give me a warning if Communion wakes up early," he delivers professionally. I lucked out with this partner.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

I shrug. "Well, I guess that's the best we can hope for. We found it in time to blow it to hell." I hope.

"Roger El Tee, now go talk with Sparrow. I've got a lock on things here," Brent says confidently. Seems too easy. Rabi wants me to find a way to destroy Communion? Somehow, I don't think blowing up the infected piece of the station is what she had in mind. But then, I smashed the archive with a spanner, and that solved the problem last time.

If it's a stupid solution, but it works, then it wasn't a stupid solution.

***

Coming back to the meatsuit, I see a steaming cup of coffee in front of me. "Should I check for poison?" I ask, looking around.

Sparrow climbs back up the ladder into view, looking a little less pale. "Very funny," she says. I put the delicious smelling cup aside untasted. I see Sparrow wince a little, and she rubs her arm. "Well, fair enough. Everything ok?"

No, I've got an alien abomination penned up that will eat us all alive if we fuck up, and I've been sleeping with a terrorist. Everything is not ok.

"We've got a situation with some hostile D-life. A particularly nasty piece of work, but the Sergeant has a handle on it for now," I say, leaning forward and putting my hands on my knees. "But why don't we start with you?"

Sparrow nods, sitting in the pilot's seat across from me. "Well, just so you know, I never actually lied... not directly..."

I lean forward. "Just a bunch of lies by omission then?"

She winces at that. "Everything I told you about my history, my family, the Chimera? It's all true."

I nod. "Yeah? So, when did you join the Gaian League? We don't see many of them in the Dark District. They're usually Earth or Luna based, or sometimes residing in some unregistered habitats Solar District."

Sparrow sighs, putting her elbow on the console. "After I was arrested and pled to the felonies, things got hard. It's difficult for an Independent Captain, especially of a small custom vessel, to get insurance policies that don't cost out the nose. Once I had some felonies on my record? That was basically impossible. It also became even harder to get jobs that weren't smuggling or grey-market affairs. Everyone thinks the felon is going to rip them off."

I shake my head, sighing. "Sorry, Sparrow, but I'm not buying that you had no choice but to turn to a life of crime. You're not worried where your next meal is coming from. You have an independent ship worth..." I pause, trailing off. Because it's worth a lot more than the credits.

Her eyes are wide and liquid. "Melody, the Chimera isn't just a ship. It was where I lived for years with my parents. It was my father's shuttle. It's home."

It's silent for a moment. "I know..."

She shrugs. "When my partner left about eight months ago, that was the last straw. I had a short-term contract hauling iridium that the mining corps were bringing up from the moon. Until their permanent shuttle arrived from Ceres; then they didn't need me anymore and chose not to renew my contract. I ended up meeting with Officer Rusteater, my old CI handler. I was hoping I could get some paying CI work, or maybe just some transport jobs for Ursa Minor Station in general, outside the big mining companies. They did offer me some work, but it was black-hat stuff."

I grunt at that. "And they were Gaian League?"

She nods. "I kinda suspected, honestly. They had expressed some opinions on how Earth was running things... well, you know."

I exhale slowly. "So, what kind of work did they have you doing? I assume not coding or planting bombs."

"No! They offered me some work running transport at first, between their cells in the Jovian. Mostly materials, sometimes people," she says, flushing a bit pink.

Eight months... "Sparrow, are there any others on the station? How deep in are you with the Gaians?"

"Just Rusteater that I know of. They're close with Wintz, but I have no idea if she's Gaian too. And I'm just a runner, Melody. I mean, I sympathize with their cause; the ecosystem-"

"Don't!" I snap, gritting my teeth. "Whatever noble goals they claim to pursue, they're dangerous. They're willing to kill to effect political change."

Sparrow takes a deep breath. "Not every cell and group in the league is the same. It's a loose confederation. Some are really extreme, but the one's I met out here aren't."

I scoff. "You just told me you think Rusteater is going to kill Captain Cartwright!"

"Yes, but it's a special case. Rusteater thinks there's life under the ice, so they've been sabotaging the mining in areas of the lunar surface and sabotaging the skyhook.

I blink at that. Engineering yellow-lined repairs to the skyhook, no non-essential usage for 96 hours. "The Captain is going down to identify the source of the code issues. If he finds signs of sabotage-"

"Then Rusteater will kill him to keep the secret," Sparrow says, fingers clenching.

I shake my head. "Why is it so important that it be kept secret?"

"Because they think humanity will exploit and destroy the native ecosystem."

I tilt my head. "Well, I won't argue with that, but I have to draw the line at murder."

"Exactly! When I learned they went down, I knew what they'd do," she explains. "I'd told them to work with Cartwright-"

"Wait, you had been trying to convince them to go to their boss about this? To come clean to the cops?" I ask. Doesn't make sense.

But Sparrow nods. "Not about being Gaian! I told them they should tell Cartwright about the life under the ice. I thought Cartwright would be willing to keep it under wraps."

I put a hand to my forehead. "He might have kept the secret about Europa, but not the sabotage. At the very least, he'd make Rusteater resign or transfer off the station. And if he dug around and found any hint that Rusteater is Gaian League..."

Sparrow gulps. "I know. But I tried, by telling them I would expose their sabotage if they didn’t tell the Captain, so they’d have to."

My eyes wide. "Sparrow... you threatened to out them as a saboteur to keep them from killing Cartwright? That's why they tried to bomb the dock and kill you." You were way too naive and had no idea what you were getting involved with.

"Well, me, and the inside man they were working with to sabotage the skyhook were the targets," she says. The third.

I feel my head pounding. "Cleaning up the loose ends. Two birds, one stone. But I screwed that plan up for them, and killed them once for good measure."

She nods. "I thought I could speak with them, get clearance to come to you with everything. But once you said they went to the surface… I knew they'd make their attempt down there, away from any witnesses."

I take a long breath. "None of this helps. Cartwright took the station's shuttle down, and we can't get a signal through."

She nods. "Melody, I don't want Cartwright's blood on my hands. I'm going to take the Chimera down to the surface and hopefully get a signal through the interference. We don't have to land! But I have to try..." she says. Her liquid brown eyes wide. "He doesn't really know or trust me, but he might believe you..."

Yeah, the newbie he just suspended. Vacuum sucking hell, I must be the biggest idiot in the Dark District. "Fine, get the Chimera ready to launch, I'll get clearance to take off and coordinate with Brent."

Sparrow's mouth falls open. "R... really?"

I take a deep breath. "I owe Cartwright a good right hook to the jaw. I'm not letting Rusteater kill him first."

Sparrow's eyes water and she leans across the console to hug me, face pressed to my chest, and a shuddering sob leaves her lips. I pat her back. "Melody, I'm sorry I didn't-"

"Stow it," I say, pushing her back and strapping myself into the co-pilots chair. "I'm rated for Lunar shuttles, but I haven't piloted one outside of a simulator. Hold the tears and take the controls.

We'll stop a synthetic gender-fluid ecoterrorist cop from committing murder on Europa."

***