Existence

signal. It is using a pop-out antenna.”

“Good! Initiate war-danger protocols.”

“Protocols engaged. Tracking and weapons coming online. I am plotting a course to come get both of you.”

Tor would have bitten her lower lip, if she still had one, making a hard choice.

“Better not move, just yet. That beam was damn powerful. Gavin and I are safe for now-”

“Hey, speak for yourself!” her young partner interrupted. “You wouldn’t say that if an organo-boy had his arm chopped off!”

“-but we’ll be screwed if any harm comes to the ship.”

That shut Gavin’s mouth. Good. His position was worse than hers. He shouldn’t radiate any more than he had to.

“Warren, did you get drone telemetry to analyze the beam?”

“Enough for preliminary appraisal, Captain. From the kill-wattage, duration, and color, I give eighty-five percent probability that we were attacked by a FACR.”

“Shit!”

Across the broad asteroid belt, littered with broken wreckage of long-ago alien machines, only one kind was known to still be active. Faction-Allied Competition Removers-an awkward name, but the acronym stuck, because it was easily mispronounced into a curse.

A couple of decades ago, less than a year after Gerald Livingstone recovered the first of the space-fomites, there had come the Night of the Lasers, when observers on Earth stared skyward in amazement, watching the distant sky crisscross with deadly beams. That same day, all over the Earth, hundreds of buried crystals detonated bits of themselves, in order to draw attention and perhaps get themselves dug up. All this desperation happened just after world media carried the Havana Artifact’s formal sales pitch, offering humanity its deal for a certain kind of immortality.

Why did all of that occur on the same fateful day? It took some time to put all the pieces together and grasp what happened-the reason why that broadcast had such violent effects. And apparently it’s not over.

“Warren,” she said. “Maybe it’s no coincidence that we were attacked just after you orbited behind the rock.”

There was no immediate response, as the ship’s mind pondered this possibility. Tor couldn’t help feeling the brief, modern satisfaction that came from thinking of something quicker than an ai did.

“If I grasp your point, Captain, you are suggesting that the FACR is afraid of me. More afraid than I should be, of him?”

“That could explain why it waited till you were out of sight, before shooting at Gavin and me. If it figures you’re too strong to challenge… well, maybe you can come get us, after all.”

“Amen,” murmured Gavin. Then, before Tor could admonish, he lapsed back into radio silence.

“Unless it was the machine’s intent to lure us into drawing exactly that conclusion,” the ship-brain mused. “And there may be another reason for me to remain where I am, for now.”

A soft click informed Tor that Warren was switching to strong encryption.

“I have just confirmed a two-way channel to the ISF vessel Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Battuta. They are only three light-minutes away.”

Well at last, a stroke of luck! Suddenly Tor felt less alone.

She quelled her enthusiasm. Even using its fusion-ion engines, the big, well-armed cruiser would have to maneuver for weeks in order to match orbits and come here physically. Still, that crew might be able to help in other ways. She checked encryption again, then asked the Warren Kimbel-

“Can ibn Battuta bring sensors to bear?”

“That ship has excellent arrays, Tor. As of last update, they were swinging sensors to focus on the region in question-where the killer beam came from-a stony debris field orbiting this asteroid, roughly five kilometers from here, twenty north by forty spinward. They will need some minutes to aim their instruments. And then there is the time lag. Please attend patiently.”

“Ask them not to use active radar,” Tor suggested. “I’d rather the FACR didn’t know about them yet.”

“I have transmitted your request. Perhaps it will reach them in time to forestall such beams. Please attend patiently.”

This time Tor kept silent. Minutes passed and she glanced at the starscape wheeling slowly overhead. Earth and the sun weren’t in view, but she could make out Mars, shining pale ocher in the direction of Ophiuchus, without any twinkle. And Tor realized something unpleasant-that she had better start taking into account the asteroid’s ten-hour rotational “day.”

North by spinward…, she pondered. Roughly that way… She couldn’t make out any glimmers from the “stony debris field,” which probably consisted of carbonaceous stuff, light-drinking and unreflective. A good hiding place. Much better than hers, in fact. A quick percept calculation confirmed her fear.

At the rate we’re rotating, this here girder won’t protect me much longer.

Looking around, she saw several better refuges, including the abyss below, where baby starships lay stillborn and forever silent. Unfortunately, it would take too many seconds to hop drift over to any of those places. During which she’d be a sitting duck.

Why in space would a FACR want to shoot us, anyway?

The battle devices were still a mystery. For the most part, they had kept quiet, ever since the Night of the Lasers. In all of the years that followed, while humanity cautiously nosed outward from the homeworld and began probing the edges of the belt, she could recall only a couple of dozen occasions when the deadly relic machines were observed firing their deadly rays… mostly to destroy some glittering crystal-or one another, but occasionally blasting at Earthling vessels with deadly precision, and for no apparent reason.

Armed ships, sent to investigate, never found the shooters. Despite big rewards, offered for anyone who captured a FACR dead or alive, they were always gone-or well hidden-before humans arrived.

We finally figured out they must be leftovers from the final battle that tore through our solar system long ago. Survivors who made a devil’s bargain with the interstellar crystals. A battle machine would help one of the crystal fomite factions to win, by eliminating its competition. In return, that faction would repay the favor, once it took over the local civilization. In exchange for its help, the FACR might win a role in the new order.

Biologists claimed to see clear parallels in the way some natural diseases did their deadly business, with viruses and bacteria paving the way for each other. One exo-sociologist wagered that the Last Machine War- ravaging Sol System tens of millions of years ago-must have been triggered by the arrival of crystal message capsules. They likely infected some of the more ancient mechanical probes, swaying them with persuasive offers of immortality and propagation. This theory might explain the Night of the Lasers.

When it seemed likely that the Havana Artifact was about to win over humanity, uncontested, all the other fomites had to gamble everything to draw our attention-either sacrificing bits of themselves to detonate come-get-me signals underground, or emitting risky here-I-am flashes as they drifted overhead. But these FACR devices were out here waiting, after eons, to fight for one crystal lineage or another. To help one faction to get heard… or to blast others and keep them from making their pitch.

It all made a kind of Darwinian sense… or so the best minds explained, reminding everyone that evolution had ferocious logic.

But then, how can this one benefit by firing at us?

Eyeing the rate of rotation, she knew another question was paramount.

How am I gonna get out of here?

It wouldn’t suffice to just sidle sideways around the ancient girder, which was narrow and perforated in the other direction. And Gavin’s situation was probably even worse. We’ve got to do something soon.

“Warren. Has ibn Battuta scanned the debris field?”