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card in the center of the table, stood back.
    Immediately, the spot on which the card sat seemed to dissolve into a grayish liquid. The card floated for a quarter- vitia , then sank from sight. The liquid spot on the table solidified once again. The card was gone, disappeared within.
    “Have you got it, Lamella?” Ricimer asked. No answer. “Have you got it?”
    The reassuring voice of Lamella returned. “I have it, Captain.”
    “Good.”
    “I’ve released the Sol C virus into Governess’s logic centers and have inoculated myself against it with the supplied security wall,” Lamella continued. “I believe that all Governess’s defense measures have been bypassed. We will know in a momentia if—”
    “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaiaaaaaah.” The wail had the all-permeating odor of carbolic acid, in human terms the smell of lamps used for coal mining and caving in the days before high-intensity LEDs. The carbolic aroma was urgent, ongoing. But Lamella had kept the keening of Governess out of the vessel’s virtual feed. Ricimer smelled it in the chamber, but not in his head. Which meant nobody else outside the cabin could detect it, either.
    And then, like steam from a kettle taken off its heat source, the scream wafted away. The air cleared.
    “We were successful,” Lamella said, her citrus-fresh tone as professional as ever. This was not an a.i. created to mimic Guardian emotional emission. Oh, Lamella had feelings. He understood that. This fact had been part of the means he’d used to bring her to his side. But they were the emotions of a hive, a roiling mass of intelligent agents vying for place in a sort of rough-and-tumble mental survival dance. Lamella was not a person. Not yet. She was more like a family of personas.
    “So Governess is—”
    “Dead, sir,” said Lamella matter-of-factly.
    “Very well,” said Ricimer. He breathed a sigh through his muzzle. It communicated no words, but communicated everything he felt, all the relief that was in him.
    To have begun. Finally to have begun.
    “And vessel systems?” he said.
    “The transfer to my own redundancy and to autonomous processing was successful. All indications are the rates took no notice.”
    “And my selected officers?”
    “Informed of the situation, Captain. The others do not seem alarmed. It is difficult to tell with officers, since I do not have full access, but I believe that those not selected by you do not suspect what has happened.”
    “Good, then,” Ricimer said. His knee unaccountably gave out, and he almost fell but caught himself against the projection table.
    “Captain?”
    Ricimer pulled himself up. Straightened his shoulders. Held himself steady. He looked at his palms.
    “I’m . . .”
    Bloodstained. His gripping gills soaked in fluid. He turned his hands over. Tissue and gristle clung in little clumps to their back sides.
    Blood all over his uniform in wet streaks and patches.
    Blood in a slick, pussy mess on the deck.
    A decapitated body.
    So many details still to take care of. The hard part yet to come.
    “I’ll be okay in a moment.”
    He put out a call to the bridge. Commander Talid answered immediately.
    “Orders, Captain?” she said.
    Ricimer curled out a tired smile. Good old Talid. Best XO in the Sporata. With him now at the end of their careers.
    “May I ask your status, Captain?”
    “I’m fine, Commander,” Ricimer answered, broadcasting multichannel so that he might be heard by all. “All is proceeding as expected. We have our orders. Bring her to a dead stop, Commander.”
    “Sir?”
    “We’re going to test out our very fancy and very new stealth technology, it seems.”
    “Aye, sir.”
    “One thing more. There’s to be complete beta silence. Do you understand, Commander?”
    “Beta silence, aye, sir.”
    “Make us disappear, Commander,” said Ricimer, “and let her drift.”
    “Aye.”
    “Oh, right. Please send Storekeep Susten to me here in V-CENT.” Ricimer looked once again at the mess.