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fitting at the same time.
    She turned back towards Carolan. “It probably depends on how close they are to all this.” Moria nodded at the screen, now displaying a shot of a moon installation being bombed by one of those horribly massive ships. “I bet they're coming in their pants back on Earth, but out closer to the line they might be a little less happy about it all.”
    “Mmm, I guess… you know they've been discussing mining the cargo gate?”
    “What?”
    “Well, we're not that far from the line here and they don't want these Prador getting hold of runcible tech.”
    “But they don't have AIs.”
    “Nevertheless…”
    Moria thought about those words, we're not that far from the line here, but though she understood on an intellectual level what the newsnets were displaying, she could not quite equate it with the reality she knew.
    The shuttle, a fifty-metre cylinder with a rounded nose and two stubby wings, rose steadily on AG, and the fusion flame of its main engine drove it through the Trajeen atmosphere. Moria always preferred this particular shuttle over the more usual delta-wings because of its ample provision of windows. She gazed out at the falling curve of the planet and the gradual winking on of stars in the purple-black firmament.
    The moon Abhid lay within view to the fore of the shuttle, but Vina and Sutra were not visible. Modelling the planetary system in her aug she realised Sutra would soon be coming into view over the horizon, just below and down at four o'clock from Abhid. Vina, presently lying over on the other side of Trajeen, would only be visible to the rear of the shuttle just before it docked at the cargo gate. Vina's position influenced the timing of shuttle launches, since thus far the fast-moving moon had eaten up one public shuttle and two private vessels. Miscalculate the position of something two hundred kilometres across and travelling at 40,000 kph and you won't get any second chances. Just as an exercise to distract her from what the screen was showing she ran statistical calculations on the chances of ending up in the moon's path, considering the number of launches from the planet over the last twenty years, and the navigational and computer systems available to those craft. She then calculated escape vectors and drive thrust requirements, swiftly realising that those aboard the three craft, whose remains lay impacted on Vina's surface, had been rather unlucky.
    Again to keep herself distracted from some particularly nasty images now being displayed, Moria began an investigation into the circumstances surrounding those shuttle crashes, and immediately stumbled on some conspiracy theory net sites. According to them, one of the privately owned craft belonged to someone who later turned out to be a chief financier of Separatist terrorists on Trajeen. And the other belonged to an out-Polity weapons dealer. The AIs killed them, the theorists claimed. While she studied circumstances surrounding the crash of the public shuttle, Sutra rose as predicted, and she snorted with satisfaction.
    “You were running something in your aug,” said Carolan Moria turned to her. “Is it so obvious?”
    “As with me. I'm told we'll only develop the ability to compartmentalize after a few months of usage. What were you running?”
    Moria did not like the question. It almost seemed equivalent to, “What are you thinking?” As she understood it, the behavioural ethos slowly being established for aug usage was that you did not ask such questions unless they were work related. She answered anyway.
    “That's pretty damned advanced,” Carolan replied with a puzzled frown. “I haven't even started on that level of modelling and calculus. Where did you have your aug fitted?”
    “Privately—a surgeon by the name of Aubron Sylac.”
    “You didn't use an ECS-approved clinic?”
    “No.”
    “Oh.”
    Moria sank back into a trancelike state, and after quickly working through the theories concerning