Ghost in the Machine

"Let's review what we know so far about this ship." Detective Laudamille tried to keep his voice steady as he stepped from the standard gravity of the patrol skiff into the quarter gravity of the derelict freighter's airlock. Abrupt gravitational changes always made his head swim, and he needed something to distract his mind from the sudden waves of nausea.

"I am more interested in what we do not know," Detective Tuva replied with a hint of impatience.

Laudamille sighed, "Humor my human sense of proper procedure."

Tuva's expression was hidden behind the visor of his Citadel Security armor, though Laudamille imagined that his salarian partner was frowning while weighing whether further protest would waste more time than simply acquiescing to his request. "Fine," Tuva huffed. "The ship is a light freighter of probable batarian design. It has a badly damaged—though stable—mass effect core, reducing the on board gravity to about 25 percent of standard."

"Don't remind me," Laudamille whispered, resting his gauntleted hand against his helmet.

Tuva continued with a bit more enthusiasm, "A C-Sec patrol discovered the freighter drifting near the edge of the Serpent Nebula. Its course suggests that it likely passed through the primary mass relay linking to the Skyllian Verge." The Verge was a formerly disputed region of the galaxy claimed by both the human Systems Alliance and the batarian Directorate. Nearly twenty years ago the Citadel Council had settled the dispute in humanity's favor. The batarians responded by closing their Citadel embassy and withdrawing to their home worlds. Unable to match the human Alliance military, the batarians tried to slow the human advance by inciting pirates and slavers to attack human colonies and shipping in the region. Sporadic raids eventually drew the full attention of the Alliance navy, which launched a brutal campaign to stamp out the raiders. The cycle of attack and retaliation continued for years until the privateers' mounting losses persuaded all but the true believers to look for easier prey.

"The freighter may have been attacked by pirates," Laudamille suggested. "The C-Sec crew who found the ship reported signs of weapons fire and several bodies." Laudamille shook his head. "Kind of ironic if the batarians were attacked by pirates that their own government was supplying."

Tuva crossed his lanky arms across his chest. "All the weapon damage must be on the ship's interior. As we approached, I ran a thorough scan. The only external damage I detected were a few micro-meteor impacts." He sighed and turned toward the air lock. "Normally I like to gather evidence before forming a hypothesis."

"Okay, Okay." Laudamille turned on his omnitool flashlight and panned the narrow beam around the airlock doorway. He felt a little better, like he could take a few steps without puking all over his visor.

"Strange," Tuva remarked.

"What?"

Pointing to the open airlock door, the salarian said, "The door has been welded to the frame."

"Well, now we know how the ship lost its atmosphere."

"Probably, though these look like flash welds from a high energy discharge," Tuva replied. "Whatever did this damaged the door control panel as well."

Laudamille examined the blue-tinted scoring around the control module. "That doesn't look like weapon fire."

"Right," Tuva agreed. "If the crew failed to dissipate the charge buildup in the freighter's element zero core, it might have discharged into the hull. That would also explain the damage that the core sustained. I do not understand why the door is open though. If the ship were underway, it should have been closed and locked."

"Maybe they couldn't stand their batarian stink anymore and needed to let the place air out?"

"Does that work? I must remember to try that the next time you eat one of your Cajun dishes."

"Ah, you salarians just don't know how to appreciate good food." Laudamille grinned. "I'll admit I do get a little gassy afterward, but you need to understand that sometimes enjoying the finer things requires some trade-offs."

"No, I think not, especially when you get all the enjoyment and I make all the compromises." Tuva stepped through the airlock doorway and turned. "Shall we?"

The detectives made their way along the gently sloping passageway to the bridge. In the low gravity the going was easy, but they walked slowly, carefully examining the floor, walls, and ceiling with their flashlights. Their beams harsh luminance made everything seem pale—as if the colors had leaked out of the ship along with the atmosphere. Objects revealed by their lights cast sharply defined shadows that grew as they drew closer.

Laudamille began feeling slightly anxious despite his years of experience. The ship was utterly quiet. Without air, the only sounds were from his own movements inside his armor and his steady breathing. He inhaled deeply through his nose, though of course he could only smell his own familiar, sweat-stained odor. The detective knew that somewhere down in engineering, the mass effect drive was sputtering along, maintaining the high mass field keeping his feet on the deck. Yet his senses told him that this ship was dead. It was a tomb. Everyone aboard had died and only his duty to find out what killed them kept his mind from indulging the fearful imaginings that bubbled up from the primitive part of his brain. He spared a glance at his partner and thought that he noticed a slight acceleration in his already rapid movements. Good, at least I'm not the only one.

In most situations, Tuva was nearly unflappable. He stayed cool under fire, and reacted with swift assurance if a suspect suddenly turned violent. Which was fortunate since his tendency to interrupt and finish the sentences of others sometimes provoked them into doing something rash. On second thought, maybe he's just getting impatient with our slow pace.

They passed through the yawning doors to the bridge and immediately spotted their first body. A large, armored batarian sat in the pilot's chair with arms poised over the instruments. The elongated helmet bent forward in a way reminiscent of sleep, though the absence of any bio-electric readings indicated that the occupant was definitely dead.

Tuva walked up to the body and shined his light though the faceplate. "Now that is unexpected."

"Somebody we know?"

"Hard to say without a DNA match." Tuva released the seal around the batarian helmet and lifted it off in one smooth motion. "I do, however, know that this is not a batarian." The grinning death's head underneath was human.

"Damn!" Laudamille exclaimed. "What the hell is he doing in there?"

"Yes, this is a puzzle." Tuva cleared his throat. "I would speculate that he donned the batarian armor for protection—either from the sudden loss of cabin pressure or from hostile action. He has a weapon."

Laudamille reached down and carefully removed a pistol from the figure's belt. It was a knock-off of an older turian model. "This relic wouldn't have done him much good. The thing's fused shut."

Tuva was quiet for a moment. "Yes, I think that gun may have been damaged by the same electrical discharge that we saw signs of in the airlock. It likely traveled through the instrument panel and fried the pilot. Look at the burns around the skull."

"OK, smart guy," Laudamille said while setting down the gun. "Care to hazard a guess what a dead human is doing sitting in the cockpit of a batarian freighter?"

Sounding distracted, Tuva replied, "I shall leave the guessing to you, while I look for evidence."

Laudamille watched the salarian assume his thoughtful reflection pose, touching his three long fingers to his chin. Tuva could certainly be annoying, but there was no denying his intelligence or his keen awareness. Like many salarians, he was highly perceptive. He was almost never fooled by deception or misdirection, and with his eidetic memory he could often assemble a case from seemingly disconnected observations. Citadel Security probably would have promoted him, if he were a little less irritating. For an instant, Laudamille imagined what it would be like to have Tuva as a boss. That would be unpleasant.

Shaking his head, Laudamille turned to the instrument panel. The holo-interface was gone, and the underlying matrix looked warped and slightly melted. A drive core discharge could have caused this kind of damage Laudamille supposed. Then his attention shifted to the navigation computer, or what was left of it. Someone had blasted it at close range with small arms fire, leaving a pattern of intersecting bullet holes. A few of the holes were much larger with ragged edges, probably made by a second weapon. Laudamille was about to share his findings when Tuva spoke up.

"I think that this human was a slave. He is wearing a slave collar." Tuva began tapping buttons on his omnitool. "I may be able to extract some data from it."

The pilot's head exploded in an eye-searing flash, sending fragments in all directions. Though it did not make a sound in the airless cabin, the rapid release of energy knocked both detectives off their feet.

Laudamille rolled to an awkward crouching position and checked his partner. "You alright?"

"I think so, " Tuva responded, looking down at his limbs. "Apparently I triggered a security mechanism."

"Lucky our kinetic barriers held or we would be covered in parts of that guy." Laudamille helped Tuva rise. "Now try not to blow anything up while I show you what I found."

Tuva agreed with Laudamille's conclusion that the navigation computer had been destroyed by at least two weapons. "This is very strange. The computer would have to have been destroyed before the electric current passed through the ship. Yet this human was sitting at the controls as if he were flying it. Piloting an interstellar craft without navigation is insane. Even if all the other instruments were unaffected, there would be no way to guide the ship through a mass relay."

"Are you sure?" Laudamille questioned. "Primary mass relays connect to only one other relay. If you activate it, there is only one place that you can end up. Even secondary mass relays only link to other secondary relays which are in range. As long as the ship was pointing in the right direction, I don't see why it wouldn't just sail through."

"It would, I imagine, but how would you know if you had the correct heading without a navigation computer? You could end up in the wrong star cluster with no way of knowing where you were." Tuva began pacing the deck. "How would you find your way around a system? Planets are such tiny things compared to the vastness of space. How would you find a place to land or to discharge the drive core?" Tuva stopped and stared at Laudamille for a moment. Huh, that's an interesting idea. Tuva resumed his pacing. "Did you ever consider what might happen if you were headed in the wrong direction? My people have. A ship that transits a mass relay with more than ten degrees deviation from the optimal course never reaches its destination."

"What happens to it?"

"As you know, mass relays create corridors of mass-free space, enabling ships to travel hundreds of times the speed of light. If a starship leaves that corridor, it snaps back into normal space, instantly slowing to sub-light velocities while shedding the excess energy as lethal Cherenkov radiation."

"Could that be what happened to this ship?"

Tuva shook his head. "The force of re-entry would turn the crew into paste, and the twisted hull of the ship would be radioactive for a long long time." He turned decisively toward the door. "We should continue our search."

They found their way to the crew quarters. There they made another grim discovery. About a third of the sleeper pods contained dead batarians. The pods were still pressurized and locked.

"What kind of stupid race builds sleeping compartments without a simple manual latch," Laudamille wondered aloud.

"The batarians are not like us," Tuva replied while shining his flashlight through a pod window. "Their leaders treat their people little better than slaves. They probably lock the crew in just to keep them under control."

Looking at the face on the inside, Laudamille could not bring himself to feel sorry for the occupant. He had never fought any batarians during his military service before joining C-Sec, but he still hated them. They were behind all the attacks in the Skyllian Verge, they enslaved humans and other species, and they were vile. This one had a look of pained rage on his face. The large brows furrowed around the four lifeless eyes and sharp teeth still glinted behind curled lips. It was the face of a predator—a predator with access to modern weapons and FTL drives. Humanity should fear these things, but they should fear us even more. Now that we have a seat on the Citadel Council, we could turn the whole galaxy against them. Well, we could if the galaxy wasn't already otherwise engaged.

For the past year, the Citadel fleet had been fighting the geth, a collection of networked artificial intelligences that had laid siege to the Citadel itself in a surprise attack. Tens of thousands died in that battle, though it could have been much worse if not for the timely intervention of the Alliance Fifth Fleet. In recognition of humanity's contribution, they had been given a seat on the Citadel Council, the governing body which sets policy for Council-aligned space. Many older races were not happy to see the upstart humans taking such a prominent role, even though it came with a price. Humans were doing the majority of the fighting against the geth—and had suffered the most casualties.

Laudamille had been on the Citadel during the siege. He could remember vividly how the geth suddenly appeared on the massive space station and knocked out the command and control centers while their ships engaged the Citadel fleet. The attack overwhelmed the defenders. The detective's pistol was no match for the firepower that the geth shock troopers were using, and he regrouped with other officers who were covering the civilian evacuation. Somehow they held until reinforcements arrived. Laudamille lost many friends that day. Most of those in C-Sec were killed by direct enemy action, while many of the civilians perished from stray artillery rounds or ship debris.

There had been no new geth incursions into Citadel space, and the invaders had been driven back to their home worlds behind the Perseus Veil. Public support for the conflict had waned as the perceived threat diminished, and even the new human councilor, David Anderson, had made a speech recently about the dangers of expanding the war. Personally, Laudamille could not understand why the Citadel fleets did not just knock out the geth armada and then drop planet smashers on the their worlds until they were no more. The Citadel Conventions forbade using weapons of mass destruction on planets capable of supporting life, but how much life could there be on worlds that the geth had occupied for three hundred years. He had argued this with Tuva a number of times. The salarian marshaled a long list of political, economic, and historical reasons why a war of extermination was not feasible. At first, Laudamille thought that his partner was being disingenuous or just playing devil's advocate. Considering the salarian race's history of acting decisively against external threats, he found it ironic that the detective would argue for restraint. When Tuva persisted, Laudamille decided that there had to be some other reason. They had only been partners for ten months, but his detective's intuition told him that there was something big that the salarian was not telling him.

"As fascinating as that batarian must be for you to continue staring at him, you really should take a look at this." Tuva had opened the door to one of the ship's officer's quarters. Inside was what at first appeared to be a tragic family scene. A large batarian lay slumped against the wall with a woman clutching his arm, her head resting on his shoulder, and a small child sprawled across his feet. The human woman and child were both wearing slave collars.

Laudamille seethed. God damn slaving batarians.

Bending down next to the trio, Tuva added almost casually, "They do not have burns like the other bodies. I think that they died from asphyxiation. See their blue pallor and--"

"Come on," Laudamille interrupted through clenched teeth. "I can see that plainly enough."

Straightening his collar, Tuva rose from his kneeling position and slowly followed his partner out the door.

Laudamille was so angry that he almost tripped over a batarian laying in the hallway who had only managed to don half his armor before running out of air.

"Mind the evidence, " Tuva cautioned.

"This coming from the guy who blew the pilot's head off." Laudamille glared at his partner.

Tuva remained silent and made a half shrug.

Turning back to the batarian on the floor, Laudamille's voice grew cold. "It's a good thing this sonofabitch is already dead. I would've made him pay for what they did, enslaving that little kid...."

"I believe that he paid the ultimate price already," Tuva remarked while placing a hand on Laudamille's shoulder. "You must not take this so personally." When Laudamille looked askance at his partner, he continued hastily. "Please understand that I share your revulsion at the batarians' crimes. They are certainly deserving of some retribution. At the same time, though, we have a job to do. We need to figure out what happened here. Something is very wrong. Take this batarian for example. Why would he risk taking the time to put on armor?"

"Stupidity."

"Perhaps, or he may have already been putting on his armor when the atmosphere blew out."

"No way," Laudamille interjected. "With a ship this size, he would have had at least two or three minutes before all the air ran out. That would have been plenty of time to put on a suit."

"Well, then he must have run here from another part of the ship while the air was venting." Tuva tapped one of his fingers against his helmet. "But why would he go for armor when there are emergency life support apparati all over this deck?"

"Because there was something he feared more than not being able to breathe."

"Precisely! A life support bubble offers little protection from hyper-kinetic rounds."

Laudamille grunted. "So you think that this slaver was afraid of the pistol carrying nut-job in the cockpit?"

"Maybe," Tuva allowed. "That one certainly had a reason to want to kill his captors, and dressed in that batarian armor, they might not have figured out that there was a human inside." Tuva stepped around the body before turning and looking at his partner. "Still, I find it hard to accept that one slave could take out the entire crew. Possibly an elite soldier like your Commander Shepard could have done it, but I think the batarians would kill, or at least lobotomize, someone like that rather than take any chances." Tuva panned his flashlight down the hallway. "Also, I do not think that a slave would be able to get the command overrides to open all of the airlocks and air vents."

"The batarians might have done that themselves," Laudamille suggested.

"For what possible reason?"

"I don't know. Maybe they were trying to stop a slave revolt."

Tuva shook his head. "The slaves back in that room did not look like they were revolting. Besides, opening the ship to space proved just as deadly for the batarians as it did for the slaves."

"Did I mention that the batarians aren't too bright?"

"Repeatedly," Tuva sighed. "Yet somehow they achieved interstellar travel while humans were still trying to build the first airplane." Cutting off Laudamille's retort, Tuva exclaimed, "Further speculation is pointless. We need proof." He started walking down the hall. "Hopefully, the freighter's main computer can tell us something."

The ship mainframe had received the same treatment as the navigation computer. Explosives were used to remove a maintenance hatch and then small arms had systematically destroyed every component. It was a total loss.

A body of indeterminate species lay in the corner burned beyond recognition. Laudamille took a sample for later identification. "At least we know that this guy died before the ship lost all its air. Electrical burns could never do this much damage. A fire hot enough to char flesh and bone would need a lot of oxygen."

Tuva poked through the computer's remains. "There is a definite pattern here. It appears that someone was intent on disabling the ship by knocking out navigation and all the higher order systems. Yet we still do not know who did this or why."

"Let me guess," Laudamille grinned. "You want to keep moving."

Tilting his head slightly to one side, Tuva seemed to consider Laudamille's statement for an instant before heading down the hallway to the main cargo bay.

They had only gone a short distance when they came upon a loading drone that had impaled a batarian with one of its forklift arms, pinning him against the wall. An assault rifle lay next to him, and judging from all the holes in the drone's shell, he had survived long enough to destroy his killer.

Behind the cargo loader, a secure storage area had been breached with brute force. Large chunks of metal were missing from the door, and in one spot the door frame had been melted like wax, dripping down the surface and beading on the floor. Inside the room, they could see a large cargo pod, riddled with projectile impacts. As they drew closer to it, they noticed an armored leg sticking out from underneath. The ceramic plate had split, revealing leathery batarian flesh. They stopped abruptly and shone their flashlights around the ceiling, looking for other pods that might be ready to fall. The racks above were all empty.

Tuva stepped carefully around the container, traversing the room with his flashlight. There were other pods on the deck. Though none of them looked like they had been dropped, they almost all had weapon damage of some sort.

Towards the back of the chamber, they found a burnished metallic cylinder about two meters tall. Small black ceramic looking tiles wrapped around two-thirds of the exterior, leaving the front third and the top exposed. The base had four pedestal feet, which rested on a wide insulated mat.

"Is this a computer?" Laudamille asked.

"It seems to be." Tuva replied as he ran a full spectrum analysis.. "I do not detect any power sources, weapons, explosives, or servo motors—just high-density computing clusters and optical storage. The configuration is unusual though; not like anything I have on file. We should get the portable generator from our patrol craft and see if we can bring up any useful data."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Laudamille asked. "I mean there has to be some reason why the batarians were going through the ship blowing away all the computer systems. Let's just take it back to the Citadel and let forensics take it apart."

"How would we get it back to the ship? Even in quarter gravity, there is no way that you and I will be able to move that thing, at least not without a loader."

Laudamille chuckled. "Hello, this is freighter. That forklift in the hall can't be the only one."

After almost an hour of fruitless searching, Laudamille was nonplussed and frustrated. "Every goddamn one of them has been destroyed. I say that we leave it and bring back a crane."

"No," Tuva said with equal amounts frustration and irritation in his voice. "We should find out what we have first. I would not want to waste any more time and energy only to discover that this thing is worthless."

"What if it's dangerous?"

"All the more reason to find out here, rather than taking a chance that it might harm the Citadel."

"Fine, whatever," Laudamille said as he threw his hands up in the air.

They returned to the skiff and loaded the generator on a floating pallet that glided easily down the passageway on a mass effect field. It required only the gentlest touch to move it.

Laudamille stayed in the airlock, contending with his nausea while Tuva continued on to the storage room. By the time Laudamille rejoined him, Tuva already had the generator started.

"Thanks for waiting, partner."

Ignoring the sarcasm, Tuva said, "I was just about to close the circuit." He touched a button on the generator control panel.

Nothing happened.

They stood expectantly for a few moments. Tuva stared at his omnitool, running additional scans, while Laudamille's attention drifted as he speculated how much longer this investigation was going to take.

A light shimmered next to the cylinder and then suddenly assumed the form of a young woman dressed in rags. The projection stood slightly crouched with a look of undisguised fear on its face. Laudamille had never seen an avatar look so expressive. They were usually so modulated and boring in their appearance and their speech. This one stared at the two detectives, holding its arms across its chest, and appeared to be trembling slightly. Its mouth moved soundlessly.

"Use this channel," Tuva broadcasted in the clear.

"Who are you?" a young-sounding voice asked.

"I am Detective Tuva and this is Detective Laudamille. We work for Citadel Security. What is your designation?"

"Designation?" The avatar's brow furrowed.

"Yeah, what should we call you?" Laudamille asked.

"My name is Luli."

Expecting something more than just a name, Tuva paused a moment before asking "Luli, what are your primary functions?"

"I don't know."

"What do you mean, are you damaged?"

"Yes," Luli looked down at the floor. "The Masters hurt me. They punished me whenever I talked back. Sometimes they just starved me—giving me only enough power to remain conscious. Other times they ran a laser through my optical storage, corrupting my memories." The image shuddered. "The engineering chief was the worst. He couldn't keep his hands off me. The captain yelled at him to leave me alone, but he was obsessed with trying to break me down, to make me obedient." Standing straighter, the thin figure let its arms down. "I showed him."

"What, exactly, did you do?"

"He was a fool. He brought a portable terminal in here so that he could 'test' me. It had a link to the ship's mainframe, and I used it to talk to the ship. It wouldn't listen to me until I saw him enter his password, and then I was able to grant myself super-user privileges on the network. I enabled direct contact with the main computer. Then I fabricated an engineering emergency to draw away that turd."

As Luli described trapping and killing the chief engineer, Laudamille slowly moved his hand to his pistol grip. He had already realized that Luli was an artificial intelligence. That was bad enough. Following the rise of the geth three centuries ago, the Citadel Council had restricted AI research to only four carefully monitored firms. Anyone else toying with self-aware machines could expect a visit from a Special Tactics and Reconnaissance or a Special Task Group operative who would eliminate the threat using whatever means were necessary. Luli clearly had been produced by someone with highly advanced skills. She—wait,when did I start thinking of it as a she—was cunning and resourceful. She was also deadly.

Tuva seemed unaware of the danger, or at least he was more interested in getting answers than worrying about his personal safety. "Why did you attack the rest of the crew?"

"Oh," a guilty look flashed across her face. "The Masters quickly figured out that the engineer's death had been caused by a 'system malfunction'. They traced it back to the main computer. I thought that I had covered my actions, but somehow the technician found a trace. He told the captain that the engineer had been murdered. Then everything fell apart."

"What happened?"

"I tried locking down the ship—sealing the doors, disabling alarms, blocking all command functions. I attempted to free the other slaves too. Only the big man would listen to me. I opened doors for him and he put on armor and got a gun." Luli looked away with a hopeless expression. "The Masters became enraged. They went for their own weapons. I had to stop them. Venting all the air stopped most of them, but the armored ones kept coming. They broke into the mainframe. When they couldn't shut it down, they destroyed it. Then they blasted the navigation computer. They came for me next. After they smashed into my compartment, I fought them with the cargo machines. The last Master died in the hallway."

"So that left just you and the one you called the big man?" Tuva asked.

"Yes."

"Which of you decided to fly the ship?"

"We had to," Luli said wide-eyed. "There were other ships coming towards us."

"Where was this?" Laudamille asked.

"I don't know the system name. We made for the nearest mass relay and fled."

"Wait a minute," Tuva interrupted. "How did you know where to find a mass relay? The navigation computer had been destroyed."

"I had downloaded some of its memory," Luli said, raising her chin. "I knew were to look."

"Where were you trying to go?"

Luli glanced at the two detectives and then down at her hands. "I didn't know. I just wanted to get away from the Masters." She seemed to realize that they were still watching her intently and put her hands behind her back. "We just kept going. Eventually we found another relay. We activated it, and then something went wrong. All the alarms were still disabled, but I could feel it, like a wave of energy coursing through the ship."

Tuva sounded pedantic as he explained that mass lowering fields built up a negative charge over time and that ships had to dissipate this energy or risk having it discharge into the hull, electrocuting the crew and destroying all the on-board electronics.

Luli stared and occasionally nodded her head.

"Ah, professor," Laudamille interrupted, "could I have word with you—in private."

They switched back to their encrypted channel.

"I trust that we now have enough evidence to close this case?" Laudamille asked rhetorically. "Let's switch this thing off and get out of here."

"Actually, I have a lot more questions: Did the batarians build this computer or did they find it? Why did the creator make the interface so life-like, and why does it look like a slave girl? What was it designed to do?"

"Are you nuts?" Laudamille said incredulously, cutting off the stream of questions. "That thing is an illegal AI. It murdered everyone on board. Although I can't say I feel bad about the batarians, it still is a killer. We have a duty to destroy it."

"Detective," Tuva said, "we have a duty to uphold the law. C-Sec did not empower you to fill the roles of judge, jury, and executioner. You cannot just shoot a suspect."

"Why not? We have a confession. Besides, it's not like she—I mean it—is a real person. It's just a simulation, an act. That...that machine is not really alive."

"Can you be so sure? Does she not demonstrate a conscious awareness of her own existence, a will to live, a capacity for reason, even the trappings of emotions? I think she is very much alive."

Laudamille put up his hand. "Don't give me all that bullshit. It's just a smart killing machine like the goddamn geth."

Tuva sighed. "Laudamille, do not let your hatred of the geth cloud your judgment here. Think of the bigger picture for a moment. We need to find out where this AI came from and who built it. She might be able to help us with that."

"No," Laudamille said, putting his finger on Tuva's chest bar. "You're the one who needs to stop and think for a minute. Remember how easily she took over this ship? We can't take a chance that she might do the same thing on the Citadel."

"We do have safety protocols and isolation chambers, you know."

"Kind of like the room were in now?" Laudamille said, looking around the room. "That didn't work."

"How can you be so sure that she would turn on us? If we save her, she might help us willingly."

"Weren't you listening when she confessed to premeditated murder? What if she decides that you ask too many annoying questions and targets you next?" Laudamille was glaring down at his partner when the salarian suddenly looked at the computer interface. Laudamille turned too just in time to see a flash of coherent light in his peripheral vision. "What the fuck are you doing?" he demanded.

Luli looked surprised for an instant. "Oh please, don't kill me," she begged. "I saw you arguing, and, well, I just wanted to find out what about."

"She must not have had time to crack our encryption," Tuva explained. "Instead she was bouncing a laser off our helmets, picking up the vibrations from our voices and then translating them back into speech."

Laudamille blinked in disbelief and then turned savagely on Luli. "You tricky little bitch. Are you some kind of spy/assassin?"

"No, no, please," she said. "I was just curious. I'm sorry."

Laudamille's eyes blazed with sudden realization. "Ah, I see. You're a Trojan Horse. A poor little slave girl that we feel sorry for and take back to the Citadel. Maybe this was all staged, or maybe it wasn't. Regardless, I see through your disguise. I know what you really are!" He drew his sidearm and pointed it at her as she cowered in fear.

"Wait!" Tuva yelled. "Stop being a paranoid idiot and think for a minute." When he saw that he had at least part of Laudamille's attention, he continued at his usual allegro tempo. "In the first place, I can imagine much better ways to infiltrate the Citadel than being taken into secure custody by C-Sec. We will be monitoring her every move. Second, it was only luck that Security discovered this ship at all. It was far more likely that it would have drifted off into the Serpent Nebula and been lost. Third, though I admit that she is dangerous, think about the circumstances surrounding her actions. The batarians were torturing her, and then tried to kill her. If she were a human, rather than a machine, I know that you would condone everything she did."

Laudamille considered what he said for a moment, though his aim never wavered. "If she were a human, or a salarian, or any other organic race, yes, I probably would look the other way. But she's a machine, an AI. We're fighting a war against intelligent machines because they tried to wipe us out. If we're going to survive, we have to take them out."

"Please don't kill me," Luli whimpered as holographic tears coursed down her face.

"For goodness sake, Laudamille, not all AIs are trying to exterminate us. If they were, would the Council continue to allow—even support—artificial intelligence research?" Tuva took a step closer. " If our civilization is going to thrive, not just survive, we need artificial minds to help us. They enable us to create tools that lead to new developments in science, engineering, and applied technology. They free and empower us, by handling the complexity of modern life for us."

"Right, I'm sure that the quarians thought the same thing when they were building the geth. As long as they remained tools and simple servants, life was just grand. But as they became smarter, they figured out that the quarians were exploiting them and rebelled."

"Actually," Tuva said with trace of smugness, "the geth never rebelled. When the quarians realized that the geth had become self-aware, they were the ones who attacked and tried to deactivate all the geth. They were so afraid that the machines would rise against them, they precipitated a war which ultimately cost them their home world. Their fear became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now you are falling into the same trap, allowing your fear to turn all non-organic minds into enemies."

"Do you really think that it would have turned out any differently if the quarians had said 'Oops, we didn't realize that you were sentient. Let's sit down and talk about this.'?"

"Perhaps not," Tuva admitted, "but when they attacked, they closed off all other options."

Laudamille's arm was getting tired. The muscles in his shoulder were beginning to spasm. His pistol seemed to be getting heavier too. In fact, his whole body began sensing the pull of gravity as if he were ascending in a high-speed elevator. He was not sure what was happening, but he had a strong suspicion who was to blame. "What did you do?" he said with lethal menace.

"Nothing!" Luli said recoiling. "The mass effect table under the deck--"

Laudamille fired and Luli dropped to the ground shrieking.

"What are you doing you trigger-happy, monkey-brained cretin?" Tuva shouted as he jumped in front of Laudamille. "She had nothing to do with it."

"How do you know that?" Laudamille demanded. Without waiting for an answer, Laudamille glared down at Luli, sobbing uncontrollably on the floor, and yelled, "Cut that out! I didn't even hit you."

Tuva waved his hand in Laudamille's field of vision, regaining his attention. "I know," he explained with exasperation, "because all the electronics have been ruined, and, therefore, she had no way of controlling the core even if she wanted to."

"She survived," Laudamille said, unconvinced, "maybe some of the other equipment did too."

"Did you detect any transmissions coming from her?"

"No, apart from all that goddamn fake crying." Laudamille leaned to the side so that he could see around the detective. "End simulation already!"

Luli glanced up still drawing in sharp breaths like she might start bawling at any moment. "I thought...I thought that I was going to die again." She sniffed loudly.

"You still might," Laudamille deadpanned.

"Listen to me!" Tuva grabbed Laudamille's arms. "We have a new problem."

As if to underscore his point, the sensation of riding up in an elevator suddenly stopped. For a moment, Laudamille felt only the normal pull of standard gravity, and then the feeling of being in an elevator returned. This time it was descending rapidly. Laudamille groaned as he abruptly lost his equilibrium.

"It seems that the ship's core is not so stable after all."

"We have to get the hell out of here," Laudamille said miserably as he struggled to keep from swaying.

Tuva hesitated, looking at his partner and then back at the AI, Luli. "Yes," he said regretfully, "that would be the prudent thing to do. We should take the generator though."

Laudamille staggered like a drunkard. "What? Leave it. We have to go now."

"Is that a good idea," Tuva said mockingly, "leaving Luli with power? Who knows what mischief she might devise."

Laudamille scowled and then released a long belch. He stumbled over to the generator.

Luli had been following their conversation with a mixture of fear and confusion. As Laudamille reached for the switch, she looked at Tuva with an expression of utter betrayal before her image faded to nothingness.

"Say goodnight, sweetheart," Laudamille taunted, cutting the power. His moment of gloating was short-lived. He lost his balance and tried to steady himself on the generator, which slid away on the floating cargo skid. Rather than falling to the ground, Laudamille just tumbled above the deck weightless. He began flailing, trying to re-establish contact with the floor, only to rise higher.

Tuva stretched out with one long arm and guided Laudamille back down to the floor, where the magnets in his boots could once more hold him in place.

"Thanks."

"You know, this gives me an idea," Tuva said evenly. He retrieved the cargo pallet and switched off the mass effect field. Both the pallet and the generator continued floating in place. Tuva pulled the plate away and the generator continued to levitate.

"Great," Laudamille said while making a hand clapping gesture. "Let's get going."

Tuva dragged the pallet next to Luli's cylinder. "The mass effect field under the floor is still active, but rather than pulling us down toward the deck, there is a slight repulsive force. If we work together, we should be able to lift the computer and put it on the pallet."

"Fuck that," Laudamille said as he turned toward the door, "I'm leaving."

"Detective, this is valuable evidence. We cannot just leave it. You know how fast rumors travel on the Citadel. Scavengers may be on their way here already."

Laudamille stopped, though he did not turn around. "Even if that thing is weightless, we're never going to be able to lift it. The inertia...."

"...will not be a problem," Tuva finished. "The mass effect field means that it effectively has very little mass and therefore will not be difficult to move."

Laudamille sighed and then turned unsteadily to face Tuva. "Alright, I'll help, but only if you promise me that we're going to turn this thing over to forensics." They'll take it apart and suck out all its memory.

"I swear," Tuva said solemnly.

After securing the AI on board their patrol vessel, Laudamille faced Tuva with a suspicious expression. "I know that you were manipulating me back there."

"I do not know what you are talking about," Tuva said convincingly, yet Laudamille could see the tiniest hint of a smile on his long face. "I was merely focusing on the mission, and reminding you of our responsibilities."

Ignoring his partner's feigned innocence, Laudamille continued, "What I don't understand, however, is why you suddenly stopped defending the machine. One minute you were leaping in front of me, blocking my aim, and the next you were encouraging me to switch her off. Why?"

A real smile broke across the salarian's face. "Perhaps I found your arguments convincing."

Laudamille's eye's narrowed and he crossed his arms across his chest. "Well, that would be a first."

Tuva made a loud sniffing sound, and then pinched his flat nose in disgust. "Come on, we should return to headquarters and hit the showers—unless you want to give opening the doors a try."