"All right, then," Ryland said, "what did you want to talk to me about?"

He pulled out the chair and slipped smoothly into it while his partner took the one opposite. Leeson's was a popular chain on Coral, and had four separate storefronts on Pioneer 2, all of the style that held a shop counter only. Like with the other food-court stores surrounding it, patrons could cross the shopping arcade to sit at tables ranged along the transparent plasteel barrier that separated the deck from the open cityscape.

It was interesting, he thought as he took the lid off his cup, how people adapted. It was a common ritual of human beings that they talk together over food or drinks. As an android, though, Lyon didn't eat, and when they'd first started working together regularly, this fact had bothered Ryland, as if he was inconveniencing her by making her conform to his organic needs.

Now, he not only didn't give it a second thought most of the time, but he'd even lost any discomfort he had about eating or drinking around other organics who were not. His fundamental perception of the social rules had shifted, thanks to his friendship with the artificial intelligence.

"It's our last job," she said. Lyon folded her hands on the table in front of her, an act some subroutine within her mind told her was an appropriate reaction for her emotional state—probably, from her tone, something like "pensive" or "thoughtful." If he'd been curious, she could have told him exactly what it was and what other alternatives surrounded it all, something he found endlessly fascinating.

"I figured that." He sipped his coffee. Despite its popularity—generally there was some law about such things being related inversely—Leeson's coffee was excellent, and this cup was no exception. "You have to give me credit for at least a little deductive reasoning, despite my poor, organic brain."

Lyon tipped her head back for a second, a gesture equivalent to rolling her eyes since her eye style didn't have an iris to roll.

"Don't fish for compliments," she huffed.

"I won't; it's just kind of obvious under the circumstances. You've been a little off ever since Kane jumped into the sea."

Lyon nodded.

"That would be one way of putting it."

"The suicide disturbs you?"

"I don't understand it," she said.

"In what sense?" he wondered. "That you don't understand why Selfas Kane would commit suicide, or why organics would take their own lives at all?"

"The first one. Admittedly, I don't really get suicide as a general concept, but I have an intellectual understanding of the social and cultural factors that could drive someone in that direction."

"But even given that, Kane confuses you."

"He does."

"Honestly, you're not the only one," Ryland said, then took a drink of coffee.

"I noticed that before, back on-planet. But I thought that you might have a better idea than I do. You like mysteries, after all, so I thought that maybe you were trying to solve this one."

"This is really bothering you, isn't it?"

Lyon nodded again. She glanced to her right, at the throngs of shoppers going by. There were long lines at some of the stores, matching up with "limited supply" or "today only" sale signs. She then looked left, out at the city of thirty thousand souls built within a spaceship, a colony that had ventured across interstellar space for two years in hope of finding a future, a new home, at the blaze of light from the lit windows and signs, at air traffic flowing back and forth through the sky.

Ryland figured he understood what she was looking at.

"It doesn't really make sense, does it? To come all this way to escape a dying world, only to give everything up?"

"And Kane was a hunter, too," Lyon went on. "That means something. He wasn't just waiting here on the ship for the Administration to finally tell them that everything's okay. He was out there, working with his own hands to help push things forward. We weren't trying to arrest him, so it wasn't like he was going to be faced with a prison cell."

Ryland couldn't deny that the threat of an extended prison stay could tip some people over the edge. It had been over two years since Pioneer 2 had arrived at Ragol, after all, and yet there was no sign that settlement of the surface was anywhere in sight. Frustration and despair over the wait were real threats, so how much worse would it be to be locked up in the brig, a prison within a prison?

To an android, he supposed none of it would make sense. Lyon's personality matrix was modeled on a human being's, even to the point that she genuinely had a gender, but it was still a model that was designed to reach rational conclusions. Even when her emotions provided impetus for her actions, the actions produced were directly associated with those emotional goals and priorities.

Really, there was no way of getting around it: suicide out of depression or despair wasn't logical. And unlike a high-grade, software-based AI, Lyon couldn't go "insane" without some sort of external cause such as physical damage or hacking.

But then again, maybe psychology wasn't the problem with Selfas Kane, either.

"Do you remember the first time we worked together?" he asked.

"Of course."

Silly question, but he was making a conversational preamble, not genuinely asking.

"The chief culprit killed himself then, too. Part of it might have been fear or panic, but it was also to prevent interrogation. He was a military spy, after all, and could have compromised secrets of his faction."

"But we told Kane we'd let him go."

"He might not have believed us. Or, interrogation wasn't the threat he was afraid of."

"Kane did call us 'Administration lackeys' and accused us of knowing what was 'really going on.' I have to admit, that certainly sounds like someone who's picked a faction."

Ryland nodded.

"A man with a cause is a man who likely has things that he values more than his own life, things he'll sacrifice himself to protect."

"So, the data, then?"

"It almost has to be."

"But that doesn't make sense. He could have just tossed the disk off the cliff without killing himself over it. To say nothing of the fact that our client was perfectly happy with that outcome anyway. Why would Kane kill himself when he didn't accomplish anything by doing it?"

"I don't know," Ryland said, possibly his least favorite words in the language. "It could be that he was cleaning, that although Solus was satisfied that Kane didn't deliver the data, it would have been better for his side's plans if we'd retrieved it. Or Kane thought we might haul him in if he just ditched the disk. He might actually have known something sensitive." He ran his finger back and forth along the rim of the cup. "But I agree with you. I don't like those answers. They seem too weak to justify a man losing his life."

"The whole thing seems too weak to justify a man losing his life," Lyon groused. "These factional battles between the Administration, the Lab, the military, Black Paper, 32nd WORKS, not to mention folks with private agendas and the odd corporation or criminal gang, it's all so pointless. People battling over scraps of wealth and power, all the while destroying the underlying society bit by bit."

"Too busy fighting over a piece of cake to notice they're scattering crumbs everywhere."

"Something you and your brother used to do?"

Ryland shook his head.

"Not really; he was just a kid when our parents divorced."

"Darned reality, spoiling my metaphor. Or actually your metaphor; I was just drawing conclusions from it."

He theatrically buffed his nails on the front of his robe and said, "That's what happens when amateurs try to trespass on the territory of the master."

"I should have sat next to you so I'd be in ponytail-flipping range."

"I'm in arm's reach now; this is a small table."

"Right, but if you sneeze and spray coffee, I'm right in front of you, and the price of a carapace cleaning doubled last month."

"I guess we all have our living expenses."

He took another sip of coffee, using the pause to transition away from banter back to serious topics.

"I'll give you this, you've managed to get me interested in Kane's death. I'm not sure if it's an inexplicable puzzle, but there's clearly more going on here than theft and retrieval of some random research data."

"Uh-huh."

"But now I have a question for you: do we care?"

Lyon blinked, something she did strictly as a nonverbal communication of surprise.

"Ryland?"

"We're hunters, after all. We work to resolve quests that our clients hire us to perform, and, well, nobody's hired us for this job. Our part's done. And…how did Naomi say it, back on Ragol? That 'trying to figure out which faction is screwing over which other faction on any given job' wasn't fun?"

"She said 'puzzle,' but yeah."

"What I would do if I had your memory. But you see what I mean. Kane's suicide was strange; it can't be explained by what we know. But it's not part of what we were hired to do. The answer lies in whatever's going on behind the scenes."

He took a long drink of coffee while Lyon thought that over.

"So Donovan Ryland is going to just back away from a mystery all on his own, without the slightest curiosity as to what's inside?"

Anyone who didn't believe that an android could master sarcasm was appallingly ignorant.

"Seriously, that's why we ended up as partners in the first place, remember? You got sent after Rappy migration data and got curious. No one was paying us for that. And now, a hunter gives up his life to make sure that our employer doesn't get something, except in a shocking swerve our client is perfectly happy, making all that passionate sacrifice completely pointless. And you're not the slightest bit curious?"

He adjusted his glasses, pushing them back up his nose.

"Of course I'm curious. I'm just surprised that you are, to be honest with you. After all, when we take on complex jobs together, you're usually doing it for my sake."

"Well, yes, most of the time I do prefer 'go there, kill that monster' kind of work," Lyon said.

"Right, so I didn't want to go dragging you off to hunt some wild conspiracy or political game just to satisfy my own interest, without even having a client to pay us for it."

"Oh…so you are interested, too?"

"Of course." He grinned at her. "A hunter devoted enough to spend his life for the sake of his cause, data we were sent to retrieve that we didn't have to get in the end, I'd love to know what's behind them. The two attitudes are so at odds with one another that I can't help but assume that someone is sadly misinformed about what's really happening here."

"But this time, it's not just you. You wouldn't be dragging me into anything, not when I'm as curious as you are, maybe more so." She shook her head as if to clear it of the fog of confusion, and Ryland had to marvel at how natural he found her programmed displays of body language. "I really do want to understand, Ryland, what it is that could drive a hunter like Kane to believe it was worth spending his life on this."

"It made that strong of an impression on you, then?"

"It did. It lies outside of 87.94% of anticipated human behavior in that situation, and all but demands that something compelling and important exists. While it may be personal to Kane, more than likely it is a matter that reflects on the well-being of the people of Pioneer 2 generally."

"For one side or the other," Ryland remarked, again thinking of the job on which they'd met. That suicide had been of a murderer and spy. The passion to sacrifice one's own life in pursuit of one's goals was not confined to those who followed virtuous causes.

"I know." She paused for a moment, then, while her mind no doubt ran analyses of the various factors involved: what words would best express her meaning given her knowledge of Ryland's own personality and awareness, if there was anything likely to offend him, what would be most likely to accomplish her specific goal of (apparently) getting him to investigate Kane and the recent job with her, all of those different probabilities then input into an analysis based upon the matrix of her own priorities.

Ryland always found it fascinating when Lyon explained to him about how her mind worked. The fundamental difference between her and an organic person was that her analysis of those factors took place with mathematical precision on a level that she was aware of, while for him, the same analysis was run in the depths of his subconscious mind, with extremely fuzzy logic and a lack of precision.

"It's what Naomi said to Kane that's bothering me, the line you quoted a couple of minutes ago," she finally said.

"About not caring about the factions?"

"That's right."

"I thought you pretty much agreed with her?"

The crimson running lights of an aerocar passing overhead momentarily shaded Lyon's orange carapace parts into pink.

"I do, but there's more to it than that. The Administration, the Lab, the military, they're all the same to me, and their political struggles don't matter. But within those groups there are individuals and smaller groups, people working on good causes to help us, and people working on bad causes, to hurt a lot of people for their own benefit, like Dr. Osto's work on Pioneer 1 ended up doing. Kane's suicide suggests some kind of moral component to whatever he was doing. If there's a group out there working towards some kind of Great Cause, then a whole lot of people could be at risk. I'm worried that there might be some kind of terrorist plot underway."

"If there is, then getting their hands on that data was probably part of it. But how significant a part is impossible to tell. Indeed, the idea that terrorists are involved is itself purely supposition." He smiled at her. "And if you want to try and find out, then I'm with you absolutely."

She vocalized a sound very much like a sigh of relief.

"That's good, then. But where should we begin?"

"There's only one place: with Selfas Kane himself. His behavior is the odd element about this job, so we need to look at the man himself to see what caused it. Is he a hunter, some kind of zealot, or is there something else going on entirely?"

Ryland had a feeling that whatever the answer turned out to be, what lay behind it wouldn't be anywhere as simple as it sounded.

~X X X~

A soft hum emanated from beneath as the elevator platform descended through the ship. Many of Pioneer 2's sections were connected only by warp platforms, which allowed for more efficient shipbuilding by not requiring physical conduits between areas that would eat up space, but that was not exclusively so.

"The news from back home isn't good," Colonel Zanov said. He was a tall man with a weathered face and hard, dark eyes, the eyes of a man who had seen too much. "Vasiri military maneuvers are being treated as deliberate provocation in Tor Malis. There have been incidents, fighters getting too close to one another, warning shots fired…"

"Your estimate?"

"The Ten-Nation Alliance is on its last legs. Within the year, more likely in the next few months, it will end formally, broken by any one of three potential conflicts."

"I see."

"I suspect you do not. The Pioneer Project operates under the aegis of the Alliance. The Administration, the Lab, and the military are all at each other's throats as it is. Consider what would occur if there was internal fragmenting besides, groups competing against one another for the sake of different governments on Coral."

Commander Valgarde scowled. It was an impressive scowl; he was a man whose looks suited his work. Tall, powerfully built, his clean-shaven face showing off his strong, square chin, his white hair cut short like it had been since boot camp, the chief of Pioneer 2's military forces had an imposing physical presence.

"We have some of that, too. But you're right. It would be worse if Coral fragments and Pioneer 2 starts becoming a pawn in their games. The weapons and biotechnology research we've accomplished already could swing the course of a war if placed in the right hands. And that's not all. Dol Grisen has been pushing in the Administration for change from within. He's been making noise about how Pioneer 2 has been cut adrift, shoved into a dangerous situation here by powers on Coral who wanted to exploit Ragol under the guise of a colonization mission."

"Grisen. I know that name. A firebrand, considered one of the chief rivals for Principal Tyrell's position."

"Oh, he wants the job, all right. But he also has an agenda, one which the situation on Coral is just feeding. He's dangerous."

"Commander?"

"Our position is precarious enough as it is. Without support from Coral, it becomes even more so. The destruction of 32nd WORKS left the military with even less influence than before. The Hunter's Guild isn't unified, but it supports the Administration and the Lab and likely can match our strength in the field if it came to that."

"I know, sir."

Valgarde's lip curled.

"Apologies." He clenched a fist. "I just don't want to be played by Milarose again."

"She is definitely our most dangerous opponent," Zanov agreed.

"I only wish that I knew what she was up to. Is she supporting Tyrell? Grisen? Someone back on Coral? Or does she have her own agenda?"

"That last one is not exclusive. With Milarose, it's wisest to assume that she always has her own agenda."

Valgarde laughed, a sharp, mocking bark.

"That's the truth." He paused, the continued. "Spike her guns, Zanov. I'm giving you my complete authority in this operation."

"To what extent?"

Valgarde glanced at the colonel. Zanov met his eyes directly, without any attempt to hide what he meant by his question.

"This operation is prioritized Level S." The elevator platform came to a stop and the door swished open. "Do whatever is necessary."