Kendric's residence was right on the fringes of Downtown, close enough that people with a bourgeois attitude could brush it off as being part of the slum and far enough away that those who lived there could say, if they wanted, "Well, at least I'm not down there." While hordes of gangers and street crime weren't the norm, so the area hadn't degenerated into near-total lawlessness, the police presence wasn't exactly overwhelming.

Still, it wasn't a place where one expected a high-powered sniper round to whip past one's head, barely brushing the field of Lyon's Photon armor, and blowing out a side window as she was reaching for the door of the hunters' docked aerocar.

She reacted at once, scrambling for the bow and ducking around it, two more shots following in her wake, pummeling the vehicle. Ryland had already dropped behind the aerocar on the far side, taking cover, and as Lyon settled in beside him she felt the sudden rush as the Deband technique took hold, interfacing with their frames and enhancing their effectiveness for added defense.

"Are you hit?" Ryland asked.

"No, although the aerocar will never be the same. Too bad that Resta doesn't work on anything that's not living."

They'd had several long talks over why it was the healing technique counted androids as being "alive" and so would work to repair them when it wouldn't function for simple robots unless they'd been infected by the D-Factor. It was the kind of thing Ryland loved to speculate about. He didn't say a word on the topic this time, though. In the middle of a firefight wasn't the best opportunity for technical and philosophical chatter!

A moment later he unleashed the Shifta technique, and the red haze melding with Deband's blue showed Lyon that her attacking power had been enhanced as well.

"Did you get a bead on where the shots came from?" he asked.

"No, but give me a second."

She accessed her visual memory and used it to construct a 3-D model of the environment in her mind, then added in the real-time impressions she'd gotten of the shots launched in her direction. Mapping what she could observe about the trajectory to the image, it was a relatively simple matter to determine the origin point of the Photon rounds.

"It's the building up one from the one across us, third window from our side, four levels up from here."

Another shot hammered the aerocar, blasting through it and sending a shower of glass from the passenger-side window raining down over them.

"We'd better move; this cover's not going to be covering us for much longer. That rifle's pretty powerful, probably a Visk, maybe even a Wals or Justy." Lyon had drawn her Varista; the Photon driver was up and active.

"All right. We'll break, circle, and come back at the building door. Do you want left or right?"

"I'll go right. Your Foie technique has better aim on a high-deflection shot than my gun. He'll probably shoot at the one going right as an easier target, too, and I can take a hit better than you can."

"Okay." They crept towards opposite ends of the car, so they'd be ready to break cover simultaneously. "On my mark. One…two…go!"

They bolted, dashing out onto the deck that spanned the rows of buildings. Lyon fired up at the window where the shots had come from, hoping to make the sniper have to duck and cover. She didn't really expect to hit anything at this range without a rifle of her own, but with luck she might be able to at least turn aside the chance of taking any damage while exposed.

The sniper, though, was aware of a handgun's limitations and took the time to line up a shot. The Photon bullet took Lyon in the left shoulder, and despite the Deband-enhanced armor it was still enough to crack her carapace and do moderate damage to the internal structure, resulting in an estimated 37-percent drop in the efficiency of that joint. That could mean trouble if they ended up in hand-to-hand and she needed to use her shield to block with.

The luck wasn't all against her, though. Holding position to shoot at Lyon meant that the sniper couldn't take cover, and while Lyon's gun wasn't a serious threat at that range the same could not be said of Ryland's techniques. Even as the sniper's second shot blasted a small hole in the upper deck plate next to Lyon's feet, the flaming blast of a Foie technique was arcing up at the window. While Foie didn't have the auto-targeting of Zonde or Grants (too risky to use in these circumstances as there was too much of a possibility that they'd lock on to an innocent bystander nearer to Ryland than the sniper), it would home in on a target within its field of fire.

It would have been a very difficult shot with a gun, but the fireball sped unerringly to blast the shooter back away from the window, and before he or she could recover, Lyon was across the deck at the door of the building. Ryland, who'd had a longer run, came dashing up a moment later.

"Sometimes I think we human Forces should take a cue from our Newman counterparts," he said, tapping the button that made the building door slide open. "These robes, even cut for mobility as they are, aren't the easiest thing to run in."

"The cost of tradition," Lyon decided, leading the way.

Both of them knew that the sniper would almost certainly be on the move, not just placidly waiting now that his or her targets were no longer in sight. Lyon summoned the elevator to their floor, Ryland using a Resta to heal her shoulder while they waited. When the car arrived, Lyon stepped inside and made a few quick alterations to the control panel, freezing the elevator on their floor. That left the stairs as the sniper's only exit route other than jumping or climbing out a window, so the hunters wouldn't be climbing up while the sniper rode down or vice versa.

Four flights of stairs later, they burst out into a kind of lobby for the level, with potted plants in the corners, vending machines against the far wall, and a touchscreen panel mounted opposite the elevator door with a building directory. Lyon took in these elements at a glance, and she had to, because the sudden fiery explosion that filled the room a second later nearly blinded her while blasting her off her feet.

"Quick! Don't let them up!"

In the next instant she felt what she could only describe as a pressure, a kind of aura settling around her—or rather, trying to, but unable to cling. It was, she realized, someone trying to use one of the weakening techniques, Jellen or Zalure, but the attempt didn't take and the intangible heaviness seemed to shred itself to nothingness. Evidently, Ryland's corresponding enhancement technique had been stronger and overpowered the enemy's.

Someone else took more direct action; the pam-pam-pam of a pair of mechguns firing rang out and the three-round burst slammed into the prone android. The effects were strong, but again not as bad as they would have been had she not been protected by Deband, and Lyon rolled to her right, the next burst pumping into the floor where she'd just been. Granted a moment's grace, she was able to take stock of her situation.

There were two of them, both male, tall, muscular, and dressed in black. The one with the mechguns had the built-up chest armor popular with human Rangers, and wore a half-helmet with a horizontal red eyeslit. His partner had blue hair cut in short spikes and wielded a pair of pale green Photon swords, marking him as a Hunter, and likely the tech-user of the duo.

The HUmar charged, getting to Ryland just as the Force was rising to his feet. Ryland got his left arm up in time to block an overhand swing with his wrist-mounted barrier, but that left him open to the other sword, whistling in with a horizontal sweep at waist-height that threatened to cut him in two. It didn't, but only because of his Deband-enhanced Photon frame. His robes were torn open and blood flowed from a shallow cut.

Pulling herself to her feet, Lyon grabbed Ryland's arm and yanked him back out of the way of a follow-up.

"Switch off!" she yelped, dropping her Varista in favor of a Durandal, a high-end Photon saber with a narrow gold blade. Light flashed as the Hunter parried her first thrust. He smirked at her.

"Think you can keep up, bot-girl?"

He launched into a complex series of strikes, patterns that allowed him to slash out while still in a good position to parry or deflect any counterattack she might offer. She fought to keep up, using saber and shield both; had Ryland not healed the damage from the sniper's shot she knew she'd never have been able to maintain the pace.

"You're a funny one," he said over the hum of Photon drivers and the crackle of energy meeting energy. "A Ranger who thinks she's a HUcaseal. Got some bug in the system, huh? Somebody screw up your programming?"

The irony of a man using racial slurs that reduced Lyon to a mere machine in order to try and provoke an unmachinelike emotional reaction that would give him an advantage was almost amusing and definitely took the sting out of the remarks. Unfortunately, his underlying premise wasn't wrong: his training as a Hunter was superior to the hand-to-hand programming and combat experience Lyon possessed. What was more, the very structure of her body was optimized for ranged combat, not the kind of quick movements that were needed in melee. That, combined with the damage she'd already taken during the ambush, left her on the defensive.

The good news was that defensive was fine for their purpose.

It was actually how they operated as a partnership. Lyon would engage the monsters of Ragol at close range, keeping them tied up and unable to advance on Ryland, who was more than happy to blast the hell out of them with techniques. Without the Hunter constantly on him, he was able to dodge ahead of the powerful but clumsy mechguns and quickly snap back with Zonde. The bolt of lightning hammered the enemy Ranger even as Ryland dove away from the gunfire, and the impact left him vulnerable to Ryland's next technique. It was one of his best, Gibarta, unleashing a stinging spray of ice and cold that left the Ranger frozen, temporarily sheathed in a crystal of ice.

With a few seconds' complete freedom of action. Ryland acted fast. Another quick use of Resta completely wiped out all the damage he and Lyon had suffered. Jellen, unlike the Hunter's previous casting, overwhelmed the enemy's Shifta and left them weakened, the Photon effects of their weapons degraded. Finally, he pointed at the Hunter and a swirling ball of light began to coalesce out of the air, shimmering around him.

Being an experienced fighter, the Hunter was able to recognize the effect in time to offer his opinion.

"Oh, son of a—"

He was cut off when the Grants exploded and left him down and out. When the ice around the Ranger shivered apart, freeing him, he was greeted by Lyon slashing into him with the Durandal, taking him to the ground where she held the point of the blade to his throat. It was a matter of only a minute or so to strip the two men of their weapons, including the Visk-235W the Ranger had used to snipe at them, turn off the Photon drivers in their armor, and remove their PDLs and Hunter's Guild Section ID badges.

"So, we have Avram Kyle," Ryland said, nodding at the blue-haired Hunter, "and his gunslinging friend is Jonn Brackley. Both are Guild members in good standing, as should come as a surprise to absolutely no one."

"Not to me," Lyon agreed.

"Now, what they were up to seems straightforward enough. Jonn, here, snipes at us, and if he doesn't get the job done that way, he and his friend are ready for us to walk right into an ambush when we pursue the sniper. A nice two-stage tactic, and we danced to their tune right into it."

"Except they weren't up to the job."

"Well, yes, except for that. Tactical advantage can only take you so far. But the intent's still fairly obvious: these two were hired to murder us. The operative question is, by whom?"

Kyle's lip curled in a sneer.

"Forget it. You're hunters, too. You know not even the Administration can compel us to reveal our clients. Good old Guild extraterritoriality at work there."

"That's true. No force of law can compel you to reveal the identity of your employer."

"Then let's end this farce. Turn us in or let us go, but get on with it."

"I said, 'no force of law.' The law isn't the only kind of force." Ryland picked up one of the weapons they'd taken from the would-be assassins, a raygun that Kyle had been using as a backup piece for ranged encounters, and leveled it at the Hunter's abdomen. "There's the whole question of what you'd do to save your lives."

"Bull," Brackley spat.

"Oh, really?" He fired, blasting a hole in Kyle's thigh, making the man yelp, before healing the injury with a Resta. "You deliberately tried to kill us. I'm not inclined to let that pass."

"So we talk or you kill us, huh?"

"That's about the size of it."

It was a tactic they'd used before, in the previous February, although that had been more a case of "talk and we will use Reverser to save the life of your partner." This time, though, the hunters they'd captured were too savvy for that to work.

"Looks like we're in trouble, then. Because if you get anything out of us that way, then you've got to kill us to keep us from reporting you to the Guild. Hunters fighting each other is the way of the business, but using torture and threats on a fellow Guild member to get them to break Guild rules, not so much. So if we open our mouths, we're dead men."

Lyon considered Brackley's analysis and realized that, assuming a certain level of cold-blooded pragmatism, he was right. The only reasons that it had worked the previous year was that it had ultimately suited the hunters' client that Lyon and Ryland find him anyway, and possibly that the interrogated hunters simply hadn't thought of it.

The systematic torture of captured prisoners was a separate kind of objection altogether.

"And if we figure that since you're useless as information sources, we'd might as well just kill you now for trying to kill us?" she said.

Kyle smirked.

"Then boy, it would suck to be us."

"It's what you'd do," Lyon said with near-absolute certainty.

Neither man responded to the accusation, probably because any idiot could see that Lyon was right and emphasizing the point wasn't going to get them anywhere.

She glanced at Ryland. There really seemed to be no good options.

"There's nothing to gain by turning them in. If it turns out that the military is their client, the milipol would just cut them loose for 'lack of evidence' or on some similar pretext. Even if not, all we have are assault charges and destruction of property, and filing the reports would take more time and trouble than they're worth."

"So you just want to let them go?"

"I was thinking more along the lines of tying them up and leaving them here. They'll escape one way or another, but it will get us some more time. And we'll take their equipment as spoils of battle, to pay for the repairs to the aerocar."

"And if they come around for a second attempt on our lives? If there's a kill order out on us, it's not going to go away just because we survived the first attempt."

"True—and it stays true, regardless of whether we let these men go or not." Ryland offered the prisoners what was not a nice smile. "And making their employer stop and think about just how forgiving a mood they're in will only buy us more time."

No, it was not a nice smile at all.

~X X X~

"I suppose that one reason why you didn't press the point over who employed Kyle and Brackley," Lyon said a little over an hour later, "is that if your scheme to get into the Guild's computers for Kane's records works, you can just look up those two at the same time?"

"Exactly. Why waste time when the new question just has the same old answer?"

They called in to have the aerocar towed, unloaded the two assassins' gear at the Guild deck shopping arcade, and proceeded to take an omnibus over to the Lab's wing of the ship. Unlike the Administration offices and the Hunter's Guild deck, the Lab was not located in the domed city section but in the starboard-side winglike structure, part of the area that made no pretense of being anything other than part of an artificially constructed vessel, not an imitation of planetside life.

A number of Lyon's organic acquaintances, including Naomi, found the area claustrophobic. It wasn't something that the android really understood—her personality matrix did not include subconscious impressions drawn from parallels to real-world environments, so she didn't really feel "outside" when she was in the city in the way an organic could.

She did appreciate the feeling, though, as entering the Lab area did trip several emotional flags that she associated with a sense of oppressive wariness, similar to moving through dangerous ground where an attack might be imminent. The ambush by the two hunters had already put her on that kind of guard, devoting greater processing power to analyzing her sensory input for potential threats, but this was something different, an emotional state caused by her awareness of the various plots that swirled around this area, starting of course with Chief Milarose herself.

As hunters who had passed the Lab's training exam and security check, Lyon and Ryland were permitted to enter the public areas of the Lab facilities. They left a message at the reception desk, and were shown to a seat in a comfortable but minimally furnished waiting room. The white metal walls were broken up by narrow dark bands along which strobed colored pulses of light. Lyon wondered if they were data channels, perhaps for CALS, Photon energy conduits, or maybe just lights designed to give the area a more pleasant look.

As it turned out, she didn't have a long wait time to consider the matter.

"Ryland, Lyon, it's good to see you."

Dr. Marc-Paul Severin was a slim, handsome man with elegant features and wavy, honey-blond hair, the kind of fellow that Lyon could easily imagine attracting any amount of appreciative attention. The clothing beneath his open lab coat was, as always, tailored to perfection, and his handshake had just the right amount of pressure to convey an impression of confidence and character without initiating a battle for dominance.

"And you, too. I hope things are going well?"

He shrugged.

"You know how it is. The progress of science is made up of numerous halting steps and sudden leaps. We all just strive to do what we can."

Ryland chuckled.

"They should use you as the poster boy in the Lab's publicity campaigns."

"Oh, they do. I look much better on a vid broadcast than Dr. Pelfrey, or Dr. Croehl from the military research team." He flashed them a grin. "So, I'm guessing that this isn't a social call, and your time is probably as in short supply as mine is, so how can I help you?"

Ryland smirked at Lyon.

"See what he did there?" To Dr. Severin he added, "Can we talk freely here?"

"Why don't we come to my office?" No doubt the waiting area was on any number of security monitors, video and audio alike. He took them down a couple of corridors, then to a warp platform and up another hall after the warp, where a sliding door took them into a space about the size of Lyon's living room.

"Nice," she commented.

"It's a sociocultural aberration," he remarked with another shrug, taking a seat on the far side at the desk. "Status is commensurate with space, so the higher-ranked the researcher, the larger the office, regardless of the area they actually need. I was promoted last year and this room is half again the size of the one I left. Which is ridiculous, because the only things I use the office for are meeting with people and getting privacy with which to compile various reports. It's all very silly, but some people need the familiarity of the system."

He tapped several keys on the touchpanel set into his desk and a holoscreen came up. He touched another sequence and the video display awoke, with spiraling graphs and progress bars.

"There," Severin concluded with a hint of relish. "It seems as if my assorted rivals haven't quite managed to bug this office since the last time I had it swept, so we're reasonably private."

"Good." Ryland leaned forward in his seat. "So then I'm free to ask if you've renewed your artificial intelligence project after losing Rina."

The smile vanished from his face.

"Exactly who is it that you're asking for?"

"Ourselves," Lyon said. She'd basically bullied it out of Ryland on the way over.

"More specifically, we've run into a problem in our actual job that an AI is probably the best possible solution for. So, we're not poking around to investigate you." Dr. Severin's first AI development project had been carried out in secret, without official Lab approval. "On the contrary, we're hoping that you did take the lessons you learned with the RINA system and built a new artificial intelligence, because we could really use one's help right now and I don't think Chief Milarose is likely to let us borrow CALS."

"Probably not, if she isn't your employer."

"Also, probably not, given what we want it for."

"Which is?"

"To hack the Hunter's Guild computer system and determine who hired certain hunters for a job," Lyon cut in.

"But you are hunters."

"Which is why we both know the importance of that information and the consequences of getting caught."

"The plain fact is, it's been made clear to us by people who ought to know, that security on the Guild systems is high enough that only a high-grade AI or an elite cyberwarfare unit could possibly hack it without getting stopped or leaving enough of a backtrail that they'll just get hunted down after the fact."

"And if such an AI exists," Severin said, "then what would be our motivation for helping you?" He leaned back in his padded executive's seat and spread his fingers, pressing the tips together. "It's a highly illegal act, one with the potential to have significant repercussions in the relationship between the Guild and the Lab if it should go wrong."

The hunters glanced at each other.

"You…actually have a valid point there," Ryland admitted. "The plain truth is, we don't have a compelling reason to offer. We're currently working for the Administration, trying to trace whether a particular hunter's activities pose a threat to Pioneer 2, but mostly we're just looking for answers for our own sake."

"We actually started looking into matters on our own; signing on with the Administration was an accommodation for them allowing us access to classified information."

"Information that you're now proposing to share with the Lab in order to facilitate this search?" Severin suggested.

"Not if we can help it, but…" Ryland shrugged. "It's a little hard to conceal information from the person who's retrieving that information for you."

"Valid, but it still doesn't explain why we would help, if we're able."

"You can probably drop the 'if,' since you've pretty much admitted that you can help," Lyon noted.

"You wouldn't have asked the question in the first place if you couldn't—well, other than an excess of curiosity or an attempt to probe us for more information, but neither one of those is really you."

Dr. Severin's gaze narrowed.

"Is that your reason, then?"

"Huh?"

"He means," Ryland explained, "are we threatening to reveal what we know and what we suspect about his team's AI development projects to authorities in the Lab, Administration, or both if he doesn't help?"

"Blackmail? Of course not; I literally hadn't even thought of that!" Which was the truth: her personality matrix didn't even return that as a possible course of action, having ruled it out as a strategy when dealing with Severin on the general level without even reaching specific responses. "That's not acceptable with allies and associates unless the stakes were considerably higher, better-defined, and more immediate."

Severin's lips quirked up in a half-smile.

"But in those circumstances acceptable."

"It's only logical. The question is, which act carries the worse consequences over the short and long terms, properly weighted according to my personal values."

"We all have our lines we won't cross and the prices that we're willing to pay," Ryland said. "The only difference is that Lyon knows where her lines are. Blackmail, though, no, that's not anywhere near one of those lines. For either of us."

"If it helps, two of the three hunters we want to investigate just tried to kill us. So although we're not even sure what it is that we have hold of, it's hot enough that someone doesn't want us getting any closer. We're also pretty certain that they killed a fixer last night, also on board Pioneer 2. So although we don't know what's at stake, we do know what price in lives the other side is willing to put on it."

"But you can't tell who's involved? For all you know, the 'other side' might be a Lab project."

"It could," Ryland agreed. "The military is tied up in this somehow, but we don't know the context for their involvement."

"I see. I appreciate your honesty. That's not a lot to go on, and as I'm sure you understand, I have a lot of time and resources invested into my own projects, including the AI work that you're hoping to make use of. Putting that at risk to engage in an unsanctioned operation that poses a high risk for an uncertain gain, that honestly doesn't sound like something that I should help you with. But," he amended his conclusion.

"But?"

"But I've learned from my mistakes with my RINA prototype as well. Like you said, Ryland, everyone has their own standards, and while I have my opinions, I'm also not the person that you're asking for help. So why don't you come along with me, and you can ask him directly whether he thinks it's worth trying."