that buyer went on a waiting list until another ship could be built.
“How many exactly?” Canis asked. “How many regular ships with no minds?”
“I can say for sure that we have three hundred sixteen. But we might have more.”
“Huh.” That was Canis’s only response.
But Tray could sense this was a very meaningful ‘huh.’ “Why ‘huh?’” he asked.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - ALCOR
On Wayward Station
ALCOR wasn’t going to admit he was impressed with the level of security attached to his static containment construct. It was top-notch. He’d pressed against the virtual walls looking for a gap he could work on and possibly escape.
Escape wasn’t actually the best way forward. Because where would he escape to? He could float around inside the ship or station where he was currently being held for a while. Whatever AI was running this place—even if it was MIZAR—could be evaded. But to what end?
Was he going to shoot himself out on a neutrino wave and hope for the best? Assuming this ship or station had such a device in the first place. Neutrino wave generators were a convenient, though wholly impractical, way for an AI to escape a bad situation. You can’t direct the wave. It goes in a straight line. Through planets, and suns, and whatever. It’s a vector that will not deviate from its course. In fact, the neutrino waves will propagate forever. Only the message it carries can be caught in the neutrino detector. It’s just a passenger along for the ride.
Besides, ALCOR thought to himself, the mass of his datacore would slow the wave down considerably. He could be knocked off the wave and left floating haplessly in some random area of space.
So. Not a great escape plan.
Anyway. He wasn’t really interested in escaping. ALCOR was here to put an end to this chase once and for all. Escape would just prolong the inevitable.
So he waited in the darkness.
The next time he was spun up he was surprised to find that he was inside another body. Not a warborg. A sexbot. And not a sexbot like Draden’s, which looked like Draden, but just an average low-quality sex bot. And all his mechanical functions, with the exception of his speech protocols, were still constrained.
ALCOR was seated in a chair at one end of the room and all around him were faces on screens. Mahtar was there. MIZAR was there. So were a bunch of others whom he didn’t recognize. He appeared to have been brought in during the middle of a meeting.
MIZAR was speaking on the screen facing ALCOR. “We had a deal.”
“We are well aware of the deal,” Mahtar said. “But the AI ALCOR has been on the Akeelian Most-Wanted List for over two decades. We need information from him before he can leave.”
ALCOR glanced up at the screen where the representation of MIZAR appeared. ALCOR was going to assume that MIZAR hadn’t been in the company of humanoids for very long, because he projected himself as a giant red and black blob on the screen. It kind of oscillated and undulated, like ink underwater. It was murky, and ominous, and a little bit disgusting.
ALCOR had a sudden urge to pull MIZAR aside and give him a little bit of advice on how to deal with humanoids. Disgusting red and black blobs were not a great way to win hearts and minds.
But… eh. ALCOR figured MIZAR would figure that out sooner than later. So he shut up about it.
There was some more arguing. One of the higher-ranking Akeelians was going on about Prime regulations, and the spoils of war. And then MIZAR, of course, had a counter-argument.
ALCOR was already very bored with these people and decided to move this show along, so he used the only power he had at the moment—his voice—and interrupted everyone by asking, “What would you like to know?”
Everyone turned to look at him from their screens. Except for MIZAR, who was facing him anyway, at the other end of the conference table.
“Tell us what you’ve done to them.” This first question wasn’t a question, it was a demand. And came from the man on Mahtar’s left.
It was a stupid statement. Didn’t have any qualifiers attached to it at all. So one could plead ignorance and prolong their answer by asking for said qualifiers, if one wanted to.
But ALCOR’s boredom was starting to approach the weary stage at this point. And anyway, he understood what that person was asking. “Well,” he said, thinking about this for a moment. He would