***

“Black, go get the Warsim eMDev.” Even amid the soft humming form hundreds of little glowing screens and the little clear spheres that run them, Maeve Carroll’s smooth, low voice was impossible to miss. I scooted my chair back and stood slowly, stretching long legs cramped from several hours spent sitting on a metal contour chair. Then I quickly left the control room and headed for storage compartment D-354, where the little memory devices—or eMDevs, as everyone called them—for the battle simulator lay under high-security. It had taken me three months to gain access to these little goldmines; even now it was hard to imagine that the little wafers were worth more than I usually earned in several years, even with such a high-paying job as espionage. But then, Panasim Enterprises makes only the best, and in 3417 Standard, what with inflation and contraband merchandise, the best can cost you dearly.

When I reached the smooth ceramic door to D-354, I quickly inserted the special electronic key into its port, scrawled in the eight-digit passcode on the screen with a stylus, and waited for the computer to recognize my handwriting—as far as it knew—and affirm the passcode. The screen turned yellow—I removed the key—and green. The door slid open with a slight whoosh inwards into the previously vacuum-sealed airlock.

Once inside, with the door closed behind me, low radiation from emitters in each wall surface swept over me, sterilizing the air from the corridor. Then, I had to repeat the clearance process with the inner airlock door, but with a different key and passcode. Big corporations are notoriously paranoid, especially about someone else’s stuff.

The walls of storage compartment D-354 were lined with small, clear-fronted receptacles, each with its own passcode. Finding the receptacle for the Warsim eMDev, I inserted yet another key, this one much smaller than the first two, and scribbled the passcode onto the transparent membrane separating the contents of the receptacle from the rest of the compartment. The membrane seemed to melt away, and I hastily reached in and withdrew the Warsim eMDev.

Now, I had to hurry. I had three minutes, max, before I would have no possible excuse for remaining in the storage compartment. The clone I carried would take two minutes, give or take 10 seconds, to copy all of the information on the Warsim eMDev at low power. If I could have run it full speed, I wouldn’t have had time to blink before the operation ceased, but that would draw too much power for it to be within the error margin of the current detectors—corperate paranoia again, and I can’t begin to count the number of times that fear has made an easy job into a nightmare. Hopefully, this wouldn’t be one of them.

I put the clone right on top of the Warsim eMDev and looked at my chrono just as the light on the clone began to glow yellow: 1735.45.37 Standard, since I was currently inside Panasim’s main complex, right in the middle of the intergalactic capital. That would give me until 1738.45.35 to be out—and I mean totally out, including exit procedures—of D-354. Cutting it a little close, but I’ve skated through smaller margins in much more dangerous jobs. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not cocky, just good at my job.

The little yellow light winked off. I checked the chrono again. The little blue numbers read 1736.58.72 and counting. Good. One minute, 47 seconds, 630 milliseconds to get out of this sterile cage. I quickly shoved the clone—now another Warsim eMDev—into one sleeve, hastened to get the first exit key into the port, and scrawled exit passcode number one. Yellow light: I removed key; green light: the door opened and I rushed to the next door and repeated the process with exit key-and code-number two.

Finally, I got back into the corridor and hurried back to the control center. I entered the room (thankfully no entrance procedures for this door, since there was nothing more important than some techies and a few standard computers in here).

“What took you so long?” Carroll asked me, her grey eyes raking me as if she could detect any visible signs of subterfuge; happily, she found none.

“Apparently I’m getting illegible; it took me two tries to write the second exit code neatly enough and three for the first exit code.” Her eyes returned to the screen in front of her, and I returned to my console, relieved. The job was more than half done with the clone made; all I needed to do now was get out of the complex unnoticed. I continued to scan through paperwork (not that anything is in paper anymore).

“All right, people, closing time. Shut down your consoles and get out of here.” Never had Carroll’s droning alto sounded so sweet to my ears. I quickly ran my security programs, shutting down all files and then the main power supply. They’d find nothing incriminating about me on the computer; all of my personal data matched the identity I’d been assigned, and the security codes were easily available to someone with high enough security clearance.

I took a little more time than usual setting the codes; as a result, the room was empty when I exited, shutting down the ambient lights as I went. The corridor ambients were shutting down as well, and I found myself navigating the familiar corridors by soft blue light. I was just entering the main lobby when something hard and smooth jabbed between my shoulder blades and a low voice snarled,

“Got you now, Black!” That voice belonged to Maxwell Venera, the man in charge of the Warsim eMDev’s security.

Uh-oh, I thought, and froze.

“No sudden moves, Black,” Venera’s guttural whisper purred in my ear. I could hear the smirk in his voice. “Not unless you want a little… sting.”

Whoops. Things just got even worse than I imagined. The weapon currently residing somewhere on my back—no doubt above my spine and the powerful nerve centers there—was not, as I had hoped, a liveray, which would only administer a painful—but non-lethal—shock through a relatively small voltage difference. But no; Venera had a stingray and its adjustable voltage difference controls, and if I so much as shrugged a shoulder a potentially lethal current would go straight through my spine. I didn’t want to imagine the effects this would have on my health. Suffice to say, I’d get a big insurance payoff but would be in no shape to enjoy it. I’d been as annoyed as the rest of the population when the Panagalatic Alliance banned stingrays and other adjustable current weapons (nothing beats a stinger when you’re up against psychopathic maniacs), but then again, maybe government weapons bans weren’t so bad after all. I wondered briefly where Venera’d picked it up, or more importantly, from whom, and then sharply refocused as he spoke again.

“Just what exactly are you up to, Black? Did you really think that someone wouldn’t notice a current, even one as small as that, in such an important piece of merchandise? The machines may have discounted it as random flux in the system, but a PANARM rep is trained to be more suspicious.” Double uh-oh—a military operative. Well, that, at least, explained the stingray. Variable voltage weapons are contraband for the regular citizenry, but the military higher-ups have special privileges regarding violent weapons. That complicated things; a corperate spy I could deal with; they don’t study anything beyond the most basic offensive techniques, and rarely have the guts—or the motivation—to use them. A military operative, however, was another story. Hopefully, however, even Venera hadn’t been trained in the more archaic forms of offensive fighting. In my training for becoming a spy, I’d had to take extensive courses in the more vulgar of the offensive arts; mainly hand-to-hand fighting, as it was once called, and fighting with thin-edged implements.

Carefully, trying to show no signs of my movement, I pressed the thumb and forefinger of my left hand together, completing a circuit that would release a rigid wedge of monofilament (so much more sophisticated than those ancient “knives”). Venera was still talking—more of that tri-dim action dialogue that’s so overused in the military bureaucracy—but I ignored the words, focusing instead on where, precisely, his words were coming from in order to get a rough estimate of where his body should be.

Then, when I had compiled the best estimate I would likely get, I fell forward on to my knees, pivoting around in time to catch Venera’s still-outstretched hand with my left arm, using the monofilament to slice cleanly through the stingray, which sparked once while the more delicate components melted. Venera, quicker than I had expected, jabbed at my left shoulder with the slightly-smoking, more than somewhat melting ex-stingray, but my insulated shirt stopped the overheated components from burning me.

In a somewhat belated move, I squeezed my right forefinger between the thumb and middle finger of the same hand, extending the minute hypodermic needle with its mindwipe and sedative fluid. In one smooth motion that I had practiced countless times, I swiped my hand at him, and he, seeing no weapon, knocked it away, in the process coming into contact with the little needle. In about one point five seconds, the fast-acting serum had done its work, and Verena’s eyes rolled back in his head as he collapsed abruptly.

Now for the cleanup. I took the both parts of the ex-stingray and applied some weak explosive material to them, which I summarily detonated. The resulting melt disguised the clean break from the monofilament. I then put the ex-stingray back into his hand and jammed the severed tip into his forehead. With a little luck, anyone finding him would assume that the ‘ray had malfunctioned and that the tip had blown off and into his forehead, thereby causing his amnesia and collapse.

The dirty work done, I continued out of the lobby to the dock, where my little singleship awaited. The Dragonfly-3000, built for speed and maneuverability, had cost me the better part of my savings, but it had paid off the expense with interest. That little ship had gotten me out of more nasty situations than I could count, and I never once regretted the purchase.

Now, opening the hatch and climbing inside, I relaxed for the first time in over three months. Mission accomplished. Now I could go home, back to the ship, until another job beckoned me away again.

Even with the Dragonfly’s superb speed and controls, I didn’t manage to make up for my lateness (due to my unfortunate run-in with Venera). I arrived at the ship, Reine du Ciel (or Sky Queen, if you prefer Common), about twenty minutes later than scheduled, and Vienne Watson, Captain and ship’s doctor for Queen, lost no time in informing me of this.

“You’re late, Black,” she snapped as soon as the doors to the airlock hissed open, not even waiting for me to get through the door before she spun on her heel towards the main control area. Vienne’s pretty tall, and she walks fast, and as a guy of average height, I had to hurry to keep up with her.

“That’s it?” I quipped. “No ‘hello, Jayce, nice to see you again?” Silence. I tried again. “No ‘glad you made it back alive from the mission’?” That one elicited a response, but not quite the kind I’d had in mind.

“Really, Black, how hard can a standard infiltration-and-clone job be? On the other hand,” she added sarcastically, “perhaps some nasty arm-for-hire pulled a stinger on you?”

“Yeah,” I replied, nettled, “some nasty arm-for-hire did pull a stinger on me. A PANARM rep by the name of Maxwell Venera.” Finally, eye-contact. Her green ones were uncharacteristically wide with surprise.

“A militia representative? For a product from a private organization? Now that’s suspicious…” By now we had reached the control center; Vienne went immediately to Jenn Zang, our systems analyst and programmer.

“Jenn, run a query for PANARM rep Maxwell Venera, in connection with the soon-to-be-released Warsim eMDev.”

“Will do, Cap’n,” Jenn sang out, her fingers flying over the keyscreen in front of her. Within milliseconds, she had called up a full bio of my would-be attacker, including a brief life summary, history of employment, and several tridim models of his face and upper torso, which Jenn projected onto the control panel beside her.

“Maxwell Venera, born on New Alexandretta on AlphaSystem planet four, Mars of old, on the 6th of Twelvemonth, 3388 Standard, which makes him…” Jenn paused to do some quick figuring, “29 years old. Parents were wealthy, but died when Venera was fourteen, so the government enrolled him in a military academy… he was very successful and soon after graduation became a PANARM Representative for its dealings with Panasim… specifically with the battlesims, which is where the Warsim eMDev comes in. PANARM probably sent him to guard it and make sure no one messed with it during the post-production checks and bureaucratic nonsense that always bogs down these sensory stimulus programs.”

“But no one in the company seemed to know that he was military trained,” I objected. “He was introduced as a business representative from the PanaGalactic Allience; nobody ever even mentioned PANARM or the military.” Jenn frowned.

“That’s funny. Why would the government cover something like that up? I don’t see any reason for it… unless Panasim already knew he was from PANARM and assumed that you would, too. But that still doesn’t explain why he would attack you…” She stared off into space, concentrating hard.

“Venera said that he knew I was up to something, and he was watching the current in the original eMDev, almost like…” I stopped, hardly daring to believe the idea that had popped into my head.

“Like what?” Vienne asked impatiently, but the wariness in her narrowed green eyes belied her concern.

“Like he knew I would try to clone the Warsim eMDev” I continued slowly. “Like he knew I was coming.”

“But that’s impossible,” Jenn objected. “Espion InterGalactic isn’t affiliated with the army; the chief executive reports only to the Council of Ten. How could a military rep know about any missions in the Department of Espionage?”

“I see only one possibility,” Vienne stated flatly, her eyes dark. “We have a mole. Someone, somewhere, is leaking intelligence to PANARM.”

We agreed, as a crew, to report no complications to Espion InterGalactic. If Venera was indeed a PANARM rep, then the military would no doubt cover up his failure in attempting to get the Warsim eMDev from me. We also decided, since Venera’s intel probably came from a mole in Espion, that we would test the Warsim on the non-networked computer, since it wasn’t hooked to the ship in any way and could do no damage to the ship’s programs should Venera have planted a virus on the eMDev in preparation for my cloning of it.

Jenn, naturally, was in charge of going through the data on the eMDev, since she was the code expert. After scanning through several hundred lines of code, she yelled, completely out of the blue,

“Vienne, vienne! And hurry! You won’t believe this!”

Vienne had probably tired of the pun in her name years ago (I know I would have if my name meant “come” in Alpha Prime “French”, even if it was a dead language), yet Vienne obeyed and came anyway.

“What is it?” she snapped, her concern coming out as usual as anger. Jenn, used to Vienne’s eccentricities from many years spent serving under her, replied,

“Right here—” she indicated a string of pseudo-Common with her finger—“where the actual simulation code starts, somebody wrote in subliminal behavior keys. This one, for example,” Jenn continued, pointing to a complicated string of symbols and what even I recognized as chemical equations, “is an offense reflex keyed to the name ‘Lorenzo.’ ”

“Meaning…” I prompted, still unclear on what the significance of the “key,” as Jen called it, was.

“Meaning that if the person taking the simulation hears the name Lorenzo, he or she will automatically complete the behavior specified by the equations.”

“What kind of behavior?” I asked, with a sinking feeling in my stomach.

“This particular reflex set is a violent one meant to make the person attack whoever happens to be nearest to him or her,” Jen clarified grimly.

“So if someone happened to know that if he said Lorenzo, the simulator-indoctrinated guy would take out the guy next to him…” Vienne began.

“Then he could control any soldier he happened to see, because PANARM uses the same sims for all personnel,” I finished, finally understanding how serious this whole thing was.

“Exactly,” Jenn confirmed. “And remember: that’s just one of billions of patterned reflexes built into this program.”

I don’t particularly approve of profanity, so I won’t tell you what Vienne said. Suffice to say that it made me blush, and I’ve heard some pretty nasty things in my line of work.

“So now what do we do?” Jenn asked.

“I vote we stick to the previous plan, but with one exception,” I declared. “We need to tell someone at Espion that there’s a leak.”

“Someone up high, who won’t want to spread the word for rear of appearing weak,” Vienne stipulated. “We all know how people in positions of authority hate to admit that someone got the better of them.” I may have imagined it, but I think that Vienne was avoiding my eyes when she spoke these words. I grinned inwardly. Oh yes, we all knew that, especially me.

“So,” our captain continued. “We arrive at the rendez-vous as planned, showing nothing of what we know. Then, when we’re back at Espion InterGalactic, we request an audience with Operatives Director Rendon. The man in charge of the actual spy work will certainly be able to deal with our mole, and isn’t too high that our meeting will attract suspicion.” Vienne glanced at her chrono. “It’s eighteen-twenty-four Standard; I want us in hyperspace and accelerating for Espion InterGalactic Base by nineteen-hundred.”

***

During the long, dark jump home, Vienne and I discussed in detail the particulars of my mission. Jenn watched the controls and made minute adjustments to our interception vector and acceleration. At 1930, after half an hour of acceleration at 2.4 gees, Jenn announced,

“Commencing deceleration on my mark… mark!” Now, instead of being pressed against our contour chairs, we experienced the pull forward against the restraining harnesses. Not for the first time, I thanked Viktor Halles for inventing the infinidrive and allowing hyperspace travel; in normal space, this same trip would take an incredible amount of time shortened only infinitesimally by accelerating at a higher gravity, and that would be even worse than the already tiring pushing and pulling experienced at 2.4 gees.

At precisely 2000, Jenn pulled us out of hyperspace and back into the brilliant starlight of normal space. Ahead of us shone the large type G star of—well, I can’t actually tell you the name or location of Espion InterGalactic’s system, so I guess you’ll have to live without the knowledge. But hey, so do trillions of other people.

We still had two days of travel in normal space in order to reach Espion headquarters, so Jenn turned control of Queen over to the automatics and we all caught some sleep after the hard acceleration and deceleration of the trip through hyperspace. Besides that, we needed some time to rest our minds after the astounding and disturbing discoveries we had made that night.

***

We docked at Espion InterGalactic as precisely 0915 two days later. Jenn maneuvered Queen onto the landing pad, shut down the system and docked it, and we disembarked on the great plaza in front of the main building.

We wasted no time in signing into the database, confirming the success of the operation. Then Vienne, with cool confidence even I admired, went to the main control panel and registered a conference, in person, with Operations Director Rendon. In explanation of her request, Vienne told the sysbot that she wished to discuss important information of a delicate nature regarding the recently completed operation.

Ten minutes later, we received clearance codes to an antechamber of Rendon’s office, where he awaited us. Seated in his high-backed chair—not a contour chair but a more expensive variant of similar type—Rendon commanded respect. His steely-grey eyes surveyed us with polite but distant inquiry as he tucked a strand of long, blue-black hair behind one ear.

“What is it?” he asked, not bothering with pleasantries. Vienne replied, with equal formality,

“We have reason to believe that there is a mole in this department, leaking classified information of a delicate nature to PANARM.”

Rendon quirked one dark eyebrow.

“And that reason would be?” he inquired.

“The Warsim eMDev we were ordered to clone is corrupted. The code is riddled with subliminal behavior keys.”

At this moment, I realized that something wasn’t right. Rendon’s grey eyes closed up inside, and his mouth tightened almost imperceptibly. The room seemed suddenly colder, and I felt a slow shiver run up my spine.

Carefully, keeping my eyes on Rendon’s I made the subtle hand motion ‘stay alert,’ and saw Vienne and Jen make the equally inconspicuous affirmation. We had developed the language for the sort of dangerous situations that saturate this kind of work, but I never believed that we would need it here at Espion, especially with Rendon.

“Are you sure?” Rendon was saying. Carefully, Jenn spoke up.

“Positive. I’ve seen enough patterning to recognize it, and this code had all the earmarks: the uncommon name triggers and chemical equations, even the basic structure.”

Randon was silent for a moment, and I would bet a year’s salary that he was thinking of a way to get rid of the loose ends. Us in other words. We knew too much. There wasn’t a mole, unless you counted all the directors and anyone above the manager level in the bureaucratic hierarchy. We had been told, everyone had been told, that Espion InterGalactic reported only to the Council of Ten. But now I realized that Espion and PANARM were intimately linked. Everything we had been told was a lie.

“Good work, Captain Watson, Operative Black, SysMaster Zang,” Rendon said abruptly, nodding to each of us in turn. “I’ll have Mazer check it out. Meanwhile,” he continued, “take the clone to Analysis. I’ll have someone meet you there and brief you on your next assignment.” He returned to his work, and we exited the room.

As soon as the door slid closed behind us, I turned to Vienne and Jenn, making the signal for silence. They nodded, and I proceeded to tell them my theory, much abridged, in hand signals. Vienne stared at my swiftly moving fingers, and then her eyes widened as she, too, put together my experience with Venera and Rendon’s oddly stilted manner.

(Now what do we do?) she signed back. Silently, I replied,

(Wait for my signal, then return to the ship. Fast. Don’t stop for anyone of anything. Let me do the dirty work.) She nodded again, and continued to walk down the corridor as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

Looking surreptitiously behind myself, I saw two operatives whom I knew only by reoutation enter the hallway from opposite doors. Ahead of us, where the corridor opened up into the main lobby and the hub of the wheel-shaped building complex, were two more operatives, again ones I didn’t know personally.

“Game’s up, mates,” I murmured, releasing the hypo needler in my right forefinger, while at the same time activating the reflective layer in my clothes in order to prevent energy emitted from an electromagnetic-radiation weapon from hitting my body. Pressing the thumb and middle finger of my let hand together, I released from my sleeve a thin liveray, adjusting the beam for a narrower focus. I didn’t know whether the operatives were armed with stingrays or not, but with the element of surprise I hoped to take several down in time for Vienne and Jenn to escape to the ship. Vienne had the Warsim eMDev in her pocket, along with a high-res tridim vid of our meeting with Rendon taken from a minute recorder implanted in the iris of her left eye. These two tiny objects contained the only proof that Espion and PANARM were working hand in hand. If she and Jenn could get to Queen, they could spread the word among the right sources and ensure that everyone knew of the deception.

(On my mark, run, I signaled silently. I saw Vienne and Jenn acknowledge the sign with a barely visible nod.

I watched the operatives carefully, then whispered,

“Mark”, activating the liveray and sweeping it across the two operatives in front of me as Jenn and Vienne sprinted down the corridor.