Insidious by Michael McCloskey Page A

served only to give him time to think. That meant Jackson knew about it and might even have the activation codes. Bren hoped that knowledge would never prove useful.
     
    ***
     
    After two more days, Bren’s focus shifted away from processing the old information. Now he had to concentrate on modifying the ASSAIL background information to anticipate more resistance like the one they had encountered at Thermopylae. He always worked through his PV, so he wandered about the Vigilant , thirsty for new scenery that never materialized. The intricate confines of the Guts got to everyone after a time. Bren had fantasy time accumulated but he didn’t use it; once he was hooked on a challenge, he tolerated no distraction.
    He stripped the targeting priority on the Circle Fours. Bren wanted the freshly started units to pay rapid attention to any kind of unknown robot. They’d made the mistake of thinking Circle Fours were the greatest danger. He supposed that the penalty would be that an ASSAIL unit might target something like the medical scanner early on, ignoring even a Circle Four for vital seconds, but what choice did he have? By the time the units had been mission green for a few minutes, they would be able to react to what they had experienced. They would have the power to change their own priorities, which they would do with superhuman intelligence.
    Nicole Devin caught up with him in the galley after he had finished a meal. Shipboard time was late in the evening.
    “Hello, Bren,” she said. He took her use of his first name as a good sign.
    “It’s great to see you again after all this time,” he said, smiling at her. “Are you catching a late snack?”
    “No, I’m after a person, not a meal.”
    Bren raised an eyebrow. “Oh.”
    She laughed. “Well, I meant a person from the station. I’m interested in learning more about a particular individual who was on Thermopylae. We need to search through the ASSAIL data and see if there are any clues in there.”
    She sent a pointer for two face models through her link to Bren. The first identified the face of a beautiful woman with straight black hair and dark eyes. Bren found her Asian features mesmerizing. He tore his attention away to look at the second model. It was a representation of the mask from one of the plastic suits the Bentrans had worn. Bren’s first reaction was to say he couldn’t help much, citing his schedule. But he liked Nicole and wanted to work with her again.
    “I have a tight schedule, as I’m sure you’re aware. Why is this particular person such a high priority? I take it she’s not talking, whoever she is.”
    “This individual was definitely up to something interesting. Probably espionage, or at the very least some unusual kind of security,” Nicole said.
    “Well, as you know, the ASSAILs are going in at the next base. I need to know if those people are a threat, and if they have anything to do with that robot we engaged, some kind of red spider—”
    “Red. That’s what they called it.”
    “What?”
    “They had a nickname for it, the company people who weren’t privy to its secrets, which was about everyone. They called it Red, because of the spot on its side.”
    Bren realized that Nicole wasn’t demanding a one-way transfer of information. He wanted to know more about what had been happening on Thermopylae, and she could tell him.
    “Yeah? Well, what did the freaks in the suits say about Red? Where was it built? What the hell was it, some kind of experimental military design? And why does it spin instead of walk?”
    “It spins?”
    “Yeah. I can’t say I really understand how it moves or why it moves that way.”
    “Well, all these people know about Red is that it was smart, and it served as a sort of enforcer for the top executives.”
    “The ones who’re dead? Do you think it was a full-blown AI core and it killed the executives to hide itself?” Bren asked.
    “I don’t know. Let’s cooperate on it.”
    “We