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Gagnon, fortunately, took warning from her tone and didn't pursue the subject. “And Domitian wants me to do what?”

“Search the ship with him in case there are any more,” Althea said. “I have your sidearm; you'll have to stop by the control room to get it from me.”

When she glanced up at the tile showing the footage of Gagnon's room, she saw that he was just sweeping his long red hair back into a ponytail and zipping up his uniform jumpsuit, scrubbing a hand across his unshaven chin and leaving the stubble be.

In the video, he stopped at the intercom beside the door and punched the button. In unison with the movement of the image on the screen, his voice came from the intercom at Althea's elbow: “I'll be there in a moment.”

Now that Althea knew what the intruders had done, it was a simple matter to track it down and undo it. Here in the control room, with the entire ship arrayed before her in its code and in its cameras, she was nestled next to
Ananke
's cerebellum.

Gagnon arrived to get his weapon, briefly breaking into her almost meditative state.

“Where's Domitian now?” he asked, buckling it to his waist, towering over Althea on her gray padded chair.

“Docking bay. When you see him, tell him that the camera feeds from the docking bay when the intruders boarded are completely corrupted; I can't access them.”

Gagnon nodded and leaned forward to look at the video feed from the docking bay; tall and thin, he leaned right over her without pushing into her space. “That's their ship?” he asked, pointing at a large ship shaped like a Ferris wheel parked on the
Ananke
's deck. Though it was tall, it was dwarfed by the vast cavernous emptiness of the
Ananke
's hold. “Nothing special. Too massive to have a relativistic drive; standard centripetal gravitation model. Transport and living quarters, not weaponized.”

“So?” Althea demanded.

Gagnon's hand clapped down on her shoulder. “So they're probably thieves,” he said, “not saboteurs,” and with a quirked smile, he left her alone.

She let out a breath after he was gone and tried not to be too reassured by Gagnon's certainty. She couldn't let herself relax until she had seen with her own two eyes that no one had done anything permanent to her ship.

While she worked, Gagnon and Domitian started their sweep of the ship. Whenever one finished sweeping a room, he would tell the other one over the intercom.

“Clear,” said Gagnon.

“Clear,” said Domitian a moment later, his deeper voice rendered staticky and scratchy by its passage through the ship's wiring. The
Ananke
's dark core was harsh on electronics.

The more Althea looked, the more it seemed that Gagnon had been right: the men were thieves, not saboteurs, and their interaction with the ship's computer had been solely for the purpose of getting on board. They had deceived the computer—and Althea—so well only because they were so practiced at coercing ships' computers into allowing them to board.

Still, she went through all the important processes, checking, just to be
sure
.

“Clear,” said Domitian.

A polite chime from another part of the enormous screen caught Althea's attention. The System had responded to her message. There were files attached to their response, one labeled
MATTHEW GALE
and the other
LEONTIOS IVANOV
.

“Clear,” said Gagnon.

The message itself read:

The intruders have been identified as Matthew Gale (of Miranda) and Leontios Ivanov (formerly of Earth). They are known thieves and work together. On occasion they have a female accomplice named Abigail Hunter (of Miranda) [no photograph available]; perform a complete check of your vessel's premises. Attached are the files for the two identified intruders. Read all flagged items and respond accordingly.

It was not signed. A single person must have typed it, but it had not come from that individual but rather from the System as a whole. The typist, whoever it had been, had been nothing more than the fingers to type it.

“Clear,” said Domitian.

Althea hit the intercom. “The System has identified our two intruders,” she said.

“Clear,” said Gagnon, and, “So who are they?”

“I haven't read their files yet. The System says they usually work together on their own, but they might have a third accomplice, a woman.”

“Names,” Domitian demanded, as always terse.

“Matthew Gale and Leontios Ivanov,” Althea said, glancing back at the screen to be sure she got the names right. “The woman they might be working with is Abigail Hunter.”

“Ivanov?” said Gagnon. “That sounds familiar.”

“No chatter,” Domitian said. “Althea, read the files and report to us. Gagnon, this room is clear.”

“Yes, sir,” Gagnon said a little more smartly than was wise, and Althea opened the files.

The first file that opened was Matthew Gale's. The image was immediately familiar to her as the man with the broken arm, although he clearly had been younger when the photo had been taken. Even though the photograph was a mug shot, he was smiling a crooked smile at the camera, looking fairly cheerful about his apparent incarceration. He hadn't changed his appearance since the photograph had been taken; his brown hair was still just a centimeter away from dangling into his eyes in the front, and he was still clean-shaven.

Althea looked to the next file, already knowing who it would be.

Leontios Ivanov was the name of the man with the wolfish smile, but the man in the photograph and the man she had surprised bent over her computer were so different in affect that she might have doubted that they were the same man but for the blue of their eyes. He was even younger in his photograph than Gale was in his, wearing a brilliant blue high-collared shirt like the ones that were fashionable among the Terran elite, his handsome face as blank as a mask. The man in her hold had been as graceful and controlled as a wolf hunting was; the man in the picture was nothing more than rigid, stiff.

Ivanov's file had more flags than Gale's did. She told herself that was why she started with his, and not Gale's.

The first flag she encountered was POTENTIAL TERRORIST CONNECTIONS.

She hailed her crewmates immediately, checking Gale's file while she did. “Both our intruders are flagged for terrorist connections.”

“You don't think maybe they were more than thieves?” Gagnon asked.

Althea thought nothing for sure right now; she only feared. Before she could respond, Domitian said, his deep voice calming, “We'll find out why they're here in time. Read the files all the way through, Althea.”

Althea obeyed. The files clarified the terrorism flag, indicating that both Ivanov and Gale probably were connected to the terrorist called the Mallt-y-Nos, but before Althea could really take this in, it went on to say that the System believed the two men were only tangentially connected to the organization, if at all. Ivanov and Gale were hired thieves, grunts, nothing more. It was far more likely they were on the
Ananke
to rob her than to destroy her.

But why try to rob the
Ananke
? She was clearly not a merchant vessel. The
Ananke
was not designed for cargo but for scientific experiments. Perhaps they had hoped to find valuable scientific equipment on board—they would not have had any luck; the ship's extremely valuable scientific equipment was the ship itself—or perhaps they really had come on to destroy her.

Wondering would get her nowhere. Althea continued to read through Ivanov's file to the sound of Gagnon and Domitian announcing “Clear” as they checked each room.

The next tag said, GENETIC PREDISPOSITION TO ANTI-SYSTEM VIOLENCE.

Althea got back on the intercom.

“Ivanov's the son of Connor Ivanov,” she said. “That's why you've heard of him, Gagnon.”

“Connor Ivanov, the man who destroyed Saturn?” Domitian asked.

“Yes, him,” said Althea. She had not yet been born when Connor Ivanov had declared Saturn and its moons independent of the System and begun a civil war; she had not yet been born when he had lost control of the moons almost immediately or when the System had come down like lightning from a wrathful god and restored peace forever. But she knew the story. It was a proud tale for System citizens to tell one another, how the System protected their peace and their safety without flinching, without defeat.

Gagnon sounded triumphant. “That means his mother is Milla Ivanov. Doctor Milla Ivanov. The astrophysicist.
That's
how I know his name.”

“Discuss this later,” said Domitian. His voice was absolute, like the fall of a gavel, and stopped Althea before she could mention that she'd been to several of Doctor Milla Ivanov's lectures before, too.

Leontios Ivanov looked a good deal like his mother now that Althea remembered her, and it seemed he had inherited her intelligence as well. From his father it appeared that all he had inherited had been heavy System surveillance. Althea could tell exactly the kind of man he was from his file: Terran, rich, intelligent—blessed. He had been at the top of his class at the North American branch of the Terran University. The System had sought to employ him.

Except that there was one more tag on his file, the oldest of the tags, and it read MOOD DISORDER.

At the age of nineteen he had tried to kill himself and nearly succeeded.

Althea looked back in the file at his blessed life and then back at the bare, sparse details of the attempted suicide and did not understand.

But sitting and wondering would get nothing done. For the moment, she dismissed her curiosity and moved on to Gale's file.

“Clear,” said Gagnon.

Gale had many of the same tags as Ivanov—from what Althea could tell, they had started working together ten years earlier and had never stopped since—but his list of crimes stretched back much further than Ivanov's, back to when Gale was still a child in the foster system. Gale's file was straightforward; there was no incongruity of attempted suicide. Without disparagement she saw someone: lower class, from the outer planets, a problem child. It seemed strange that the two men would partner up.

“Clear,” said Domitian.

The oldest tag on Matthew Gale's file was labeled FLIGHT RISK. For a moment, she did not understand what she was reading; then comprehension struck her like a bullet.

“Domitian, Gagnon,” she said, interrupting Gagnon's announcement of “Clear!” He and Domitian were hardly halfway down the
Ananke
's central hall; they were far away from the two prisoners in their cells. “Gale is an escape artist. Gale's the one in the storage closet.”

She glanced up at the tiled video displays and sought the one of Gale's cell. It was up near the top, far out of her line of sight when she had been reading the files. In the image she could see Matthew Gale, with his broken arm bent up awkwardly against his chest, hand stuck into the neck of his shirt to brace it and hold it partly still, kneeling in front of the door and picking the lock. The heel of his boot had been twisted to the side, exposing a hollow place within; that must have been where he had kept the picks.

Althea turned back to the intercom and was about to warn Domitian and Gagnon, but before she could, Gale shoved his boot back into place, stood unsteadily up, and swung open the door; the sound of the
Ananke
's pealing alarm rang out throughout the ship.

“Gale?” Domitian asked with tension in his voice that was like anger.

“He just picked the door to his room,” Althea shouted back over the sound of the alarms. She had to find the display of the camera in the hallway outside Gale's cell to see what he was doing next. “He's in front of Ivanov's door now.”

“Stay in the control room; we'll handle this,” Domitian said, and in the corner of her eye she saw them leave the rooms they were sweeping and take off running down the hallway. She heard their boots thunder past her door as they ran, and she sat and opened the videos showing Gale and Ivanov, turning on the sound, unable to do anything but watch.

Gale was fumbling with one arm broken, holding some picks in his teeth, having trouble getting leverage, getting torque. She watched him drop a pick and heard the quiet sharp exhalation of what must have been a swear, too low for the camera to pick up.

There was a camera in Ivanov's cell. Through that camera, Althea saw Ivanov rise from the cell's slender cot to come stand before the cell door, his face as expressionless as it was in the picture on his file.

Up in the main display of camera screens, Gagnon and Domitian ran down the hall, passing from one camera's sight to another, appearing at seemingly random places in the mosaic of images, only to leave each image again a moment later.

“Mattie,” Ivanov said quietly, with the static sound of empty air making it hard to hear. Althea turned up the volume and listened.

Gale seemed to be determined to ignore his partner in crime and continued to try to force the lock.

Gagnon and Domitian were getting closer.

“Mattie,” Ivanov said again, louder, and knelt down so that his face was level with the one opening in his cell door, the food slot. Gale still ignored him.

“Matthew Gale!” Ivanov said, so suddenly loud that Althea startled, and Gale stopped trying to undo the lock to slam his hand, open-palmed, against the door. Ivanov didn't flinch but waited, and Althea watched his hands flex into fists.

Gagnon and Domitian were almost in sight of the two. They were blocking the only way up to the docking bay or the escape pods; they were armed and hale, and Gale was unarmed and injured. He would be captured soon, Althea assured herself, and continued to watch, silently urging Domitian and Gagnon to run faster.

Gale opened the food slot, and Althea saw the two men staring at each other through the narrow opening.