"Wait, what?" Mila asked, suddenly afraid. "There'a an extrasolar incursion. Napoleon has blown-up most of the shipyards, and Theo says the Warmind at the Charon Observatory went dark." Kyrea explained. "We're trying to get a message to Titan about what Napoleon's doing, since Ganymede is in Jupiter's shadow for about seven more hours. There's a tight-beam laser in the station. The plan is to fire a message off, run for your ship, and hopefully get out before Saladin drops anti-matter bombs on this instillation." "Saladin?" Mila asked. "Saturn's Warmind." I explained. "Most of the fleet is stationed around the belt, Uranus doesn't have cadeometirc weaponry installed on its moons, and Neptune is currently on the far side of the solar system. Earth and Mars are blind, Venus' Warmind has been MIA for weeks, and Mercury is on the far side of the sun." "One last thing." I added, as Mila began to scramble into her suit. "Napoleon currently believes we're heading to the docks, to take a military ship out. We need to let it think that for as long as possible. Once Napoleon realizes we're deviating from that expectation, it will know what we're up to, and could devote itself to trying to kill us." "Who are you, Doctor Ratterson?" Mila asked. "Who are you to know a Warmind's thinking so well?" "I make them." I replied. "One among thousands. None of whom fully understand how what they created works." Belisarius retorted. Considering it couldn't hear what we were saying, it's involvement in our conversation was based entirely on what it expected us to say. A gentle reminder of the extent of its mind. "Likelihood of success from here?" I asked it. "44.3391%." It sent back. I grinned, reading that. Good odds, especially against another Warmind. I wondered, for the first time, what I had truly made in Belisarius. Mila put the helmet on her head, and took out what looked to all the world like an old revolver. Only quite a bit larger than a revolver should be. "Portable cannon." Kyrea explained, for my benefit. "For when you want to put the largest slug you can exactly where you want to put it. Not a bad choice, if you have the talent and can work with the recoil." "I can set your suits up to automatically convert glimmer into ammunition." I told them, drawing out a comm cable. "I'll fix it to my local expense account. I may cry a little every time you use that machine gun, Sergeant." "Considering I'll have spat out a week's pay every time I reload? So will I." Kyrea admitted. "You're not bad company for the apocalypse." Mila said, as she tested the heft of her shotgun and strapped on her last knife. "How shall we proceed, ma'am?" "I'll take point. Theo next. Mila, rear-guard. Waypoints are marked on your map." Kyrea ordered, as she reached the door. She opened it, and started forward. Wordlessly, I followed, the rifle in my hands pointed towards the ground. "Let me guess." I sent to Belisarius. "Eighteen frames ahead, all armed. Nothing with enough punch to actually endanger us, but enough to make us believe we're being hunted." "Twenty-two frames." It corrected. "The number, as you surmised, is immaterial. You are expected to believe you are defying the odds, rather than being herded to your death." "We have company up ahead. Two dozen frames. Do not reply." I sent by my secure line to the Sergeant. When I tried to send the same message to Mila, I was surprised to see her suit had a built-in tight beam communicator. "Napoleon can hear and read all communication we make, except anything sent by tight-beam comms." I explained by text to her. "Why has Napoleon turned on us?" She sent back. "I don't know." I sent back. Another lie, but the truth might make her suspicious. She already struck me as unusually perceptive, and I had a theory about her background that would make her more inclined to understand how dire our situation was. The lie, as it turned out, was pointless. "You lie, Doctor. A man willing to set himself against a Warmind isn't going to walk through this situation blindly." "I didn't pick this fight. But I know something about our current enemy, and I guess that's more than most people have. When you want to win against a supercomputer, there's two things you need to do. First, choose a simple game, one with so few variables that it has no advantage." I sent back. "And the second?" Mila asked. "Cheat." "My ROM core is being transferred now." Belisarius sent. "I'll be out of commission for fourteen minutes and five seconds. If it's longer, Napoleon has played us badly, and I won't be coming back online. Good luck with that Warmind, Theo. Belisarius out." Ahead, Kyrea made a show of examining the next corridor. "It looks empty, asides from a lot of strategically placed metal containers starting halfway down the hall. Like what you'd set up if you were planning an ambush." "Can we go around?" I asked aloud "No. The only other way is outside the station. And I don't like the odds of getting back in once we leave. I'm afraid the only way out is through." Kyrea said, as she set her rifle against the magnetic holster set on her armour, and took the machine gun into her hands. "I lead with supressing fire. Theo, use one of those power supplies you stole earlier and get it over that barrier. Mila, take a grenade off my belt and throw it at the same time. Once they explode, we rush the barricade and mop up." "You just told the Warmind our plan." Mila said. "It already knows our plan." I reminded her, as I fished out one of the fusion cores and tried interfacing with the computer on its onboard controller. "Wouldn't be much of a Warmind if it didn't expect that much." "So why do we expect to win?" "Because we're overwhelming odds." Kyrea said, as she rounded the corner. Even with the sound muffling built into my helmet, each bullet sounded like a car back-firing. The shots pounded into the air, letting me feel the bass-like droning of each bullet. I hazarded a look down the corridor, even as I primed the frame's fusion core to detonate remotely. Her shots seemed to have caught the frames almost unawares, tearing into them and hewing off chunks of steel. Mila moved to the other side, and we each threw a grenade behind the boxes, before darting back around the corner. I detonated the fusion core, and all three grenades exploded. Bits of shrapnel flew across the corridor, smashing into the nearby wall just in front of us. We sprinted out, weapons out, and opened fire on the half-dozen frames still reeling from the explosion. They fell with absurd speed, breaking apart under our weapons as if their steel chassis were only paper packaging. I was grinning, almost euphoric from the rush of action, and chuckled aloud. Mila joined in, and even the Sergeant tapped her on the shoulder approvingly. "Nicely done. Keep going like this, and we might all make it out of here," "How long until I get bumped up a pay scale?" I asked. "Because as it stands, enlisting is the worst financial decision I've ever made." "Since you're bankrolling my bullet-hose?" Kyrea asked. "I'll review your rank in a few weeks." "Thanks, ma'am." I said. I started snooping the wireless network again, and found that I could access the lines by spoofing Belisarius' access protocols. This gave me a passive access to the emergency logs, but I didn't want to actually let my suit connect to the network. Because Napoleon would rip through my firewalls like tissue paper. The emergency logs were interesting. Apparently, the networks had been isolated to prevent access from an external incursion. Which meant another Warmind, probably Saladin, was already watching our situation. Hopefully, with Napoleon unable to devote serious resources to killing us, we had a chance. The next waypoint was the final point where we could pretend to be following Napoleon's expected route. Once we turned left instead of right, one of the most powerful weapons humanity had ever built, a mind meant to win impossible wars, would actively try to kill us. "So, point of no return?" Mila asked. I had just enough time to put the palm of my hand to my face place and groan, before the lights turned brutally bright and the emergency blast shielding on the windows slammed down. "You weren't supposed to say that out loud." Kyrea told her. To my surprise, she somehow looked bored despite being unable to see her face. "The moment you did, Napoleon figured out our plan." Actually, it ran several hundred simulations to isolate the possible reasons she would say that, extrapolated our actual plan from the results of those simulations, and discovered a non-zero possibility that we could succeed. Right now, it was evaluating responses that likely included cadeometirc weaponry.