Somerset was hanging back from the others, near the hatch to the airlock. It said, “You grow an intricate story from only a few facts.”
Ty told the neuter, “Don’t you realize it’s your fault Barrett found out about Alice?”
“I asked Somerset to make a search on the infonet,” Maris said. “It isn’t its fault that Barrett’s AI was able to break into its records. And I was stupid enough to ask Barrett about the shuttle’s cargo, which probably made him suspicious in the first place.” She took a breath to center herself, called up every gram of her resolve. “Listen up, you three. We all brought Alice back; we all decided that we couldn’t give her up to Barrett; we’re all in this together. We have to decide what to do, and we have to do it quickly, before the crew of the Symbiosis ship start to worry about their boss.”
“Somerset has a point,” Bruno said. “We don’t know what happened between Alice and Barrett.”
“He didn’t come over for a social visit,” Ty said. “He wanted these spores, he threatened her with the weapon. That’s why she killed him.”
Somerset said calmly, “I am not sure that Symbiosis will believe your story.”
Ty knuckled his tattooed scalp. “Fuck you, Somerset! I know Alice is no murderer, and that’s all that matters to me.”
“That’s the problem,” Somerset said, and pointed Barrett’s weapon at Ty. It was as black and smooth as a pebble, with a blunt snout that nestled between the neuter’s thumb and forefinger.
Maris said, “What are you doing, Somerset?”
Somerset’s narrow face was set with cold resolve. It looked wholly masculine now. It said, “This fires needles stamped from a ribbon of smart plastic. Some of the needles are explosive; others sprout hooks and barbs when they strike something; they all cause a lot of damage. It is a disgusting weapon, but I will use it if I have to, for the greater moral good.”
“Stay calm, Somerset,” Maris said. “Don’t do anything foolish.”
“Yeah,” Ty said. “If you want to play with that, go outside.”
“I want you all to listen to me. Ty, before we found Alice, you were convinced that she was a monster. I believe that you were right. Because she looks like a little girl, she triggers protective reflexes in ordinary men and women, and they do not realize that they are being manipulated. I, however, am immune. I see her for what she is, and I want you all to share this clear, uncomfortable insight.”
Ty said, “She killed Barrett in self-defense, man!” He had drifted in front of Alice, shielding her from Somerset.
“We do not know what happened,” Somerset said. “We see a dead man. We see what looks like a little girl. We make assumptions, but how do we know the truth? Perhaps Barrett drew this weapon in self-defense.”
Maris said, “You don’t like violence, Somerset. I understand that. But what you’re doing now makes you as bad as Barrett.”
“Not at all,” Somerset said. “As I believe I have said before, if you take the side of a murderer with no good reason, then you are as morally culpable as she is.”
“She isn’t a murderer,” Ty said.
“We do not know that,” Somerset insisted calmly.
“You fucking traitor!” Bruno said, and dove straight at the neuter.
Somerset swung around. The weapon in his fist made a mild popping sound. Bruno bellowed with pain and clutched at his right arm. Suddenly off-balance, he missed Somerset entirely, slammed against the edge of the airlock hatch, and tumbled backward. And Alice spun head-over-heels and threw something with such force that Maris only saw it on the rebound, after it had sliced through Somerset’s fingers. It was a power saw blade, a diamond disc that ricocheted sideways and lodged in the door of a locker with an emphatic thud. Somerset, its truncated right hand pumping strings of crimson droplets into the air, made a clumsy grab for the weapon; Maris snatched the black pebble out of the air, and Ty knocked the neuter through the airlock hatch.
Ty and Maris trussed Somerset with tethers, and Bruno staunched its bleeding finger stumps and gave it a shot of painkiller before allowing Maris to bandage his own, much more superficial wound. Alice hung back, calm and watchful.
“I am lucky,” Bruno said. “It was not an explosive needle.”
“You’re lucky Somerset couldn’t shoot straight,” Maris told him.
“I don’t think Somerset wanted to kill me, boss.”
“We should make the fucker take the big walk without its suit,” Ty said, glaring at Somerset.
“You know we can’t do that,” Maris said.
“ I can do it,” Ty said grimly.
Somerset returned Ty’s angry glare with woozy equanimity, and said, “If you kill me, you will only prove that I was right all along.”
“Then we’ll both be happy,” Ty said.
“She’s using us,” Somerset said, slurring every s, “and no one sees it but me.”
Maris grabbed the hypo from the medical kit and swam up to Somerset. “You can’t keep quiet, can you?”
“Silence is a form of complicity,” Somerset said. Its eyes crossed as it tried to focus on the hypo. “I do not need another shot. I can bear pain.”
“This is for us,” Maris said, and pressed the hypo against Somerset’s neck. The neuter started to protest, but then the blast of painkiller hit and its eyes rolled up.
“We could fly it right out of the airlock,” Ty said. “It wouldn’t feel a thing.”
“You know we aren’t going to do any such thing,” Maris said. “Listen up. Any minute now, the ship’s crew are going to notice that their boss is missing. What we have to do is work out what we’re going to tell them.”
Ty said, “I’m not giving her up.”
“We know Alice must have killed Barrett in self-defense,” Maris said. “We can testify-”
Bruno said, “Ty is right, boss. We know that Alice isn’t a murderer, but our testimony won’t mean much in court.”
Alice waved her hands to get their attention, then pointed to the workshop’s camera.
“It’s recording,” Ty said. He laughed, and turned a full somersault in midair. “Alice knows machines! She had the internal com record everything!”
Maris shook out a screen, plugged it into the camera, and started the playback. Ty and Bruno crowded around her, watched Barrett struggle through the airlock in his p-suit, watched him question Alice, his p-suit still sealed, his voice coming cold and metallic through its speaker. He loomed over her like a fully armed medieval knight menacing a helpless maiden. Her stubborn intervals of silence, his amplified voice getting louder, his gestures angrier. Alice shrank back. He showed her his weapon. And Alice flew at him, whipping a tether around his arms and body, the tether contracting in a tight embrace as her momentum drove him backward; she wrapped her legs around his chest, smashed his visor with a jack-hammer, and emptied a canister of foam into his helmet.
The camera saw everything; it even picked up the glint of the weapon when it flew from Barrett’s gloved hand. He flung his helmeted head from side to side, trying to shake off the foam’s suffocating mask; Alice pressed against a wall, unobtrusively out of focus, as his struggles quietened.
Maris said, “It looks good, but will it look good to the court?”
“We can’t turn her over to Symbiosis or the TPA police,” Bruno said. “At best, they’ll turn her into a lab specimen. At worst-”
“Where is she?” Ty said.
Alice was gone; the hatch to the airlock was closed. Neither the automatic nor manual system would budge it. As Bruno prized off the cover of the servomotor, Maris joined Ty at the door’s little port, saw Alice wave bye-bye and shoot through the hatch into Barrett’s sled. A moment later, there was a solid thump as the sled decoupled.
Maris and Bruno and Ty rushed to the viewports.
“Look at her go!” Maris said.
“Where is she going?” Ty said.
“It looks like she is heading straight to the Symbiosis ship,” Bruno said. “She sure can fly that sled.”
“Of course she can,” Ty said. “What do you think she’s going to do?”