Clyde signals to me that Mama and Dad are back on board. Hiro makes a big deal about pulling the ship away from the station like I couldn’t complete the task with my eyes closed, but he’s the pilot, and that’s the biggest thing in his sixteen-year-old world, and he’s not letting anyone forget that fact.

“Leaving station orbit and rendezvous with ore site in twenty-three hours.”

He adopts a distinctive tone for these announcements. The last time we docked at a supply station I bought him an old-style pilots pillbox hat. Enormous high front with a silver wings badge. I had one of the maintenance robots leave it on the pilot’s console. Hiro didn’t get the sarcasm and would probably wear it all the time if it fit.

We could get to the drop off in a lot less than 23 hours, but I programmed the ore containers to split up and take separate routes. That gives us time to find a buyer, check if any of the containers are bugged, and make sure no-one is following the ore or us.

“We’ve got targeting alarms.”

Mama’s voice is always calm. It’s the scientist in her; at least that’s what Dad says. Hiro breaks in over the network sounding off like a wannabe action movie line.

“One of the defense turrets has come on-line.”

Ms. Teale is building up an introduction to the creation of the True-AI’s who became self-aware and immediately left earth. Ten in a row and no matter what anyone did once each True-AI came online they upped and left. The last two didn’t even say goodbye. I read up on this so I lock my avatar into a listening pose and flick back into full time on the ship.

“It’s the station manager. He escaped, took the targeting software offline and is firing manually.”

I calculate our acceleration, distance, and risk of an Ore Corp middle manager being able to hit us and relax. Even though my scripts are self-destructing to leave no trace there are enough of their effects to randomize the targeting system so that it will think it’s locked on to us when it’s shooting wide.

Hiro yells as a volley of fire from the turret pass high above us. He plunges the ship down hard away from the flak, and I sigh because it’s not helping, he’s forcing the corrupted targeting computer to recalculate to make sure that it misses us again.

“Retaliating,” barks Hiro.

‘No,” shouts everyone except Clyde who will be quietly sounding out the word ‘retaliating’ so he can look up what it means and make a note to ask Mama when he can’t find it.

The assault software simulates two soft crumps of an explosion as the double-tap of the counter strikes destroy the defense turret and anyone inside.

“Oh Hiro,” says Mama, “what have you done?”