Up to that point, the only genuinely autonomous machines the Martians had left us were Harlan’s World’s very own orbital guardians, and no one was getting near them. Other stuff was automated but not what you’d call smart. Now here were the archaeologue systems specialists suddenly being asked to take on interface with crafty naval command intelligences an estimated half million years old.

Some form of upgrade was in order. Definitely.

Now that upgrade was sitting across from me, sharing a military-issue endorphin rush and staring into an empty whisky glass.

“Why’d you sign up?” I asked her, to fill the quiet.

She shrugged. “Why does anyone sign up for this shit? The money. You figure you’ll make back the sleeve mortgage in the first couple of runs, and then it’s all pure credit stacking up.”

“And it isn’t?”

A wry grin. “No, it is. But you know, there’s a whole lifestyle comes with it. And then, well, servicing costs, upgrades, repairs. Weird how fast the money spends itself. Stack it up, burn it down again. Kind of hard to save enough to ever get out.”

“The Initiative can’t last forever.”

“No? Lot of continent still to clean up over there, you know. We’ve barely pushed a hundred klicks out of Drava in some places. And even then you’ve got to do constant house-cleaning everywhere you’ve been, keep the mimints from creeping back in. They’re talking about another decade minimum before they can start resettlement. And I’ll tell you Micky, personally I think even that’s crabshit optimism, strictly for public consumption.”

“Come on. New Hok isn’t so big.”

“Well, spot the fucking offworlder.” She stuck out her tongue in a gesture that had more Maori challenge about it than childishness. “Might not be big by your standards—I’m sure they’ve got continents fifty thousand klicks across where you’ve been. Round here it’s a little different.”