Marcan looked at the scanner aboard Polydeuces with a sharp eye. The distance between the small fighter and Castor could be counted in metres and centimetres and each move he made had to be calculated carefully. There was no automated docking procedure involved with the joining of the two craft and considering that the other craft was piloted by the rather inexperienced android, Petr, Marcan had to be extra-careful as he guided the ships towards each other.

They were attempting the docking procedure in the vicinity of the Denver Terminal and at a sufficient distance from the few Long Range Cruisers that accompanied the big orbital city. Petr's Adder was still docked at the local station and they would get it back as soon as Polydeuces and Castor were connected together and Marcan could fly them alone.

Polydeuces's 10g manoeuvring thrusters gave him a good feel of what he was doing and gave a possibility for some quick changes in the small fighter's orientation as the ships got closer and closer together. With a less manoeuvrable ship, the procedure would have been a lot harder without any computer aid. Overall, the small ship reminded Marcan of Eagle Mk I, as far as it came to their properties. The thrust force of the main mover was slightly higher in Polydeuces, but other than that the two light fighters were very much alike to fly.

Finally, after a definite clank and the subsequent hissing sound, the two ships were connected. Thus far the computer displays of Polydeuces had not given any special signs and there had been no sign of any AI, but as soon as the hissing sound stopped, some previously undetected buttons appeared on the touch-screen on the left side of the cockpit. After some further crackles and pops the speakers came online.

"Thank you, Commander Rayger, for bringing us together," came Castor's majestic voice.

Marcan smiled, "Castor, I'm sorry that it took this long. I know that it must have been hard to wait this long even after you rescued me and Petr from Argo II."

There was a brief pause before Castor answered, "Yes, Commander, it was at times. However, I wish to thank you for doing this. By the way, did you know that Polydeuces and I have never been connected like this before? I appears that Polydeuces's central computer has never been turned on. Could you press the buttons on the touch-screen and bring him online? I wish to get to know him."

Marcan looked at the buttons that had lit up on the screen and hesitated for a short moment. He wondered if Victor Shelanko's, or nowadays Lance Hendriks's warning about the AI that Professor Bardoff had been programming had something to do with Castor and Polydeuces. It was only a brief moment of hesitation, though, and then he pressed the buttons one after the other, initialising the base programming and identity programs one after the other. As he pressed them, the buttons disappeared. When he had pressed all of them and they had all disappeared, the part of the screen where they had been was filled by the image of Castor and Polydeuces, the original Greek heroes. The two dark-haired youths stood facing right and carried swords and spears.

Marcan looked at the image and remembered seeing it in some of the mythology files that Castor had shown him during the early part of their relationship. He waited for a short while to hear from Castor again, but when the AI did not say anything, he called out for him.

The AI answered almost, but not quite, immediately. "Commander, I'm fascinated," Castor said slowly. Then the ship, or both of the ships, as they were now joined together, lurched and pivoted around.

Marcan looked at the controls in alarm and called out to the main ship, "Petr, what are you doing?"

"Marcan, I am doing nothing. If you are not causing this, it must be the ship itself!" the android answered in alarm.

Marcan frowned. It was just like a computer to come up with the most logical explanation in such an easy manner. But it was hard to believe that Castor could be controlling the ship. It was against every regulation and rule to allow a computer to control a ship unless it was a straightforward docking procedure. "Castor, are you controlling the ship?" he asked nevertheless.

"Yes, commander, I am," the AI answered. "I never imagined this possible." Then the ship lurched forward and started moving towards the Long Range Cruisers that lay in the distance.

"Castor, where are you taking us?" Petr asked and Marcan heard his question over the communication systems.

"Commander Petr, Commander Marcan Rayger, I no longer wish to be known as Castor. From hereon we are to be Dioscuri!" The AI replied, ignoring the question.

Marcan frowned and looked around. Until now, he had not studied how he was supposed to move from one of the ship to the other but now he turned his eyes to the connecting hatch on the floor behind the pilot's seat. He picked himself up from the seat and turned to face the hatch. The opening mechanism was a simple one; only a button on the floor beside the opening and a manual override behind a small glass window. Marcan pressed the button and looked as the iris mechanism of the hatch opened up and revealed the narrow shaft that lead into Castor. As he descended, he heard Petr's following question.

"Well, Dioscuri, where are you taking us?" the android asked from the AI, who had until recently been known as Castor.

"Commanders, we owe you a great deal for what you have done for Us, but I fear that we must now go our separate ways. We have a mission to attend to," the AI answered, his voice sounding even more majestic than it had before.

Marcan had just pressed the small button on the Castor's side of the iris hatch when he heard the AI's words. As the hatch above him closed and left him alone in the shaft, Marcan felt cold shivers running up his spine. The AI formerly known as Castor had clearly put pressure on the word 'us' in a way that made it sound like the royal 'we'. And he did not like the sound of the 'mission' either, let alone the fact that he seemed to be losing the ship that he had grown to love.

Marcan descended the rest of the way to the bottom of the shaft and opened the door into the rest of the bigger ship. It was the camouflaged door that the workers at Vera Industries had spotted on the ship and pointed out to him and it took him to the short corridor between the living quarters and the bridge. After a few steps, Marcan was standing beside Petr and looking at the view offered by the main screen.

The Castor-Polydeuces combination was now clearly heading towards one of the LRCs. Marcan reached over Petr and pressed a couple of buttons. One of them locked the target on the gigantic ship and the other identified it. It did not surprise him greatly to see that the LRC that they were heading towards was the same one that he had paid attention to when he had arrived to the station. It was the only one equipped with a sufficiently big hyperdrive to make it possible for it to travel to other star systems. Still, he had no idea why Castor was heading for that ship.

"Marcan, what is happening here?" Petr asked, futilely trying to take over the control of the ship from the built-in AI.

Marcan shook his head. "I don't know. I guess this has something to do with the warning Victor Shelanko gave us about the mad AI Professor Bardoff had been programming."

Petr turned to look up at him, "But I thought that AI was supposed to be in the Boa. Do you think that Castor and Polydeuces are the two parts of the AI that Shelanko told us about and that we have now succeeded in putting together the maddest AI in the known space?"

Marcan grimaced, "It may be. On the other hand we have to remember that Castor got rid off his delusions of grandeur a long time ago and is no longer the AI that Bardoff meant him to be when the two parts got joined. We can only hope that the change was such that Castor will not now consider himself a god reborn."

Petr tilted his head, "There is certain logic in that; I hope you are right. However, he is still taking us towards that Long Range Cruiser now and he has yet to offer us a suitable reason for that. Do you have any theories about that?"

Marcan shrugged his shoulders. "I've no idea. There is a possibility that Victor Shelanko is somehow behind this. He is certainly rich enough to own such a ship. But I cannot see him predicting any of this to happen. He explicitly told us not to allow the mad AI to be turned on and he seemed to have no idea that Polydeuces contained the other half of that AI. The only other party that has any inkling of what we are doing here is Bardoff's Trust Fund."

Petr thought about his words for a moment before saying, "I think it more probable that the Trust Fund is behind this. They had access to the same information as I and could probably have travelled here in the time it took for you to arrive from the other side of the human space. They are also in the possession of the Boa that had all the notes and diaries that the late professor kept. They most certainly knew about the AI that was meant to rule the new colony and it is they who hired you to find Polydeuces in the first place."

"Yes," Marcan considered. "Perhaps they were not sure whether I was going to bring it back to them and decided to come to keep an eye on me."

Marcan did not like the idea that he had been followed. It was true, of course, that he had been more drawn to the Vera Industries' offer of 100'000 for the small fighter, but he had intended to let the Trust Fund get a glance of it as well. Of course, it was all meaningless now that Castor had taken control of the matters himself. It was still a mystery to him how Castor knew where to go, though.

"Castor," Marcan began before he remembered the new name. "Dioscuri, does that ship belong to Bardoff's Trust Fund?"

"No, commander. It belongs to the Dioscuri Syndicate," the revamped AI replied.

"Dioscuri Syndicate? Since when has there been such a thing?" Marcan exclaimed.

"The Dioscuri Syndicate was formed only a month ago after the Bardoff's Trust Fund was discontinued," Dioscuri answered as the ship was only a hundred metres from the Long Range Cruiser's landing bay doors.

"And how do you know all this? And why are they here waiting for us?" Marcan asked, a tad annoyed.

"I'm sorry, commander, if this troubles you. All your questions will be answered by our employees as soon as we board that ship," Dioscuri said.

Marcan almost jumped at that. "Your employees? What is happening here?"

The artificial intelligence unit gone mad did not answer to his fiery questions. Dioscuri kept silent as the combined ships entered through the opened landing bay doors on the bottom side of the LRC and settled down on a vast flight deck. There were several other ships there, on the various landing pads, including even a Boa Freighter. Marcan wondered if the Boa was actually Argo II, but he had no way of finding it out with Castor refusing all questions.

Castor settled down on a pad close to the bay doors and opened the entrance hatch and extended the ramp. Marcan and Petr took it as a clue that they were supposed to leave the ship. Feeling that it could very well be the last time that he stood on the bridge, Marcan looked around and thought back at the last few months that he had spent commanding that ship. It was the first ship he had actually liked amongst the medium fighters and he wondered if he was ever going to find anything comparable.

After that short moment of reminiscing, he went back to the living quarters and picked up his belongings. It took a while to pack the FMI uniform and the other clothes, as well as the many datacards and other small items that he had gathered over his career. Fifteen minutes later, he walked down Castor's entrance ramp with Petr and looked at the three people who had gathered to meet them.

There were three men, all of them were relatively young - not one of them was older than Marcan - and they were dressed in unmarked white jump suits. None of them was anyone Marcan knew from his communications with the Trust Fund.

"Welcome, Major Rayger and Commander Petr. My name is Carl Clark and I'm here to take you to meet the current board of directors," the man in the middle said while the two others remained silent. It was clear that they were there only as toughs, making sure that everything went on smoothly.

Marcan looked at the young men, paying special attention to the two toughs in an attempt to spot if they carried any hidden weapons. He was almost sure that they had some. He felt quite angry at what was happening, but he tried to keep himself calm. He could not believe that Castor had been working behind his back with this group of people, possibly ever since they arrived to the system, if not even before that. Perhaps Castor had even told them where Marcan was going and that was how they had known when and where to go.

Despite his anger, Marcan kept his mouth shut tight and followed the three men with Petr. The android was once again just happy to remain silent and wait to see how things were going to turn out.

Since the LRCs were quite large ships, over ten times as big as a Boa Freighter and a hundred times as big as an Asp Explorer, one did not walk from one place to another. Instead, the three men guided them into a bullet-car that ran along a long tube that led from one end of the ship to the other. The bullet-cars themselves could carry up to twelve people a piece and there were four of them travelling along the central tube into either direction. It was the fastest way to move security personnel, technicians and other crew around the ship.

There were no one else in the bullet-car that Marcan and Petr were led into and as the five of them sat in the car as it travelled the distance from the flight deck to the fore part of the spaceship, the three men in unmarked white jump suits said nothing. Marcan kept his face expressionless and looked around in the small car. He noted that the insides shone as if the car had been recently cleaned and polished up. He did not know what to make out of it.

The room in which the board of directors of the ominous sounding Dioscuri Syndicate converged to meet Major Marcan Rayger and Commander Petr was about ten metres long and eight wide. The front part of the room was occupied by a long table, both ends of which curved slightly towards the rest of the room. On the wall above and behind the long table was a large painting of the two mythical heroes Castor and Polydeuces, Dioscuri. This table and the chairs behind it was located on a low stage and the rest of the room was divided into two sections of seats with an aisle between them.

It was along this aisle that Marcan and Petr walked to meet the board of directors; eleven men and women who sat behind the long table. The audience seats were unoccupied. Marcan locked eyes with the centremost person; a man of later years whose hair was already white-grey. Marcan remembered seeing him before on his earlier meetings with the now extinct Bardoff's Trust Fund. The fact that the same man was in charge of the new Dioscuri Syndicate proved that it was indeed the Trust Fund who were behind this, not only as the people who had founded this new company, but as the directors of this new company as well. In essence, the Trust Fund had just changed its name.

Marcan frowned as he looked at the rest of the people behind the table. He could not be sure, but he thought that he had seen all of them before, if only briefly. What, he thought, is the purpose of this new company? He had presumed that the Trust Fund had been liquidating their funds in order to divide the profits between the owners and fold, but now they had founded a new company and taken Castor away from him.

The fact that Castor's, or Dioscuri's last words to him had insinuated that it would no longer be his ship angered Marcan greatly. He had always thought that the ship had been given to him as a payment for the fact that he had found it in the first place, along with the Boa and Bardoff's remains. Now he was not as sure about it. Castor had originally asked him to find Polydeuces for him. It could be that his promise to do so had been the only reason the AI had decided - as it seemed to be able to make such independent decisions - to stay with him and that the Trust Fund had just decided to tell him that it was an award for his finding. Perhaps they had checked his background and seen that he had served in the Federal Military and decided that he might have enough resources to find the missing fighter. Whatever the case was, the behaviour that he had earlier interpreted as graciousness was now exposed to be just another example of calculated planning.

As all kinds of thoughts tumbled up and down in Marcan's mind, he and Petr reached the long table and the board of directors. They were guided to seats in the front row. Marcan sat down and smiled indignantly at the eleven people who were sitting on the stage. It was the oldest trick in the book to make ones visitors sit lower than the hosts in order to make them uncomfortable and more malleable and Marcan assured himself that he was not going to fall into that kind of a trap. He decided to break the illusion that their hosts had gone all this trouble through to produce and spoke up before any of the board members had a chance.

"I was told that you would explain what is happening here?" he said and looked at the central person on the stage in the eye.

The old man whose, if Marcan remembered correctly, name was Stefan Ballians hesitated visibly at the straight question and looked at his colleagues questioningly. As none of the others reacted, Ballians turned his eyes back to Marcan and Petr. "Yes, Commander Rayger. Dioscuri instructed us to explain you everything that has happened," he said.

Marcan snorted, "Well, you could begin by telling me how long Castor has been working with you behind my back."

Ballians smiled slightly and said, "The AI that you knew as Castor did not know his full potential at all before he joined with the other AI unit, Polydeuces. At that very moment when they were joined, they both ceased to exist and Dioscuri emerged. Therefore, Castor never worked behind your back."

"Then how did you know to come here and wait for him?" Petr asked.

"Dioscuri told us that you guessed already that we found information about the half-god AI in Professor Bardoff's personal files. We knew what would happen if the two parts of the AI were brought together and decided that we'd like it to happen. Then we simply followed what Commander Rayger was doing and when he put up the wanted massage on the public message boards we waited until someone answered to that message and bought the information right after you did, Commander Petr," Ballians said.

"But why did you hire me to do all this?" Marcan asked. "Why did you not do it all by yourself. There are certainly good many people in your company who could have been used in this search!"

The woman who sat on Ballians left side answered, "I think this was explained to you already when you first came to us. We wanted someone who was known not to work for us. You had gained renown in the military and then more when you found Argo II. People knew you from the media-coverage and thus they were more inclined to speak to you and trust you."

"But when you found out that the ship is here. Why did you not act then? Why did you wait for me to show up and find the ship?"

The woman smiled, "We did act. But we did not have access to the resources you did. When Castor and you showed up and we made contact with your AI and found out about the military contacts and snooper programs that you had, we decided to back off and let you do your job."

"You contacted Castor?" Marcan asked.

"Yes," Ballians said. "We had to contact him in order to tell him what we had found out about him and Polydeuces and that we were prepared to put him in charge of our new company as soon as the AIs had been brought together."

"But why?" Petr asked. "Why did you want this unlawful AI to be finished? And why have you put up a company for him to rule? There are several law cases in history about AIs that were programmed against regulations and the damage that those AIs caused in the society. This Dioscuri is illegal everywhere in the human space."

Marcan grimaced as he saw the expressions on the faces of all the members of the board of directors. Those expressions did not promise anything nice.

Ballians frowned, "Yes, we know that this project is illegal. And no, we cannot tell you why we are doing this or what Dioscuri is really about. In fact, to be honest, we do not know what we are to do with you."

Another member of the board of directors, a young brown-haired man, interrupted Ballians, and said, "We were hoping that you would have become to like this Castor enough to agree to serve him in this company with the rest of us. How does that sound?"

Marcan feared the worst now. He knew that the kind words and the offer were all just a hoax. The illegality of an uncontrolled AI in charge of millions of credits and several hundred people was such that the company would not risk having anyone from the Federal Military know about it. Even if he agreed to serve the AI, he would not be trusted to leave the LRC, or any other company locale in fear that he would tell someone about their operation. Neither the Federation or the Empire would take such a company kindly. However, Marcan feared that he and Petr might be killed outright if they did not swear to secrecy and agree to be employed by the new company.

Still, he knew that if he agreed to their offer, they would know that he lied. At least Castor would, since the AI knew him well enough to know that he would not accept what was happening here and that he would not agree to serve anyone. As Petr seemed to be waiting for his decision, Marcan decided to tell the truth.

"I cannot agree to be employed by you. The old Castor knows that I want to be my own boss. But he knows also that I am a man of my word. Even if I have my reservations about this syndicate of yours, I know Castor well enough to promise that I will not tell anyone about this if you let us go," Marcan said.

Several of the board members laughed nervously at that and one, a man of Marcan's age, cried out, "You're fool to expect your word to be enough!"

Marcan locked eyes with the other man, his expression serious. "I'm not a man to go back on my word the way some people seem to do," he said clearly.

Several of the people behind the long table cried out at that and the rest of them at them to keep quiet. After it became clear that the board members would not be calm down by themselves, Ballians stood up from his seat and roared, "This meeting is adjourned! Get the prisoners into secure quarters until the board is able to reach a decision!"

Marcan's calm attitude was broken when he heard himself and Petr being called a prisoner. He stood up and yelled back, "You cannot hold us here! Get us back to Denver Terminal immediately!"

Petr stood up as well and echoed his demands. The three men who had brought them in front of the board stood up from their seats and drew out small laser pistols. Marcan saw that there was not much he could do as he was not carrying his own weapon at the moment and he decided to wait for a better chance. He put his right hand on Petr's shoulder to make sure that the android remained calm as well.

When they reached the doors of the meeting hall, Marcan and Petr picked up the trunk and the satchel in which Marcan had collected his possessions from Castor. Marcan made sure that he got the satchel since he knew that he had packed the Sergam-10 laser pistol into it. As the three young men in jump suits ushered them back towards the bullet-car, one of them walking ahead of them and two behind them, he tried to dig out the small weapon from the satchel without being noticed.

It was clear to him that he and Petr needed to escape while they still could. Even though the board had not seemed to be unified in their position towards Marcan now that they had received the super-AI, he did not trust that the benevolent side would win. Marcan had no idea how much the board would be consulting the AI in order to reach the conclusion, and if they did not, they were surely going to get rid of the only people who knew about the illegal AI and the fact that they were planning something that they did not want anyone else to know.

At the moment Marcan could not be bothered by the mystery of Dioscuri Syndicate; his only concern was survival. Even if the board of directors did consult the AI formerly known as Castor, there was no guarantee that the AI had not changed in the process of joining with Polydeuces. Dioscuri might easily agree with the hostile side of the board, especially since Castor had witnessed his close connection to the Federal Military Intelligence.

Then Marcan felt the cool handle of the laser pistol with his stealthily searching fingers and he cleared his mind of everything but what he was going to do. The bullet-car was their quickest route back to the flight deck and the flight deck was their only way out of the vast ship. He had given a quick thought to finding the escape shuttles and using them to escape the predicament, but then he had realised that there was no guarantee that they were still in Ethenbe system. If they were in deep space and he and Petr got out in an escape shuttle, they would be an easy target to the ship's weapons turrets and missiles.

Since it was possible that the security scanners in the ship's corridors would detect a sudden discharge of energy and alert other security personnel after them, Marcan avoided using his pistol when he attacked the three guards. Taking a good grip of the pistol and drawing the weapon out of the satchel, he slowed down his steps in an attempt to draw the two men walking after them closer. Then he suddenly stepped backwards and jerked his left elbow up and back, trying to aim for the guard's larynx.

He felt his strike hit, but he missed the most devastating point. The leftmost guard croaked out in agony and collapsed, holding his throat with his hands. Marcan then brought his left hand forward and swivelled towards the other guard, who had not yet recovered from the surprise. Marcan clenched his hand into a fist and hit him in the face, his full weight and body behind the strike. The guard reeled backwards and dropped his weapon.

Then the third guard in front of them turned around and brought his pistol to bear on Marcan. In an attempt to avoid the possible shot, Marcan fell backwards onto the floor and aimed his pistol at the last guard. He realised that there was no way to avoid using the pistol now, and he squeezed the trigger.

"Stop right there!" the third guard cried and aimed his gun at Marcan who lay prone on the floor, aiming his pistol from between his upraised knees. Petr stood by the wall of the corridor, his mechanical eyes wide in shock as he looked at what was happening around him.

Marcan squeezed the trigger again, his mind refusing to understand that even the first squeeze had not resulted in a shot, let alone in the kill of the guard in front of him. Again, the pistol failed to work as it was supposed to. The two guards that he had incapacitated earlier started to recover and they picked up their guns.

It was then that Marcan realised that his pistol's energy bank had been emptied. It had probably been done while he and Petr had been in the conference room and his belongings had been on the other side of the door. He groaned in disappointment and let his hands fall on his sides. He looked at the ceiling above until the guards ordered him to stand up.

"So, Mr Rayger," one of the guards snarled, holding his throat with his left hand, "Your violent behaviour will be reported to the board. I don't think that it will help your situation at all!"

Marcan kept quiet as he and Petr were ushered into the bullet-car. He remained silent all through their journey to the next stop. When they were taken out of the car, he looked around and saw that they had been brought into the living quarter area of the ship. Apparently they did not have any other place to put their prisoners into.

They were put into a small, and apparently vacant single-room quarters and the door was locked behind them. Marcan looked around and found himself a chair to sit on. He felt frustrated at the situation that they had wound up in. Ever since he had docked Polydeuces with Castor, he had had no control over the turn of events. Now, also his attempt to make their escape had failed and let them in even worse situation.

Petr remained standing and looked down at Marcan. It was one of the few times the android was given such an opportunity, giving the great difference in their heights. "You risked both of our lives out there," the android observed. It was hard to say if it was more than an observation.

Marcan shook his head slightly. "And they were prepared for it," he said almost exasperatedly.

Petr nodded, "Yes, it seemed so. Still, as that guard observed, what you did may very easily affect the board's decision on what to do with us."

Marcan chortled and shook his head again. He rested his elbows on his thighs and lowered his face to his hands. "I don't think there's much to decide. We already know too much and they cannot risk letting us out. Even Castor knows that I like mysteries and that I might try to find out more about this Dioscuri Syndicate if I was let go."

"Would you?"

"I don't know. To tell the truth, right now I don't give a damn. Castor more or less betrayed me: why should I be interested in what he has become?" Thinking about the betrayal made his heart sting. He had grown to like the AI more than he had ever liked his many human associates. All he wanted at the moment was to put it all behind himself.

Petr, being an android, had little appreciation of human sense of betrayal. "Aren't you interested in why they are doing all this? They must have some big project going on to make them first turn all their possession into liquid cash and then to buy a Long Range Cruiser like this, fully equipped with an out-of-public-market hyperdrive."

Marcan looked up at Petr and smiled slightly, "There are millions of mysteries to be solved in the galaxy. I can pick another one."

There was a moment of silence during which Marcan moved from the chair and went to the bed, which had only the mattress and no sheets, to lie down for a while. Petr sat down on the chair that he had vacated and looked at him.

"Do you think there's any way we'll get out of here?" Petr asked.

"You're the one with the computer in your head. You're welcome to figure out the probabilities," Marcan said.

Petr tilted his head, "There are too many variables here. Humans are inconsistent and illogical in their decisions and actions."

"It's called grey logic," Marcan inserted.

"Yes," Petr said, "It is grey logic, such logic that is of much deeper shade than you have been able to program your computers to achieve, including us androids. This greyness could benefit us in our present situation since the most logical option would be to get rid of us and the danger we pose."

Marcan snorted, "Your grey logic eludes me, Petr. Are you saying that because humans are illogical, they will not follow the most logical route? That's a fallacy and you know it."

Petr shook his metallic head, "No. I'm just saying that we still have a chance."

Marcan turned to look at the hopeful android. He suddenly remembered that Petr had been programmed with a civilian personality and as such he was unable to face death in the manner that the military drilled into their people. Petr actually needed to believe that they still had hope in order to function properly. But the android actually had a point there; they did have a chance as long as they were still alive.

"Yes, Petr. We do have a chance. But I don't think that we should be counting on the decision of others if we want to survive. If we want to get out of here alive, we both have to be ready to do something for it," Marcan said, musing at the ceiling.

"What do you mean?" Petr asked.

Marcan turned his attention to the locked door that led to the corridor. He knew that there were at least two guards behind it. "Exactly how strong are you, Petr?" he asked.

Petr tilted his head, "I have been working at shipyards. My frame has been improved accordingly."

"Could you break down that door?" Marcan asked, pointing at the hindrance.

Petr stood up from the chair and looked at the door. It was a standard issue door, in no way suitable to imprison anyone for long periods of time. Marcan knew that even he might be able to break it down if he was given enough time. However, in order for them to be able to surprise the guards on the other side, the door would have to go almost instantaneously.

Petr sat back down on the chair and looked at Marcan, "I could break down that door very quickly, yes. However, I'm not sure that it would be the wisest thing to do. For one thing, there are certainly guards on the other side and for the other, I think that we should give the board a chance to make a good decision before we force them to take decisive action against us."

Marcan snorted, "So, what you are saying is that you want us to stay here and that you will not help me in getting us out of here?"

"For now," Petr said.

Marcan shook his head in dismay and closed his eyes. It was not in his nature to keep still under pressure; he was more a man of direct action, but now he had to force himself to calm down. Otherwise he might have jumped up from the bed and killed himself trying to claw through the android's metallic skull into his thick electric brain. He was sure that by waiting they would only get deeper into trouble.

A few hours later Marcan Rayger woke up when someone knocked onto the door. He sat up and cleared his eyes with his fingers to see their guest better. The door opened and the old man, Stefan Ballians stepped inside. Through the momentarily open door, Marcan could see that there were at least three guards in the corridor outside.

"Commanders Rayger and Petr," the old man greeted. "I'm sorry that you had to go through this, but as you may know, this company was just recently founded and some basic issues are still to be decided. Now that we have Dioscuri AI to lead us, those issues will probably be settled in the near future, but as of now, we have to make do with each new situation."

Marcan frowned, "And what does this have to do with us?"

Ballians smiled, "Nothing anymore. There were some difficulties in coming to this conclusion, but when Dioscuri joined in, the decision was made before we knew it. Even the most heated counter-arguments were silenced when the AI made his opinion known."

Petr drew his blue lips into a slight smile and glanced at Marcan. Then the android looked at the old man and asked, "Does this mean that we are free to go?"

"Yes, it does," Ballians answered.

Marcan sneered, "What about my ship and the reward for finding Polydeuces for you?"

Ballians gave him a cold stare, obviously disliking his attitude. "Give it a rest, commander. Rest assured that Dioscuri has spoken well for you and asked us to compensate you almost better than we can afford at the moment. Since our money is for the most part invested to various interest, we are going to give your payment in the form of a new ship instead."

"What ship is that?" Marcan asked. His interest grew, although he still suffered from the loss of Castor.

"We'll give you both Argo II, the Boa Freighter that used to belong to Professor Bardoff. Even though it is in the need of some serious repair, it is worth more than Castor and the fee we promised you, as well as the 100'000 that the Vera Industries promised you for Polydeuces."

Marcan started at the last comment. He stared at the old man for a moment and sensed that Petr had turned to stare at him in turn. He had not mentioned the oversized fee to anyone as he had wanted to keep it to himself. Then he realised that the only one in addition to him who knew about the fee was Castor. The AI had obviously revealed the information to the board of directors of the Dioscuri Syndicate, giving no heed to the fact that it had been a secret.

When he got some of his sense back, he realised something. "How about the crew? Me and Petr will need eight more people to fly a Boa and I don't want them to be your employees."

Ballians frowned, "Unfortunately they'll have to be our men. There aren't people in this system looking for a job on a spaceship at the moment, and even if there were, I doubt you'd trust them not to be working for us. We can offer you two men who will help you to get the ship to some safe system where you can release them, fix the ship and find your own employees."

Marcan snorted again, "With four men, we'll hardly be able to pilot the ship, let alone defend ourselves if we get attacked!"

This time, Ballians almost laughed, "You'll not have to worry about defending yourselves; the Boa doesn't have any working weapons!"

Marcan was rendered speechless and he just eyeballed the old man. Also Petr seemed to consider the situation funny and he smiled widely as he looked at Marcan.

"You'd better get us to that ship soon, or Commander Rayger may cause more havoc," the android said to Ballians with a smile.

"I'll do that. Your guards will guide you to the flight deck and there you'll meet the two men assigned to you for a while. I wish you both good luck!" Ballians said and walked out of the room. Marcan and Petr picked up their belongings and walked out of the room as well. The three guards who had been guiding them around the ship were still standing outside.

When Stefan Ballians had disappeared from the view, the three guards relaxed and looked at the two former prisoners.

"You got treated better than you deserved," one of them said. Marcan was almost sure that he was the one he had struck in the larynx.

Marcan looked coldly at the man and said, "Just get us out of here and you'll never have to see us again."

The bullet-car came to a smooth stop once the five of them reached the flight deck. The door opened and one of the guards was the first one to step out. Marcan stepped out right behind him and saw how a laser bolt struck down the guard in front of him. Without wasting a moment, he lunged towards the floor himself and thus managed to avoid the three next laser bolts fired in their direction.

He hit the floor beside the fallen guard and searched his dead body brutally to find the laser pistol that he knew to be there. The laser fire continued, but Marcan had luckily lunged on the left side of the guard's body and it offered him some cover. Also, the shooters seemed to be more interested in the bullet-car's door and the armed guards behind it.

Once Marcan had found the laser pistol from the folds of the dead guard's clothing, he took a quick look at the surroundings. He spotted the attackers close to the Boa that they were supposed to be heading for. The area between the bullet-car and the large ship offered no cover at all, but the assailants had built themselves a small cover from several small metallic containers. There were at least four of them, all armed with a laser rifle.

The closest other ship was a model he did not recognise, and it was only seven metres to the side from his present location. However, it was seven metres of running through an area that was completely open to laser fire from the enemy location.

Marcan heard the guards still inside the bullet-car cursing as they tried to answer to the laser fire. From the lack of any sounds, Marcan presumed that Petr was deep inside the bullet-car, whimpering to himself.

Then Marcan checked the charge in the laser pistol that he had confiscated and leapt up from his flimsy cover into deadbolt run towards the cover of the unknown ship. Some of the fire that had been directed towards the bullet-car, turned immediately to track him down. Marcan fired some random shots towards the enemy position in hopes of persuading the men to keep their heads down and cease firing at him.

But the men behind their cover could not be intimidated by some stray shots, that missed their mark by metres in the least, and they continued firing. Suddenly one of the laser bolts burned Marcan's left calf and he cried out in pain and fell forwards. Still, through the haze of the searing pain, he was able to collect his thoughts enough to turn his headlong fall into a graceful roll towards the closing cover.

He rolled the last metre or two and then he was behind the landing gear of the small ship and safe from the laser fire. He tried to ignore the pain in his leg and looked towards the bullet-car. He could see the two guards hiding behind the doorframe, holding their pistols ready. The laser fire from the assailants had dissipated into few stray shots at the open door, but Marcan could see that it was mere warning fire, reminding the guards of what was in store for them. If the guards dared to try to come out of the car, they would be met by an another volley of laser bolts.

Marcan glanced up at the ship that he had rolled under in hopes to see the entrance hatch on the side that was not visible to the riflemen. But to his misfortune, the hatch seemed to be on the side that was in the view of their unknown enemy. Marcan did not even dare to think about trying to get to the next ship in line, knowing when to stop counting on his luck, or on the performance of his injured left leg.

Having served in the Federal Military, Marcan had received training in ground assaults and close combat. Still, all that previous training seemed to offer no clues on what to do to escape the situation in which he had now wound up. Alone, against a force of four people, even though they had to divide their attention between him and the bullet-car, there was not much he could do but wait.

It was then that he noticed that the alarm klaxons, which should have been turned on by the laser fire, remained silent. Marcan wondered at it and decided that their assailants had been clever enough to turn off the appropriate sensors in the flight deck. But the fire alarms and the fire extinguishing systems were quite another matter. Unlike the security sensors, the fire sensors were usually stand-alone systems, which worked with their own inner power source.

Marcan looked around to find one of the fire sensors, but there were none in his immediate vicinity. He crawled away from under the ship, taking care to keep the landing gear between him and the attackers, and looked up at the ceiling fifteen metres above. Almost at once he spotted one of the fire sensors and, lying on his back and holding his pistol with his both hands, he aimed it at the sensor. He fired three shots in a rapid succession, and one of them hit dead-on the target.

Immediately the alarm went off and the fire extinguishers started spewing foam down on the flight deck. The men who had laid the ambush for them cried out in anger and started shooting like maniacs at the bullet-car, apparently hoping to achieve even a little more damage before the foam blocked their view.

Marcan used the cover that the white foam spewing down from the ceiling and accumulating on the floor offered and galloped around the small fighter towards their enemies. His sense of balance had to work overtime keeping him upright running on the now slippery floor with a serious limp.

At the same time as Marcan started running, the two guards came out of the bullet-car and started shooting towards the barricade, making their own advance through the slippery environs. They fired blind, just the way the assailants were now firing, and their shots flew wide more often than they did not. Still, one of the guards collapsed on the floor when one randomly fired laser bolt hit his left hip.

Marcan's approach had not been expected as much as the guards', though and he got near enough to kill the only man who had been firing in his direction. Then as another of the riflemen turned to face the new danger, Marcan lunged forward into the foam that now covered the floor and skidded towards the barricade under the foam cover. He had to trust only his sense of touch as his face was covered with the foam.

The three remaining men could not see him as he made his way blindly around the barricade and started firing random, but lethal shots at the men covering behind it. Marcan wiped his eyes clear with his right hand at the same time as he emptied the laser pistol's power cell with the rapid fire.

The white foam had stopped coming down from the ceiling, but there was over half a metre of it on the floor now. Marcan knelt on his right knee and tried to see if anyone was still moving in the foam near to the barricade. He saw no movement and decided to risk trying to get closer to get one of the laser rifles to replace his now useless weapon. He got to the nearest body safely and found the rifle. Then he backed away again and kept aiming the new weapon at the foamy vicinity of the barricade.

Then he felt something touch his right ankle and he rolled away, just barely missing the shot fired from inside the foam. One of the assailants was apparently still alive and had tried to find him by touch, crawling in the foam. Marcan left no room for doubt and fired almost twenty shots into the foam, right about the point where the shot had come from. A cry of pain told him that he had hit the mark.

Marcan backed away further from the barricade and the dead bodies before he yelled, "Petr, guards, are you alright?"

"Marcan, I'm here," came Petr's answer from the direction of the bullet-car and the two guards answered immediately after him.

Marcan waited for a few moments before he stood up to look at the white scene. One could not have guessed it, looking at the white snow on the flight deck, that only a few centimetres under that pure white surface were the bodies of five dead men. Marcan looked at the two snowmen who were the guards walking towards the barricade, one supporting the other. A fit father away, an android stepped out of an iglu and started to walk towards him as well.

Then, the wide doors that connected the flight deck to the quarters of the fighter pilots and the mechanics opened and over a dozen new people arrived to the scene.

For the whole time it took for the flight deck personnel to hose off the foam and uncover the dead bodies, Marcan held onto the laser rifle. Petr stood by his side, keeping an eye on everyone at once. There was no reason for them to trust anyone anymore, except perhaps the guards who had fought on their side. But those two men had left the deck, one seeing the other one to medical care.

Only after the dead bodies had been carried away and the deck had been cleaned, did one of the directors' board arrive to the scene. Ballians arrived in a bullet-car and walked straight to Marcan and Petr. He seemed to be badly shaken.

"Commanders, I'm really sorry for this. I had no idea..." the old man said.

Marcan cut him off, "I don't care. Just get those two guards back here and they'll be the ones to join us in the Boa. I won't accept or trust anyone else. And right after I have left this ship, I'll fly to the Denver Terminal, assuming that we are still orbiting Ethenbe 1, and have this Boa checked out for booby traps and bombs. If any such thing is found, I'll hold you responsible!"

Stefan Ballians stared at him for a second, before he said, "I assure you, this ship is clean of any such devices. I'm sure that they did not have time to set up anything like that between the board's decision and your arrival to the deck."

Marcan sneered, "They had well enough time to build up a barricade and set an ambush. Just get me those two men."

"I will do that," Ballians gave up and turned around to view the cleaned up scene.

"Excuse me," Petr said then. "Who were those people?"

Ballians turned back to them and frowned in an embarrassed manner. "I suppose they were people who did not approve of the board's decision to let you go. As I told you earlier, this is still a new company and we still have several things to work out."

That comment made Petr's yellow eyes freeze still for a moment and there was a surprised frown on his face. "Mr Ballians, I doubt many companies have problems of this magnitude when they start up," Petr said slowly and turned his eyes away from the old man.

Marcan was surprised by Ballians' comment as well. It told volumes of the Dioscuri Syndicate that their employees could just pick up weapons if they disagreed with their leaders. If the AI formerly known as Castor had any desire to make his new company follow even some basic spirit of the law, he still had a long way to go. There were a lot of rotten apples up this tree.

It took an hour more for the two guards to return from the medical bay, and then to receive their new orders to accompany Marcan and Petr until they reached a safe system to repair the Boa. With only the skeleton crew onboard, the Boa would be undefendable for the whole length of the journey. Basically, Marcan's plan was to buy as much fuel as the Boa could hold from the local station and get to the Core Systems as directly as possible. As soon as they reached the Sol system or the Barnards Star, they would be able to relax and wait the few or more weeks that it would take for the ship to be repaired.

When Marcan and Petr reached the bridge of the former Argo II, they found that it was almost in the same state as it had been when they had first found the ship. Only the most necessary systems to run the ship had been repaired or replaced, and all the ancient Greek -style decorations, reliefs and statues, were still there.

Marcan took the captain's seat without asking Petr and looked at the main view screen. He had never been aboard a ship that big, let alone commanded one. Even if it was a piece of junk that just barely held the air inside, he loved the feel of such power under his command. Although he did not have even close to enough money to repair the ship in one go, he promised himself that he would earn all that he needed in order to get to command such a magnificent vessel in the deep space.

"Let's get out of here," he said at last to Petr, who had sat down at the navigation computer, Michael Meacher and Jeff Bainfeld, who sat at two other consoles. Since they were going to spend some time together, Marcan had gone through the trouble to learn their names. The fact that they had fought at his side against their assailants convinced him that they would not fail him during the long journey.

As the ship descended through the landing bay doors into black space Marcan finally relaxed a bit. The ordeal that he had been forced to go through, first Castor's betrayal and then the fire fight, had both enraged and exhausted him. He was glad to get away from all that and looked forward to the journey ahead. Their first stop would be the Denver Terminal to pick up lots of fuel and Petr's Adder, and after that they would head for the Federal systems, away from the dangerous frontier space.