An hour later, Gjosta found himself in the station’s vault. The room appeared to have a metal mesh faraday cage to isolate the room from EM fields, and it was filled with shelves stacked with metal boxes about the size of pistol cases.

  He and the archivist sat on opposite sides of a desk.

  The desk itself was a two meter by one meter monstrosity had a custom-built computer view-screen covering the entire tabletop. But the desk also seemed bizarrely simple and disconnected; it wasn’t even wireless. Gjosta couldn’t see any other piece of computer equipment in the whole room.

  On most stations, even the waste disposal and doors had computer control systems, and yet this was an archive designed to minimize computerization.

  There were six chairs, and the room was large enough it could practically double as a conference room. Maybe it did, from time to time.

  The archivist called himself Mayer. He had short blonde hair and a cybernetic eyes with blue liminal rings around the iris. His station uniform identified him as military of some sort. Insignia changed in security forces, and no one did it exactly the same, but Gjosta expected the taller man was a lieutenant of some kind. A little low-ranked for his age, but Gjosta didn’t judge him for that.

  He judged him for being insufferably stubborn.

  “This is irregular. Corporate hasn’t audited our records in thirty years.”

  “Don’t you think it's time?” Gjosta asked the archivist.

  “Listen. I don’t think you understand. It’s a dragon.” Meyer replied. “We don’t mess with it.”

  “What I understand is that you aren’t letting me review the archive, as the contract with Thor & Co. requires. Who did you think sponsored this operation? A saint? This worthless puddle only has value because it can monitor LM-25. That’s the whole reason this orbit always faces the asteroid. Hand over the data.”

  “I don’t know how you ended up on my schedule. I have already contacted the station manager and security personnel.”

  “I have an appointment because I am a Deputy Vice-President of Thor & Co. I outrank everyone on this station. Do not try me boy.”

  “We’ll see.”

  The doors to the little office swung open to the station’s corridor. An older woman in a slightly more elaborate uniform and two armed security stepped in. Gjosta and the archivist stood.

  “Manager.” Mayer said. “This is the individual I messaged you about.”

  “Arrest him.” The woman ordered.

  The security did not move.

  “You’re the station manager?” Gjosta said. “Perhaps you will honor the contract that your archivist will not.”

  In a heartbeat, Gjosta hacked her cyberware and used her wireless connection to force the contract clause into her system storage.

  “What are you two doing? Arrest him!”

  The security did not respond. They didn’t even twitch.

  “They’re in stasis,” Gjosta said. “In case you’re wondering, ‘how did that happen?’ I put them there. I am Gjosta the Wizard. And I know you.”

  And he did. She was older, and she had grey in her hair now, but she had the same steely look, Theodora Capricorn. Humans tended to blend together, but he remembered her quite well as ambitious twenty-something trying to make her mark in the company.

  “You briefed me personally at corporate thirty years ago. You—of all people—should remember the contract clause I’ve put into your data storage. You can find it indexed next to the pictures of your grandchildren.”

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “Gjosta,” Manager Theodora said. Some of her anger seemed to subside. “I remember now. You haven’t aged a day. Yes. Of course. Release my personnel and we can discuss what you need.”

  “They can wait in the hall.” Gjosta warped the two guards into the hallway through the open doorway. Then, he wirelessly engaged the auto-closure on the door, slamming the vault door shut, and locking it closed. Now it could only be manually opened from the inside.

  The digital backdoors he installed let him put his virtual boot on the network‘s neck; there were hardly any systems he couldn’t override.

  His little maneuver wasn’t effortless, but he’d gotten good at hiding the strain. His own sealed suit and black thigh-length synth-weave coat hid his elevated heart rate and cold sweat. He was lucky the security guards weren’t bigger, because he wouldn’t have been able to use his bio-liminal engine that way for more than a few more heartbeats.

  “If I’d known that your archivist would be so insufferable, I would have scheduled the appointment with you instead.”

  “Uh, right,” Theodora managed to say. “So, this is a surprise inspection?”

  “No. This is a corporate infiltration and recovery operation. Sit.”

  The manager and archivist cautiously lowered themselves onto the chairs at the desk. Gjosta remained standing.

  “I am here to recover the lost data and unique assets of LM-25. Do not repeat any operational information you hear in this room. However. I will be leaving this station with your most up-to-date information on LM-25 and your cooperation. If not, you will receive your discharge from the company and denial of benefits in less than 24 hours. You won’t be able to step foot in a Thor & Co. system without being arrested for corporate treason. I will see to it personally. Understood?”

  “Please,” Mayer pleaded. “Sir. Vice-President. You need to understand. My great-grandmother was on one of the corporate ships that tried to take back LM-25. The blue dragon came out and shredded the fleet. Shields and weapons had no effect. Look, my grandmother escaped and saved a video log. I’ll share it with you.” He tapped the desk and a video file began playing.

  Gjosta suspected he knew what Mayer wanted to show. The video showed an angle Gjosta hadn’t seen before, probably from a tactical officer’s cyberware. But, the substance was the same as the other archive footage.

  A fleet of spaceships in close formation—perhaps only 20 km apart—had rotated into position to launch missiles on a glowing entity at the edge of their effective range. The video showed the visual, positional, and targeting data. The target, which looked like a blue ribbon with feathery protrusions, appeared nearly 2 light seconds away; only magnification made it possible to distinguish it from the stars behind it. Because the target was that far away, the missiles would have to lock on a they approached. No unaugmented human could react fast enough to calculate a target that had already moved

  The ribbon of blue fire rippled from across the distance, and the missiles disappeared from the targeting data. Instantaneously, the shining blue ribbon of light and plasma appeared among them. Each ship it touched fell off the tactical display, some obliterated in explosions, and others merely lost power and began venting atmosphere. Communications from the other ships cut off, sometimes mid-scream.

  A jolt rocked the view. Alarms blared on the consoles. Someone ordered the ship abandoned, and the video stopped.

  The entire video lasted less than a minute.

  “After that battle,” Mayer said, “if you can call it that, the dragon pulled the ruined spacecraft hulks into the gravity well of LM-25 and set them to orbit the station. The dragon can’t be stopped. I am not sure anything could even hurt it.”

  “I have heard this superstitious nonsense before.” Gjosta said bluntly. “It’s either an AI with an advanced weapon system, which I am uniquely qualified to hack. Or, it’s an alien, which cares not at all about the data the company and minerals wants to retrieve. Either way, this mission is going forward.”

  “You are taking a big risk. This planet lives in the shadow of that asteroid. We’re profitable. Six thousand people have made a life here. If you anger that thing, we’ll all suffer if you fail,” Theodora told Gjosta.

  “I won’t fail.”

  “Then, feel free to retrieve the data,” Mayer said. The archivist stood and pulled a metal box off the shelf, and opened it. Inside were 366 slots, and each held a transfer drive about the size of Gjosta’s thumb. “We can’t stop you. Just so you know: twenty-five years into the original surveillance, this station lost all its data on the dragon and any archive data on LM-25. According to the records on file, we never knew who, or what, deleted those files. The planetary authority decided to make it impossible for the dragon to destroy the data a second time. We drop copies to the planet surface every week, but these are the primary archive. This is the box for last year, the rest are on the shelf with labels. Please return the the drives to the Faraday-boxes after you transfer each file, and put them on the floor or desk. I’ll re-shelve them.”

  “Help me load the drives into the analysis table for transfer?”

  “I’m sure you can figure it out. I’m going to update my last will and testament.” Mayer stood and left, levering open the door’s manual latch as he went, and banging the door into the wall. Outside, he snarled an order to the security team, and took them with him.

  “I’ll show you the system,” Theodora said. She glared at Gjosta. “This better not come back on us. If we die because of an angry dragon—or alien, or AI or whatever—I’ll haunt you for the rest of your life.”