Deathstalker 07 - Deathstalker Return

served my ancestor, the blessed Owen, two centuries ago during the Great Rebellion. Yes?"
    "Well, yes and no," said Ozymandias. "I'm not entirely him. He was destroyed twice. First by Owen and his companions when it was discovered that the original Ozymandias had been secretly programmed by the Empire to spy on them. The AIs of Shub managed to preserve a few fragments of the original AI personality and built a new AI around it. Then, later, Owen and Hazel destroyed that Oz after they found it was spying on them for Shub. Not a very lucky personality, when you get right down to it. I'd be worried if I was superstitious, which I'm programmed not to be. Anyway, the AIs of Shub built me around what fragments remained of the second Oz. So I'm not, strictly speaking, Ozymandias. I am a copy of a copy. But I'm as close as you're going to get, so make the most of me, because I'm bloody good at what I do."
    "Hold everything," said Lewis. "Are you saying you're a part of Shub? Just another of their voices, like the robots I met? And why do I just know you're going to say 'Yes and no'?"
    "I don't know," said Oz. "Maybe you're psychic. I am a subpersonality—a fairly separate subroutine with a certain amount of autonomy. So I'm me, but I'm Shub as well, at a distance. I'm all yours, ready and eager to obey your every command, but Shub looks over my shoulder from time to time. And if you're confused, think how I feel. Shub has raised multitasking to an art form."
    "Great," said Rose, not looking up from polishing her sword. "We've stolen the only ship in the Empire
    whose AI suffers from Multiple Personality disorder."
    "And I hate these clothes too," said Jesamine, following a logic only she understood.
    Though she did have a point. She and Brett had both had to change their clothing, on the grounds that what they'd been wearing had become more than a little battered and bloodstained during their escape from Logres. (Lewis had just scrubbed his armor clean, Rose had ignored the state of her leathers, and Saturday had licked the gore off his scales with a limber virtuosity that impressed and disturbed the others.) The only spare clothes on board the Hereward came from the captain's closet. Fortunately, it held a fairly wide collection. Either the previous captain entertained a lot of friends, or he liked to play dress-up on long voyages.
    Jesamine was now wearing a series of overlapping silk creations in dazzling and fiercely clashing hues, all heavily perfumed. On first seeing herself in the mirror, Jesamine had angrily announced she looked like a Mistworld doxy. Brett had asked her how she knew, and the conversation had deteriorated rapidly.
    Brett himself was now wearing a thermal suit with built-in chameleon tech, so that he could fade into any background. He was very pleased with it, on the grounds that it opened up whole new fields of avoiding trouble and not being found when there were dangerous things that needed doing. Brett firmly believed that fighting was something other people did, and feats of heroism and derring-do were for people who needed their heads tested. Being around Rose had done nothing to change his opinion.
    Lewis just knew this conversation wasn't going to go anywhere good, and was racking his brains for some way to derail it when Brett suddenly got a fit of the giggles. Almost despite himself, Lewis leaned out of his chair to get a look at what Brett had on his viewscreen now. Lewis had checked out some of the earlier examples of alien porn, just out of curiosity, and had to say it did nothing much for him. Some of the human—alien interactions were… interesting, but he found most of the alien—alien material frankly incomprehensible.
    On finding out what the Hereward's cargo was, his first reaction had been to declare it should all be seized and held as evidence. Brett had quickly reminded Lewis that he wasn't a Paragon anymore, and Lewis had scowled and muttered and finally said, Oh, hell; drop the lot into space. We can use the extra room. Brett nearly had a coronary. Dump it? Are you crazy? Do you know how much we can sell this shit for on Mistworld? Look, if we're going to be rebels on the run, we're going to need working capital.
    Lots of it. Lewis had finally agreed, in principle at least, but he still wasn't happy about it. He took a look at what was amusing Brett, and felt his scowl headache coming back again.
    "Brett… what is that? I mean, those two whatever-they-are aren't even