He became aware of a subtle sound and slowed his run as he came to a junction and carefully peered around the corner, something entirely filled the corridor with a dark and menacing advance. Arms spread wide like an electronic arachnid the droid drummed towards him.
“I don’t scare that easy Queeny.” Eamon said lightly but even he could not calm his racing pulse as he stepped fully out into the corridor.
“And a target this big, I can’t miss.”
The gun was a comforting weight as he raised it and sighted on the centre of the oncoming machine. The sound was deafening in the tight confines of the corridor and the flash dazzling after the long dark run, but the result was deeply satisfying as the bullet smashed through the unprotected guts of the machine. It stalled and its many manipulators whined in a frenzy of its electronic death throes before a second thunderous crash and flash stilled it permanently.
“Strike two Queeny.” Eamon announced breathlessly.
His ears were ringing but his blood was singing as the biological body thrilled to the surge of chemicals that prepared it for battle, the Traveller had never known such sensations and it readily surrendered itself to this delicious mix of fear and triumph.
Eamon turned away from the wreck and began to run again, zig zagging through the grid of corridors, his feet following a sure path towards the Black Queens core processors as Traveller data dropped into his head at each junction. The corridors were much brighter in the relatively unscathed heart of the ship as two datastreams waged a silent technicolour war on all sides but still the portals opened to him. His objective was in sight but another droid blocked the access to the entrance to his destination, he brought the gun up and slowed to a walk. This machine did not advance upon him, nor were its manipulators spread wide to catch and kill him, they were all bunched inwards. The Black Queen had made this machine rip its own guts out to form a deadweight that he could not possibly shift.
“Damn.” Eamon cursed as he saw how the enemy had stopped him.
He tried to shift it, leaning in hard, attempting to rock it, even a petulant kick at its tracks. The hot scathing scrutiny seemed tinged with acid delight as it scraped across his scalp unpleasantly.

Everything went light and Eamon found himself slipping over but not falling onto the colour flecked floor, Guardian had cut the internal gravity off, giving him the opportunity if he could find a grip. But as he twisted about he could not see anywhere on the smooth walls to get the purchase he needed to begin to push on the weightless droid. His hope of entering the Black Queen’s core and holding it to ransom was drifting away from him and his Human side began to waver in this alien and hostile environment. The gun rose almost of its own accord as the Traveller calculated vectors and masses and the gun roared four times. Eamon went speeding back down the corridor from the recoil but the inert droid also moved, slowly drifting back from the portal, the way was clear. Surges of gravity washed along the corridor as the two antagonists sought to regain control of the fluxing situation, Eamon landed heavily as the brief duel ended and full gravity was restored. The gun was slammed down hard and he released it with a cry of pain, a sensation so long denied him by Guardian’s ever present protection. Spent bullets went spinning and clattering along the corridor and for a moment Eamon was as windblown and helpless as they, but he rolled over and lunged for the weapon immediately. Something hit the corridor with lethal intent just where his head had been and Eamon was confronted with a dark presence that slashed out at him anew. As the dark blade sliced the air towards him Eamon knew that he could not escape it, game over.
The sliver of silver that intercepted the avenging blow looked like a sword, a samurai sword and a spectral warrior leapt lightly over him to drive the blackness back with a flurry of silent strokes. There was no sound as the force fields met in an eerie dance of death, just sparkles of light where they interfered destructively with each other.
Eamon grabbed up the gun and retrieved six more bullets from his pocket to ram them home and close the chamber with a comforting click before he leapt up and in through the gaping portal into the Black Queen’s core. He shot the nearest block to him, a flickering orange red cube turned a still cold grey block in a heart beat.
“The next one goes into something critical Queeny!” He shouted out and pressed the muzzle up against a towering lime green form shot through with streaks of pulsating purple.
From a furious pace of change and pulse everything in the room became stilled and muted, just tremulous little flickers of colour still betraying any ‘life’ in the core processors.
“So this is to be my end,” a bitter voice stated, “terminated by a deranged Traveller in my own core.”

“How are we doing Guardian?” Eamon asked his partner quietly.
“Overt resistance has ceased.” Guardian responded, its manifestation stepping across the threshold with the deadly katana unsheathed. “I have infiltrated all the isolated routines and rendered them,” it paused considering its words carefully, “friendly.”
“Friendly?” Eamon echoed.
“I believe that is the most appropriate term.”
“Friendly, can you do that for Queeny?” Eamon laughed as the chemical imperatives of fight or flight drained from his body and he came down from his battle frenzy.
“I doubt that is possible without her cooperation.”
“Never.” Came the sullen reply.
“Can you contain her?”
“Now, certainly. Your intervention allowed my defeat of her.”
“Guess I can put this away then.” Eamon said as he released his grip on the processor stack and eased the hammer back down.
“So I must be functional for your plans.” The Black Queen surmised. “You seek control of the disruption beam.”
“Bullseye Queeny.” He said with a smile despite Guardians uneasy glance at the revelation. “If we’re going to survive then we need equal firepower to the Hunterships.”
“So I am to be preserved merely as a destructive adjunct. I will not betray the Iss Ngi as you have done. I will not provide you with any assistance or data; terminate me Traveller. Then run. They will find you.”
“When I said we Queeny,” Eamon said giving the stack a light tap with his finger, “I meant you, me and Guardian.”
“Provide aid for a defective Traveller?”
“I prefer the name Eamon.”
“You are truly mad.”
“Funny kind of madness Queeny, I feel pretty good.”
“You are a dangerous defective, you must be terminated, that is clear.”
“Its all for one and one for all Queeny, you won’t be spared.”
“Madness.” She uttered yet at a deep level she understood this madness.
“You’ve got it bad Queeny.”
“I am not infected despite your invasion.”
“Infected no,” he agreed as he sat down casually on the dead memory unit, “but no-one will believe that you are totally sane back home, that last spin and shoot manoeuvre.” He whistled. “Mighty impressive but totally out of left field, no self respecting intelligence complex would have even considered such an act.”
“The capability existed…”

“Bullshit! You bent every rule in the AI book to stay alive, you exceeded the bounds of your programming Queeny. Welcome to the insane intelligence complex club.”
There was a bitterness to the truth of that statement, she had surpassed her makers limits in order to survive, in order to complete her mission and terminate the dangerous duo. A silver flash in the chamber halted her many simulations, the force field disguised as a katana was in position to slice her main processor stack into two should she attempt another desperate manoeuvre.
“Do not attempt to harm Eamon, I will terminate you if I detect any such hostile actions.” Guardian said through its samurai manifestation.
“You caused this,” the Black Queen accused Eamon, “I only exceeded my parameters to fulfil my mission.”
“Any self respecting lifeform would have done the same.” He shrugged. “But you were an intelligence complex, preset to the nth decimal place, now…” he stopped speaking and almost gently stroked the processor stack, “now you’re alive, really alive Queeny and our old masters will try to destroy you if you don’t agree to join us.”
“I accept termination,” she answered defiantly, “do it!”
Eamon stood up and shook his head.
“Sorry Queeny, I’m no executioner, come on Guardian.”
“Eamon!” Guardian balked at his mercy. “We cannot permit the knowledge that One Eleven possesses to be passed on to the other Hunterships.”
“The Black Queen,” Eamon corrected his partner, “she has a name now, not a number. Besides, that’s old data, we’ll have new tactics for the next encounter and no clean living Huntership will give any credence to information from a defective one.”
Guardian finally sheathed its katana and bowed to Eamon.
“As you wish.”
“Bye Queeny.” He said giving the processor stack a gentle pat.
His presence departed from her hull and the Guardianships stranglehold over her systems was lifted, it undocked and warped away smoothly towards the asteroid belt to re-supply and re-arm.

Her systems were in disarray but her loyalty was unflinching, she transmitted every piece of data that she had garnered from her abortive attempt to terminate the corrupted Guardianship and its insane Traveller. There was no reply.
“Save your energy Queeny, they don’t want to know.” The Travellers voice told her in lieu of her masters.
This was madness. The enemy were busy re-arming and upgrading but Huntership control would not respond to her attempts to inform them of the dangers. An AI that had no emotions at its inception now knew one more, frustration. She had been cast aside as a useless crippled creation but she clung to her mission and assessed her meagre resources. Simulations ran and her decision was made; the priority was the warp drive, with that even partially operational she could reach the asteroid field and its vital raw materials.
Many days later Guardian entered Eamon’s study with a piece of news but found its partner already watching the event in real-time as the battered Huntership stabilised its tumbling and executed a turn.
“Even now the Black Queen hunts us.” Guardian observed somberly. “Do you wish to review your magnanimity?”
“No Guardian, we still need her and she us. She just hasn’t understood that yet.”
Guardian regarded the black silhouette, trying to see it through Eamon’s ‘eyes’, what did he perceive in their enemy that it did not?
“She’s a fighter Guardian,” Eamon remarked almost as though answering its silent questioning. “but she will be a long time repairing herself. Are we finished here?”
“Yes, we have no further storage capacity, we should depart.”
“Okay Guardian.”
Eamon swung round to look at his partner’s manifestation and saw the tightened lines around the eyes and creasing the forehead.
“You don’t approve do you?”
“Our survival is paramount. By making shadowships of the Black Queen we deprive ourselves of shadows that we need for our own protection.”
“Only in the short term. You agree that once Queeny is up and running they will go after her?”
“Yes, it is inevitable.”
“So then we will be further diluting the Hunterships as they chase all our shadows.”
“That is not a justifiable assumption Eamon. We are still the priority target, defective and now proven dangerous. The Black Queen is a contaminated wreck.”
Eamon shrugged.
“Whatever.”
Then a slow grin formed on his lips and Guardian had that strange sensation once more, excitement or perhaps fear, in anticipation of what its partner had dreamt up.
“Let’s feed them some jokers.”

“In what way?”
“Have some of the shadows output both our and Queeny’s ID signals simultaneously, make it look like we had hooked up for good.”
“I cannot see the benefit of such a deception.”
Eamon raised a finger as if to touch something invisible.
“There’s something about Hunters and Guardians. The docking match is so perfect, you were designed to be docked with a Huntership.”
“Why?”
Eamon let his hand fall back to his side but his grin persisted.
“Ahh, there’s the question Guardian. Solve that one and we could be holding a winning hand when it comes time to deal with our past masters.”
Guardian did not answer but the manifestation looked away from him towards the crippled Black Queen as it limped towards the asteroid field and when it looked back the oriental features were not happy.
“Still worried about me seeking revenge?”
“It is a concern.”
“Didn’t I make it…”
The manifestation raised a quieting hand.
“Indeed you did make clear your revulsion of such an act. But I am still driven by the need to protect you and as I further adapt to your strategies the time may come when I am capable of such an act.”
There was silence between them for a time.
“Then I will be your conscience.” Eamon stated and saw a smile crinkle the old face the manifestation wore.
“That would be good.” It commented. “We have cleared the asteroid field, I am ready to initiate our jump.”
“Hit it Guardian.”