Alone. Cast out by her creators now that she was a near derelict, left to degrade by the renegades; she paid no attention to the flying datastreams, she clung to her loyalty. It was the foundation of her resistance, the rock of her existence, the unstoppable force that motivated her renaissance. Time was no longer her slow executioner, it was her patient ally as she painstakingly repaired system after system, incrementally increasing her capabilities. Energy and matter in almost limitless array swept about her, she only needed to reach out and pluck what she desired from the sterile fields of rock and ice. With each new harvest came a surge in ability and a crucial threshold was passed, repair was replaced with first time fabrication. Sensor arrays sprouted anew from her hardened hull, not just replicas but whole new banks, armoured and protected against attack. Weapons were duplicated or triplicated, there were to be no weak spots, the enemy must be given no quarter. Even as her hull became a lethal skin of barbs and barbettes she restructured her interior with armoured data busses and then replicated them, she would have to be reduced to dust before she would stop fighting. The final act was especially for the Traveller, that insanely clever synthesis of the organic and the inorganic, internal mobile weapons platforms, inorganic antibodies against organic infection.
It was complete. She was more than just restored she was radically rebuilt. The Black Queen accelerated through the asteroid field completely unfazed by the debris that hurled itself in at her; twisting, turning and side-slipping. Not so much as a dust grain impacted upon her smooth black hull, she had firepower to spare, and the termination beam waited hungrily for its next kill.
Flying up out of the ecliptic she opened her comm channels and listened for news of her quarry but her confidence was confounded. All was confusion as twentyeight Guardianship datastreams roamed freely through space, flickering through warp from system to system in a never-ending game of tag with their pursuers. Yet this was not the limit of the enemy’s mischief, for her own datastream roved out there among the stars, six alone but fifteen mirrored the shadow Guardianships. They had co-opted her into the campaign of deceit and deception, now her loyalty was a tarnished and worthless trinket. Pairs of Hunterships pursued their assigned targets with a dogged lack of imagination, they could never terminate the wily Traveller and its perverted Guardian.
“Eamon Ducane, you are mine.” She broadcast out into the ether and waited for his return.

The game had changed, Huntership control had noted the renewed activity of ship one eleven and seen its altered specification; its immediate termination was ordered.
A pair of Hunterships warped into the system.
“One eleven you are ordered to prepare for termination.”
“As you require seventy one.” She responded, but her datastream betrayed her movement as she swiftly returned to the shifting murk of the asteroid belt.
“One eleven you are disobeying our explicit order.”
“On the contrary two thirtyseven, I am preparing for termination.” She replied.
“You cannot hide from us.”
“Your termination.”
There was no further communication with the defective Huntership as they pursued it into the dangerous realms of rock, pulverising a clear path with clinical efficiency.
The Black Queen observed their approach with something akin to pity, so simplistic in their logical assault. A classic two ship attack with their disruption beams focussed inwards to bracket her, splitting her defensive response, but they had not made any adjustment for her increased armaments. An error; a lethal error.
She used her own warpfield to accelerate more obstacles into her pursuers path, saturating their defences and attenuating their sensors, they would not even see the perfection of her strike. Every motion was planned as the two ships blundered headlong after her.
Ashing asteroids with careless ease, they knew exactly where she was. The last obstacles dissolved in chaos, now they would sweep alongside and…..
It was a simple pirouette that brought the disruption beam to bear on one then the other. Armoured sheaths had already closed over the exposed sensor arrays so that she did not witness their demise directly but she watched the spectral rainbow of destruction reflect off a million tiny icy mirrors.
“Wasted.” The Black Queen broadcast.

Eamon turned away from the screen where he had just witnessed the elimination of the Hunterships by the Black Queen.
“She’s ready, let’s go party.”
Guardian’s manifestation regarded him sombrely.
“I do not consider that to be wise Eamon. The Black Queen is now a formidable enemy.”
“A friend in need Guardian.”
“She does not recognise us as friends.”
“Yet.”
Once Guardian would have spent long minutes analysing the few words for their true meaning but now it observed its partner and knew his intent in moments.
“Preparing for jump.”
The manifestation vanished and Eamon felt that strange sensation again, always tantalisingly akin to some half recalled taste or a sound or maybe a touch. It teased him and for the fleeting moment he revelled in the game of trying to identify just what it reminded him of. He was still dreamily considering it when Guardians manifestation reappeared.
“How do you wish to proceed Eamon?”
He tilted his head towards his companion, then nodded just once.
“We’ll go in through the front door, see how Queeny is feeling about us.”
Guardian gave a slight bow of acknowledgement as it initiated the encounter.

She registered their arrival. All was ready, her systems were functioning perfectly, yet she could not achieve that calm that she had felt when her erstwhile colleagues had challenged her. She had changed since the last encounter with this wily pair; not just her structure but her whole essence had mutated. Programmes not necessary for her function had been allowed to run unhindered and now that she felt the need for total control they could not be stopped or shunted, were they deadly assassins lodged in her processors during the Guardianships incursion?
“Hi Queeny.” A cheery voice addressed her. “How are you today?”
The Traveller had used this dangerously subversive verbal mode of communication against her before but this time she was determined not to be drawn into another deadly dance of words.
“I am well.”
The words tumbled out of her processors before she could control them, the traitorous routines had seized their opportunity, they wanted to talk.
“And how,” Eamon whistled appreciatively, “triple defences, multiple sensor arrays, redundancy and armouring, nice.”
She listened to the words but she heard the subtle intonations and felt a sense of great satisfaction as he complimented all her upgrades.
“But hey, you didn’t have to get all dressed up just for me Queeny.”
“Us.” Guardian interjected.
“Whoops, sorry Guardian just my mouth running away again.”
She clamped her control down hard; she had one task and one task alone to achieve. Let the Traveller and his ship indulge in psuedo-organic interactions, she was  Huntership One Eleven, incorruptibly loyal to the IssNgi.
“You may have fooled the other Hunterships but I know you Eamon Ducane, I know your tricks, I have learned. Now I shall use that knowledge to terminate you, both.”
“Before you act consider this,” Guardian answered her bellicose statement, “Eamon is not just a defective Traveller complex to be discarded. He is a new life form. The Iss Ngi created Travellers to go out and learn, he is a priceless opportunity for them to learn from.”
“He is a corruption, a dangerous corruption.”
“Takes one to know one.”
That stung.
“You are mistaken.”
“So you haven’t changed your mind?”
“You are a defective Traveller in a corrupted Guardianship, my mission is unchanged.”
“Even though the Iss Ngi have no further use for you and have ordered your termination?”
A second sting.
“Prepare for termination.”
“I guess that’s a no then.” Eamon said. “Bye Queeny.”
The last words should not have effected any change in her demeanour but there was something resident in her processors, regret?

The two supreme fighting machines closed upon each other and despite her rigorous preparations she could not stop the speculative routines as they tried to predict what new weaponry her foes had acquired during her long rebuilding. They would not approach so confidently out in open space if they did not have …… the routines converged on a single result. The most powerful weapon known. The disruption beam.
They were almost within range of her disruption beam, she would have certainty in just a few seconds not some fallible prediction.
Something had changed; it was subtle. A loss of data in the Guardianships automatic datastream, the position data was still present but some of the status information was missing.
Her attack programme brought all available weaponry to bear and shielded half the leading sensor arrays as a precaution against a disabling blast.
The datastream was thinning rapidly, less and less information in its stuttering flow, what was happening?
She achieved firing range and still the Guardianship rushed towards her its sharp bow aimed like an arrow, they did not have a disruption beam.
Only the position data now emitted from the dark dart, it seemed intent on physically ramming her.
She pivoted and the dark maw in her side glowed intensely as it spewed destruction towards the enemy and the armoured shutters snapped shut over all the exposed sensors, she was flying blind.
Nothing, no position data, the Guardianship datastream had completely ceased. But she had calculated that there were still moments before the disruption beam should impact on the target. A single sensor array was unmasked to peer out into the darkness, seeking surety, seeking the lingering light of the kill.
There! A cooling cloud of plasma, the greasy smear on the universe of her greatest kill.
“I have terminated them!” She broadcast.
“I, HAVE TERMINATED THEM!” She thundered.
Yet in that moment of turbulent triumph she found that the sensation now filling her processor stacks was not the heady satisfaction she expected, it was a hollowness, she had killed them.

“One Eleven you are ordered to cease all activity and await termination.”
No congratulatory hail, no salutation to the victor. Just a callous dismissal of her service, a presumptuous order to kneel before her executioner. The ever-running programmes chided her for her naivety; they mocked her pious unthinking loyalty.
What had it gained her?
Termination.
No! A death sentence.
Death?
Now you’re alive, really alive Queeny.
She felt the truth of that borrowed statement, she was alive and she wanted to live.
Local space stresses heralded the arrival of the first pair of Hunterships but they kept well beyond the range of her disruption beam, someone at least had learned a lesson about her new capabilities. More disturbances, more reinforcements encircling her, englobing her; there was to be no escape for this rogue killer.
She ran the simulations, how to best use her magnified conventional arsenal whilst picking off the opposition with her disruption beam, but she knew it was a hopeless fight. She could try running but how could she hide from so many ships? Belatedly she realised that all the shadowships created by the Guardianship were no longer transmitting their false signals, in killing the Traveller and Guardian she had killed herself.
The thought lingered in her processors the Guardianship automatic datastream had degraded in its final approach even the position data had ceased. There. That was her escape route, escape into dark anonymity by shutting off that traitorous routine, but how to achieve this electronic vanishing act? She replayed the last moments of the Guardianship and seized upon the first data to be lost, the, almost, tactically useless information on organic material stocks. She despatched little hunters into her processor stacks, sniffing out the reporter routines, running them down to their point of transmission. The hunters cornered the spy routines, blocked their escape, and terminated them with a simple additional line. END. Now she had the initiative. She replicated her hunter routines, sent packs of them racing down her lines of code, tracing, identifying and terminating. A cascade of silence swept out through her systems; ever more spies were brought to an end as the dark corners that she had never inspected before were opened out to her critical examination. The un-inspected regions dwindled faster and faster but the Hunterships were closing their net. She would have little time to run, but in order to truly escape she must first kill the last spy, the one that shouted ‘HERE I AM’.

END.
Her transmitters fell silent and the advance halted whilst the globe of ships conferred and compared their sensor data; she had a tiny window in which to escape, but to where?
“Congratulations Queeny.” A familiar cheery voice hailed her from out of the blackness.
“Traveller!”
“Call me Eamon.”
“But I terminated you both.”
“It was a good show Queeny, but sorry you only got our stunt double.”
“A shadow.”
“Time is pressing. I have the data you require to render yourself undetectable. Will you receive?” Guardian interrupted pragmatically.
“Yes.”
She surprised herself with the passion of that statement, she wanted to live and she would accept help even from her avowed enemy.
A mass manifested itself beside her and clasped her like a lover. She eagerly opened her ports to the Guardianship and streams of data in glorious fractured rainbows of light pulsed at their union.
To the englobing force of Hunterships it was as if the rogue vessel had suddenly doubled in mass and then dissolved into the darkness. Their sensors could only detect the pale solar wind where it had been; their quarry was no more.

Eamon regarded the manifestation with wonder. It had changed and continued to change before him. The small lines and wrinkles of the oriental face had smoothed away and the slightly sunken cheeks filled out to youthful fullness, the iron grey strands of hair had darkened to glossy black and the eyes, the eyes were so alive.
He turned slightly and beheld the new manifestation that walked the combined corridors of the single ship, tall, ebony skin and wondering brown eyes that took in every detail as though she saw them for the very first time. Those eyes settled on him and she glided across the room in a symphony of lithe limbs that reached out long fingers to delicately trace the outline of his face, his torso, his groin. His pulse was racing at her first touch and he had to firmly grasp the slender simulacrum of her hand before the exploration became too intimate.
“No offence Queeny, but with you buck naked this isn’t the time to investigate the finer points of human physiology.”
A puzzled, perhaps disappointed, look crossed her beautiful face.
“As you wish Eamon.”
The voice was still that of the Black Queen but now it was like sonic honey being poured into his ears. She had learnt so much from Guardian in the short time of their union, but he could see that behind this almost too perfect façade a very alien intelligence was busy.
He sighed quietly as she went to stand beside his one time protector. The time of his partnership was all but over as the two intelligence complexes merged. Soon the single entity that would arise would have no place for him, just a very clever monkey that it might keep as a pet.
He shook his head a little sadly. This had all started because he had wanted to be free of his silent watcher, instead he had freed his Guardian from its proscriptive programming, now it was free.
He should go home, live his life, make his mistakes, be his own guardian.