With his cropped blonde hair and chiseled blue-eyed good looks he could have passed for a local and joined the Jihad if he felt like it.

“About as well as could be expected,” I said. “I got the speech about how we don’t shoot the voters.”

“Enough,” roared Raqequit. He slammed one huge fist down on the tabletop, giving Lopez a view of his cards.

I looked at him just in case he was planning to cold cock me. He’d been on the edge of a Blitz breakdown for a while now. “Sorry, what was that?”

“We don’t shoot the voters enough,” he bellowed. “That’s the problem. If we did, they would be a bit more careful about who they pointed their weapons at.”

“I don’t think the Colonel would agree with you,” said Medico Mark. He put a red three down on top of a green three.

“She’s paid to disagree with me,” shouted Raqequit. “She has to say don’t shoot the voters.”

“We are supposed to be protecting them,” said Lopez. He studied his cards with a worried expression. He seemed to find losing embarrassing. He gave the game as much thought as he would tactical dispositions on the battlefield.

“Seems to me that we could cut the deathrate ninety-nine per cent by sending in the drones and disarming them,” said Mark. He shook his head and picked something up from the top of the deck.

“That’s why we’re not allowed to send the drones down,” said Raqequit. “They can claim it violates the tenets of their faith all they like, but it is the real reason.”

“It is one of the tenets of their faith,” Lopez said, putting his hand of cards face down and staring hard at Ragequit. “They don’t believe a machine should be made in the image of a man or software in the image of a man’s mind. They don’t want to join the Ascendants in the Singularity States. They don’t want to be slaves to the A.I.s.”

Raqequit turned unblinking porcelain blue eyes on him, and reached up to scratch his shaved head with one huge paw. “We’re not slaves to the A.I.s.”

“That’s because all the smart ones have gone to the Singularity. The INT Cap sees to that. The only things left are the ones like Orbital and our golems, who don’t cross the Brin Threshold for manumission.”

“You’re all wrong,” I said, to stop the argument I could see inevitably heading across the event horizon. “They don’t want drones down there, they want living bodies.”

“How so?” shouted Raqequit.

“So they can shoot at us. It’s part of their insurgency strategy. They can make life uncomfortable for the Fed Gov by inflicting casualties on its people. You can’t do that if there’s only drones to shoot at. That’s why they killed the Enforcers.”

“Well you taught them that’s not such a good idea either,” said Lopez.

“StarForce!” Ragequit shouted. “They should call us Hostage Force and have done with it.”

“Don’t even think about,” I said. “Remember when they were going to rebrand us PeaceForce.”

“PeaceForce,” Ragequit said. “Who would want to join PeaceForce? StarForce is bad enough.”

Lopez covered his eyes with his hand. Medico Mark glared at me. “You had to do it, hadn’t you?”

“It beats listening to you all argue about religion,” I said.

“Join StarForce, they said,” Ragequit ranted.