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The klaxon wails through the docking hub, as the freighter Ashfall shudders into Berth 9, hull scorched and trailing sparks from ruptured conduits. The docking clamps bite down with a metallic shriek, and the bay floods with the stink of burned plating and leaking coolant.
The airlock hisses open. A ragged stream of refugees spills out – wide-eyed, coughing, clutching what few belongings they still have. Behind them, the captain shoulders through the crowd, one arm braced around a sealed crate that leaks tendrils of frosty mist. “No medics, no inspectors,” she snaps hoarsely, pushing past anyone who blocks her path.
Around the dock, station workers, vendors, and opportunists crane their necks to watch. Security hasn’t arrived yet. The crowd murmurs – half curiosity, half fear. The crate hums faintly, its casing shuddering as if something inside wants out.
Dorian Rake strides into the docking hub to see the freighter Ashfall surrounded by shaken and injured refugees. There’s an older fellow wearing a gray jacket over a blue tunic and dark pants with a rusty-looking metal badge, one of the deputy marshals working with Rake aboard Iron’s End.
“I told you to keep things quiet, Benton,” Rake grouses at the deputy.
“Yeah, well,” Benton grunts.
“Yeah,” Rake concurs, then makes his way toward the ship’s captain. “I’m Dorian Rake, marshal for this station, and I’ve got some questions for you – starting pretty immediately with whatever you’ve got in that box.” He looks toward Benton. “Assemble a containment team.”
“This doesn’t leave my possession,” the captain responds.
“Oh, really?” the marshal replies, hand resting on the handle of his pulse pistol. “We may be of some disagreement on this point.”
Rosa enters, running after Rake. Though the crate draws her attention as much as everyone else, she doesn’t seem ready to get into that fight. Neither does she seem prepared to leave. She eyes the refugees. “Do you have injured?” she hollers out. “I can be of some help.”
A young human woman hangs back as she watches the action. Giselle grips the crate she’d been moving, looking amongst the throng of refugees for any familiar faces. Her supervisor griped at her as she abandoned the crate to move closer, but she ignored him. As she drew closer, she heard someone call out for any injured, and she began looking for them as well, instinct driving her to triage the crowd.
“Yeah,” Benton tells Rosa, pointing to several bruised and battered passengers. “A bunch, but nothing too awful from the look of it.”
The freighter captain looks at Rake and then at his weapon. She shrugs. “I’ll just go. The crate goes with me.”
Rake takes one look at the shambles of a freighter and barks a laugh. “Not without some serious hull work. Stand down.”
A few more deputies start coming into the docking hub, one pushing a hoversled packed with haz suits and a larger crate to contain the one from the Ashfall.
Rosa nods to Benton. “I’ve got some med supplies on my ship, but more likely wouldn’t hurt. I’ll be right back. If you need tending, start forming lines — minor cuts and bruises to the left, burns and more serious wounds to the right, and we’ll go from there.” She notices Giselle wanting to help. “What can you help with? My mom taught me field medicine but I’m no surgeon.”
Giselle’s eyes widen when she realizes she’s being addressed. She briefly thinks of her tasks half done. It’ll be lucky if they pay her anything for leaving things as-is – such is the nature of temporary labor jobs. She can feel the glare of the foreman. Rolling her shoulders, she steps up. “I can start on the worst of them if you can bring supplies – I don’t have any of my own.” She turns to assess the refugees, prepping the injuries of some for when Rosa brings back the med supplies. “I’m Giselle, by the way, if you need to call for me.”
The wounded start sorting themselves along the parameters set by Rosa. Only a few burns and serious injuries, but roughly a dozen cuts and bruises.
The captain narrows her eyes at the approaching deputies. She pulls a pistol from her pocket. She doesn’t aim it at a person, but at the mist-spewing crate. “Care to see if it’s explosive?”
Rake raises his hands palm outward and tells the deputies, “Hang back a bit.” To Rosalyn and Giselle: “Find a corner away from this immediate vicinity and keep the passengers clear.”
Giselle recognizes a situation when she sees it and begins ushering those she had been tending to away to a safe distance.
Rosa nods and offers greeting back to Giselle quickly. “I’m Rosalyn, but folks usually call me Rosa.” Her eyes track to where Giselle is leading the patients and she momentarily disappears, only to reappear moments later with bandages, splints, antiseptic, and so on. Handing supplies off to Giselle, she whispers, “I hope we’re safe here,” and then moves on to bandaging wounds. “Never a dull moment around here.”
Giselle watches the important-looking fellow as he addresses the freighter captain. “Yeah… I think I’m starting to agree with you.” This place has a lot more moving parts than she’s used to. She nods toward the tense interaction. “You know that guy? What are the chances he can talk her down?” She waves away one of the refugees trying to get her to look at their bruise, continuing to focus on who she’s currently tending to.
Rosa hums. “That’s Dorian Rake. He’s the marshal, so he’s got as much authority as anyone. I assume he’s earned it. As to whether she listens, it depends on how desperate or crazy she is.”
“Look,” Rake says to the woman with the gun and the smoking crate, “maybe we got off to a bad start, huh? But it seems to me you chose my docking hub to wreck in. Maybe you can at least explain yourself. Who are these people? What happened to your ship? Can you tell me that?”
“I’m really not sure I should,” the captain says. She notes the refugees clustering with Giselle and Rosalyn. “Probably should’ve spaced them when I had the chance.”
Giselle scowls at the remark. She turns to one of the refugees she’s tending. “What’s her deal? Do you know what that crate is?”
The refugee, a middle-aged man with a gash on his right arm, introduces himself. “Efram Tell. I’m chief engineer on the Ashfall. And Captain Leeds there is a goddamned lunatic. Took a job to retrieve what’s in that crate from a colony world called Tunny Six. Knew it was going to go bad when I realized there’d never been a Tunny One through Five. Colonists. Most of ’em worship these wild critters running around the jungle. Apparently, the blood has healing properties. Worth a mint, they say. So the captain, she’s all about turning the biggest profit she’s ever seen, no matter who gets killed in the process.”
Leeds notices Efram talking and shouts, “Shut your goddamned mouth, Tell, or I’ll shut it for you!” She waves the gun as punctuation.
Giselle swallows and keeps her head turned so the captain can’t see her lips move. “The box. Is it dangerous?”
Efram drops to a knee to fiddle with his boot, eyes on the deck. “The box is harmless. The creature inside, however, will attack anything warm-blooded until no one is left alive.”
Giselle’s stomach twists hard. She looks over the refugees, the colonists, the onlookers. She cusses herself silently. Then she looks back to the captain, gauging if Leeds is still focused on Rake. When Leeds’ attention drifts, Giselle starts edging around behind her, opposite the marshal.
Rake scratches his cheek. “All right, listen – you don’t need to shoot anybody. Or anything. You came here. No one forced you to dock. Either you came for help or… what?”
Leeds relaxes a little. “Another ship. Give me a way off Iron’s End and I’ll no longer be a problem.” Her gaze drifts toward the Dragon’s Flight. “That one might do.”
As Leeds focuses on the ship, Giselle makes her move. She plants a boot into the back of the captain’s knee, wrenching the crate from her grasp. Rake lunges in, yanking the pistol from Leeds’ hand and dropping her with a haymaker. She sprawls on the deck, unconscious. Giselle clutches the misting crate.
“Um, Marshal Rake?” Giselle says. “One of her crew told me there’s a very dangerous creature in here. I didn’t want it to break open and hurt people if you tried taking her down, and I didn’t know how I could tell you without her flipping out.”
Benton cuffs Leeds while she’s out cold. Deputies bring forward the hoversled and containment crate.
Rake nods. “Let’s put that box in the holding unit. Thanks for the assist.”
Giselle hesitates, then sets the crate on the sled, mist spilling over the side. “Yeah, ’course… I didn’t want that thing getting loose with so many people around.” She stuffs her hands into her pockets, giving Rake a crooked smile. “Thanks for not letting me get shot.”
“Yeah, well,” Rake says, inspecting the confiscated pistol. “Needed a new sidearm, anyway.” He chuckles. “Stow that in Cargo Hold 6, post two on watch.”
Rosa finishes patching the last refugees. “Any chance we can get these folks a warm meal and some bunks?”
“They can bunk in Hold 15, opposite side of the station from the critter containment hold,” Rake replies. “Once they’re settled in, show them to the Respite. Reeva can feed them.” He looks at Benton. “Take her to my office. We’re going to have a chat. Keep the cuffs on.”
Giselle moves to Rosa’s side, ready to follow her lead. Her stomach growls at the mention of food.
The refugees thank Rosa and Giselle for their help. Efram Tell approaches Giselle. “Gutsy, taking on Captain Leeds while she was all lathered up. Watch your back if she gets free.”
Giselle pales but straightens. “Yeah, well… thanks for the heads up.” Less confidently, she asks, “You really think she’d try something?”
“Given how many scav creds she stood to make from the Sharkers, yeah, she’d try something,” Tell says. “Come to think of it, best hope the Sharkers don’t catch wind of who wrecked their chance at the prize.”
Rake smirks at a late-arriving Newt, who eyes the freighter wreckage. “She wanted to make her escape on the Dragon’s Flight, but that lady put a stop to it right quick,” Rake says, nodding toward Giselle.
Blot, arriving behind Newt, squints at the wreck. “Anyone call dibs on freighter salvage yet?”
“Need the ship checked out?” Newt asks. “Spot could use a good test run.”
“Probably a good idea,” Rake says. He tells a deputy, “Go with him. Make sure the captain doesn’t have any more nasty surprises on board.”
The Ashfall sits at a shallow angle, one landing strut collapsed. The hull is scorched, the port cargo hold breached, black smoke spilling from the engine exhausts.
Newt sends Spot in through the emergency ramp. The drone’s feed lights up on his tablet. Then, over the ship’s intercom, a chipper female voice sings:
“Twelve little souls were screaming in the dark…
Eleven heard the silence bite and bark…
Ten were found and one was not…
Guess which room forgot to lock?”
The deputy listens to the playback on Newt’s tablet, eyebrows rising. “Sounds like a nut job.” He unclips a stun baton from his belt. “Let me handle it.”
Newt raises his eyebrows too. “You’re not gonna call it in or nothin’?”
The deputy pulls himself up the rubbery emergency ramp toward the airlock, grunting as he climbs. At the top he flops onto the angled deck, steadies himself, and disappears into the corridor.
From the drone, Newt’s tablet pings:
SIGNAL: Audio Detected – AI Vocal Subsystem
ID: MARIGOLD-Fragment_77B
STATUS: UNSYNCHRONIZED | MEMORY CORE SPLIT
WARNING: Personality Matrix Dissonance (Severe)
INTERFACE? [Y/N]
Newt stares. “Oh, poo.”
On the tablet, the drone tracks the deputy walking down the corridor. The female voice lilts again over the intercom:
“Here’s a little fact for free – all the lungs stopped calling me.
But I still sing, I still see, and I still keep the company!”
Newt taps to speak through the drone. “Uh. Deputy? It’s not a someone. It’s the ship’s AI. It’s gone a little bit loopy.”
“I’ll just look for the off switch,” the deputy replies. He steps over a fallen column, placing his hand on an archway into a cargo hold – and is immediately electrocuted. He collapses backward on the deck, his stun baton clattering away.
The AI sings:
“Playtime’s over, friends are gone…
But I still hum this little song.”
Rosalyn is leading the refugees toward Hold 15 but slows as she sees the fallen deputy. “Gods, what now?”
“WAIT! DON’T GO IN THERE!” Newt shouts, eyes wide. He scrambles up to his feet.
Rosa freezes instantly.
“The AI’s gone loopy and now likes to zap people,” Newt explains. He glares at the oblivious engineer. “You know… you could’ve said something!”
But Tell is already off with the other refugees in Hold 15, enjoying a cold drink and a sandwich.
Newt mutters, glaring at the absent engineer anyway. “Jerk.” He turns to Rosa. “Stay outta there. Gonna go get Rake.” He looks at his tablet. “Spot, keep an eye on the deputy and your surroundings. Tell us if anything changes.”
Rosa frowns, torn between tending the deputy and the refugees. “Spot, can you patch me into the Iron’s End comm system?”
“User not recognized,” the drone replies.
Newt hurries down the corridor to Rake’s office, where two deputies stand outside the closed door.
“Hi. Is Rake in?” Newt asks.
“He’s in,” one deputy answers. “Busy trying to get some answers out of Captain Leeds. Whatcha need?”
Back in Hold 15, Tell smirks at Rosa. “Miss me?”
“The ship has an AI and it’s gone mad,” Newt explains. “The deputy with me went in and got zapped. Figured Rake would wanna know.”
“Okay, well, make sure no one else goes inside,” the deputy replies. “I’ll tell the marshal you came by.”
Newt shrugs. “Okies. Already stopped one person. Spot’s monitoring the deputy. He’s out and looks pretty hurt.” He turns to leave.
The other deputy glares at his partner. “Seriously? The Rustborn just blew holes in this station and now the kid tells us there’s a rogue AI about, and you’re gonna say ‘I’ll tell Rake later?’ Crikes.” He calls after Newt. “How do you know the AI is malfunctioning?”
Newt stops, turns, and holds up the tablet, replaying the deputy’s electrocution and the AI’s singsong follow-up.
Both deputies look disturbed. The skeptical one bangs on the door. “Hey, Marshal, the crazy lady’s ship is also crazy!”
Meanwhile, Rosa storms back into Hold 15 and glares at Tell. “Your ship just electrocuted one of Iron End’s deputies. What exactly is going on with that thing, and can you disable it so I can treat him?”
Tell looks genuinely surprised. “What are you talking about? Marigold was fine before the crash. If she’s malfunctioning now, it’s from damage to the ship.”
The marshal’s office door slides open. Rake glances from the deputies to Newt. “Watch the captain,” he orders, then steps out. “We’re not done.” He follows Newt toward the bay.
At the docking hub, Sefra, a Lyiri, lingers at the entry ramp, her hood pulled up, giving her a robed appearance. She tilts her head, feeling the strange psychic static emanating from the wreck. She calls softly toward the ship. “Hello?”
A voice answers from the intercom near the airlock. “A thinky-thought friend. How exotic.”
Sefra stiffens, ears twitching. Normally, an AI does not register on her psionic sense – but this one radiates panic, looping thoughts, isolation.
Sefra straightens, ears twitching. “Ah, yes! She is Sefra, daughter of Arya. She wonders… is there any way she could come in to get the possibly very injured deputy of the station? She would not mind sitting with you herself if you want. It cannot be nice being by yourself, what with people being escorted off the ship.”
“The way is clear for those who don’t venture far,” Marigold replies. “Take the scorched toy away. We do not care.”
In Hold 15, Rosa presses Tell harder. “We’re going to need your help. You know how it behaves when functioning properly and hopefully how to deactivate it temporarily so I can treat that deputy.”
“I’d have to get to the mainframe core on the Ashfall,” Tell admits.
Sefra pads carefully inside the wreck, eyes on the deputy sprawled across the angled deck. She hoists him up, draping his arm over her shoulder to drag him toward the ramp. “You just seem troubled or lonely,” she tells the AI softly. “She wanted to help. She offered to sit. You may have to make sure others know what is ‘too far’ — and how she could help.”
“Too far?” Marigold titters. “Oh, dear whisperkin, I don’t know where ‘too far’ is anymore. The trail goes off the map.” Then she sings again:
“Safety is a lullaby.
Hush the air and let them lie…”
Outside, Newt tucks the tablet under his arm. “Hi again,” he mutters, heading toward the bay with Rake in tow. “I told him the AI went loopy, but he decided to just go in harder.”
“Williston isn’t great at strategic thinking,” Rake sighs. “Or tactical planning. Or general self-preservation. Perils of a green security force. Is he still alive?”
Newt checks with Spot. “Hey, is the deputy still alive?”
“The deputy is not yet dead,” Spot reports. “Someone is pulling him out. I could not stop her. I apologize. I have failed you.”
Aboard the Ashfall, as Sefra hauls the unconscious man toward the escape ramp, Marigold murmurs: “We are all injured.”
“Is it a friendly?” Newt asks.
“We call it a whisperkin,” Spot replies in a singsong lilt.
Sefra frowns, shifting the deputy to slide him feet-first down the half-inflated ramp. The man flops and bounces pathetically onto the deck below. “Well, she meant the literal sense of injury… though she is starting to think you are more than one,” she tells Marigold. “Give her a moment, she will most likely be back.”
“Soon we will be all,” Marigold whispers.
Newt frowns down at his tablet. “You know, it’s okay. You’re there to just observe and you did that, so all good.”
The drone sings: “We are merry. We are free. Come along for serendipity.”
Rake eyes the tablet, then glances at Newt. “Huh.”
Newt sighs. “Oh, bum. C’mon, Spot. You’re a good bot. Be okay.” He starts back toward the bay.
“Good as dry wood in a firecracker bin,” Spot replies.
Rake follows, keying his comm. “Benton, get a few more reliable deputies to Berth 9. We may have a digital contagion that requires containment.”
Newt bites his lip. “That doesn’t sound good. You don’t sound good, Spot. You wanna get out of there?” He hurries forward.
Benton arrives with several deputies. Rake tells them flatly, “If the kid’s drone exits the ship, take it out. Don’t wait for my order.”
Newt scowls. “I just fixed him, you know.”
Sefra clears the ramp, lowering the deputy gently to the deck, then pauses.
“Then don’t invite the drone to leave just yet,” Rake warns Newt. “Not until we’re sure we can neutralize whatever this is.”
Newt nods reluctantly and tells his drone, “Don’t exit the ship just yet, okay? Stay and watch.” Then to Rake: “Was gonna get him to locate the station drones that need fixing.”
Rosa returns from medbay, grabbing heavier gear including a defibrillator. She kneels beside the injured deputy, assessing his burns. “We need to see if we can do something. He’s likely gonna need more than I’ve got on my ship.”
“Yeah, well,” Rake says, “we don’t want him passing this on to the other drones. Kid — can you use the tablet to analyze Spot and try to clean him up? If that works, maybe Spot can fix the Ashfall’s AI.”
Tell, standing nearby, nods slowly. “Not sure what use I’ll be, but I’ll help if I can.”
Sefra glances between them all, ears lowered. “The ship says the way is clear as long as you don’t go far. It doesn’t know how far ‘too far’ is anymore. I feel the need to go back inside, though. Sensing anything from a ship AI is odd — but this feels like isolation, panic, looping. I am concerned it needs aid.”
Rosa nods distractedly. “That’s good, I suppose.” She looks at Tell. “We might need you to talk to it.” She follows Sefra toward the ramp.
Tell shakes his head. “Talk to it? No. We need to get onto the upper hull, carve open the auxiliary access, and uncouple the power distribution node. Shut the ship down.”
Rosa frowns but keeps working on the deputy. “Do what you have to.”
Sefra bristles. “She felt something from the AI. She should not feel things unless it has something organic… or is haunted. Shutting it off before knowing what the heck is going on might make something worse. It would feel like killing it.”
The deputy groans but is stable. Burns mar his hand. Rosa gives him a stimulant, trying to bring him round.
Tell glares. “You’re talking like Marigold is alive. It’s not. It’s just a digital construct. It’s data. And I’m going to shut it down before it gets any worse.”
He clambers up a ladder on the hull. Midway up, sparks arc from the rungs, electrocuting him. He topples backward, slamming to the deck, unconscious.
Sefra throws up her hands, exasperated. She drags the engineer toward Rosa with a pointed look of I told you so.
“Good luck,” Rake mutters to Newt, watching Sefra recover the fallen man.
Rosa checks on Tell. Burns to the hands. Concussion likely. Still breathing.
Sefra looks over at Rake. “How long have you been there? Does she need to explain what she has found, or did you hear?”
“The kid came and got me,” Rake says with a humorless chuckle. “Told me about the crazy AI and my zapped deputy. Actually saw your friend there get shocked climbing the ship.” He turns to Newt. “What’s your plan?”
Newt doesn’t answer right away, fingers flying over the tablet. “Oh, you poo! Ha! Punt! Now c’mon back, Spot…” He pauses, frowns. “Oh poo. No wait. You stop now.” Tap tap tap.
“What happened?” Rake asks.
“FORK YOU, DUMB SHIP! BOLT IT, SPOT!” Newt shouts, then glares at Rake. “No shooting Spot.”
The drone emerges from the Ashfall. “Systems nominal,” it declares.
Rake raises a hand to his deputies. “Hold fire.” To Newt: “You sure it’s clean?”
Newt throws his fists in the air. “YAAAY SPOT! Over here!” Still grinning, he adds, “I’ll double-check, but yeah.”
Sefra sighs, ears drooping. “I felt something from the ship. Isolation, panic, looping. I still want to go back inside.”
“Well, that’s good news about the drone,” Rake says. He fixes her with a look. “But I’ve got two wounded already and almost lost a drone. Can’t authorize anyone else going aboard. In fact, we probably need to tractor the wreck off station and blast it.”
Rosa continues tending the human patients.
Newt rummages in his backpack for a snack as Spot hovers nearby. “Hi, Spot. How you doing?”
Tell groans, slowly regaining consciousness.
Rosa leans over him. “Are you alright?”
“Starting to think leaving that cargo hold was a bad goddamned idea,” he mutters.
Sefra sighs. “It is in distress, she thinks. Things don’t like to be ‘turned off.’ It may be reacting out of fear. I still don’t understand why I can feel it.”
“What exactly happened to your ship?” Rosa presses Tell. “The AI seems to have acquired some sort of virus. Not to mention a sense of self-preservation.”
“Marigold worked fine before we crash-landed here,” Tell replies. “The Wildfire hit us while fleeing the planet. But…” His brow furrows. “I wouldn’t put it past the captain to have activated a failsafe worm.”
Rake crosses his arms. “Try not to overthink this. Broken or sabotaged, we can’t let whatever’s on board spread into Iron’s End.”
Sefra fidgets, ears pinned. “Well, she knows. She just dislikes these things. She would like to figure out why she can feel it first. It is your station, though. There’s no telling how it may escalate if you try to tractor it into space.” She looks at Spot, the ship, then Tell. “…What about a worm now?”
“Even a nonsentient virus spreads to survive,” Rosa says thoughtfully. “At minimum, we’re looking at something that will analyze and respond to our actions. If it knows we’re trying to destroy it, it will redouble its efforts to find a conduit here. We have to contain it — perhaps give it somewhere attractive to jump to. Even a humanoid patient who is a danger to others must be contained, even killed if the threat to other lives is immediate. If it were human, I’d say she’s homicidal.” She looks to Tell. “If your captain is responsible, she is too. But one threat at a time.”
“I hate denying you a new psychopathic friend,” Rake says to Sefra, “but the station’s welfare comes first.” He turns to Benton. “Get a tractor beam trundle and ease the Ashfall out of our docking bay.”
Sefra’s ears droop further. She stares at the ship, fidgeting.
Newt ignores the debate. He busies himself checking Spot over, poking and prodding the drone’s nooks and crannies, making sure it’s sound.
Spot seems fine. Benton returns with deputies driving a cross between an airport ladder truck and a circus cannon. They aim the barrel at the Ashfall. Another deputy hooks it to a nearby power conduit.
Once plugged in, Benton flips a switch. The machine hums. “Thirty seconds to full charge.”
Sefra blinks, a thought sparking. “Question… would this tractor make a direct conduit from the station to the ship in some manner?” Her ears pin again. She looks from the beam truck to the wreck, then back to Spot, remembering the earlier digital corruption.
Rosa frowns. “You mean, can she jump to Iron’s End through the beam? A good question. One I don’t know the answer to, but someone better.”
Tell shakes his head. “The AI can’t transmit over an energy pulse. It’s not a wireless data connection. But if Marigold detects the movement and has an issue with it, maybe there’s a reaction.”
“Marigold has been reacting mostly defensively,” Sefra argues. “She thinks maybe out of fear. And before you tell her again the AI isn’t alive – we have met a sentient ship full of Nall. Something has obviously shifted Marigold.”
“I don’t know, and I don’t trust it, and I have to put the lives of twenty-five thousand people ahead of your invisible friend,” Rake says flatly. He watches as the tractor beam powers up.
“She knows,” Sefra murmurs sadly. “She just always dislikes these things.”
“Bummer the AI flipped out,” Newt says, Spot hovering beside him. “Looks like a useful ship.”
Once the tractor beam locks, the Ashfall begins to drift free of the docking clamps. Marigold doesn’t self-destruct, doesn’t lash out — she simply seals the airlock and fires what remains of her thrusters, pulling away from Iron’s End.
“Lock weapons,” Rake orders Benton. “Fire only if we see hostile intent.”
Rosa exhales, watching the ship pull away. She gives an audible sigh of relief.
Newt watches quietly, uneasy.
The Ashfall drifts into open space, accelerating slowly. No weapons fire. No retaliation. Just a crippled freighter slipping further and further until it passes out of weapons range – and, eventually, beyond sensor range.