Shelly was the Librarian, and she hated it.

The Library was what they called the storage complex for souls. Or at least, the transcoded neural nets of Marauder victims who had been copied and stored when their bodies had been processed into fuel. But “souls” was easier to say.

Every so often, the Aegis managed to “liberate” a Marauder stronghold, and the soul matrices were transferred to Aegis Prime. They had over 12,000 of them now. The problem was what to do with them.

Theoretically, Aegis could place the souls into more of its automechs, or even clone new bodies for them. But even if they had the funds to build them, the UN would never allow them to field 12,000 cars —and while the anti-cloning laws could be skirted in dire need, they couldn’t get away with making 12,000 of those, either.

And the souls were too valuable like this, anyway, Shelly thought bitterly. Because even if Aegis was too moral to make them, it could still use their knowledge and processor power exactly as the Marauders did.