Angus is frustrated by the many tests he undergoes (I'm not much of an Angus apologist, but I don't blame him in this case) and bitterly resents those particular tests that prove he cannot harm members of the UMCP. Angus is prevented from falling into despair by a passionate fear which keeps him hoping for an escape route from being controlled. He is looking forward to having only Milos Taverner to deal with once he leaves the UMCPHQ.Get it over with, he snarled at Hashi Lebwohl's staff, even though they couldn't hear what he said in the silence of his mind. Let me out of here.
Ignoring him, they did their jobs with meticulous care. In theory, their control over him was perfect. The computer between his shoulder blades mastered him absolutely. Nevertheless they worked to ensure that he was as helpless in practice as in theory; that any hope he held out for himself was mere illusion.
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While Lebwohl's people tested him, he also tested himself.
Eventually he learned that his programming was in fact all that prevented him from getting away. In every other sense, he might as well have been designed and built to break out of UMCPHQ. The new dimension of his sight enabled him to identify and analyze alarms and locks. With his lasers, he could charge circuitry or cut open doors--or kill guards. He was as strong as a great ape; as quick as a microprocessor. And his computer recorded everything for him. In fact, it was more useful than an eidetic memory, since it held a wide variety of independent databases which were gradually made accessible to him as his programmers trusted their control over him more and more.
If he'd been his own master, he could have dismantled his prison and fled.
But his zone implants held him. He was required to wait.
One morning a group of doctors and techs walk into Angus' room, and he is ordered to sit on the edge of his bed and assume stasis. The doctors swab Angus' back, make an incision, switch out his personal datacore from his back and replace it with another one, and disconnect him from all external equipment. His stasis is discontinued, and he's given a gray shipsuit and boots to don. He puts them on and lays on his bunk to await whatever's next.
UMCP Enforcement Division director Min Donner then walks into the room, seeming hawk-like and balanced for either relaxation or violence. A glowering Milos follows Min into the room. Angus tells Milos he looks like crap, and Milos orders Angus to apologize. Angus apologizes because he must, but Min warns Milos Angus isn't to be used like that. Milos smirks that he's planning to get satisfaction out of controlling Angus, and Angus calls Milos a traitor. Min orders them to shut up and to follow her out of the room. They comply.
They pass out of the surgical wing of UMCPDA section, then leave Data Acquisition altogether to travel through the Enforcement Division section of the UMCPHQ space station. Angus is plotting how he can take advantage of situations unforeseen by his programmers, and is looking forward to an opportunity to rid himself of Milos. They enter UMCPHQ's Administration section, and toward a door with a sign identifying a conference room behind it. Min warns Milos to keep his speech simple so he'll live longer. Then she opens the door for Milos and Angus to go in.
Angus found himself in a room like an interrogation chamber in an old video. Lit by a single light, a long table surrounded by hard chairs stood in the center of the space. The light was so bright, so narrowly focused, that the middle of the table gleamed as if it were hot; but its ends remained dim, shrouded, and the walls were barely visible. A quick glance told him that the corners were thick with monitors of all kinds. However, none of them was active. Apparently no one would eavesdrop on or record him this time.
That made his anxiety worse.
Min Donner pointed him into a chair within the circle of light. Milos she instructed to take a seat opposite him. Then she sat down at one end of the table. In the gloom, she looked as hard and unreachable as her reputation.
"This is fun," Angus muttered. "What do you want us to do now? Make friends?"
Min watched him from the dimness. Milos' dull gaze revealed nothing.
Impelled by mounting apprehension, Angus demanded, "Did I tell you how he betrayed Com-Mine? How he and that glamorous fucker, Succorso, set me up? Hell, if more cops were like him, there wouldn't be anything left for me to do."
The ED director didn't move a muscle.
"Personally," another voice remarked, "I would be more interested in hearing how you acquired a name for such despicable crimes without accumulating evidence against yourself in your ship's datacore."
Angus jerked his head to look at the other end of the table.
A man sat there.
Angus hadn't heard him come in. And he definitely hadn't been in that chair a moment earlier. Yet he was there now. Maybe he'd been hiding under the table. Or maybe the purpose of the contrasting dazzle and gloom was to let him come and go with as much stealth as he pleased.
He was hard to see, but Angus made out enough detail to perfect his fear.
The man had a chest as thick as a barrel, short, sturdy arms, strong fingers.
Despite the dimness, the lines and angles of his face appeared as exact as if they'd been machine-tooled; his mouth, jaw, and forehead might have been cut from a block of steel. Gray hair uncompromisingly cut spread stiffly across his scalp. Only the crookedness of his nose moderated his features: it gave the impression that it had been broken several times.
Glints of light reflected piercingly from his single eye, the right one. Over the socket of the left he wore a synthetic patch glued to his skin.
Warden Dios.
UMCP director.
In effect, he was the most powerful man in human space. Holt Fasner, UMC CEO, wielded the political influence, the economic muscle. But the fighting force intended to protect humankind from the Amnion took its orders from Warden Dios.
Oh, shit.
The eye patch Warden Dios wears is how Angus recognizes him. Dios wears that patch to cover the prosthetic eye that allows him to perceive truth or falsehood in the people talking to him. Angus nervously claims to Dios to have interrupted scan to keep information from going to his ship Bright Beauty's datacore. Warden counters that the interrupts would have been recorded in the datacore. Warden asks Milos what he found in that datacore, and Milos answers glitches were found that were assumed to be interrupts. Warden remarks with a smile that the glitches fortunately kept Angus from being executed, so that he can now be used for the UMCP's mission.Warden proceeds to brief Angus and Milos on their mission: they are to operate a Needle-class gap-scout ship called Trumpet and take it to Billingate on Thanatos Minor, where they will work to blow up Billingate. Warden explains that such a covert strike is necessary in order to avoid the appearance of treaty violation with the Amnion.
Milos states to Warden that he feels he's the wrong man for the job, being unexperienced with covert operations, combat, and deception. Warden tells Milos that he's the perfect cover for explaining how Angus broke out of jail.
Angus snaps that Milos is the one he'd chose to help him get free of UMCP control, and he demands to know why it's so urgent to destroy Billingate now. Dios responds that Nick and Morn are arriving at Billingate, having spent some time in forbidden space. Angus worries he may be intended to rescue Morn, and he fears her revealing his crimes even as he desires her company. The thought of Morn is enough to distract Angus from realizing that Warden hasn't made clear what's so urgent about blowing up Billingate.
Warden orders Min to take Milos to Trumpet, while he talks to Angus alone for a few minutes. Min complies. Warden demands Angus tell the truth that the glitches are data elisions rather than scan interrupts. Angus tells Warden that Warden's crazy. Angus argues that he could make a fortune editing datacores for illegals at Billingate if he was capable of data elision. Warden retorts that Angus hates other illegals too much to help them in such a manner, regardless of the profit to be made. Then Warden says it's just as well that he doesn't know how Angus can edit a ship's datacore, as the knowledge is too explosive.
Then Warden orders Angus to stasis, moves to Angus' chair, pulls down his shipsuit, cuts into Angus' back, and removes his body datacore to replace it with another datacore. Then Warden bandages Angus' back and pulls the shipsuit back up. Warden then walks around the table to the point opposite Angus' chair, and reaches across the table and shifts Angus so Angus can see him. Dios sits down and faces Angus.
Angus can't react to these statements, so he just waits until Warden tells him to end stasis. Then Warden leads Angus to the docks so that Angus and Milos can board Trumpet."Angus," Warden said distinctly, facing Angus with his tooled jaw and his human eye, "I've replaced your datacore. You know that--your mind is still alert, even if you can't move. You won't be able to tell the difference. In any case, most of the changes are extremely subtle. But even if they weren't, you wouldn't recognize them because you can't compare the two programs. As far as you're concerned, the datacore you have now is the only one that exists."
Angus blinked because his brain stem decided he should. His heart and lungs continued functioning. Something in Dios' manner told him that what he was about to hear was crucial, the crux of the whole situation.
"I wonder," the director continued, musing as if to himself, "if you understand what we've done to you. We call the process 'welding.' When a man or woman is made a cyborg voluntarily, that's 'wedding.' 'Welding' is involuntary.
"Technically, we've done you a favor. That's obvious. You're stronger now, faster, more capable, effectively more intelligent. Not to mention the fact that you're still alive, when you should have been executed years ago. And all you've had to give up is your freedom of choice.
"But I'm not talking about technical questions. In every other way, we've committed a crime against you." As he spoke, his tone became more and more like his earlier smile--the tone of a man who couldn't begin to express how intensely he loathed his power, or perhaps his obligation, to inflict condemnation. "In essence, you're no longer a human being. You're a machina infernalis--an infernal device. We've deprived you of choice--and responsibility.
"Angus, we've committed a crime against your soul. You may be 'the slime of the universe,' as Godsen says, but you don't deserve this.
"It's got to stop." Dios folded his hands together on the table as if he were about to pray. "Crimes like this one--or like withholding the immunity drug. They've got to stop."
Warden's speech to Angus was unexpected, but it makes me think that he wants to fight the corruption at the UMCP, with his mention of withholding the immunity drug being an example of something that's got to stop. But then that leaves the question: who is forcing Warden to outwardly accept the corruption?
right now I cant 
