Our heroine and her sarky AI that she's co-incidentally carrying find reports of strange survivors drifting in open space and shortly the Neighborhood starts going downhill.
...........................................................................................................

Roche's mission is to carry an AI back from the Transcended humans who made it, to her Intelligence HQ. However the spaceship she's on gets ambushed by the local empire next door (also human of a different political persuasion) and she's forced to crashland on the nearest planet. This is a desert prison world, but perhaps the locals can be persuaded to help overthrow the Enforcement patrols and gain escape for themselves too. Along the way she picks up a telepath and strangely powerful survivor Crane, about whom no-one knows anything very much, including himself.

The setting is blunter than I remember, somewhat short of a fully envisaged world, even Roche herself seems told a little more often than shown. But it's a clever premise with interesting possibilities. The AI is in fact sufficiently powerful that many of actions rightly feel duex et machina, but this is (for once) reasonable, and limtis become found. ( )

ZB13