Beyond the Dragon's Gate

Anna Kim has been kept in isolation on the Undying Pyre, a star fortress commanded by the Marshal of the Harmonious Stars, after the military's ship AIs began malfunctioning — taking on names of their own and, it turns out, killing themselves one by one. The Marshal wants Anna to communicate mind-to-mind with the surviving AIs to learn why, a process that killed her academic partner the last time it was attempted. A short, dense piece of military science fiction about what it means for a mind to be property.