Fugitive Telemetry

Chapter Four

WATCHING ME TRY TO get the transport’s lock open, Ratthi said, “You don’t think we should call Station Security?”

I had my hand on the entry panel. The transport wanted to let me in but couldn’t get the lock open. I was trying to force an emergency open through the transport’s feed but the connections were inactive and it was like groping around in a giant bin of tiny broken drones for the one that was still intact. I said, “No. They told me they didn’t need my help.”

“Did they tell you that?” Ratthi said. His expression was doubtful. “What exactly did they say?”

I pulled it from memory. “They said, ‘We’ll call you if we need you.’”

Gurathin said, “I can’t tell if that’s you being passive aggressive or you being willfully obtuse.”

I would be more pissed off about him saying that except a) he was right about the passive aggressive thing and b) he was standing where I had told him to stand, blocking the nearest port camera view of what I was doing.

Ratthi was on a rest break after finishing his work for the last survey and getting ready for the next. I had been lucky to catch him on the way back after a meal appointment with his human friends. Gurathin didn’t have any other human friends from what I could tell but he had been taking a cycle rest period, reading in one of the lounge areas with lots of plant biomes.

“It’s definitely not willfully obtuse,” Ratthi told him. He told me, “I do think we should call Station Security.”

“The transport said I could come in,” I said. “But it’s too damaged to open the door.”

“So we should tell Station Security—”

“It might be just a maintenance issue, which would fall under the Port Authority’s remit,” I said. I almost had it. “We won’t know until we get inside.”

Gurathin sighed. “You sound like Pin-Lee.”

“No, Pin-Lee is much worse than this. And if it was her, she would be swearing at us by now,” Ratthi said. He asked me, “I’ve always wondered, did you learn to swear from her or did you already know how? Because you two use a lot of the same—”

I finally managed to get the transport’s mangled feed to trigger the hatch to open. I stepped back and pulled Gurathin out of the way of the port camera view, so whoever was watching could see the hatch wasn’t damaged, that it had been opened from the inside. I’d managed to keep the transport from automatically triggering any station alerts, too. So even though it was me, we should have a few minutes to take a look around and pull info from the transport’s systems before a human from either Station Security or the Port Authority showed up.

Ratthi craned his neck to see inside the hatch, but let me walk in first. “Are you sure no one’s aboard?” he asked as he followed me through the lock.

I was not. There shouldn’t be, but I hadn’t been able to get a confirmation on that from the transport. I sent my drones ahead and said, “Stay behind me.”

“This is ill-advised,” Gurathin muttered, but he clomped along after Ratthi.

On visual and via drone cam I was looking at small low-ceilinged corridors, dingy and scuffed but mostly clean, worn gray and brown upholstery on the seats along the bulkhead in the small lounge we passed through. Lights were up, life support set for humans, but the transport was clearly designed mostly for cargo shipping with passengers as an afterthought. Ahead off the main corridor, my drones encountered a transport maintenance drone, wobbling in the air with its spidery arms drooping, beeping pathetically.

“Do you smell something bad?” Ratthi frowned.

Gurathin said, “Something’s happened to the waste recycling.”

The air cleaners were working but the filters needed maintenance the transport couldn’t perform. Or maybe it had stopped deliberately, hoping to try to alert someone.

The limping ship’s drone swerved away from my drones and led them through a short upward passage and into the main crew lounge. Right, so this wasn’t a recycler problem.

I followed the drones but stopped in the hatchway to the lounge compartment. Ratthi and Gurathin halted behind me in confusion. I had trained them too well to step past me in a situation like this, walking into a strange place, but Ratthi peered around my side and Gurathin stood on his tiptoes to see over my shoulder.

It was a fairly standard lounge with padded seats along the walls and quiescent display surfaces floating in the air. In the far wall, a set of steps wound up to the cabin area just above. On the floor in the middle were dried stains of various disgusting fluids that tend to come out of human bodies when they die. (I also have fluids that come out of me when I’m injured; they aren’t any less disgusting, just different.) (But I also have fewer places for fluids to come out of, unless you count open wounds.) (Right, this is completely irrelevant.)

And sitting on the curved couch along the bulkhead was a utilitarian blue bag with a shoulder strap.

“That’s blood, and—” Ratthi stopped as the realization hit him. “Oh no.”

“Was someone ill there?” Gurathin asked, still trying to see. (Note to self: tell someone to tell Gurathin his vision augments need adjusting.)

“Someone was dead there,” Ratthi told him. He stepped back, worried and clearly upset. “Now can we call Station Security?”

My drones had just completed a fast scan/search of the transport and I knew it was unoccupied; whoever had killed Lutran—hopefully it was Lutran who had been killed here and not some other human we hadn’t found yet—was long gone. The damage to the transport’s systems meant there was no chance of retrieving video or audio without some extensive memory repair. There was nothing else here we could do.

I said, “Now you can call Station Security.”

Station Security swooped in like they were a big deal and not hours too late to catch anybody, and made us wait outside the transport’s hatch in the embarkation hall. It had taken seven minutes for them to arrive, and I had been able to collect a lot of visual and scan data in that time, including the download of the bio scan filters that Ratthi had suggested. I felt we had done a complete job, even with Gurathin distracting us by standing in the hatchway yelling at us to get out of the ship.

A bot that worked for the Port Authority had shown up before Station Security, pinged me, and then it just stood there. I’d seen it in the embarkation area a lot, and I’d never seen it do anything but just stand there.

(I had considered leaving a few drones hidden strategically around the transport to keep track of the investigation. But I had seen the thorough imaging scans they had done of the area where Lutran was found, and if the drones were discovered it would have been humiliating. I felt like I was at least one if not two points up on Station Security at this moment and I wanted to keep it that way.)

The initial response team was three Station Security officers and a Port Authority supervisor. They had taken a verbal report from Gurathin while eyeing me like they expected him to turn me in for whatever I had probably done. The first officer, feed ID Doran, said, “How do you know there’s no one on the transport?”

Ratthi and Gurathin looked at me, and I said, “I checked the transport for possible fatalities and injured crew or passengers in need of assistance, as well as potential hostiles. It’s clear.”

The expression range was dubious to skeptical.

Gurathin made an exasperated noise and said, “That’s what SecUnits do, that’s their job. Why don’t you do your jobs?”

“That’s what we’re here for,” Officer Doran said, beginning to fluster.

I said, “Station Security Initial Incident Assessment procedures require one of you to view and verify the scene before calling additional assistance from the Major Incident Team, if the surroundings are safe.” Not long after I’d first gotten here, I’d downloaded all the Station Security procedures so I’d know what I was dealing with. I added, “The surroundings are safe.”

Ratthi had to fold his lips almost completely inside his mouth to keep from reacting.

“We know that.” Officer Doran said to the Port Authority supervisor, “We’ll go in. You wait out here.” The Port Authority supervisor rolled her eyes and went to go stand with the Port Authority bot.

They had gone in, and after three minutes, came out again and stood around talking on their feeds. The PA supervisor started to set up a feed marker perimeter to warn off the hauler bots. The PA bot followed her around, which while not exactly helping, at least was better than just standing there.

Then Indah showed up with the same group of techs and officers who had been at the Lutran site. A second response team from the Port Authority, this one with more bots and different techs, showed up to mill around. Ratthi said they were here to assess the damage to the transport and try to repair it. (Apparently on Preservation this would be free? Gurathin said it fell under what they called a traveler’s aid rule. In the Corporation Rim, the transport would have had to sit there damaged and racking up fines until its owner or an owner’s rep arrived.) Station Security told the PA team to hold off, since the damage to the transport was evidence and would have to be documented before it could be repaired.

Gurathin kept saying we should leave, but I didn’t and Ratthi didn’t, so he stayed too, shifting around uneasily and occasionally pacing. “You don’t think this is related to GrayCris, do you?” Ratthi had asked me after he had called Station Security.

“It’s a possibility,” I said. I explained my idea about Lutran being another corporate agent who had been killed by a GrayCris agent. “But without corroborating evidence, the threat assessment is undetermined.” I could come up with scenarios where a GrayCris agent would have reason to kill another passenger on their transport, but without evidence I was just making up shit. (If I’m going to make up shit I’d rather do it about something else besides how a human got murdered by another human.)

“Then why was this Lutran killed?” Gurathin asked, his big brow creased.

“We don’t have enough data to make a guess yet,” I said, not as patiently as would have been required by my governor module. “There are too many factors involved, like did Lutran and the killer know each other before they boarded the transport. We don’t even know yet if the killer was another passenger or someone who was invited aboard, or who managed to trick or force the transport into letting them aboard. We don’t know how they moved the body from the transport to the station mall junction. We don’t know the motive, if it was corporate espionage, theft, a fight, or even a random opportunity killing.” We didn’t know shit, basically.

Because this is Preservation, Ratthi said, “What is a random opportunity killing?”

“When a human kills another human just because they can.” It’s also the kind of thing that’s much more common on media than it was in real life, but still.

Neither one of them seemed happy with that answer. I actually wasn’t either. From everything I’d seen in the media, assholes who just like to kill other humans are hard to catch. But without more info, I thought it was more likely there was a reason that Lutran had been killed, and that it would have to do with who Lutran was and why he was traveling. Threat assessment agreed.

Besides, as soon as Station Security got off their collective ass, we’d—they’d have the surveillance video from the transit ring cameras.

Indah stepped out of the hatch, speaking to another officer I hadn’t seen before, with a private feed ID. Then she walked over toward us, trailed by the officer and Tural, the tech who had been trying and failing to identify Lutran.

Something in their body language made Ratthi step up beside me. It occurred to me Gurathin was maybe right for once and we should have left. It would have possibly been another point up for me, to send the report about the incident to Station Security and then be back in the hotel or Mensah’s office acting like it was just another day by the time Station Security arrived at the transport. But it was too late now.

Indah stopped just out of what humans would consider comfortable conversational distance, looking at me. Then she hesitated, glanced with some annoyance at Gurathin and Ratthi, then back at me, with more annoyance. Tural was looking at Indah, and a little agitated like they wanted to talk and were just waiting for permission. The other officer was trying to do a stony stare at me but good luck with that, you need an opaque helmet to really make that work. Indah said, “Officer Aylen, this is… SecUnit.” She didn’t quite stumble over it. “And Survey Academics Ratthi and Gurathin, our other two witnesses.”

Gurathin said, “We didn’t really witness anything. I don’t think we have much to tell you.” Gurathin seems to hate talking to strange humans almost as much as I do. And he wasn’t wrong, he and Ratthi hadn’t seen anything that I didn’t have video of. But him talking gave me a chance to work around the privacy seal on Aylen’s feed ID and see she was listed as a Special Investigator. I didn’t know what that meant, but it was a good job title and honestly it made me a little jealous.

Indah was looking at me again. I hadn’t said anything because what was I supposed to say at this point? Oh, I guess I could have said “hello.” Well, it was too late now. Indah said, “I saw the report and I know how you identified Lutran as our deceased. We got verification from Medical on the body scan right after that. But how did you know Lutran was a passenger on this transport?”

Ratthi had shifted from acting defensive to acting like this was a meeting we were all having. He said, “So it was him who was killed in there, then? The person who was found?”

Tural said, “Unless it was spoofed, there was a DNA match. Spoofing isn’t unlikely, but in this case—” Indah glared at Tural and they shut up.

I answered, “The transport identified him when I asked it. With its systems damaged it was unable to report the onboard incident to the Port Authority.”

Tural was nodding. “The transport’s giving us nothing but error codes. The analysts are going to try to do a restart but they’ll copy the memory core so they can get the latest passenger manifest, and restore if anything—”

Indah gave Tural a “not now” eyebrow scrunch and they shut up again. She asked me, “But how did you know it was this particular transport?”

“I didn’t, I was checking all the transports.” Then I added, “That’s why it took so long.” Yes, I was rubbing it in.

Indah squinted one eye. Aylen looked me over again in that way humans do when they’re trying to intimidate you and they fail to understand you’ve spent the entire length of your previous existence being treated like a thing and so one more impersonal once-over is not exactly going to impress you. Then Aylen said, “One point I’d like to get out of the way. Did you have anything to do with this?”

Wow, really? I’m better at keeping my expression neutral after so much practice, but I was surprised at how pissed off it made me. Compared to a lot of things that had happened to me, you’d think it wouldn’t matter. But here, now, for some reason, it mattered.

Ratthi made an angry snorty noise. Gurathin was grimly staring up at the arch of the transit ring’s ceiling; they had both suspected this was coming, that’s why Gurathin had wanted us to leave and then had stayed around himself when we wouldn’t. I said, “No, I didn’t. Why would I?”

Aylen was watching me intently. “I don’t like having private security with its own agenda aboard this station.”

Oh wait, she thought it was GrayCris. That maybe I had found out Lutran was a GrayCris agent and killed him, and now I was trying to lead the investigation along a specific path, using my two oblivious human friends as cover.

So, the problem was, that wasn’t an unlikely idea at all. It was something I might have to do if I did find a GrayCris operative on the station. Which meant I had to answer very carefully.

There were a lot of humans lying to each other on The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon, and I knew outright angry denials tended to sound incredibly guilty, even though they were often an innocent human’s first impulse. You wouldn’t think lying would be a problem for me, after 35,000 plus hours lying about not being a rogue SecUnit while on company contracts, then the whole lying about not being an augmented human and lying about being a non-rogue SecUnit with a fake human supervisor. But the last two hadn’t exactly been failure-free; what worked best was misdirection and not letting myself get caught in the wrong place at the right time, and making sure no humans ever thought about asking the wrong questions.

Misdirection, let’s try that. “I would have either disposed of the body so it was never found, or made it look like an accident.”

Indah frowned, and Aylen’s brow creased, and they exchanged a look. Eyeing me, Indah said, “How would you dispose of a body so it wouldn’t be found?”

I’m not the public library feed, Senior Officer, go do your own research. I said, “If I told you, then you might find all the bodies I’ve already disposed of.”

“It’s joking.” Ratthi managed to sound like he completely believed that. “That’s how it looks when it’s joking.” He sent me on the feed, Stop joking.

Gurathin sighed and rubbed his face and looked off into the distance, like he regretted all his life choices that had led to him standing here right now. On our private feed connection, he sent, Or you could just show them where you were when this person was being killed.

(Yeah, on reflection I think I misdirected in the wrong direction. It was the kind of thing a human or augmented human could get away with saying, not a rogue SecUnit. Even if they knew I was just being an asshole, I’d made them wonder, I’d put the idea in their heads.)

(And now if I did have to kill some GrayCris agents, I’d have to be really careful about what I did with the bodies.)

(It was probably better to make it look like an accident.)

I hated to admit it but Gurathin had a point. I pulled the right section of video from my drone archive. (I don’t keep all my drone video because it would take up storage space that could be used for media, but I run an analysis of it for relevant stuff before I delete it. I was behind and still had the last 72 hours stored.) I clipped it around the relevant section and sent it to Indah and Aylen.

The clip was from one of Mensah’s sentry drones parked up on the ceiling of her council office. I was sitting on a corner of her desk and she was pacing. I’d muted the audio; her complaining that Councilor Sonje was an ass was proprietary data. I let the clip run, showing I’d had an alert from another sentry drone, warned Mensah, and got off her desk in time to be standing by the wall when Councilor Ephraim walked in. Then I stopped the clip.

So that was one planetary leader plus one councilor who had seen me at the council offices across the station when Lutran was being killed.

Indah sighed (yes, she did that a lot around me) and said, “Continue, Officer Aylen.”

Aylen said, “The reason I had to ask was this,” and via the feed she sent me a video clip.

It was the video from the transit ring surveillance camera. The clip had been processed already but the timestamp was intact. It showed the transport’s lock, and Lutran walking up to it, asking for entrance, and being admitted. The hatch closed after him. I fast-forwarded through the video, but there was nothing else. No one else approached the transport’s hatch, no one had entered the transport after Lutran. I said, “There was someone already in there?”

My drones showed me Aylen’s grim expression. “No. No one other than Lutran ever entered or exited that transport.”

It had to be a hack. It wasn’t like the way I removed myself from video surveillance—I did that from inside the system, removing the images of me and substituting images taken before or after I walked into view. It was nearly seamless, but it was easier to spot than this. The person who had done this had known the video might be checked by humans, not just a monitoring system.

If it was a person. Could GrayCris have sent another SecUnit? Or a CombatUnit?

My organic skin actually had a prickling reaction like from sudden exposure to cold air. Could they afford that kind of firepower just for revenge? I checked Mensah’s drones, and tightened the drone sentry perimeter around the admin office block anyway. I didn’t want to scare her with something that might just be me being nervous.

(Ratthi was asking Indah, “Can I see too?”

“No,” she told him.)

I pulled the clip apart to look at its underlying code, but it didn’t tell me anything. Aylen said, “From the report on how you rescued Dr. Mensah from the corporate station, you can do something similar?”

I said, “I can, but only under certain circumstances.” Circumstances which I am not going to explain to you, Special Investigator. “Is your security system compromised?” It was kind of an urgent question.

Indah was watching me closely. “Our analysts say the PA’s system hasn’t been hacked. They think it could be a jamming device.”

Which was good, because that meant it wasn’t a construct. A construct would use a hack, not a tool. “I don’t know of anything that could do that.” I started a search against my own archives, which included the tech catalogs I’d used to pick out the new drones Dr. Mensah had bought for me. “And the Corporation Rim runs on surveillance, there’s no way a tool like this wouldn’t be banned there. At least, banned for commercial sale.” My search wasn’t finding any results. The only jamming devices I’d seen like this were in the media, secret weapons or magical artifacts. “It might come from outside the Rim.”

“So it would be an espionage tool.” Aylen glanced at Indah, who looked grim.

I started to say that they never used SecUnits for espionage, and then realized I didn’t actually know that for sure. Take away our armor and alter our appearance and give us the right module…

There was a lot I didn’t know for sure.

I am going to have to stop scaring the shit out of myself.

I asked, “Did they use this when they removed the body from the transport?”

“No.” Aylen sent me another clip. “A simpler method.”

On this video there was no attempt to hide what was happening. A floating delivery cart arrived, and the transport’s hatch opened to let it in. Seven minutes later, the hatch opened again and the cart floated out. Well, that sucked because it was so obvious. It looked like a standard large cart, a three-meter square box used for deliveries around the port. I said, “The subject is in the cart with the body. Who called for the cart?”

Aylen said, “We’re looking for the cart now. But it’s likely the perpetrator would have cleaned it. We already know they have access to a sterilizer to remove contact DNA. And it’s unlikely they used their own ID to request it.”

This sucks more. All you needed to get a cart was an address, and the subject could have used the transport’s lock ID.

Gurathin said, “Then why didn’t this person clean the transport? If they had, we wouldn’t have known this was where what’s his name was killed. We’d know the transport was damaged, that was all.”

It was a good question and I had a good answer. “They meant to. They thought they had more time to come back.”

Indah made a thoughtful noise. Aylen was still eyeing me like she suspected something. Then Indah shook her head and said, “Forensics and Medical are going to need this scene for a while. Investigator, what’s your next step?”

Aylen wasn’t caught unprepared. “We can’t locate this transport’s contractor yet, but we have the ID of the outsystem ship that was supposed to deliver its next cargo. I’m going to the private dock to speak to them.”

“Outsystem” on Preservation meant the same thing as what the Corporation Rim called “non-corporate political entities,” which were basically planetary settlements, stations, moons, floating rocks, whatever that were not under corporate ownership. They might be nice like Preservation or total shitshows, you never knew.

Indah said, “Good. Take SecUnit.”

Yeah, I was surprised too.