Марта Уэллс: Exit Strategy

And the fucking gunship was sitting out here not doing anything about it. I’m guessing GrayCris had somehow gotten TranRollinHyfa to refuse docking and operational permission, meaning the company couldn’t land its armed retrieval team without fighting TRH station security and the company hadn’t been paid enough to do that.

The other code in the status was Secondary Clients Status: Recognizance . That was almost worse—it meant someone else named in the bond (probably Pin-Lee, Ratthi, or Gurathin, since they hadn’t been listed in the newsburst as returning to Preservation) had left company protection and were in the wind. There was only one way to be in the wind between a gunship and an armed station: they must have taken a shuttle, certified themselves as unarmed to get past the operational prohibition, and been allowed to dock.

So that was four of them I had to worry about.

Waiting was stressful, and I watched an episode of my favorite, The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon, while the transport finished its approach and went through docking procedures. Then the ship’s feed signaled that it was time to disembark.

One reason I’d picked this particular fast non-bot-piloted transport out of the others heading here was because there were 127 passengers, forty-three of whom were traveling together. They didn’t disappoint me and disembarked in a single noisy confused mob. I walked out surrounded by them and was across the embarkation floor and up into the transparent pipe of the elevated walkway before they became distracted by the vending and advertising bays and started to thin out. I kept walking.

By that point I’d deflected three weapons scans and had hacked the restricted feeds for the various drone security cameras. The security was tighter for disembarking passengers than the other transit rings and stations I’d visited. Unusually tight for a station that sold its public feed for ads that drowned out the safety info and official announcements. (You could tell which humans and augmented humans were trying to use its mapping function because they kept walking up to blocked exits and walls.)

I had also been hit by at least four different recognition scans. These scans are usually searching for known humans or augmented humans that the station security is keeping tabs on, not random escaped SecUnits. (Random escaped SecUnits is not nearly as prevalent a problem as the entertainment feed would have you believe.) But I was glad I’d listened to ART and let it change my configuration. I was glad for every single precaution I’d taken, even the ones that had seemed paranoid at the time.

I didn’t spot any armed security patrols but there were extra drones, small ones, a different brand and configuration than the ones I was used to. After I modified my queries to block the stupid ads, I got a download and search of the news feed started, as well as the port’s public dock assignment list. I checked the port map that had managed to fight its way through the advertising chaff, and took the walkway heading up into the station mall.

My transport had docked on the second transit ring, so there were a lot of ramps to walk up, if you didn’t want to take the lift pods, which I didn’t. I wasn’t catching pings, but a check of the station directory showed two security companies based here who had SecUnits available for rental, EinoArzu and Stockade Kumaran. Palisade was listed as a security company, but not as a company that supplied SecUnits. That didn’t necessarily mean they didn’t have them, it just meant they didn’t advertise them.

I wasn’t too worried about SecUnits being used against me at this point. SecUnits would be able to identify me as a rogue unit on sight (or on ping, more accurately) but we were never used on transit rings. The security companies would ship us (them) through the port as cargo, to keep from panicking the humans. I mean, there’s a first time for everything, but it just wasn’t likely, maybe a fifteen percent chance at best.

Even if they did deploy, they still had to find me. The governor modules wouldn’t let the SecUnits hack systems or search for my hacks, not on their own without human direction. (And I didn’t think GrayCris had any idea how much hacking I was responsible for.) Only combat SecUnits could detect or counteract my hacks without a human supervisor.

Still, my human skin was prickling with nerves. The extra security seemed to support a theory I had. Or maybe I mean a hypothesis. Whatever, the idea was that if Bharadwaj’s statement in the newsburst had been a message to GrayCris, a sign that Preservation would cooperate to save Dr. Mensah, then the stories about Mensah being arrested, about her going to or somehow being taken to TranRollinHyfa were messages, too. Messages to me.

GrayCris thought the newsbursts were how Mensah had ordered me to go to Milu, so it stood to reason they would use newsbursts to lure me here.

It wasn’t a great theory/hypothesis. They had Mensah, so I don’t know why they would want me. They knew I’d been on Milu, did they suspect I had left with an armful of incriminating data? But GoodNightLander Independent had Milu now and would hopefully be mad enough to look for incriminating data of their own, so they could publicly complain about it on their own newsfeeds. GrayCris going after me and Mensah wasn’t going to stop that.

But they were humans—who knows why they did anything?

It made it all the more obvious that now that I’d gotten in here, I needed to make sure I could get out. Speaking of which, I pulled specs and info from the security feeds I’d accessed, and tagged it to work on later.

I walked up the last ramp surrounded by a crowd of humans and augmented humans, and on into the station mall. There was no fringe travelers’ area, with cheap transient hostels and vending kiosks. It went straight into multi-levels of expensive shops and offices, most in spheres, stacked into looming towers or hovering overhead. The feed was a maze of vids and ads and instructions and music, competing with the floating display surfaces and the holosculptures of giant waterfalls and trees and abstract art things. I’d seen similar, and better, on my shows, but seeing it in person was different. My camera angles weren’t as good, for one thing. And the humans and augmented humans wandering around randomly were distracting from the view.

Oh, and there were downloads, sweet downloads, multiple entertainment feeds, way more than HaveRatton and Port FreeCommerce, hanging temptingly in the air. I picked a couple at random and started downloads. One of my queries had pulled up the station’s actual index for residents, not the abbreviated one for tourists and transients, and I needed a place to stand still to review it. I headed toward one of the lower-level spheres.

It was a big shop, with lots of humans and augmented humans going in and out. I could do a shop. I’d done shops (one shop) before. No problem.

I tried to relax and look preoccupied as I took the ramp up to the entrance. The shop’s feed ads said it sold advanced lifestyles. I don’t know what that is and the explanations in the feed weren’t helpful. Even some of the humans wandering around looked confused. I wandered with them into a central area where humans were watching a hovering display of products? Art and music inspired by products? It wasn’t the enclosed booth I was hoping for, but it gave me a reason to stand still and stare while I reviewed my query results and the station index.

Not a surprise, I had turned up a dock listing for a shuttle with a company ID code, the only company code in the arrivals index. That was the shuttle the Preservation team had used to get here from the gunship.

It was … strange, knowing they were so close. Considering the size of the shuttle, they probably weren’t staying on board. After a little delicate unraveling of the Port Authority’s protected systems, I got a download of the docking contact index and matched the shuttle’s entry with a physical address in a station hotel.