Марта Уэллс: Fugitive Telemetry

“We know that,” one of the humans said. They started to unfold from defensive positions as they realized I wasn’t here to shoot them. I didn’t see any signs of serious injury but from the disarray of their clothes and some visible bruises, they had been knocked around in the module at some point. I wasn’t picking up any augments or interfaces. Which made sense; only the non-augmented contract labor would be able to leave BreharWallHan without being traced, and the escapees would know to leave their interfaces behind. Their captors would have confiscated any comms or interfaces the Lalow crew had given them. Human One continued, “They’re bounty-catchers, sent by the supervisors.” She pointed up.

It could have been a trick but I looked up anyway. Oh shit, the module is attached to a lock. An appallingly jury-rigged lock, way too small.

The module’s other hatch, the large one meant to load and unload bulk cargo, was open, sealed directly against the hull of the ship. For fuck’s sake, I could see part of the ship’s registration number.

The ship’s lock, roughly in the center of the opening, was only about two meters square and had no transparent panel, just a camera, and no controls to open it from this side. It was terrifying, both from a safety standpoint and an “oh shit” standpoint. It’s a good thing I can have a horrified emotional reaction while also simultaneously pulling the latest video out of the ship’s SecSystem, deleting myself and the open hatch, and starting a loop so if any hostiles checked their module camera, everything would look normal. Was there even an air wall behind that lock? Holy shit, who does this?

The hostiles up in the ship might have heard the screaming. I lowered my voice. “We need to get you out of here now.” I hadn’t meant to say that next but it just came out, because this could be such a disaster. All the hostiles had to do was disengage the seal on the module and I’d lose every one of the humans. With the bot pilot down, they couldn’t disengage via the ship’s feed, but the chance that the seal had a manual release was high.

My bag, blorping quietly to itself on the access hatch, was starting to look really friendly in comparison.

I connected to the hostile ship’s hamstrung SecSystem again and started to feel for more cameras. There wasn’t a full set; obviously this crew didn’t like the idea of a video record of all the fun they were having while hunting contract labor refugees. But I needed to get a view of the compartment on the other side of the hatch of jury-rigged terror.

“So your station can send us back to the supervisors and get the bounty?” Human One said. The humans were all shivering and showing various signs of physical and emotional distress. I didn’t know what the air quality rating was in here but I could guess it wasn’t good. This was no time to explain Preservation’s attitude toward forced labor and the fact that the council would be unlikely to allow corporate bounty-collecting as an alternative income for the station. (A bounty probably wouldn’t pay for even a week of JollyBaby’s annual maintenance, anyway.)

I said, “Contract slavery is illegal on Preservation. You have refugee status here and no one can send you back or make you do anything you don’t want to do. If I can get you back to the station.” I pointed at the bag. I know, I felt like an idiot. “This is a life-tender. You’re going to need to get in it.”

The three humans in front, the brave ones, came forward, still afraid but desperately willing to be convinced. Human One stepped close enough to peer through the hatch, where the module’s light was not being kind to my giant bag. “In that?” she said, as if honestly baffled. The others recoiled a little.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” I told her. The bag had already set itself to return to the colony ship’s lock and was just waiting for a go code. I wanted to pile all the humans in but the instructions insisted there was a per trip limit. I could override it, but… Yeah, no, better not. On the ship’s feed I found cameras in engineering, the passage into the bridge, and finally, a camera pointed at the other side of the lock where the module was attached. There was no air wall, no full lock, just that round hatch. Oh, huh, I think this is a modified raider ship and that hatch is designed for ship-to-ship boarding. And there was a box attached to it that looked suspiciously like a manual release. Yikes.

(I mean, there had been an 80-plus percent chance it existed, but seeing it drove home the whole oh shit aspect of everything.)

I needed to keep telling the humans to get in the bag. “It’ll hold six of you and you need to get in, now.” I pointed up at the obviously rigged-for-rapid-decompression-hole in the roof of the module. “It’s better than that.” Was I going to have to make them get in the stupid bag? I really hoped not, because if they realized I was a SecUnit, this situation was going to go from awkward to… really fucking awkward. “It’s self-guiding, it’s a short trip, all you have to do is go through the station airlock when it opens for you.”

Then Human One, still looking out at the bag, made her decision. She turned back to the others. “Come on, the youngs go first.”

She picked out the three adolescents and three of the adults. There was some muffled crying and protests as she shoved them into the bag. They were afraid, they didn’t want to leave the others, etc.

The bridge passage camera picked up a human in tactical gear moving past. I said, “How many aboard?”

Human One said, “We only saw two, but there has to be more. They opened the hatch once after we were locked on to look at us.”

Human Two said, “They said they wanted us alive for the bounty.”

Then Human Three added, “They got a SecUnit.”

“They do?” Did they? I hadn’t caught any pings and there’s no way a SecUnit wouldn’t have noticed when I took control of the ship’s SecSystem. I’d had the theory that PortAuth system had been hacked by a SecUnit or CombatUnit, but that didn’t fit with our current working theory that there was a local actor who had legitimate PortAuth access. “Did you see it?”

“Behind the others, in the armor,” Three said. Two and Four nodded.

One made a noise under her breath and I said, “You don’t think it’s a SecUnit.” I should have been more careful there, but I was trying to get into the ship’s memory archives without waking the bot pilot, and with my drones hidden, I was mostly looking at the hatch or the bag. I wanted schematics, controls for the jury-rigged lock. No, they could still use the manual release, I couldn’t jam that from here. Another hostile in tactical gear left the bridge. Yeah, I think they’ve alerted on me, somehow.

Human One said, “They use SecUnits up in the processing centers, not in the backrocks where we were most of the time.”

When the sixth human tumbled into the bag, it signaled that it was at capacity and ready to leave. I let the module’s hatch close. Then I wished I’d left a drone in the bag so I could monitor it directly. Whatever, I was just going to have to trust the damn bag.

At least I had its channel as an input and could tell it had sealed itself and scooted off to take the most direct route back to its “home” airlock. “How long will it take?” Human Three asked.

“Not long, just a few minutes,” I said. If we were lucky, there would be time for a second trip and I wouldn’t have to do this the hard way.

A vibration traveled through the hull and the humans flinched. “What was that?” Human Two demanded.

“They’re trying to dump us!” Human Four’s voice was shrill. He was right, someone in the bridge had tried (and failed, because I had control of SecSystem and it was preventing the command from going through) to release the clamps on the module. Something had spooked the hostiles and they were trying to dump the incriminating module and leave. Well, crap. Time to shift to Plan B. I connected to the station’s feed and used it to send the “proceed” code to the responder. Since there was no point in hiding anymore, I also sent a feed message to Aylen and told her refugees were incoming to the colony ship.