Марта Уэллс: Fugitive Telemetry

Did I want that too? Yes, yes I did. And the parameters of the problem had changed, drastically, in a way that made it solvable. Our suspect pool had been a bunch of humans and augmented humans wandering around in the Merchant Docks mostly unobserved and not interacting with station systems, as we tried to identify an actor who could remove themselves from the few surveillance cameras at will. Now we knew it was a local, someone with legitimate access to Port Authority systems. Locals living on the station do stuff that leaves a trail, that generates records in log files. “You need a surveillance audit.”

Her frown turned confused. “A what?”

“You take all the data available during the time frame when the incidents occurred, not just from the Port Authority systems, but from StationSec, StationCommCentral, TransportLocal, the distribution kiosks, the door systems that allow people to enter their private quarters, anything that saves an ID that tells you what someone was doing at the specific moment when we know the perpetrator was active, and you compare it to the list of potential operators to start eliminating them. It’s going to be harder because your surveillance is crap, but it can still drastically reduce the suspect pool.” She didn’t react and I added, “If we know someone is in the station mall accessing a food kiosk at the exact time the transport suffered the catastrophic failure, then they can be eliminated as a suspect.”

Her gaze turned intrigued. “Some of those systems are under privacy lock, we’d need a judge-advocate to release their access records, but the others…” Then she shook her head. “We narrowed down the time of death, but it’s not exact. And the theory was that some of those actions, like using the cart to dump Lutran’s body in the mall, were prearranged. The actor could have been eating in the station mall when it happened.”

I explained, “But not when the transport was hacked. That can’t be done over the feed. When the transport went down, the actor was there, on board.”

Indah’s face did something complicated, which I think was an attempt not to show enthusiasm. “How long would this take you?”

“A few hours. And I’d need outside processing and storage space.” I’d have to pull a bunch of old company code out of archive storage, build the database, and write the queries.

She pushed off the hatch. “Then let’s get out of here and get started.”

WE GOT ON THEresponder, which had collected the refugees and the hostiles, and was now ready to leave. A station tug had already arrived and was maneuvering into position to haul the hostile ship and the module to the impound bay so they could be checked for evidence. In light of the whole traitor in the Port Authority thing, Indah had ordered the tug to keep the ship and the module in isolation until Station Security cleared it. She hadn’t exactly lied, but she had implied that the ship might be contaminated with something. (Anybody who saw the galley wouldn’t have any trouble believing that.)

On the quick trip back to the transit ring, I checked my feed messages. Mensah wanted me to report when I had a chance, Ratthi wanted to know if I was all right, and Gurathin wanted to know if I’d used the life-tender and if it had worked okay. I also had a report from Tural, the combined forensic/medical report, which among other things identified the cause of Lutran’s death as a long “needle-like device” that had stabbed into his head, leaving no identifiable fragments behind. Tural also said the transport was being repaired, but the team hadn’t managed to pull any usable data off it. And Pin-Lee’s General Counsel report had arrived, which showed Lutran’s name came up multiple times in regard to cargo transfer on Preservation Station and on three other allied polities. Which meant Lutran had been funneling refugees for years, through multiple stations, as we’d theorized. And he wouldn’t be doing that anymore, so who the hell knew what would happen to all the other parts of the organization and the humans trapped at BreharWallHan. I sent acknowledgments/reply laters to all of them so they’d know I was still alive, because what I really needed to do was stand here and watch the beginning of episode 132 of Sanctuary Moon .

I’d followed Indah to the responder’s bridge, where she and the responder’s captain lied to the Port Authority about what the responder was doing. (They told them that a trader ship had had an onboard emergency that caused a comm and drive failure, and that the responder had alerted because it looked like the ship was trying to break port lockdown and leave. The misunderstanding had been cleared up now and the responder was arranging to bring the ship in for repair.) (I thought it was too complicated for a good lie, but whatever.) As we docked I followed Indah down to the airlock foyer to disembark. She stopped abruptly at the top of the corridor and I didn’t run into her because unlike the humans who are usually following me I pay attention. Audio picked up movement ahead; I sent a drone around the corner for a look. Oh, right, they were leading the refugees off the ship and she didn’t want them to see me. Which, fine.

But standing there, I thought of something. Whoever the actor was in the Port Authority, it was a human or augmented human who thought they were pretty clever and able to manipulate systems to their advantage.

Maybe we could get them to try again. I secured a connection with Indah’s feed: I have an idea.

She replied, Well, your last idea didn’t work out so badly. Let’s hear it .

The hard part had been deciding who/what was going to be the bait. It couldn’t be me; the important part (the thesis? I guess?) of our theory was that the actor was a local, with access to Port Authority if not Station Security systems. This person would know what I was and that attempting to attack me was not a good idea. (I wasn’t in a great mood right now, so it was an even worse idea than it usually was.) And there had to be some explanation of how/why the bait human knew who the actor was, so it couldn’t be a Station Security officer or a random station resident. I suggested Target Four from the Lalow, who had all the characteristics of a human who could be talked into doing anything.

Indah disagreed, on the grounds that Target Four had been talking to anybody who got within range while he was on detention in the station, and there was too high a chance that the actor would realize he didn’t know anything he hadn’t already told us. She thought it had to be one of the refugees, who had all had an opportunity to overhear/get information from the bounty-catchers. Which meant that even though it was my plan I couldn’t be in the middle of it. Which, whatever, I didn’t want to be in the middle of it where the excitement was, I wanted to be in an office working on a giant database in case the stupid plan didn’t work.

For the refugee/bait, Indah chose Human Three, the one who had been convinced the armored hostile was a SecUnit. She went to talk to him with the new special investigation team she had conscripted from the responder’s crew. (They had all been in the responder, which had been undocked on picket, so they couldn’t have been in the transport to kill Lutran.) (The other special investigation team was still potentially compromised, except for Aylen and Indah.) (And me, I guess.)

Human Three was in the responder’s medical compartment because he or someone else (I was betting it was him) had forcibly removed an interface from the skin of his forehead before leaving BreharWallHan and it had become infected. (Either the Lalow crew hadn’t offered the use of their MedUnit or with his curly head hair flopping over the wound, they hadn’t noticed.)