Марта Уэллс: Fugitive Telemetry

(I said, “It takes one to know one.”)

(Mensah said, “People, please. I’m scheduled to mediate arguments between teenagers on my next commcall home and I need all my patience for that.”)

If I was going to do this, I wanted to get started so I could make sure this anomalous murder wasn’t an indication of a threat to Mensah. Plus I had a lot of downloaded shows to get through. I said, “Can I examine the dead human now?”

Indah just looked tired. “Can you humor me and please refer to the victim as ‘the deceased’ or ‘the victim’ during the course of the investigation?” She turned to go, not waiting for an answer.

She missed Mensah mouthing the words stop it at me. (I guess the feed isn’t adequate for all forms of communication, particularly those that involve a lot of glaring.)

AT FIRST, PRESERVATION STATIONSecurity had objected to my presence on the station. Correction, at first they were fine with it because they didn’t know anything about me except that I was a security consultant who had retrieved Dr. Mensah from TranRollinHyfa Station, was injured, and was getting refugee status. Most humans, unless they get stuck working in an isolated corporate installation, never see SecUnits except in the media where we’re always in armor. But Dr. Mensah had told the Preservation Council the truth (no, I don’t know why, either) and then she had to brief Station Security.

(Senior Indah had been with the rest of the upper level security staff for the “hey, there’s a rogue SecUnit here” meeting. You should have seen their expressions.)

There was a big huge deal about it, and Security was all “but what if it takes over the station’s systems and kills everybody” and Pin-Lee told them “if it wanted to do that it would have done it by now,” which in hindsight was probably not the best response. And then Mensah, Pin-Lee, and I had a private meeting with Senior Indah.

After some preliminary polite arguing between the humans, it became really obvious that Senior Indah was determined to get rid of me. She was trying to get Mensah to send me away somewhere, like a particularly isolated part of the planet, while the situation was being “evaluated.”

I didn’t even know how to react to that. For one thing, it was a terrible idea. Threat assessment for potential GrayCris retaliation suggested a steady increase, and I needed to stay with Mensah. I hate planets, but if she went to the planet, I’d go with her. (I really hate planets.) I wasn’t going to the fucking planet alone and leave her here to get killed and let GrayCris rampage around the station.

Pin-Lee wasn’t reacting, either, except to flick a glance at Mensah and send me a feed message that said, Could you at least try to look pathetic .

Yeah, I’m not going to respond to that.

Mensah didn’t even blink. She said, calmly, “No, that’s unacceptable.”

Senior Indah’s mouth went tight. I think she was angry Mensah hadn’t told her about me as soon as we arrived from the Corporation Rim. (It had to be that, I hadn’t done anything else yet to make her angry.) She said, “Just because you’re accustomed to using a dangerous weapon doesn’t mean it can’t turn on you. Or harm others.”

Okay, wow. But it wasn’t like it hurt my feelings or anything. Not at all. I was used to this. Completely used to it.

Mensah was not used to it. Her eyes narrowed, her head tilted slightly, and her mouth made a minute movement that turned her polite planetary leader “I am listening and receptive to your ideas” smile into something else. (If she had looked at me like that I would have created a distraction and run out of the room.) (Okay, not really, but I would have at least stopped talking.) In a voice that should have caused an ambient temperature drop, she replied, “We’re talking about a person.”

Mensah can be so calm under pressure that it’s easy to forget she can also get angry. From the minute changes in Indah’s expression, she was realizing she had fucked up, big time.

Pin-Lee had a tiny little smile at one corner of her mouth. I checked her feed activity and saw she had accessed a station database and was pulling documents into her feed storage. Since she was human she was doing it slowly (it was like watching algae grow) but I could see the information she was assembling had to do with Preservation’s original charter and its list of basic human rights. Also the regulations for holding public office. Public offices like Senior Station Security Officer.

Oh, maybe Indah had literally fucked up big time. Pin-Lee was planning a case for Mensah to take to the rest of the council to recommend Indah be dismissed.

(I knew by this time that on Preservation, dismissal isn’t as bad as it is in the Corporation Rim, so it’s not like she would get killed or starve or anything.)

Indah took a breath to speak and Mensah said evenly, “Don’t make it worse.”

Indah let the breath out.

Mensah continued, “I’ll agree to forget what you just said—” Pin-Lee made a sort of hissing noise of protest here, and Mensah paused to give her an opaque look that Pin-Lee apparently understood. Pin-Lee sighed and discontinued her document search. Mensah turned back to Indah and continued, “And I want to preserve our working relationship. To do that, we will both be reasonable about this and set our knee-jerk emotional responses aside.”

Indah kept her expression reserved, but I could tell she was relieved. “I apologize.” She also wasn’t a coward. “But I have concerns.”

So there was a lot of negotiation about me (always a fun time) and it ended up with me having to agree to two restrictions. The first one was to promise not to access any non-public systems or hack any other bots, drones, etc., a solution both I and Station Security were very unhappy with but for completely different reasons.

It’s not like the private station systems were all that great; Preservation didn’t use surveillance except on essential engineering and safety entry points. So it’s not like I wanted to have access to their stupid boring systems anyway. If GrayCris shows up and blows the station all to hell, it won’t be my fault.

Right, so it probably will be my fault. There just won’t be that much I can do about it.

So that’s where I was, figuratively in an uneasy truce with Station Security, when Mensah had gotten the call that a dead human had been found in the station mall.

(She had pressed her hands down on her desk and said, “Could this be it?”

She meant the GrayCris attack we had been waiting for. Without access to surveillance I felt so useless. “Maybe.”

Her face made a complicated grimace. “I almost hope it is. Then at least we could get it over with.”)

And now I was literally standing over a dead human.

Tech Tural was back, and two other techs were lurking out in the Trans Lateral Bypass, running analysis via the feed and ineffectively poking databases. Mensah headed back to her council office, with her two assistants and the task group of drones I had assigned to her. Since there were no station cameras in the corridors (which, if there were, I have to point out, we’d know who had killed the dead human—excuse me, the deceased) I had sort of built my own surveillance network using my intel drones.

(I had promised not to hack Station systems. Nobody had said anything about not setting up my own systems.)

“No ID report yet,” Tural was telling Indah.

Indah wasn’t pleased. “We need that ID.”

Tural said, “We tried a DNA check but it didn’t match anyone in the database, so the victim isn’t related to approximately 85 percent of Preservation planetary residents.”