Fugitive Telemetry: 6 (The Murderbot Diaries), page 6
Aylen and Gamila had just walked through the hatch, which was now sliding shut. I had the impulse to lunge forward and stop it, but I didn’t, because I didn’t want to look more like a rogue SecUnit than I already did.
And the hatch sealed. Oh, Murderbot, I think you just made a mistake.
Farid cleared his throat. “So … you’re really a SecUnit?”
Yeah, I get that a lot here. I said, “Are you on the feed with Aylen?” She might have a private connection with the two officers that I wasn’t included on.
“Not right now.” Farid’s brow creased and his gaze went to the hatch. “Balin, are you on with Supervisor Gamila?”
Who the fuck is—Oh, it’s the bot. Balin tilted its head and said, “No, Officer.”
Tifany gripped her baton and shifted uneasily.
This is the other thing. Station Security isn’t armed except with those extendable batons (they don’t even deliver shocks, they’re just for hitting/holding off aggressive intoxicated humans) and the officers are only issued energy weapons when there’s actually an energy-weapon-involved emergency. Which is good, because the fewer humans running around with weapons the better. (I say that as a SecUnit who has been shot a lot, often by my own clients, accidentally and on purpose.) But it also meant Aylen was in there unarmed.
I tried to secure a connection with Aylen or Gamila. No response. I tried a test message, a ping that would bounce off the ship’s comm or feed, and got nothing. Which meant something was jamming me, something that had been activated since the hatch had closed.
Fuck not hacking systems. I hit the port admin feed and connected to SafetyMonitor, the PA system that kept up a constant connection with all ships and transports in dock. I used it to find and break the ship’s secure connection to the feed, and tried to pull camera views from inside, but I couldn’t find any video connections except the stupid hatch camera. I caught an audio source but all I could hear was humans yelling some distance away; they must be in another part of the ship, away from the audio pick-up. I found Aylen’s connection to the port feed and upped it, trying to get through to her.
I upped it enough that I caught a burst of static from her and relayed it to the Station Security feed. Both Tifany and Farid looked startled and Balin the bot expanded a sensor net from the back of its neck. I stripped out the static; it was Aylen’s ID, and she was sending a Station Security urgent assistance code.
For fuck’s sake, I knew this was a bad idea and I stood here like an idiot and let it happen. I turned to Tifany and Farid. “I need to get in there.”
Farid had a hand on his interface, sending another urgent-assistance-needed code to the Station Security comm. Tifany was more direct. She drew her baton and said, “Balin, get us inside.”
The PA bot stood up to twice my height (I honestly hadn’t realized it had been crouching until that point), extended an arm, shoved spidery fingers into the control interface in the bulkhead next to the hatch, and sent a complex ping I realized was a decoder. The hatch slid open.
Okay, so that was what the PA bot did when it wasn’t just standing around.
My drones zipped past me and I dove through the hatch after them. This is what I do when I’m not standing around.
Past the airlock, I had a drone view of a shabby corridor, an open hatch at the end, and a shabby human/Target One standing there with a big energy weapon. Audio picked up angry human shouting. Past the target and the hatch was a large compartment with three corridors leading off it. Aylen and Gamila were backed into a corner, Aylen in front with her arms out, trying to shield Gamila. Four additional targets, two armed, faced them. Target Two was the closest, aiming a projectile weapon at them and yelling. Target Three: initial assessment = most likely to fire. She was further away from the hostages, also yelling, and waving her projectile weapon.
Warned by the hatch opening, Target One had time to turn toward me and lift the weapon. I had two humans trying to come in behind me so I didn’t dodge, but I didn’t want to block the energy burst with my head, either. I fired from my right arm and hit the Target’s weapon. (I could have aimed for his face but I didn’t consider him that much of a threat.) He yelped and spun sideways as I reached him. I bonked his head against the edge of the hatch and yanked the damaged weapon away.
I flung him through the hatch in front of me to draw fire, and then stepped through to throw the broken weapon at Armed Target Two. It bounced off her head as I fired my left arm weapon at Armed Target Three and hit her in the chest and shoulder. I was still moving across the compartment and I slammed into Unarmed Target Four along the way and threw him into Target Two who had stumbled back and dropped her weapon. They both went down in a heap and I slid to a stop with my back to Aylen and Gamila. I had my drone task group do a fast circuit of the compartment then break into small squads. Three squads took up sentry positions and the rest shot out of the hatches to search the ship for more targets.
Not an ideal intervention/retrieval; my speed had been a little low. Trying to keep Tifany and Farid from getting shot had thrown me off. Also, I wasn’t sure yet if the Targets were hostiles or just really stupid, so I had held back a little. Target Three had crumpled to the floor, still conscious and trying to grope for her weapon. Before I had to shoot her again, Tifany and Farid barreled in and Farid scooped up the weapon. Targets One and Four were dazed and not attempting to move, Target Five had dropped to the floor and was screaming for no reason. Target Two sprawled on the floor, pretending to be unconscious.
I would have worried about an as yet unknown Target trying to lock us inside (it wouldn’t have worked, but it would have been annoying to deal with) (nobody wants to be locked in a ship with an annoyed SecUnit) (nobody) but my sentry drones had a camera view of Balin planting itself in the hatchway and extending four bracing limbs to keep it open. (I’m guessing the Port Authority has dealt with problem crews before.)
Tifany moved further into the room, taking up a guard position to my left as Farid said, “We’ve called for assistance, and uh, I’ll alert Medical.”
I was getting drone video telling me that the ship was a stripped-down cargo hauler, with a small livable space. The drones hadn’t found any other occupants. From inside, the jamming was easy to take down, and I pulled a manifest from the ship’s feed to double-check the complement. I said, “Ship is clear, listed crew is accounted for.” Because I was tired of Target Two’s shit, I turned around to ask Aylen and Gamila, “Are you injured?”
Target Two made a wild grab for her fallen projectile weapon. I kicked the weapon over to Tifany, who snatched it up and secured it. (Yes, it was unnecessary and showing off.)
Aylen said, “We’re unhurt.” She sounded calm, a dry edge to her voice, but her forehead was damp with sweat and her heart rate was still elevated. Her jacket and shirt had been disarranged, like someone had grabbed her and pushed her. “Thank you for intervening.”
Gamila leaned against the wall, a hand pressed to her chest. “I’m not even sure what happened! They threatened us, wouldn’t even listen to why we were here.”
“You’re here to take our ship!” Target Two snarled, the feed translating. “You pussing corporates! You sent a SecUnit after us!”
I turned to look down at her. “You didn’t know they had a SecUnit until we broke in. Try again.”
Target Two’s brow knit as she looked up at me and her mouth hung open.
Target Five moaned, “Shut up, Fenn. They’re going to take our ship.”
Aylen shook her head wearily and Gamila said, “You should have thought of that before you attacked us!”
My drone sentries saw the Station Security Response Team thunder up to the outer hatch. Balin unwedged itself from its guard position, strode down the corridor, and folded itself down to get into the compartment. It extended a limb across to Gamila, she took it, and it led her out of the ship.
Nobody moved until they were out of the way. Then the response team crowded in and Aylen said, “Arrest everyone associated with this ship. They obviously don’t want to talk to us here, so we’ll do it at the station.”
* * *
Putting it mildly, it was weird to voluntarily walk into a Station Security office.
I had never been to one before on any station. (If I had, I’d be parts and recycler trash and you wouldn’t be reading this.) SecUnits weren’t normally used in stations in the Corporation Rim, and we sure weren’t used in normal station regulation enforcement. We were only deployed on a station as an extreme measure, like repelling a raider attack. (And stations with deployment centers weren’t likely to be attacked anyway, unless there were an absolute shit-ton of raiders or they were really stupid or both.) Palisade Security, working for GrayCris, had used a SecUnit as part of their hostage security team on TranRollinHyfa because they were worried about me showing up. And they had used two SecUnits and a CombatUnit as fugitive pursuit when I escaped with Mensah. And look how that had turned out for them.
But anyway, for most of my career as an escaped rogue SecUnit, staying away from Station Security had been kind of important.
Preservation’s Station Security office was next to the Port Authority, part of the barrier that separated the port’s embarkation area from the rest of the station. Both offices had entrances into the admin section of the mall and the transit ring.
Not long after I had first gotten here I had accessed a map of the security office interior from the station archives. The first level was a public area, where humans came in to complain about each other and to pay fines for cargo and docking violations. (Preservation had two economies, one a complicated barter system for planetary residents and one currency-based for visitors and for dealing with other polities. Most of the humans here didn’t really understand how important hard currency was in the Corporation Rim but the council did, and Mensah said the port took in enough in various fees to keep the station from being a drain on the planet’s resources.) The second level was much bigger and had work spaces, conference rooms, and accident/safety equipment storage. There was also a separate attached space for holding cells, and a larger separate section for storing and analyzing samples from potentially hazardous cargo, and a small medical treatment area that seemed to be mostly used for intoxicated detainees.
The response team brought in the detainees through the transit ring entrance. Targets Two and Three had already come in on gurneys headed for the medical area but the others were mostly ambulatory.
The weapons scanners on the station’s entrance went off on me, of course.
It caused some confusion, because the response team thought someone had screwed up and not searched the detainees properly. I stood there for two minutes and twelve seconds wondering if anyone would figure it out while they searched the detainees again, looking for the weapon the scanner was alerting on. In their defense, they had actually done the weapons search right the first time (I had verified it with scan and visual), and they had confiscated the detainees’ interfaces. (None of them were augmented humans—apparently it wasn’t common to be feed augmented in the polities outside the Corporation Rim that used Preservation as a waystation.) But not so much in their defense, they had forgotten a SecUnit was standing behind them.
Finally I pulled up my sleeve (using my onboard energy weapons made holes in fabric, so I’d have to get my shirt fixed) and held my arm up. “Hey, it’s me.”
They all stared. Still woozy, Target Four said, “It’s a slitting SecUnit, you pussers, how stupid are you?”
Yeah, these Targets are going to be fun to chat with, I can tell already. I told him, “You’re the one who got yourself bodyslammed into station detention, so let’s talk about how dumb you are.”
Target Four seemed shocked. “SecUnits aren’t supposed to talk back,” Target Five said weakly.
Tell me about it. “Cargo ship crews aren’t supposed to take Port Authority supervisors as hostages, but here we all are.”
From the front of the group, Aylen snapped, “Get them inside!”
The officers hurriedly milled into a more efficient configuration for taking the Targets in through the foyer. As I was rolling my sleeve down, Aylen stepped over to me. I don’t know what I was expecting; nothing good, basically. But keeping her voice low, she said, “I’ve just had a preliminary report from the Port Authority inspectors. They did an initial scan of the Lalow’s storage, and the cargo containers are empty. And there’s no record of anything leaving that ship.”
Empty? What the fuck? I actually locked up for a second, still rolling down my sleeve. Threat assessment had just spiked and even risk assessment (which really needed to be purged and reloaded) tried to deliver a report.
I was thinking a lot of different things but the one that came out was, “So what was the transport waiting for?” I knew from my drone search that the transport Lutran had been killed in didn’t have a cargo module attached. At the time, this hadn’t seemed a big deal, since if the transport was sitting in dock it was probably waiting for modules to be loaded.
“A good question,” Aylen said. Her expression was still in the neutral range but I could tell she was intrigued by the report, just like my threat assessment module.
I wasn’t sure why she had told me this. Unless it was because she had just gotten the news and after the weapons scan fuck-up I was the only one involved with the investigation who she wasn’t currently pissed off at. It would be nice if she had recognized me as the only other one here who actually knew how to investigate a suspicious incident that wasn’t a cargo safety violation, but I doubted that. I said, “They know a lot about SecUnits for a ship with a non-corporate registry. We’re usually only deployed as rentals on mining or other isolated contract labor installations, or by licensed security companies. They could have seen SecUnits in the media, but…” I couldn’t finish that sentence. The fear and hatred had felt different from the fear and hatred generated by shows like Valorous Defenders, which sometimes featured rogue SecUnits as scary villains. The crew’s reaction had felt like there was personal experience behind it, but I had no data to back that up.
“Hmm.” Aylen lifted her brows. “According to their ship’s circuit report, they’ve never even visited a corporate dock.”
“There could be an explanation,” I said, because there could be, and I’m used to having to be as accurate as possible or get my neural tissue fried and old habits, etc.
“Let’s ask them,” she said, and went on into the station.
* * *
There was a delay, because there was documentation on the arrests that needed to be completed and the Targets all needed medical checks because that was a regulation and blah blah blah. Also more relevantly, a tech team was searching the ship for anything that looked like 1) a contact DNA cleaner and 2) something that could cause the visual jamming effect with the transit ring’s surveillance camera or 3) a suspiciously fluid-stained floater cart. It also gave the Port Authority more time to pull corroborating documentation about the ship and the missing/nonexistent cargo.
I had feed messages; one from Ratthi asking if everything was okay and had I caught the murderer yet, one from Gurathin which was the same except he didn’t ask if I was okay, and one from Pin-Lee saying she wanted me to contact her now, no she meant right now, it was important.
I had followed the others into the main office space on level two, which had a large holo map of the whole station in the center, with a running status display on all station locks, air walls, and other safety systems, plus a scroll of data on cargo regulation checks throughout the port. It was surrounded by work areas and floating display surfaces. Also way too many containers with food residue, ugh. Several humans were sitting around working in their feeds and none of them looked up when I came in.
I found an unoccupied corner to stand in and sent acknowledgments/reply-laters to Ratthi and Gurathin, and tapped Pin-Lee’s feed.
The first thing she sent was I saw the update Indah sent to Mensah about an incident in the cargo dock. Is it GrayCris?
I told her, I don’t know. I just didn’t have enough data yet for my percentages to be meaningful as anything other than theoretical shit-talking, even with the info Aylen had given me. I added, It might be.
Her feed voice sounded weary. Are we ever going to be at a point where we can forget about those assholes?
I didn’t want to just say “eventually” so I told her, I can’t give you a timeline. But GrayCris can’t get the currency to buy the company off, and even if they could, it’s too late for that. GrayCris had ordered a security firm to attack a company gunship, and worse, almost succeeded. There was no going back from that, at least as far as the company was concerned.
Farid came into the room, spotted me, and came over to say, “Uh, we’re making tea. Do you—”
I paused my feed and told him, “I don’t eat.”
“Oh, right.” He wandered off.
Pin-Lee sent, There’s been a Station Security request for documents from the General Counsel’s office relating to cargo brokering between the Corporation Rim and outsystem polities and trading concerns. It sounds like they’re looking at a possible fraud or smuggling investigation to go along with the murder. Do you want a copy of the report when we send it?
Yes. Farid was back, this time waving at me to follow him. I have to go.
Find out what the hell is going on, Pin-Lee sent back, and cut the connection.
I followed Farid out of the work space and around into a conference room. Indah and Tural were seated at a table facing a large floating display. It was divided into three separate sections, each showing a different much smaller conference room. In each room was a response team officer, sitting across from a Target. Aylen was in the room with Target Five (yeah, I had picked Target Five as the one who probably knew the most about whatever it was they were doing) and the other two officers were with Targets Two and Four. One and Three were probably still in Medical.
