Fugitive Telemetry: 6 (The Murderbot Diaries), page 9
This scenario was the most likely one, the probability was 86 percent, easily. But it was impossible unless the perpetrator could 1) hack Lutran’s transport, 2) hack the PortAuth surveillance cameras, and 3) hack the PortAuth transfer records.
So where was the module? It couldn’t just be floating around out there. The responder would have found it by now. Wherever it had gone, it must have looked like it was headed toward a legitimate destination, so the systems that did nothing but scan and monitor all station traffic wouldn’t alert on it.
It had to be attached to a ship.
And that ship, and the BreharWallHan agents, was still out there. It had been unable to leave before Lutran was discovered and the port closed. Most stations wouldn’t close their transit rings because someone found a dead body, but most stations weren’t as short on random dead bodies as this one.
The BreharWallHan ship hadn’t run, or tried to fight the responder, because Indah was right, they wanted to keep it quiet. They wanted the Lalow to continue its part of the operation until the BreharWallHan agents could trace all the routes, all the stations where refugees had been transferred, maybe until they could figure out where the pick-up point was inside the mining field.
All of this was leading to the conclusion … Oh, shit.
Which meant … I had to stop the search.
I could call Mensah and get her to make Indah listen to me. I could do that, but I still thought it would sound a lot like the time Mensah’s youngest child had got hold of the comm and demanded that Mensah tell an older sibling to stop taking all the squash dumplings. Mensah could make Indah listen to me, but it would waste time, and Indah being made to listen to me against her will was step one of a failure scenario. (I don’t know much about human interactions, but even I knew that.) I had to get Indah to trust me.
I could start by talking to her, I guess, I had actually not tried that yet, really.
I secured a protected feed connection with her and sent, Senior Officer Indah, you have to stop the search. The module must be attached to a ship still holding position off the station. If the BreharWallHan agents know we’ve found the module, they’ll kill the refugees and run. Everything on the Port Authority systems has to be treated as compromised. Whoever is on that ship could be using the dock cameras and Supervisor Gamila’s comm to listen to you and your officers right now. If you find the module while they’re listening—
She objected, You said that system wasn’t hacked.
I said, I’m wrong. Whoever did this is good enough not to leave any indication they were in the system. They are as good at this or better than I am. (Oh yeah, it hurt to say that.)
Aylen was trying to say something to her and Indah held up a hand to show she was on her feed. Her eyes were narrow and her mouth was thin. I had no idea what that meant. She said, How do you know this hacker isn’t listening to you right now?
Because that’s how fuckers get permanently deleted, is what I wanted to say. What I actually said was, I can secure my own internal system. I can’t secure the Port Authority’s systems or yours.
Indah hesitated, then switched to her all-team comm, “Aylen, come with me, we’ve got to reorganize this. I think we’re wrong about that module.” She told Matif, “Tell the search parties to resume, and we’re extending the search to the Public Docks.”
Matif glanced at Soire, clearly dubious. “Uh, all right. I mean, yes, Senior.”
Indah and Aylen were already walking away and I followed them. Keeping her voice low, Indah said, “Comms off.” Aylen immediately complied and my drone video showed a visible shift in her attitude, from confused protest to still confused but no longer protesting.
Indah added, “SecUnit, I assume you can get me a secure connection to the station responder?”
“Yes. This way.” I secured a connection with Dr. Mensah’s feed. Hi. I have a request.
I knew from her guard drones that she was still in the council offices on the other side of the station mall, working in her feed. What’s up?
Senior Indah and I need to borrow your private office.
* * *
Mensah’s private office was close by, in the admin block with the Port Authority. But the important part was that her comm and security monitoring wasn’t connected to either StationSec or any of the PortAuth systems, it was a separate secure system used by the council.
And it was really secure, because one of the first jobs Mensah had got for me was to make sure it was “up to date and resistant to corporate or other incursion.”
It was such a relief to step into a place where I had control of the security. As we crossed the tiled floor of the lobby I felt the tension in the organic parts of my back ease. Mensah had notified her staff to let us through, and I removed us from the surveillance camera, just in case.
One of her assistants opened the inner office for us. He had already closed and opaqued the transparent doors on the balcony that looked out over the admin plaza. He was used to me and used to confidential council stuff, so he didn’t even glance up at my drones, just nodded to us and slipped out as we stepped in. He said, “I’ll be in the reception area, just message me when you’re finished,” and engaged the privacy seal on the door.
Indah had been here before but Aylen clearly hadn’t, and looked around at the family images and the plants. (It was a nice office, I had spent a lot of time on the couch.) I used the feed to open the secure terminal, and the big display surface formed in the air above the desk. I opened the secure channel for Indah and for Mensah, who had been holding on her secure feed in the council offices. Then I sent a hail for the responder. When it answered, I opened the connection.
Indah ordered the responder to scan the ships in holding positions off the station and sent the module’s specifications. She told them there was a possibility the Port Authority systems had been compromised and they needed to communicate only with her or Aylen, and via the council system and not Station Security’s system. The responder asked for a confirmation order from the council and Mensah supplied it. Mensah then signed off, telling Indah to contact her immediately if she needed any other assistance, and Indah thanked her.
Then me, Aylen, and Indah were standing in the office looking at each other. Or they were looking at me and my drones were looking at them.
“You really think our systems are compromised?” Aylen asked.
Indah had her arms folded, her expression grim. It had occurred to me she was maybe worried about feeling stupid too, if we were wrong about this. She said, “Yes. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
I had control of all inputs to this room’s comm and feed, and I caught and bounced a comm call for Indah with Balin the Port Authority bot’s feed ID. It was probably an important call from Gamila but if something had blown up the council’s system would notify us and everything else could wait five minutes. It was time to be honest. I told Indah, “You were wrong when you said it was unlikely to be a local actor. But I think you know that now.”
Indah glared at me, but it was more wry than angry. “Is that what you think? Because you keep insisting it’s a mysterious ultra-hacker.”
Okay, that one stung. “I didn’t use the words ‘mysterious’ or ‘ultra.’”
Aylen watched like it was one of those human games where they threw balls at each other. (I’d had to stop a lot of those while on company contracts; they violated the company personal injury safety bonds.) (Yeah, it was super fun telling the humans they couldn’t do it because SecUnits always like giving their clients more reasons to hate them.) But Aylen also looked relieved. Like she was beginning to wonder if we were stupid or what. She muttered, “Thank the divine, can we talk about it like adults now?”
Indah pointed the glare at her. “If the Port Authority systems weren’t hacked, then the files and camera data were altered by someone on station who has legitimate access, who knew how to cover their tracks.” She made an impatient gesture. “It even fits with the tool that was used to remove contact DNA from the body. The PA uses sterilizers for hazardous material safety, they’re all over the port offices.”
Aylen nodded. “But who? Everyone’s worked here for years, grew up here.”
I told Indah, “You thought it was me.”
She snorted in exasperation. “We thought it was you when we thought Lutran was a GrayCris agent. But we disproved that—I forget how many hours ago that was, this has been a long damn day.”
Aylen was annoyed. “If it was you, why would you tell us where the original crime scene was, which led to finding the Lalow and the refugees?”
Indah added, “You are the most paranoid person I’ve ever met, and I’ve worked in criminal reform for twenty-six years.”
I don’t even know how to react to that. She’s not wrong but hey, I need my paranoia. Speaking of which, I asked Aylen, “Where were you when Lutran was killed?”
She didn’t blink. “I was on a shuttle, coming back from an assignment in FirstLanding.”
“She was docking when the body was found.” Indah huffed impatiently. “Give me a little credit.”
The responder had kept its channel open and we could hear the crew talking in the background. “SatAmratEye5 is in the best position … That one’s clear … If they aren’t local they probably don’t know our satellite placement … There we go. Senior Indah, we’ve got it. There’s a ship with a module attached hiding in station section zero, in the shadow of the Pressy’s upper hull.” They were sending data and I transferred it to the big display above our heads.
It was a sensor schematic of a long shot view of the station, the curve of the ring tucked below the main structure and the shape of the giant colony ship it had been built out from. The view turned into a scan schematic and focused in on a shape huddled not far from the colony ship’s starboard hull.
It wasn’t a modular transport, it was a ship more like the Lalow. A bulky tube with round parts sticking out, and the module clamped onto its hull stood out in the sensor view like a … like a weird thing that shouldn’t be there. Aylen swore in relief and Indah told the responder to hold position and wait for orders.
Indah said, “The priority right now is to get to those people and if they’re alive, to get them out of there.”
Aylen looked grim. “That’s not going to be easy. It’s close enough to the colony ship that we could reach it with a team in EVAC suits, but we can’t arrange that from here. If the BreharWallHan agents have someone in the Port Authority who can listen in on our comms and feed, they’re going to know what we’re doing.”
Yeah, not we, me. I said, “This is the part that’s my job.”
Chapter Seven
I’D BEEN BROUGHT TO Preservation on one of their older ships, which had been refitted over and over again. This section of the colony ship had never been refitted. The corridors were dingy, the paint on the dark metal patchy where it had been rubbed off by hands and shoulders.
The colony ship hadn’t just been left to rot; the humans liked it too much for that. It smelled of clean emptiness in a way human places never do. Pieces of clear protective material had been placed over the occasional drawings on the bulkheads, and on the pieces of paper stuck to them and covered with scribbled handwriting and faded print. Feed markers had been installed by Station Historical/Environment Management with translations into Preservation Standard Nomenclature. My drones picked up whispers of lost-and-found notices, messhall schedules, and the rules for games I didn’t recognize.
It should have been creepy. I had been in places like this that were really creepy. But this wasn’t. Maybe because I knew where the humans and augmented humans who had last used this ship had gone, that their descendants were running around all over this system, and that one of them was in my secure feed right now, demanding an update.
I’m almost there, I told Aylen. Just give me a fucking minute.
Indah had gone back to the mobile command center to be visible, but she wanted me to have backup. Aylen was waiting at the entrance to this section of the colony ship, making sure nobody followed me up here. If she had to call in a team for help, she was going to hold off as long as possible, to keep our local actor from knowing what we were doing until hopefully it was too late.
Aylen said, You know, swearing during operations doesn’t meet the professional conduct standards of Station Security.
By this point I knew that was Aylen’s idea of a joke. I replied, Because Senior Indah has never told anybody to fuck off.
You have me there.
I reached the lock corridor and sent, I’m going offline now.
Understood, she sent back. Good luck.
I understand why humans say that, but luck sucks. I found the lock and dropped the EVAC suit container on the deck to expand and unpack it.
Once I had it out, I started to pull the tab to activate it. Then I processed the instructions it was loading into the feed … this emergency device alerts the Port Authority emergency notification network and the transponder will send your location to … Ugh, of course the EVAC suit had a transponder, this was a stripped-down emergency version for stations, not the full ship corporate-brand EVAC suits I’d used before.
The local actor, if not the hostile ship itself, was sure to be monitoring the station’s search and rescue channel. They would know someone was trying to approach surreptitiously.
I was going to have to turn the transponder off. There was no way to do that via the feed so I needed to find the physical switch. I pulled the schematic from the instructions and found the transponder was buried in the sealed drive unit.
Oh, you have to be kidding me. I’d be pissed off at the humans but I had brought this thing up here without checking. Seconds were ticking away while I wasted time. I couldn’t take the drive unit apart without breaking it, I had no idea how. I didn’t have the ability to disguise the signal. I could jam it, but at such close range any static leakage, any hint of activity on the otherwise silent search and rescue channel, might alert the hostile ship. It would sure as hell alert me if I was in their position. There was no time to go back for another EVAC suit or …
Or Murderbot, you dummy, you’re on a giant spaceship that has been meticulously preserved as a historical artifact. If they still had intact lunch menus from however many years ago, the chances were good they still had the safety equipment.
Big green arrows scrawled along the bulkhead pointed me toward the nearest emergency lockers and I opened the first one. The inside was neatly packed with safety supplies, all of it tagged with explanatory labels and scrawled symbols on the containers, all of it simple and easily readable for any panicky untrained human. Except I didn’t have this language loaded.
So I had to go back online for a minute. I secured a connection with Ratthi and Gurathin and said, I need help.
They were eating together in one of the station mall’s food places; Ratthi stood up and knocked his chair over and Gurathin spilled the liquid in the cup he was lifting. Ratthi said, SecUnit, what’s wrong?
I understood the reaction. I didn’t ask for help that often. I sent them my drone video: Which one of these things is most like an EVAC suit?
Uh, are you up in the Pressy? Ratthi asked, baffled. The closest thing I see to an EVAC suit in there is a life-tender. But—
There, third shelf down, with the red tags, Gurathin added. I yanked one out of the rack and he said, Wait, why do you need it? What are you doing?
It’s a Station Security thing, I’ll tell you later, I said, and cut the connection. Now that I had the name, I used the station feed to hit the public library, where I pulled a description and operating instructions from the historical records.
The life-tender wasn’t so much an EVAC suit as it was a small vehicle. It opened into a kind of diamond-shaped bag with rudimentary navigation, propulsion, and life support. According to the library record, it was designed to get several humans off one ship and onto a new one, usually because the first ship was about to have a catastrophic failure. This one also had a transponder but it was set to the colony ship’s comm ID, which had been delisted as an active channel and turned into an audio monument, broadcasting historical facts and stories about the colony ship’s first arrival in the system. It was unlikely the hostiles would be monitoring it and the chatty broadcasts would provide cover for my comm and the life-tender’s location transmissions. The library entry also said life-tenders weren’t used anymore because without their transponders, they were difficult to locate and didn’t meet Preservation’s current safety standards. Difficult to locate sounded good, though, like the hostile ship wouldn’t know it was out there unless it specifically scanned for it, which was what I needed.
The historical story currently playing on the colony ship’s comm sounded interesting, so I set one of my inputs to record it as I carried the life-tender to the airlock. Following the instructions, I pulled the tabs, set the safety to active, tossed it into the lock, and cycled it through. It was old, but its sealed storage was designed to keep equipment functioning for long periods of time, just like everything else on this ship; it was how these old colony ships worked. (You couldn’t be on Preservation for more than five minutes without being forced to listen to a documentary about it.)
