Exit Strategy

Only a few humans were in the station, stepping out of a just-arrived bubble. We walked up to the first rack and I paid with another hard currency card and—Wow, that was three times the price of my last transient hostel. It’s a good thing I don’t have to eat.

Pin-Lee climbed in first, eyeing me with what I wanted to interpret as discreet wariness but maybe wasn’t. I sat down on the opposite bench and selected the option for an overhead tour of this segment’s shopping park. The door sealed and the bubble floated up to join the line of others passing over the hotel.

The bubble had a camera feed, but it was the kind meant to alert on certain words, sounds, and motions, probably only there to cut down on random murders. I blocked its audio feed and said, “Clear.”

She glared at me. “You left.”

Somehow I hadn’t expected that. I said, “Mensah said I could learn to do anything I wanted. I learned to leave.”

“You could have told her what you wanted. We—she—we were worried, okay.” My gaze was on the view behind her, using the bubble’s camera to study her face. She pressed her lips together, cutting off whatever she was going to say next. Then she regrouped and continued, “I saw the goodbye message you sent her. It’s not like she didn’t realize that we’d fucked up the whole situation.”

I was having an emotion, and I hate that. I’d rather have nice safe emotions about shows on the entertainment media; having them about things real-life humans said and did just led to stupid decisions like coming to TranRollinHyfa. And they hadn’t fucked up the whole situation. Parts of it, sure. But it’s not like I knew what to do with me, either. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

She sighed, a tired but angry sigh, and pressed her fingers to her forehead. I had to quell an impulse to tap my nonexistent MedSystem and ask for a diagnosis. She said, “So where the fuck did you go? And what are you doing here?” She hesitated warily. “Are you working for someone, on contract?”

That was the whole point of leaving. “Either I’m Mensah’s property, and I work for her, or I’m a free agent and I work for myself.”

Glare intensifying. “Okay, so what did you hire yourself to do?”

That was an interesting way to put it. I kind of liked it. And it felt so weird to be talking to a human like this, a human who knew what I was. I didn’t have to force myself to stare at Pin-Lee’s face, worry that my expressions were normal. Abene had known I was a SecUnit, but she hadn’t known I was me. “I’ve been traveling, and I saw a newsburst that said Mensah was missing. Did they trick her into coming here, or was she abducted?”

Her eyes narrowed again, but this time more in speculation. “You’ve really just been wandering around watching that serial. We were afraid GrayCris might catch you, but they kept demanding you be submitted as part of the evidence process. It seemed like they would have let us know if they had you, gloated about it.”

“I’ve been wandering around watching a lot of serials.” I waited. Pin-Lee had always been the tough one, and it took her time to let down her guard. Like all the others, I had hundreds of hours of stored audio and video of her. I didn’t need to review it to know her nerves were stretched thin from fear for Mensah, from the responsibility for the others’ lives.

She said finally, “So you came to help us. Why should I trust you? You obviously don’t trust us.”

If I could answer that, I’d probably be a lot better off. I didn’t trust them, not with some things. I had no idea why they should trust me. “I pulled a status report from the company gunship. They aren’t going to help you unless the station lifts the docking prohibition. You’re on your own. Or you’re on your own with Ratthi and Gurathin, which may be worse.”

She grimaced. “I forgot what an asshole you are.”

Well, yeah. I said, “I need intel to make a plan.”

She looked at the view, and winced a little at the flashing ad display circling the spire we were passing. “They took her off Port FreeCommerce, after a meeting with DeltFall representatives. Some of the families of the victims had traveled in to personally collect the remains, there were a lot of people there, it was emotional. She stepped away for a minute afterward, and she was gone. The security cams showed the moment when they grabbed her, but by that time they had already taken her off the station. With some help from our diplomatic corps on Preservation, I convinced the company that this was their problem, that they had fucked up so badly with our survey bond that they owed us. Then GrayCris sent a demand that Preservation drop our suit against them and make a public announcement to that effect. We’ve done that, and now we’re here to negotiate a ransom.” Her expression tightened. “We’ve got people on Preservation working to free up assets, but right now we don’t have nearly as much as they want.”

So I was right, and GrayCris did need money. “But no company contract support?”