Exit Strategy

Identity markers in the Corporation Rim usually had a lot of information on the bearer, but these were temporaries meant for travelers from outside the Rim. They had a string of numbers from a non-corporate political entity authorizing travel, place of origin, and a name. Obviously this was why Wilken and Gerth had them, so they could switch identities at need. Corporate political entities are more interested in keeping track of their own humans than anybody else’s. I had seen on the media that travel was easier for non-citizens inside the Corporation Rim than citizens, sub-citizens, and all the other categories each different political entity had to keep track of their humans. (It could be worse. At least humans could cut out their ID markers; I had corporate logos etched onto parts of me I couldn’t get rid of.)

I went to a public rest area, paid for an enclosed cubicle with the hard currency card, and picked an ID with the name Jian from Parthalos Absalo. I peeled back the skin around my shoulder joint and inserted the marker under it. I had to dial down my pain receptors in that area, but there was no inconvenient leaking.

I’d been pretending to be human off and on since I left Dr. Mensah, but this was the first time I’d had anything on me that officially labeled me as human. It was weird.

I didn’t like it.

* * *

I paid for passage at a kiosk at the edge of the embarkation zone and had my new ID scanned there and at the transport’s lock when I entered. I had to hack two weapons scans, and adjust the personal scan results at the lock to show a less excessive number of augments. I’d paid for a private cabin with an attached restroom facility and automated meal delivery. (I didn’t need the meals but it would give me something to dump in the waste recycler so the levels wouldn’t look off to anyone who checked.) The ship’s feed led me to the cabin and I saw only four humans in the corridor and heard five others as I passed a lounge. My goal was to not see them again the rest of the seven-cycle trip.

The cabin was nicer than the one I’d had on my only other passenger transport. It had a bunk with a bedding packet and a small display surface, a door leading to the tiny restroom facility, a storage cabinet for personal possessions, and a meal distribution receptacle. I sealed the door, didn’t bother to sit down or even drop my bag. I had feed searches to do while we were still attached to station.

I set one for TranRollinHyfa and expanded my newsburst searches with new keywords and time limits. I had already grabbed new media downloads on my walk to the embarkation zone. I knew I was going to need the distraction.

I thought I knew at least part of what was going on, and it wasn’t good. From GrayCris’ perspective, these things had happened in sequence:

1) Dr. Mensah had bought a (used, somewhat battered) SecUnit, which had then disappeared, no one knew where. 2) Dr. Mensah had said, in an interview sent out in newsbursts carried by transports all across the Corporation Rim, that someone needed to investigate Milu because GrayCris abandoning a terraforming facility was suspicious. (Never mind that the journalist had brought up Milu, not her.) 3) A SecUnit had shown up on Milu and helped an assessment team contracted by GoodNightLander Independent to a) save the facility from falling into the planet, and b) acquire proof that it was an illegal mining operation and not a terraforming facility at all.

The news of 3a and 3b was already in newsbursts making their way through the Corporation Rim, along with Abene and the others’ eyewitness accounts and Wilken and Gerth’s testimony about who had hired them.

Obviously, GrayCris thought Mensah had sent me to Milu to fuck them over.

Oops.

* * *

This was a stressful trip, right up there with the one where ART introduced itself to me by implying that it might delete my brain and the one where I kept thinking about Miki. And the one with Ayres and the other humans who had sold themselves into contract slavery.

I guess most of my trips so far had been this stressful.