Exit Strategy

by Martha Wells

  I sank into the ship’s comm. The approach protocol the PA had managed to slip out between ads stipulated that comms be set to monitor all signal traffic, voice and feed. This was so ships could bypass the choked station feed and pick up any alerts or alarms the other ships might broadcast.

  It was harder to sort and separate them without the comm system assisting but I knew what I was looking for. After six minutes I found it: the company gunship’s encrypted feed, twined around its comm signal like the melody in a music sample. I pulled the feed in and applied the key, and—this could be a mistake, did I need intel this badly? Yeah, yeah, I did. I needed to know if Mensah was here on a mission or under duress—I sent the gunship’s bot pilot a ping and added the code that would tell it I was in stealth mode.

  It acknowledged. It recognized me as also company property, since I had the decryption key and I was using the right salutation. I didn’t think it would notify its crew that it had been contacted by what it had every reason to identify as another company bot, not unless someone had told it to. Another SecUnit would have reported me immediately, but then a SecUnit would have known what I was and that I shouldn’t be out here.

  I waited, listening in to make sure no one had noticed the offsite connection. No alarms were raised. I could tell feed traffic aboard the ship was light, and mostly in standby mode. They were waiting for something.

  I mentally braced myself and sent the bot pilot Status: update (stealth). After a long three seconds, it returned a databurst. I sent an acknowledgment and broke free of the connection.

  I focused on the ceiling of the cabin again. If I was lucky, nobody would check the bot pilot’s contact log. The company had been paid for me and taken me off inventory, but I had no legal status in corporate territory without Mensah. If they realized I was here, they could report me to station authorities, or decide to catch me and forcibly separate me into my component parts, or anything in between.

  I checked the databurst for tracers and malware and then unpacked it.

  Well, this was … potentially a disaster. Shortly after the gunship had arrived at TranRollinHyfa, the contract status had gone from Retrieve: Active to Retrieve: Suspended Due to Neutral Party Access Denial, Escalation Out of Contracted Parameters. That meant that the gunship had been sent to retrieve an endangered client, but the operation had been halted because the retrieval had been blocked, and by something other than just being beyond the range of the client’s ability to pay. The client ID code was Mensah’s, the same one from my contract, which meant this was an extension of her original safety bond for the planetary survey. Which, okay, I didn’t know it worked like that, but it was confirmation Mensah was here, or at least that the company’s current intel thought she was here.

  And the fucking gunship was sitting out here not doing anything about it. I’m guessing GrayCris had somehow gotten TranRollinHyfa to refuse docking and operational permission, meaning the company couldn’t land its armed retrieval team without fighting TRH station security and the company hadn’t been paid enough to do that.

  The other code in the status was Secondary Clients Status: Recognizance. That was almost worse—it meant someone else named in the bond (probably Pin-Lee, Ratthi, or Gurathin, since they hadn’t been listed in the newsburst as returning to Preservation) had left company protection and were in the wind. There was only one way to be in the wind between a gunship and an armed station: they must have taken a shuttle, certified themselves as unarmed to get past the operational prohibition, and been allowed to dock.

  So that was four of them I had to worry about.

  * * *

  Waiting was stressful, and I watched an episode of my favorite, The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon, while the transport finished its approach and went through docking procedures. Then the ship’s feed signaled that it was time to disembark.

  One reason I’d picked this particular fast non-bot-piloted transport out of the others heading here was because there were 127 passengers, forty-three of whom were traveling together. They didn’t disappoint me and disembarked in a single noisy confused mob. I walked out surrounded by them and was across the embarkation floor and up into the transparent pipe of the elevated walkway before they became distracted by the vending and advertising bays and started to thin out. I kept walking.

  By that point I’d deflected three weapons scans and had hacked the restricted feeds for the various drone security cameras. The security was tighter for disembarking passengers than the other transit rings and stations I’d visited. Unusually tight for a station that sold its public feed for ads that drowned out the safety info and official announcements. (You could tell which humans and augmented humans were trying to use its mapping function because they kept walking up to blocked exits and walls.)

  I had also been hit by at least four different recognition scans. These scans are usually searching for known humans or augmented humans that the station security is keeping tabs on, not random escaped SecUnits. (Random escaped SecUnits is not nearly as prevalent a problem as the entertainment feed would have you believe.) But I was glad I’d listened to ART and let it change my configuration. I was glad for every single precaution I’d taken, even the ones that had seemed paranoid at the time.

  I didn’t spot any armed security patrols but there were extra drones, small ones, a different brand and configuration than the ones I was used to. After I modified my queries to block the stupid ads, I got a download and search of the news feed started, as well as the port’s public dock assignment list. I checked the port map that had managed to fight its way through the advertising chaff, and took the walkway heading up into the station mall.

  My transport had docked on the second transit ring, so there were a lot of ramps to walk up, if you didn’t want to take the lift pods, which I didn’t. I wasn’t catching pings, but a check of the station directory showed two security companies based here who had SecUnits available for rental, EinoArzu and Stockade Kumaran. Palisade was listed as a security company, but not as a company that supplied SecUnits. That didn’t necessarily mean they didn’t have them, it just meant they didn’t advertise them.

  I wasn’t too worried about SecUnits being used against me at this point. SecUnits would be able to identify me as a rogue unit on sight (or on ping, more accurately) but we were never used on transit rings. The security companies would ship us (them) through the port as cargo, to keep from panicking the humans. I mean, there’s a first time for everything, but it just wasn’t likely, maybe a fifteen percent chance at best.

  Even if they did deploy, they still had to find me. The governor modules wouldn’t let the SecUnits hack systems or search for my hacks, not on their own without human direction. (And I didn’t think GrayCris had any idea how much hacking I was responsible for.) Only combat SecUnits could detect or counteract my hacks without a human supervisor.

  Still, my human skin was prickling with nerves. The extra security seemed to support a theory I had. Or maybe I mean a hypothesis. Whatever, the idea was that if Bharadwaj’s statement in the newsburst had been a message to GrayCris, a sign that Preservation would cooperate to save Dr. Mensah, then the stories about Mensah being arrested, about her going to or somehow being taken to TranRollinHyfa were messages, too. Messages to me.

  GrayCris thought the newsbursts were how Mensah had ordered me to go to Milu, so it stood to reason they would use newsbursts to lure me here.

  It wasn’t a great theory/hypothesis. They had Mensah, so I don’t know why they would want me. They knew I’d been on Milu, did they suspect I had left with an armful of incriminating data? But GoodNightLander Independent had Milu now and would hopefully be mad enough to look for incriminating data of their own, so they could publicly complain about it on their own newsfeeds. GrayCris going after me and Mensah wasn’t going to stop that.

  But they were humans—who knows why they did anything?

  It made it all the more obvious that now that I’d gotten in here, I needed to make sure I coul
d get out. Speaking of which, I pulled specs and info from the security feeds I’d accessed, and tagged it to work on later.

  I walked up the last ramp surrounded by a crowd of humans and augmented humans, and on into the station mall. There was no fringe travelers’ area, with cheap transient hostels and vending kiosks. It went straight into multi-levels of expensive shops and offices, most in spheres, stacked into looming towers or hovering overhead. The feed was a maze of vids and ads and instructions and music, competing with the floating display surfaces and the holosculptures of giant waterfalls and trees and abstract art things. I’d seen similar, and better, on my shows, but seeing it in person was different. My camera angles weren’t as good, for one thing. And the humans and augmented humans wandering around randomly were distracting from the view.

  Oh, and there were downloads, sweet downloads, multiple entertainment feeds, way more than HaveRatton and Port FreeCommerce, hanging temptingly in the air. I picked a couple at random and started downloads. One of my queries had pulled up the station’s actual index for residents, not the abbreviated one for tourists and transients, and I needed a place to stand still to review it. I headed toward one of the lower-level spheres.

  It was a big shop, with lots of humans and augmented humans going in and out. I could do a shop. I’d done shops (one shop) before. No problem.

  I tried to relax and look preoccupied as I took the ramp up to the entrance. The shop’s feed ads said it sold advanced lifestyles. I don’t know what that is and the explanations in the feed weren’t helpful. Even some of the humans wandering around looked confused. I wandered with them into a central area where humans were watching a hovering display of products? Art and music inspired by products? It wasn’t the enclosed booth I was hoping for, but it gave me a reason to stand still and stare while I reviewed my query results and the station index.

  Not a surprise, I had turned up a dock listing for a shuttle with a company ID code, the only company code in the arrivals index. That was the shuttle the Preservation team had used to get here from the gunship.

  It was … strange, knowing they were so close. Considering the size of the shuttle, they probably weren’t staying on board. After a little delicate unraveling of the Port Authority’s protected systems, I got a download of the docking contact index and matched the shuttle’s entry with a physical address in a station hotel.

  Three newssearch results popped up while I was deleting any trace of my intrusion from the PA’s system, but they were old newsbursts from Port FreeCommerce. Just more useless speculation on where Mensah was and what she was doing, why she had disappeared.

  None of my queries had turned up any mention of her.

  I didn’t have a lot of choice. The team from Preservation must be here to negotiate for Mensah’s release, the only way they could proceed until Preservation scraped up enough currency to pay the company to violate TranRollinHyfa’s docking ban. I needed intel before I could do anything, and they were my only potential source.

  I left the shop, first making sure to do one loop of the aimless wander around the displays that the humans were doing.

  I had to go meet some old friends.

  Chapter Three

  THE HOTEL WAS AT the far end of the station mall, in a quieter area with 60 percent less foot and drone traffic, next to a multi-level plaza. All the structures around it were office blocks or hotels, all were shaped like giant cones or cylinders, except for one either iconoclast or outdated sphere, which seemed to be holding on to its real estate despite the fact that the station had tried to block it from view with a large holo forest display.

  I crossed one of the multi-level plazas, where humans and augmented humans were sitting singly and in groups at scattered tables and chairs, talking, viewing entertainment media on the displays, or working in their feeds. Surveillance was tight so I started one of the new codes I had written on the way here.

  I had been thinking about other ways to look less like a SecUnit. (An obvious option was to pretend to eat or drink something, but that was tricky. I can do that if I have to, but only for a limited time. I don’t have anything like a digestive system so I have to segregate a section of my lung to store it until I can expel it. Yes, it’s just as awful as it sounds.) I’d decided on something more subtle and less disgusting. Humans, even augmented humans, subvocalize when they speak on the feed. I had written a quick set of code that I could run in background to mimic those jaw movements. (I pulled a selection of conversations from Sanctuary Moon, Legends of the Fire, and Toward Tomorrow to use as a template for the movements.) As I crossed the plaza toward the hotel I made sure my shoulders were relaxed and my expression was distracted. I picked up a camera feed from one of the drones watching the plaza for a look. Operating in concert with my code to mimic human breathing patterns and small random movements, it was perfect. Well, perfect for me. Let’s say 98 percent perfect.

  The Preservation group’s hotel had a big terraced entrance with transparent walls and a wide doorway. A track for the station’s pipe transport ran through a transparent upper floor of the structure, so you could see passengers disembarking and boarding inside when the chain of pipe capsules arrived. (I could see them via the higher-flying drones; the other humans in the plaza couldn’t.)

  I identified two potential hostiles sitting at tables in the plaza.

  At the hotel entrance, I blended with a crowd of humans and augmented humans who were watching a floating advertising display that was showing funny short videos. (Some were pretty good so I saved them to permanent storage.) It also gave me a place to stand while I worked my way into the hotel’s security system. I had the improved version of my RaviHyral code routine to remove myself from camera views ready to deploy if needed.

  When the video display started to repeat, I followed another group of humans through the entrance. I probably sound confident, but the scan at the arched doorway made my human skin prickle. I knew the kind of chance I was taking in coming here.

  The lobby was a series of wide platforms with seating. It also had giant hanging biospheres full of simulated planetary skies, all displaying different weather. Ostensibly they were there to obscure the view of the seating platforms and provide some privacy, but they actually had the security system’s cameras and scanners along the rims. As I watched myself through the cameras I spotted four more potential hostiles, all augmented humans. One was clearly in the feed, reviewing the scan results, and the others were moving around, doing visual sweeps.

  No telling if they were GrayCris or Palisade, though if they were the hotel would know they were here. I couldn’t tell if they were looking for me; there were no standing alerts in the security comm feed. Though from their affect they were paying close attention to augmented humans wearing any kind of hood, hat, or scarf, or face-obscuring tattoos, cosmetics, or ornaments. Me, a generic type augmented human person with my hood folded down on my back, didn’t get a second glance.

  This is why humans shouldn’t do their own security.

  I went up the ramp to the check-in platform, followed the directional feed with its welcoming musical theme and instructions to a kiosk, and booked a room with one of Gerth’s hard currency cards.

  Yes, I did enjoy doing that.

  I took the rear exit off the platform to the pod junction and followed five humans into the first pod to arrive. It was a limited system, no outside connections, and would only take you to the room section now tied to your ID marker by the hotel’s feed, or the lobbies and public entertainment sections. The pod took us to our sections in order of arrival, so it gave me a chance to watch the system in operation and copy its code. It took me to my section and I followed the feed map to my room.

  It opened at the authorization the hotel had attached to my ID marker and at that brilliant moment I discovered there were no interior camera views or audio surveillance. Stupid hotel. I had probably even paid extra for it.

  Still, the room was bigger and much nicer than the cabins I’d ha
d on the passenger transports. I did a quick walk-through to scan for anomalies, then dropped my bag and lay down on the bed. (It was huge. Why have a bed that could easily accommodate four medium to large humans when you only had one hook for towels in the bath facility? Were the humans supposed to share the towel?) The wall across from the unnecessarily large bed was all display surface. To keep me company, I sent an episode of Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon to it to play—holy shit, the humans were almost actual size in the long shots—and then I got to work.

  So there were no camera feeds from the rooms, but the cameras in the corridors were picking up humans and augmented humans as they moved through the connecting passages and used the transport pods to go to and from the lobbies and the three sections of food and club areas. (Whatever “clubs” were. The things going on there didn’t seem to match my lexicon definition.) There was also a transport link to the pipe train level.

  I worked my way carefully into the system, alert for traps. Without room cameras I was going to have to do this the hard way.

  Like most surveillance systems on non-secure installations, this one didn’t save their recordings permanently and supposedly deleted their archives after a waiting period. Note I said “supposedly.” Of course, the hotel was datamining.

  The mining was only on the conversations in the public areas and corridors, but then that was what I needed. I found the stored archives from the past twenty cycles, took over one of the routines that was processing it (it was separating out the boring bits from the juicy business conversations that would need to be sent to a human or bot monitor for review), and redirected it to search for my keyword set.

  Eight minutes and thirty-seven seconds later, my captured routine turned up a sizable set of hits. I got the timestamps, then released the routine back to its job of searching for proprietary financial information. The timestamps let me know which archives to check for the camera surveillance.

  I made some room in my temp storage, downloaded the first archive, and started my scans. I was reviewing it all myself instead of using a quicker and more efficient facial recognition scan on the collected data. That type of scan is only 62 percent reliable under most conditions and while that’s fine for half-assed company security work, I didn’t want to miss my targets. It turned out I could have started there instead of wasting the eight minutes, because in the first pass I caught an image of Ratthi in a corridor, walking toward a pod junction, timestamp sixteen hours and twenty-seven minutes minus present time.