“Spliced” was an informal term for an augmented human; I’d heard it on the entertainment feed. I said, “Yes.” Then added, “Among other things.”
Rami’s red brows lifted in understanding. Maro looked impressed, and said, “I don’t know if we can afford— Our credit account is— If we can get our data back, then—”
Rami took it up again. “Then we would have plenty to pay you.”
ART, who was apparently very interested in the job scenario, started to search the public feeds for a pay scale for private security consultants. I reminded myself that I was pretending not to be a SecUnit, so me questioning them wouldn’t seem out of the ordinary. I decided to start with the basic information. “Why do you want to hire me?”
Rami looked at the other two, got nods in response, and cleared ter throat. “We were working on RaviHyral, for Tlacey Excavations, one of the smaller Umro contractors. We do mineral research and technology development.” Te explained that they were a collective of technologists, seven of them plus dependents, who traveled from work contract to work contract. The others were waiting in a hotel suite, with Rami, Maro, and Tapan having been deputized to act for the group. It was a relief to hear that their mining experience was in tech and research; in the mining contracts I had had, the techs were usually in offices off the pit site or adjacent to it, and we didn’t see them unless they got intoxicated and tried to kill each other, which admittedly was rare.
“Tlacey’s terms were great,” Tapan added, “but maybe too great, if you know what I mean.”
ART did a quick search and returned the opinion that it was intended to be a figure of speech. I told it I knew that.
Rami continued, “We took the contract because it would give us time to work on our own stuff. We’d had this idea to develop a new detection system for strange synthetics. RaviHyral has a lot of identified deposits, so it’s a great place for research.” Strange synthetics were elements left behind by alien civilizations. Telling the difference between them and naturally occurring elements that were previously unidentified was a problem in mining. Like the remnants of alien occupation/civilization uncovered by GrayCris on my last contract, they were off limits for commercial development. That was all I’d ever needed to know, since every job I’d ever had involving alien material was just me standing around guarding the people who were working on it. (ART tried to explain it to me and I told it to save it for later, I needed to focus.)
Rami said, “We were making good progress, but then suddenly our group got terminated with no notice, and they took our data—”
Tapan waved her hands. “All our work! It wasn’t anything to do with our contract—”
Maro finished, “Tlacey stole it, basically, and they deleted the most current version off our devices. We had copies of the older iterations, but we’ve lost all our recent work.”
Rami added, “We filed a complaint with Umro, but it’s taking forever to process it, and we don’t know if it’s ever going to come to anything.”
I said, “This sounds like something you should go to a solicitor about.” It wasn’t unusual. The company data mined, too, but it wasn’t as clumsy or obvious as to try to delete the work from the original creators’ devices. If it did that, then the creators wouldn’t come back and enter into more security bond agreements, which would give the company access to whatever they were working on next.
“We thought about a solicitor,” Rami said. “But we aren’t in the union, so it would be expensive. But then yesterday Tlacey finally answered our petition, and said we could have the files back if we returned our signing bonus. We have to go down to RaviHyral to do that.” Te sat back in ter chair. “That’s why we wanted to hire you.”
This was starting to make sense. “You don’t trust Tlacey.”
“We just want somebody on our side,” Tapan clarified.
“No, we definitely don’t trust Tlacey,” Maro countered. “Not at all. We need security for when we get there, if things get … touchy. Tlacey herself is supposed to meet us, and she has an entourage of bodyguards, and there’s no general security except what Umro has in the public areas and the port, and that’s not much.”
I didn’t know exactly what she thought she meant by “touchy,” but all the scenarios I could imagine in that situation weren’t good ones.
The company offered SecUnits so the clients didn’t have to hire humans to guard each other. From what I had seen in the serials, me doing a half-assed version of my job was still better than a human trying to do it.
I was still watching us through the captured security camera even though I wasn’t allowing it to record. I could see my expression was dubious, but in this case I think the situation warranted it. I said, “The meeting with Tlacey could be held through a secured comm channel.” The company bonded those, too, for funds and data transfer.
Maro, whose expression was even more dubious than mine, said, “Yeah, but Tlacey wants to do it in person.”
Rami admitted, “We know it doesn’t sound like a good idea to go.”
It was a great idea to go if you wanted to be murdered. I had hoped for an easier job, courier duty, or something similar. But this was protecting humans who were determined to do something dangerous, which was exactly the kind of job I was designed for. The job that I had kept doing more or less, often as less as possible, even after I had hacked my governor module. I was used to having something useful to do, taking care of something, even if it was only a contractually obligated group of humans who if I was lucky treated me like a tool and not a toy.
After PreservationAux, it had occurred to me how different it would be to do my job as an actual member of the group I was protecting. And that was the main reason I was here.
I phrased it as a question, because pretending you were asking for more information was the best way to try to get the humans to realize they were doing something stupid. “So do you think there’s another reason Tlacey wants you to do this exchange in person, other than … killing you?”
Tapan grimaced, as if that was something she had been aware of but trying not to think about. Maro tapped the table and pointed at me, which was vaguely alarming until ART identified it as a gesture of emphatic agreement. Rami took a sharp breath and said, “We think … We weren’t finished, our process was incomplete, but we were so enthusiastic about it … We think they must have listened in using the security feeds and heard us talking, and thought we were much further along than we actually were. So I don’t know if they can complete it. Maybe they realized it’s not worth much without us to finish it.”
“Maybe Tlacey wants us to work for her again,” Tapan said hopefully.
Probably, before she murders you, I didn’t say.
Maro snorted. “I would rather live in a box in a station mall than work for her again.”
Once they had started to talk about it, it was hard for them to stop. The collective was completely divided on what to do, which was apparently painful for all of them since they were used to agreeing on everything. Tapan, who according to Maro was too naive for this existence, thought it was worth a try. Maro, who according to Tapan was a cynical impediment to both fun and progress, thought they were screwed and should just cut their losses. Rami was undecided, which was why te had been elected leader of the collective for the duration of this problem. Rami did not seem thrilled by the collective’s confidence, but was gamely trying to proceed.
Finally, Rami finished up with, “So that’s why we want to hire you. We thought it would be better to go in with someone who could protect us, keep her crew from messing with us, show her we have backup while we negotiate.”