“Tapan, just hush and listen,” Maro interrupted, clearly exasperated.
Rami looked stubborn, but asked, “Then what should we do?”
Technically, this didn’t have to be my problem. I was here now and didn’t need them anymore. I could lose them in the crowd and leave them to deal with their murderous ex-employer all on their own.
But they were clients. Even after I’d hacked my governor module, I’d found it impossible to abandon clients I hadn’t chosen. I’d made an agreement with these clients as a free agent. I couldn’t leave. I kept my sigh internal. “You can’t meet Tlacey at her compound. You’ll pick the spot.”
It wasn’t ideal, but it would have to do.
My clients picked a food service place in the center of the port. It was on a raised platform, the tables and chairs arranged in groups, with displays floating above advertising various port and contractor services and information about the different mining installations. The displays also functioned as camera and recording chaff, so the place was a popular spot for business meetings.
Rami, Tapan, and Maro had picked a table and were nervously fiddling with the drinks they had ordered from one of the bots drifting around. They had put in a comm call to Tlacey, and were waiting for a representative to arrive.
The security system in this public area was more sophisticated than ShuttleSecSys but not by much. I had gotten in far enough to monitor emergency traffic and get views from the cameras focused on our immediate area. I felt pretty confident. I was standing three meters from the table, pretending to look at the ad displays and examining the map of the installations I had found in the public feed. There were plenty of abandoned dig sites marked, as well as tube accesses that went off into apparently nowhere. Ganaka Pit had to be one of them.
ART said in my ear, There must be an accessible information archive. Ganaka Pit’s existence would not be deleted from it. The absence would be too obvious to researchers.
That depended on the research. Someone working on strange synthetics would obviously care about where they were found, but not necessarily about what company had dug them up, or why that company wasn’t around anymore. But whoever had removed Ganaka Pit from the map would have been trying to obscure its existence from casual journalists, not erase it entirely from the memory of the population.
ART’s data had been correct; there were other SecUnits on this moon. The map showed logos from five bond companies that offered SecUnits, including my company, at seven of the most remote installations where exploration for mineral veins was still ongoing. They would be there to defend the claim from theft and to keep the miners and other employees from injuring each other as part of the bond guarantee. No SecUnits would travel through the port except as inert cargo in transport boxes or repair cubicles, so that was one less thing to worry about. My altered configuration might fool humans and augmented humans, but not other SecUnits.
If they saw me, they would alert their SecSystems. They wouldn’t have a choice. And they wouldn’t want one. If anybody knows how dangerous rogue SecUnits are, it’s other SecUnits.
That was when I felt the ping.
I told myself I’d mistaken it for something else. Then it happened again. That’s a big uh-oh.
Something was looking for SecUnits. Not just bots, specifically SecUnits, and it was close. It hadn’t pinged me directly, though if I’d had a working governor module, I would have been compelled to answer.
Three humans approached the table my clients were sitting at. Rami whispered into ter feed, “That’s Tlacey. I didn’t expect her to come herself.” Two of the humans were large and male and one of them lengthened his stride to reach the table. Maro had seen him and from the look on her face I knew this was not going to be a greeting. Scan showed he was armed.
I moved between him and the table. I put a hand up at his chest height and said, “Stop.”
On most contracts this was as far as I was allowed to go with a human until they made physical contact. But you’d be surprised how often this works, if you do it right. Though that was when I was wearing my armor with the helmet opaqued. Standing here in normal human clothes with my human face showing made it a whole different thing. But it wasn’t like he could hurt me by hitting me and he hadn’t drawn his weapon yet.
I could have torn through him like tissue paper.
He didn’t know that, but he must have been able to tell from my face that I wasn’t afraid of him. I checked the security camera to see what I looked like, and decided I looked bored. That wasn’t unusual, because I almost always looked bored while I was doing my job, it was just impossible to tell when I was in my armor.
He visibly regrouped and said, “Who the fuck are you?”
My clients had shoved their chairs back and were on their feet. Rami said, “This is our security consultant.”
He stepped back, and glanced uncertainly at the other two, the second male human bodyguard and Tlacey, who was an augmented human female.
I dropped my arm but didn’t move. I had clear shots at all three of them, but that was a worst-case scenario. For me, at least. Humans can miss a lot of little clues, but me being able to fire energy weapons from my arms would be something of a red flag. I diverted just enough attention to scan the security camera feeds for whatever it was that had pinged me.
I caught an image on a camera across the public area, near one of the entrance tunnels. The figure standing near the edge of the seating area didn’t match what I was expecting to see and I had to review it again before I understood. It wasn’t wearing armor and its physical configuration didn’t match SecUnit standard. It had a lot of hair, silver with blue and purple on the ends, pulled back and braided like Tapan’s but in a much more complicated pattern. Its facial features were different from mine, but all Units’ features are different, assigned randomly based on the human cloned material that’s used to make our organic parts. Its arms were bare, and there was no metal showing and no gun ports. This was not a SecUnit.
I was looking at a sexbot.
That is not the official designation, ART said.
The official designation is ComfortUnit but everybody knows what that means.
Sexbots aren’t allowed to walk around in human areas without orders, any more than murderbots. Someone must have sent it here.
ART poked me hard enough to make me twitch. I snapped out of it and ran my recording back a little to catch up on what was happening.
Tlacey had stepped forward. “And just why do you need a security consultant?”
Rami took a breath. I hit ter feed, secured a private connection between ter, Tapan, and Maro, and told ter, Don’t answer that. Don’t mention the attempt on the shuttle. Just stick to business. It was an impulse. Tlacey had come here expecting an angry confrontation; that was why she had brought armed bodyguards. We had an advantage now; we weren’t dead, and they were off balance and we wanted to keep them that way.
Rami let the breath out, tapped my feed in acknowledgment, then said, “We’re here to talk about our files.”
Maro, who had realized what I was trying to do, told Rami, Keep going, don’t even let them sit down.
Sounding more confident, Rami continued, “Deleting our personal work was not part of our employment contract. But we’ll agree to your proposal that we return our signing bonus in exchange for our files.”
On the security cameras, I watched the sexbot turn and leave the public area via the tunnel directly behind it.
Tlacey said, “The entire bonus?” She clearly hadn’t expected them to agree.
Maro leaned forward. “We opened an account with Umro to hold the funds. We can transfer it to you as soon as you give us the files.”