I deflected multiple scans as we entered the embarkation zone. I avoided the lift pods again because if there was an alert, the pods would freeze in place, and if I was hacking one it would become rapidly obvious where we were. I guided us down the ramp that would come out above the private shuttle docks on the first ring level. As we went along, the crowd thinned out, and I estimated a 50 percent reduction by the time we reached the walkway. A check of the stupid advertising garbage-filled port feed said that this was a normal lull in scheduled arrivals. (For once I missed being stuck in a crowd of humans.) There was no lull in the security checks, and I picked up multiple drone swarm traffic over the embarkation floors on all three rings.
I needed more intel. Normally I wouldn’t risk hacking the upper-level security feeds, the ones where the human supervisors communicated, but there was nothing normal about this. Using the drone feeds I’d already infiltrated, I started a careful hack of the top-level security feed, which I was tagging as StationSecAdmin.
I was sure GrayCris would manage to pay off or otherwise convince the StationSecAdmin and Port Authority to issue an alert and let Palisade into the port to search for us. But we had gotten here fast, and GrayCris would want to search the hotel and surrounding area first, since that was a cheaper operation than paying to search the port. If the rest of Team Preservation had made it here, we should be fine. (Yes, I know. I shouldn’t even have thought it.)
Once I was into the StationSecAdmin feed, I didn’t try to pry any further, just set some internal alerts and backburnered it.
“Will it be better if we talk?” Mensah said. I knew her well enough to hear the forced calm in her voice, and to know that the forced part wouldn’t show on her face.
We were near the public docks and I turned onto the next ramp down to the embarkation floor level. The crowd had dropped another 20 percent, to where it couldn’t actually be called a crowd anymore. I said, “That depends on what we talk about.”
As we reached the floor level, she said, “Why is Sanctuary Moon your favorite?”
Yes, that we can talk about. I actually felt the organic tissue in my back and shoulders relax. I asked, “Have you ever seen it?” I still didn’t want to directly communicate with the shuttle, but we passed a departure schedule feed access point and after the burst of ads, I saw the company shuttle was on the wait list for a launch time. It was hopefully Pin-Lee’s way of signaling that they had made it aboard, and not a trick by GrayCris.
(If it was a trick by GrayCris we were screwed. The shuttle was the only reliable way to get Mensah and the others off the station. I would have enough trouble getting myself off on a bot-piloted transport once they were safe, with all the security alerts that were going out to the transports in dock.)
(No, I had absolutely no intention of getting on a company shuttle heading toward a company gunship.)
Mensah glanced around, not looking too much like a human who had suddenly remembered she should be looking around like everything was normal. She tightened her grip on my hand. “I’ve watched some episodes, and I liked it, but I wasn’t sure why you would.” She shook her head at herself. “Maybe because it’s about the problems of a bunch of humans, and I had the impression you were tired of dealing with us.”
I actually turned my head and looked down at her, I was so surprised. I was expecting her to say no, she hadn’t seen it. Then I could tell her the plot and she could pretend to be interested, which would have gotten us all the way to the shuttle. “You watched it?”
“I wanted to see the part about the colony solicitor you and Ratthi mentioned, then I got involved.” I deflected more weapon scans as we crossed through the first gate into the private docks, and the crowd level went back up by 16 percent. We didn’t stand out nearly as much and my scan showed Mensah’s breathing and heartbeat even out. She added, “It’s a good story, I see why it’s popular. I just don’t understand why you like it best, when there are such a variety of serials out there.”
Huh, why did I like Sanctuary Moon so much? I had to pull the memory from my archive, and what I saw there startled me. “It’s the first one I saw. When I hacked my governor module and picked up the entertainment feed. It made me feel like a person.” Yeah, that last part shouldn’t have come out, but with all the security-feed monitoring I was doing, I was losing control of my output. I closed my archive. I really needed to get around to setting that one-second delay on my mouth.
A roving drone cam showed me she was frowning. “You are a person.”
Oh, that we can’t talk about. “Not legally.”
She took a breath to speak, then reconsidered and released it. I knew she wanted to argue the point, but I was right, so. There wasn’t much else to say about it. She said instead, “Why did it make you feel that way?”
“I don’t know.” That was true. But pulling the archived memory had brought it back, vividly, as if it had all just happened. (Stupid human neural tissue does that.) The words kept wanting to come out. It gave me context for the emotions I was feeling, I managed not to say. “It kept me company without…”
“Without making you interact?” she suggested.
That she understood even that much made me melt. I hate that this happens, it makes me feel vulnerable. Maybe that was why I had been nervous about meeting Mensah again, and not all the other dumb reasons I had come up with. I hadn’t been afraid that she wasn’t my friend, I had been afraid that she was, and what it did to me. I said, “The shuttle will take you and the others to the company gunship. I’m not going with you.” I hadn’t meant to tell her and I don’t know why I did. Did I secretly want her to talk me out of it? I hate having emotions about real humans instead of fake ones, it just leads to stupid moments like this.
She almost stopped, but remembered at the last second not to. “I can protect you.”
“Because you own me.”
“That’s what they think, but we—” She cut herself off, and took a breath. “I wish you trusted me, but I understand why you don’t.”
One of my alerts tripped. The one I really, really hoped wouldn’t trip, the one I’d set on StationSecAdmin. An authorization for a non-station security operation had just come through to the human supervisors.
This is one of those “oh shit” moments.
In the same second, the port emergency klaxon sounded. The humans and augmented humans stopped, flinched, looked around. I pulled Mensah to a halt, because we’d be noticed if we kept moving and every second they didn’t identify us was vital.
All I could tell from StationSecAdmin was that the emergency had been triggered manually by a human supervisor, though the authorization for GrayCris-employed Palisade operatives to enter the port was technically still pending. This was a human PortSec or Port Authority supervisor trying to do their job, giving the humans on the embarkation floor extra time to evacuate. Then the public feed cut off in mid-advertising and the PA official feed said, Emergency lockdown, take shelter/shelter in place, armed security will be moving through port—
Around us, humans started to walk, then run back toward the public security barrier. Hauler bots went inactive, cargo lifters went up into a hover pattern, drones swirled up into formations overhead. At the locks directly across from us a ship in the process of unloading sent a comm alarm through the feed, canceling disembarking, telling confused passengers to get back aboard. (Note, it was a ship from a non-corporate political entity—the corporate ships just sealed their locks.)