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it were office blocks or hotels, all were shaped like giant cones or cylinders, except for one either iconoclast or outdated sphere, which seemed to be holding on to its real estate despite the fact that the station had tried to block it from view with a large holo forest display.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