her face. “I’m almost glad you’re here.”
Chapter Four
WHEN OUR BUBBLE RETURNED to the station, I went to a hotel kiosk to book a room and Pin-Lee went to get the others. She thought we needed to talk as a group in private. I sort of did, too. (We could have done it via the feed in the garden seating area, but I didn’t trust the humans not to wave their arms and draw attention.)
I took a pod up to the room and of course there was no security feed inside because of the stupid hotel wanting to lure humans in with promises of room privacy so it could record them in the public spaces. This hotel was less expensive than the previous one but the pretty quotient was about the same. And the feed was choked, unless of course you happened to know how to get around that.
The room was a lot more practical, with a normal-sized bed folded up into the wall to leave extra space for chairs, and a display surface that only took up a fourth of a wall instead of all of it, and a bathing facility with more room for towels. SecUnits are never allowed to sit down or use human furniture whether on or off duty, so I sat in one of the chairs and put my feet up on the table. Then I took my feet off the table because it wasn’t comfortable. I entertained myself by infiltrating the hotel’s security system while I waited.
When the room’s feed signaled that they were at the door, I told it to open. I was in my best casual pose, and Sanctuary Moon was on the display surface. (I was actually redirecting the audio as chaff for a suspicious monitor that the hotel might be using to record inside the rooms, even though the booking agreement certified complete in-room privacy.)
Pin-Lee elbowed the other two in and let the door slide closed. She had clearly told them already, because Ratthi was grinning. He said, “You look great! What have you been doing?”
Gurathin’s expression I interpreted as appalled. I still don’t like you, either.
“Ratthi, later,” Pin-Lee said. She stepped past them and dropped down into the other armchair. “SecUnit doesn’t need to tell us where it’s been or what it’s been doing unless it wants to. We need to focus on how to free Mensah.”
I didn’t expect that and I was glad I was looking at the display surface. The lack of a camera was going to make this awkward, at least for me. I could sort of see everyone in the decorative reflective material at the top of the walls, but that was inadequate.
Gurathin took a breath to say something and Pin-Lee pointed at him. “If you’re going to argue—”
Gurathin grimaced and held up his hands in surrender. “No, no argument. I just don’t see how SecUnit is going to help. They won’t release Mensah without the ransom, and we don’t have it.”
Ratthi told me, “Our company liaison said they were probably holding her in the GrayCris corporate headquarters in the upper torus, past the main station security barrier, where visitors aren’t allowed. Now that you’re here—can we just get her out, and escape?”
It was a dumb idea, so I needed to quash it immediately. I’d already secured a private feed connection between the four of us and now I sent my annotated station map into it. “The problem isn’t that GrayCris’ corporate headquarters is in the upper torus.” I sent the image to the room’s display surface, then had it zoom out and plot the route between here and there. I had all the security checkpoints light up, annotating the ones that barred entrance to anyone with a non-station citizen ID, which was all of them. “It’s that we would be leaving territory controlled by neutral TRH security and entering GrayCris’ corporate jurisdiction.” I didn’t know what they’d do to me, now that my data port was nonfunctional and they couldn’t take control of me. There was a long list of alternatives, including just shooting me until I ceased to function and various other things that would seem sensible and practical to them and like torture to me. Whatever, it wasn’t a good idea to get caught, basically. “In this lower ring, GrayCris has to negotiate with and pay off TRH, and any private security service or entity who has jurisdiction, for each operation, which gives us a slight advantage.”
“Oh.” Ratthi sat back in his chair,