Chapter Text
Preservation — Current Year
”Please don’t say ‘I told you so,’” Gurathin said through the feed to me at exactly the same time as I sent:
“I told you.”
I was here, on Preservation Station, sitting behind Dr. Mensah while she met with representatives from a different non-affiliated planet system. There had been a chance they’d been infiltrated by corporate — to use her daughter’s words — goons, so I’d had to go with her. I wasn’t about to let her get kidnapped a second time on my watch.
For some reason, during the three cycles I needed to stay here with Dr. Mensah, Pin-Lee had decided to get on a ship and go to another planet to help them work out a contract with a company on the Corporation Rim and it ‘just couldn’t wait.’
I had told her not to go. I had told her to put it off until I could go with her as her security. But of course no one had listened to me. It wasn’t like I was an expert or anything.
And now Pin-Lee had disappeared.
“We have to go,” I said abruptly to Dr. Mensah, interrupting whatever the other ambassador had been saying. To her private feed I pushed the news of Pin-Lee’s disappearance.
“I am very sorry for the interruption,” Dr. Mensah said, covering for my rudeness, “But there has been an emergency. My security consultant is right, we have to go. You will be given a suite in a hotel until we can reconvene. We do apologize.”
I stared near her pointedly.
She got the idea and quickly left with me to convene with Dr. Gurathin and the others.
Sr. Officer Indah was going to want to help and I wanted to get this figured out before she got herself involved. I already knew who I wanted involved.
The first thing I’d done when I saw the news about Pin-Lee had been to send a message out to ART, hoping it was close enough to rendezvous with it. I was going to need someone competent to help me track down Pin-Lee’s ship. I only knew what planet she’d been going to and the company in question she’d been helping out against, but I didn’t know where she might be by now.
If whoever took her weren’t total idiots, they’d have gotten her through a wormhole as fast as possible to make her harder to track down.
Maybe there would be a ransom message. If I were a human, I would have sighed. I really hated hostage situations.
I refrained from picking up Dr. Mensah and carrying her to the embarkation zone where we were meeting up, if only because it wouldn’t matter, the other humans were still going to be slow.
It took us fourteen minutes to all gather around on Preservation Station to make a plan. We should be on a shuttle already.
“Has there been any communication from Pin-Lee’s security?” Bharadwaj asked.
I resisted rolling my eyes, but said, “No, the human security did not send us a message.”
“You were right, you should have gone with her,” Ratthi said, “But we’ll find her right? Will they try to ransom her back?” His voice was strained, but I still wasn’t going to lie to him. It never helped.
“That depends on why they kidnapped her,” I said.
“I believe she was either taken in a chance encounter with raiders or she was targeted by a corporation because she is our best contract law solicitor,” Mensah said.
I agreed with her. Being the ‘CombatBot of solicitors’ made her more and more of a target as Preservation increased its dealings with the Corporation Rim.
“Then do you think she’s already dead?” Overse asked, taking Arada’s hand.
“No,” I said. I did think she was probably already dead. But that didn’t matter since I was going to go look for her anyway. And I really didn’t want her to be dead. “I will retrieve her.”
“I’m coming with you,” Ratthi said.
I was planning on arguing but I received a message back from ART. As expected, it was happy to come pick me up and save the day. What it had actually said while practically vibrating with excitement was, “I am always pleased to assist Dr. Mensah.” I’m sure it was going to be an asshole about it too, but I did actually need the help, so I would probably only complain a little.
“ART is coming to help. I need a shuttle to get to the port it’s meeting me ,” I said, already walking toward the correct shuttle.
“We are going to come with you,” Dr. Mensah insisted.
I stopped, “Why?”
“If there is a negotiation, you will need representatives. Myself and anyone who volunteers will come, but we will remain on your ship and listen to any other security recommendations you make.”
I hesitated for three whole seconds, “...Fine,” I said only because she was right. I wasn’t going to be any help if we needed a complicated negotiation. My plan was to find the people who had kidnapped Pin-Lee and kill the shit out of them.
“ART will be at our rendezvous port in four cycles, we need to leave now,” I said.
Mensah, Gurathin, Ratthi, and Bharadwaj accompanied me, Overse, Arada, and Volescu remaining behind to coordinate from here and try to keep Pin-Lee’s kidnap quiet. The last thing we needed was word getting out to whoever had her that a SecUnit was on its way to get her back.
A few hours later, we were entering a wormhole. Everyone else was nervously talking in our cabin. Oh— we were all staying in one extended cabin, which was going to mean a lot of time ignoring my humans talking to each other. I was playing media and searching through station schedules to narrow down where Pin-Lee had gone missing and trying not to have any conversations.
It made me slightly calmer that we were going to meet with ART. ART and its crew knew us and liked me as much as was possible.
This felt horrible. I should not have let Pin-Lee go without me. I should have been firmer. I should have made her wait until Mensah’s meetings were over so I could have been her security.
I gave up trying to watch a new show and turned on Sanctuary Moon.
Our own wormhole journey took all four cycles, which wasn’t long, we weren’t going very far, but still, it was four cycles too many. Anything could be happening to Pin-Lee. But we all knew that and it made everyone tense.
I began pinging ART the moment we exited our wormhole.
“Yes, I’m here waiting for you,” ART replied almost instantly, “I am currently unmanned.”
“I have humans with me. They insisted,” I sent back.
“I expected as much,” it replied, “I have determined where it is most likely Pin-Lee was taken from..”
I pushed the calculations I had over the feed.
It pushed back its own, much more detailed, calculations. Show off.
I was herding the humans off the ship and through the station ring toward ART. The danger here was low, but never zero on a Corporation Rim station.
I obsessively checked my risk assessment until the last of my humans was on board ART.
“Why didn’t you accompany Pin-Lee?” Was ART’s very first question the second the lock cycled shut and I could no longer decide to take a different ship to where we needed to go.
“I was required to remain with Dr. Mensah. I advised Pin-Lee to wait.”
ART didn’t respond, but I could feel it in the feed, annoyed and worried. You and me both.
The humans were going to want to talk until they could decide how to best hunt down Pin-Lee. I had just spent four entire cycles listening to them. I needed to leave.
I walked away from the humans without speaking, heading toward my usual cabin where I stayed when I was on ART. I needed time to think and I needed ART to help me narrow down where to start looking.
I turned on WorldHoppers and wasn’t sulking, even if I knew watching WorldHoppers was the best way to get ART to watch it with me.
It did, sitting comfortably in my feed, it’s heavy, usually overwhelming presence calming me down.
“Your humans are talking about your missing human,” ART said.
“I know,” I said. I was watching them through a drone camera I’d sent to the crew lounge.
“What was Pin-Lee’s directive?” ART asked everyone over the group feed.
“She was just going to another planet in the Preservation system to help them set up a trade agreement with the Corporation Rim,” Bhardawaj said, “It wasn’t even contentious, there wasn’t a reason for them to kidnap her over it.”
“SecUnit,” Mensah asked in her soft, curious tone that usually meant she was about to be right. “Can you access what else she was working on from here?”
“Yes, Dr. Mensah,” I said in the feed. I definitely couldn’t, but I was going to try. I sort of doubted the Preservation system feed was strong enough to reach it now. And even if it could, it would take getting through the security on the station then her own personal security. It was going to take at least twenty minutes of dedicated work to know for sure that it was impossible though. What a relief.
“No need. I brought her case file,” Gurathin said to Dr. Mensah, "I thought that it would be useful to track her down.
Fucking Gurathin.
“Go Gura!!” Ratthi exclaimed, punching him happily on the shoulder.
“Yes. This is excellent, Gurathin,” Mensah said, taking the data chip.
“Just plug it into Perihelion,” Ratthi said, “SecUnit’s gonna share it anyway.”
I was.
As soon as it was inserted into ART’s control panel, ART and I both began analyzing the case file.
We both figured it out, but ART said it on the feed first, like an asshole.
“It is most likely she was captured by a corporate entity called MayWeather.”
“Why do you think that, Perihelion?” Mensah asked.
I was going to tell her it was because they were registered to have a court case on the same podunk planet she was on for hers and that they’d flown a stupid ship all the way there for it then settled their case after ten minutes. That seemed weird and suspicious.
But ART outplayed me again. He pushed them Pin-Lee’s file containing a lawsuit she was currently kicking corporate ass with. If she won, and it seemed like she really might, it would have set precedent for stronger protections of slaves who made it to non-corporate entities where slavery was illegal. If they were residents there, they wouldn’t be stuck on planet anymore. Their company owners would lose legal rights no matter where they went.
Then ART added (as dramatically as possible), “MayWeather are slavers.”
“Pin-Lee was captured by slavers?” Bharadwaj yelped.
Yeah. This was bad.
“They’ll kill her,” Gurathin said, “There’s no reason to think they’ll risk keeping her enslaved. She’s too valuable to the non-corporate planets alive.”
The question wasn’t really if they were going to murder Pin-Lee, it was if they’d already murdered her or if they were waiting to get her back to headquarters to be interrogated first.
“We need to go to their headquarters,” I said over the feed. We wouldn’t know if she were alive until we did, and that would be easier to find than a random ship that had already gotten into a wormhole.
“Ok!” Ratthi said, he was trying to focus on the offered action step, but his hands were shaking badly enough that I could see it in the drone camera, “Where’s their headquarters?”
“Where’s their headquarters?” I asked ART in our private feed.
ART didn’t answer or make fun of me for not knowing. So it must have had no idea either.
I really wanted to punch it in the face. We didn’t have time to not know.
And then a MayWeather shuttle tried to send an enormous data package to my hard address.