The Transporter's Favor by C.M. Simpson (pride and prejudice read .txt) 📕

“Exactly,” Tens agreed, from a hab termed ‘Rumah Aman Enam’.

How exactly he was connecting to me across the empty space between the habitats, without using the comms route, I’d work out later, but it was probably linked in to the way he could be both inside and outside his head, at once. I just wished I could do the same.

“Don’t sweat it, kiddo. You can do other things just fine.”

What? Like piss people off?

He was laughing as he broke the link. Seemed like he’d found a layer of security that needed more than a third of his attention. And speaking of which…

I took a long, close look at the security layer I’d found. Well, he was kinda cute… and the security construct blushed a beauty.

“Thank you,” he said. “Your visit is unscheduled. How may I be of service?”

“I require schematics to assist with my investigation,” I told him, and sensed surprise, which he covered quickly.

“In that case, allow me to give you the grand tour.”

“Thank you, but I’d prefer to explore on my own. If you could provide a schematic to guide me…”

He tutted, and shook his head.

“I’m afraid that’s outside company regulations,” he said. “If you would follow me.”

Well, this was downright inconvenient.

I unhooked two hound-doggie search programs and sent them to find the schematics, and then I put a third program into play, before prepping a layer of defense.

“I’m sure there’s no need for all that.”

And just how in the Hell did he know what I was doing?

“All what?” I asked. “Why don’t you lead the way?”

“Very well. As you know the Astarnum Mining Consortium is a subsidiary of the Selimen Consortium, that extracts ore and minerals from asteroid belts the universe over. This is one of the prime habitats in which its workers are housed so that they can enjoy premium quality rest and recuperation while off-shift. Longer periods are spent away from the habitat.”

And that was where I caught it—the first hint of deception. I was pretty willing to bet the workers no more spent time away from the habitat, than they did away from the mines.

“Show me,” I said. “The investigation requires a complete report on worker living conditions.”

The construct hesitated, eyeing me carefully.

“Whom did you say you worked for?” it asked, and the first of the warning programs I’d set on the periphery of my head, went off.

“I didn’t,” I said, as the second alarm, and the first defense measure tripped. I tried to sound surprised. “You’re a wet-wire?”

I’d give him this, he’d been a pretty good wettie, but I’d picked him up earlier, and just needed to confirm it. Programs, I could sneak by, but wet-wires were a whole ’nother story, and I was going to have to silence this one before he blabbed about the intrusion into his systems.

“I… uh…”

“Sorry, dude,” I said, and blasted him with one of the nastier programs I’d inherited from Odyssey’s bag of dirty tricks. “We’ll come check you out as soon as we can.”

“You wha—” but that was as far as he got, and I knew, somewhere in the hab’s control centre, he’d hit the floor unconscious, and wouldn’t be able to be revived for the next few weeks. His only hope was that there were protocols in place that meant he’d be slapped into a stasis pod before his vitals went off-line—and that wasn’t something I could guarantee.

I hit the link with a secondary program that would lock his head down, too, which meant there’d be no hope of retrieving anything from his implant about what had happened until he revived—it was the only way I could try and twist the mining corporation’s arm to keep him alive. They might not give two pints of crap about their man, but they’d sure as shit want to know what had happened to their system, and the only way they had of finding out was to keep him alive, until they could access his implant. It would have to do.

Trying to push away the idea I might have hurt an innocent, and a cute one at that, I dove into the habitat’s system, breaking into security cameras, traffic logs, and personnel files like there was no tomorrow. Didn’t take me long to wish I’d fried the wettie’s brain, instead. Anyone who wanted to keep secrets like these deserved a long and painful death.

The miners didn’t get any rest and recuperation—none that counted, anyway. They were kept in stasis until a slot opened up in the workforce, which happened at an all-too-regular rate. Their bunks were the equivalent of small regen tanks, since it was cheaper to mend them than replace them, and they were rotated through wake cycles on a forty-eight hourly basis, kept going the extra hours on stim packs.

Even with regen, mortality rates were high, but the productivity rates made it even, cost-wise. I wondered if we could put the oligarch into the work regime without anyone noticing, because…

“Just get the numbers, Cutter. These things are rigged to blow, and we’re gonna want to find a way to stop that from happening, if we’re to get them out alive.”

Tens. Voice of reason. My sanity for the moment.

I shut the rage away, and went through the logs and inventories, digging up the schematics and sending them over to him for input, and then I scanned the belt using the habitat’s systems, and dug out a few more maps of where they worked their miners. There was nothing that looked like it was big enough to hold the HMTs and their shells, though.

On the upside, I’d found Bennett’s missing agents. The bad news was I didn’t think either of them were going to last much longer—and while it looked like they’d gotten exactly what they deserved, I didn’t think anyone deserved this.

Biting down on the anger, I moved over to the next habitat, this time greeting the wettie concierge with a short and precise blast that put him out before he’d finished telling me my visit