Fugitive Telemetry recap

A murdered human turns up on Preservation Station, which has neither the crime rate nor the expertise to deal with one. Dr. Mensah puts the SecUnit on the investigation over the objections of Station Security, whose head, Senior Officer Indah, permits it only on condition that the SecUnit works with her officers and stops hacking station systems. Reduced to drones, physical evidence and talking to people, it establishes that the victim reached the station illegally and was moved after death. The trail leads to an operation smuggling humans escaping corporate indenture into Preservation and holding them hidden for leverage. The victim was part of that operation and was killed by his own associates to keep it from being exposed. The SecUnit locates the concealed refugees, gets them out before they can be killed to bury the case, and hands the traffickers to Station Security. The rescued people are granted asylum, Indah's opinion of the SecUnit improves enough to matter, and it gets some of its access back without conceding that it likes anybody.

Previously: the SecUnit hacked its own governor module, protected a Preservation survey team from the company GrayCris, and then traveled alone until GrayCris took Dr. Mensah hostage, at which point it came back and got her out, nearly destroying itself in the process. It now lives on Preservation Station. Mensah legally holds its contract purely as a shield; in practice it is free, employed as her security consultant, and the subject of continuing argument in a polity where nobody is property and nobody knows what to do with an armed construct that has opinions. It has agreed not to hack station systems, which it finds close to intolerable. Station Security in particular does not want it there. Chronologically this story falls before Network Effect: nothing beyond the rescue of Dr. Mensah has happened yet.

A dead human is found on Preservation Station, deliberately killed - something the station is not equipped to investigate, having almost no violent crime and no experience of it. The body carries no identity records, has no obvious reason to be where it was found, and shows signs of having been moved after death. Dr. Mensah puts the SecUnit onto the case over the objections of Station Security, whose head, Senior Officer Indah, agrees only under conditions: the SecUnit works with her officers rather than around them, and does not touch station systems without permission. Deprived of the hacking that would normally have answered most of this in minutes, it has to work with drones, physical evidence, camera coverage it is allowed to request, and conversations with humans, all of which it hates. The immediate question is simple and unanswerable: who was the victim, and how did an unidentified person get onto a station that logs everyone who arrives?

Working the case with the security officers, the SecUnit establishes that the victim never went through any legitimate entry process and had been on the station for some time, hidden. It reconstructs where the body was moved from and how, which narrows the search to the parts of the station used for cargo and transit rather than for living. The first theory is that a corporate agent - a bond company or a rival of Preservation's - has put someone aboard, and the SecUnit is conscious throughout that it is the obvious suspect for any violence on the station and cannot afford to be wrong about anything. The evidence points elsewhere: to something being moved quietly through the station, with the victim as part of the arrangement rather than its target.

The investigation uncovers the business behind the killing: people are being trafficked. A group of humans escaping indenture in the corporate systems has been brought to Preservation illegally, and the operation moving them is not charitable - the refugees are being held hidden and used as leverage by the people running the route. The victim was part of that operation. The SecUnit and the officers work backwards along the chain of hiding places, forged transit records and cargo movements toward wherever the group is being kept, knowing that the moment the traffickers realize an investigation is closing on them, the hidden people stop being an asset and become a liability.

The SecUnit finds where the refugees are being held and gets them out, dealing with the traffickers' people and a hostile confrontation in the station's cargo levels before anyone can be killed to cover the operation. The murder is explained: the victim was killed by the people he was working with, to stop him exposing what they were doing. Those responsible are taken into custody by Station Security. The rescued refugees, whose whole situation exists because they were running from being owned, are granted asylum on Preservation, which is precisely the sort of thing the polity exists to do. Senior Officer Indah, who spent the case objecting to the SecUnit's presence, ends it acknowledging that the work was good, and the terms of the SecUnit's access to station systems are loosened as a result. The SecUnit remains unwilling to admit that it enjoyed any part of it.

The murder is solved: the victim was working for an operation smuggling people out of corporate indenture and into Preservation, and was killed by the people he was working with once he became a danger to them. The SecUnit finds where the trafficked humans are being held and gets them out before they can be disposed of to close off the investigation, and those responsible are taken into custody by Station Security. The rescued people are taken in by Preservation, which treats granting asylum to anyone fleeing being owned as an ordinary obligation rather than a favour. Professionally, the case changes the SecUnit's position on the station: Senior Officer Indah, who fought its involvement from the first day, concedes that the work was done properly, cooperation between it and Station Security becomes possible, and the restrictions on its access to station systems are eased. Nothing about its legal status is settled - it is still a construct living in a polity with no category for it - but it now has a working relationship with the people who police the place it lives, and a demonstrated reason to be there beyond Dr. Mensah's protection. It remains unwilling to admit that it found any of it interesting.