Then Indah showed up with the same group of techs and officers who had been at the Lutran site. A second response team from the Port Authority, this one with more bots and different techs, showed up to mill around. Ratthi said they were here to assess the damage to the transport and try to repair it. （Apparently on Preservation this would be free? Gurathin said it fell under what they called a traveler’s aid rule. In the Corporation Rim, the transport would have had to sit there damaged and racking up fines until its owner or an owner’s rep arrived.） Station Security told the PA team to hold off, since the damage to the transport was evidence and would have to be documented before it could be repaired.
Gurathin kept saying we should leave, but I didn’t and Ratthi didn’t, so he stayed too, shifting around uneasily and occasionally pacing. “You don’t think this is related to GrayCris, do you?” Ratthi had asked me after he had called Station Security.
“It’s a possibility,” I said. I explained my idea about Lutran being another corporate agent who had been killed by a GrayCris agent. “But without corroborating evidence, the threat assessment is undetermined.” I could come up with scenarios where a GrayCris agent would have reason to kill another passenger on their transport, but without evidence I was just making up shit. （If I’m going to make up shit I’d rather do it about something else besides how a human got murdered by another human.）
“Then why was this Lutran killed?” Gurathin asked, his big brow creased.
“We don’t have enough data to make a guess yet,” I said, not as patiently as would have been required by my governor module. “There are too many factors involved, like did Lutran and the killer know each other before they boarded the transport. We don’t even know yet if the killer was another passenger or someone who was invited aboard, or who managed to trick or force the transport into letting them aboard. We don’t know how they moved the body from the transport to the station mall junction. We don’t know the motive, if it was corporate espionage, theft, a fight, or even a random opportunity killing.” We didn’t know shit, basically.
Because this is Preservation, Ratthi said, “What is a random opportunity killing?”
“When a human kills another human just because they can.” It’s also the kind of thing that’s much more common on media than it was in real life, but still.
Neither one of them seemed happy with that answer. I actually wasn’t either. From everything I’d seen in the media, assholes who just like to kill other humans are hard to catch. But without more info, I thought it was more likely there was a reason that Lutran had been killed, and that it would have to do with who Lutran was and why he was traveling. Threat assessment agreed.
Besides, as soon as Station Security got off their collective ass, we’d—they’d have the surveillance video from the transit ring cameras.
Indah stepped out of the hatch, speaking to another officer I hadn’t seen before, with a private feed ID. Then she walked over toward us, trailed by the officer and Tural, the tech who had been trying and failing to identify Lutran.
Something in their body language made Ratthi step up beside me. It occurred to me Gurathin was maybe right for once and we should have left. It would have possibly been another point up for me, to send the report about the incident to Station Security and then be back in the hotel or Mensah’s office acting like it was just another day by the time Station Security arrived at the transport. But it was too late now.
Indah stopped just out of what humans would consider comfortable conversational distance, looking at me. Then she hesitated, glanced with some annoyance at Gurathin and Ratthi, then back at me, with more annoyance. Tural was looking at Indah, and a little agitated like they wanted to talk and were just waiting for permission. The other officer was trying to do a stony stare at me but good luck with that, you need an opaque helmet to really make that work. Indah said, “Officer Aylen, this is … SecUnit.” She didn’t quite stumble over it. “And Survey Academics Ratthi and Gurathin, our other two witnesses.”
Gurathin said, “We didn’t really witness anything. I don’t think we have much to tell you.” Gurathin seems to hate talking to strange humans almost as much as I do. And he wasn’t wrong, he and Ratthi hadn’t seen anything that I didn’t have video of. But him talking gave me a chance to work around the privacy seal on Aylen’s feed ID and see she was listed as a Special Investigator. I didn’t know what that meant, but it was a good job title and honestly it made me a little jealous.