Indah was looking at me again. I hadn’t said anything because what was I supposed to say at this point? Oh, I guess I could have said “hello.” Well, it was too late now. Indah said, “I saw the report and I know how you identified Lutran as our deceased. We got verification from Medical on the body scan right after that. But how did you know Lutran was a passenger on this transport?”
Ratthi had shifted from acting defensive to acting like this was a meeting we were all having. He said, “So it was him who was killed in there, then? The person who was found?”
Tural said, “Unless it was spoofed, there was a DNA match. Spoofing isn’t unlikely, but in this case—” Indah glared at Tural and they shut up.
I answered, “The transport identified him when I asked it. With its systems damaged it was unable to report the onboard incident to the Port Authority.”
Tural was nodding. “The transport’s giving us nothing but error codes. The analysts are going to try to do a restart but they’ll copy the memory core so they can get the latest passenger manifest, and restore if anything—”
Indah gave Tural a “not now” eyebrow scrunch and they shut up again. She asked me, “But how did you know it was this particular transport?”
“I didn’t, I was checking all the transports.” Then I added, “That’s why it took so long.” Yes, I was rubbing it in.
Indah squinted one eye. Aylen looked me over again in that way humans do when they’re trying to intimidate you and they fail to understand you’ve spent the entire length of your previous existence being treated like a thing and so one more impersonal once-over is not exactly going to impress you. Then Aylen said, “One point I’d like to get out of the way. Did you have anything to do with this?”
Wow, really? I’m better at keeping my expression neutral after so much practice, but I was surprised at how pissed off it made me. Compared to a lot of things that had happened to me, you’d think it wouldn’t matter. But here, now, for some reason, it mattered.
Ratthi made an angry snorty noise. Gurathin was grimly staring up at the arch of the transit ring’s ceiling; they had both suspected this was coming, that’s why Gurathin had wanted us to leave and then had stayed around himself when we wouldn’t. I said, “No, I didn’t. Why would I?”
Aylen was watching me intently. “I don’t like having private security with its own agenda aboard this station.”
Oh wait, she thought it was GrayCris. That maybe I had found out Lutran was a GrayCris agent and killed him, and now I was trying to lead the investigation along a specific path, using my two oblivious human friends as cover.
So, the problem was, that wasn’t an unlikely idea at all. It was something I might have to do if I did find a GrayCris operative on the station. Which meant I had to answer very carefully.
There were a lot of humans lying to each other on The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon, and I knew outright angry denials tended to sound incredibly guilty, even though they were often an innocent human’s first impulse. You wouldn’t think lying would be a problem for me, after 35,000 plus hours lying about not being a rogue SecUnit while on company contracts, then the whole lying about not being an augmented human and lying about being a non-rogue SecUnit with a fake human supervisor. But the last two hadn’t exactly been failure-free; what worked best was misdirection and not letting myself get caught in the wrong place at the right time, and making sure no humans ever thought about asking the wrong questions.
Misdirection, let’s try that. “I would have either disposed of the body so it was never found, or made it look like an accident.”
Indah frowned, and Aylen’s brow creased, and they exchanged a look. Eyeing me, Indah said, “How would you dispose of a body so it wouldn’t be found?”
I’m not the public library feed, Senior Officer, go do your own research. I said, “If I told you, then you might find all the bodies I’ve already disposed of.”
“It’s joking.” Ratthi managed to sound like he completely believed that. “That’s how it looks when it’s joking.” He sent me on the feed, Stop joking.
Gurathin sighed and rubbed his face and looked off into the distance, like he regretted all his life choices that had led to him standing here right now. On our private feed connection, he sent, Or you could just show them where you were when this person was being killed.
（Yeah, on reflection I think I misdirected in the wrong direction. It was the kind of thing a human or augmented human could get away with saying, not a rogue SecUnit. Even if they knew I was just being an asshole, I’d made them wonder, I’d put the idea in their heads.）