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Back Exit Strategy
Chapters (13)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Notice
  3. Chapter One
  4. Chapter Two
  5. Chapter Three
  6. Chapter Four
  7. Chapter Five
  8. Chapter Six
  9. Chapter Seven
  10. Chapter Eight
  11. Also by Martha Wells
  12. About the Author
  13. Newsletter Sign-up

Not a surprise, I had turned up a dock listing for a shuttle with a company ID code, the only company code in the arrivals index. That was the shuttle the Preservation team had used to get here from the gunship.

It was … strange, knowing they were so close. Considering the size of the shuttle, they probably weren’t staying on board. After a little delicate unraveling of the Port Authority’s protected systems, I got a download of the docking contact index and matched the shuttle’s entry with a physical address in a station hotel.

Three newssearch results popped up while I was deleting any trace of my intrusion from the PA’s system, but they were old newsbursts from Port FreeCommerce. Just more useless speculation on where Mensah was and what she was doing, why she had disappeared.

None of my queries had turned up any mention of her.

I didn’t have a lot of choice. The team from Preservation must be here to negotiate for Mensah’s release, the only way they could proceed until Preservation scraped up enough currency to pay the company to violate TranRollinHyfa’s docking ban. I needed intel before I could do anything, and they were my only potential source.

I left the shop, first making sure to do one loop of the aimless wander around the displays that the humans were doing.

I had to go meet some old friends.

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

THE HOTEL WAS AT the far end of the station mall, in a quieter area with 60 percent less foot and drone traffic, next to a multi-level plaza. All the structures around it were office blocks or hotels, all were shaped like giant cones or cylinders, except for one either iconoclast or outdated sphere, which seemed to be holding on to its real estate despite the fact that the station had tried to block it from view with a large holo forest display.

I crossed one of the multi-level plazas, where humans and augmented humans were sitting singly and in groups at scattered tables and chairs, talking, viewing entertainment media on the displays, or working in their feeds. Surveillance was tight so I started one of the new codes I had written on the way here.