I checked the feed stream the two hostiles used to get their orders and saw my redirect had worked. They stopped at the pod junction, confused, waiting for the go-ahead from their controller. My redirect had sent that go-ahead to the housekeeping bots in another section. The redirect was set to expire and delete itself in two minutes and would look like a glitch due to the hotel’s feed-choking.

The Preservation team took the pod to the lobby and headed out through the front entrance. I reluctantly shut down my giant display surface and rolled off the bed.

Time to go to work.

*   *   *

I took my bag with me because it was likely I wouldn’t come back here. (Yes, I was going to miss that display surface.) It also had my projectile weapon, and you never could tell when you might need armor-piercing fire power. (And I could hook my right hand on the strap, which gave me something to do with that arm. How humans decide what to do with their arms on a second-by-second basis, I still have no idea.)

I caught up with Pin-Lee, Ratthi, and Gurathin in the plaza, with no sign of any hostiles trailing them. I wasn’t sure the Preservation team knew GrayCris was surveilling them, though Ratthi’s shoulders seemed a little stiff, not the way he usually walked. Then they started up the stairs to the second-level seating area and Gurathin glanced back in what he probably thought was a totally casual and not at all suspicious way. Yeah, they knew.

No, he didn’t spot me. I was using the drone cams to keep track of them so I could take another route through the plaza, the one that led under the platforms through the gardens and vending areas.

Gurathin said something to Pin-Lee as they crossed the plaza and they sped up a little, heading for the shopping block on the far side. It was a good place to avoid visual surveillance from a tail and also gave me time to make minor adjustments to the security cams so it was more difficult to track them. GrayCris security would realize by now that they had lost them and I wanted to make sure they couldn’t pick them up again. I didn’t know if GrayCris had paid off the station to get access to their public space security video, but it was better to be safe than sorry.