Her brow was furrowed. “Did you tell them I sent you?”

“No, I impersonated my client. My imaginary client. That I impersonated.” I was caught in a loop for a second there. “Since I left Port FreeCommerce, I’ve successfully impersonated an augmented human security consultant with two different groups of humans. At Milu I meant to do the same, but I was identified as a SecUnit so I told them I was under the control of an off-site security consultant client.” Impersonated is a weird word, especially in this context. (I just noticed that. Im-person-ated. Weird.)

“I see. Why did you go to Milu?”

“I saw a story about Milu in a newsburst. I wanted to get corroborating evidence of GrayCris’ illegal activity and send it to you.” That sounded good. Not that it wasn’t true, but I had a lot of conflicting motivations and that was the only one that made sense, even to me.

She let her breath out and pressed her hands over her face for 5.3 seconds. “I’ll remember this the next time I give an off-the-cuff interview.” She looked up again. “Did you get the evidence?”

“Yes. But by the time I returned to HaveRatton Station, a Palisade security squad was waiting for me. Then I saw on the Port FreeCommerce newsfeed that you were missing.” I added, “I shipped the data to your home on Preservation.”

She nodded again. “I see, right.” She hesitated. “The GrayCris executives who questioned me about this said you destroyed some combat bots?”

“Three.”

She took a sharp breath. “Good.”

I didn’t know what I was going to say next until it came out suddenly. “I left.”

She was looking at my face, and suddenly I couldn’t look at hers anymore. She said, “Yes. I handled the situation very badly. I apologize.”

“Okay.” I was definitely going to need to just stand here and stare at a wall. ART and Tapan had both apologized to me, so it wasn’t like it had never happened before, but I still had no idea how to respond. “Pin-Lee said you were worried.”

She admitted, “I was. I was so afraid you’d be caught by someone before you could leave the Corporation Rim.” There was a little smile in her voice. “I should have had more confidence in you.”

“I’m not sure I’d go that far,” I said. My backburnered map-monitor alerted me and it was a relief. I’d had all the emotions I could handle right now. I said, “We’re coming up on the port.”

Chapter Six

Chapter Six

WE’D GONE AS FAR along the backbone as we could go without hitting the port security barriers. I didn’t know how tight those barriers would be, but from the signal leakage I was picking up, it wasn’t worth the risk.

It was the walk through the embarkation zone I was more worried about.