The humans clearly had a moment of tension. There were a lot of gazes all intersecting each other and attempts to conceal worried expressions. Then Arada said, Agreed. We won’t tell her anything. She cleared her throat and said aloud, “Maybe we can use your cabins, to clean up and rest?”

ART said, on the general feed, Of course.

Ratthi and Overse helped Eletra get settled into one of ART’s bunkrooms (an unused one that the asshole gray people didn’t manage to get their growth medium odor all over). There was an attached bathroom and Ratthi brought self-heating meal boxes and beverage containers for her so she didn’t have an excuse to wander around. I put a drone sentry outside the door because I don’t trust anybody with security, particularly ART.

My humans went to the galley, which was far enough from the bunkroom that Eletra wouldn’t hear the conversation, even if she walked out into the corridor. The humans were eating meals, too, and Thiago had made a hot liquid for them in the galley’s prep unit.

ART put up another unnecessarily elaborate split display, with a view on Eletra, who had finished eating, taken the medication ART’s MedSystem had recommended, and curled up to sleep.

Arada, still eating her meal, said, “Perihelion, are you ready to answer SecUnit’s questions now?”

(Actually first she said, “SecUnit, will you stop pacing and sit down?”

I said, “No.”)

ART said, I am a teaching vessel, and a research vessel for deep space mapping, and I sometimes haul cargo. All that is true. My crew also gathers information and takes actions for anti-corporate organizations that operate as part of and are supported by the polity of Mihira and New Tideland, and administered by the Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland. These actions are often dangerous.

Arada nodded, exchanging a look with Overse. Arada said, “So you came here because of this lost colony. To examine it before the corporates arrived?”

We received information that a database reconstruction contracted by a consortium of corporations involved in salvage and reclamation had turned up coordinates to a colony seeded approximately thirty-seven corporate standard years ago.

“An abandoned colony.” Amena stirred the goop on her plate, glaring. “A bunch of people left to die, like our great-grandparents.”

Amena wasn’t wrong, it was similar to what had happened to the colonists who had eventually founded Preservation. They had been “seeded” (that actually means “dumped”) on a mostly terraformed planet with the idea that supply ships would return through the wormhole at frequent intervals until the colony was self-supporting. This was exactly how corporates established colonies now. Except sometimes the corporates went bankrupt or were attacked by other corporates and the wormhole data was destroyed or the wormhole itself destabilized or all record of the colony’s existence was just lost in a database that ended up locked due to legal battles over ownership. And so no supply ships came and all the humans starved or died when the cheap shitty terraforming failed. I’d seen movies and shows that used this as a plot, but I hadn’t known they weren’t just stories until I came to Preservation. (Most had depressing endings and were part of a whole “awful things happening to isolated groups of helpless humans” genre that was not my favorite.)