ART said, The colonies are abandoned and cut off due to corporate bankruptcy or negligence, yes. Dead, not necessarily. Some manage to survive.

Arada had finished eating and was folding up her plate for the recycler. “Didn’t you say this site had two colonies?”

Yes. Historical sources recorded the existence of a former Pre–Corporation Rim colony on this site, but no other information.

ART put the colony report, what there was of it, in the feed. It looked like it was put together from fragments, as if someone had deleted the original and this was a reconstruction. Most of it was what ART had already told us: original Pre–Corporation Rim colony site, which nobody knew crap about or if they had none of the data had survived to make it into this report. Corporate colony seeded by a company called Adamantine Explorations, partial terraforming. No info on number of colonists, terrain, weather, habitats, equipment, illegal genetic experimentation, very illegal alien remnants, nothing.

The only interesting new info was from one of ART’s crew members, an augmented human named Iris, who had added some newsfeed archives about the hostile takeover of Adamantine Explorations after the colony had been established. There were three different articles from news sources that said an undetermined number—anywhere from four to twenty-four—Adamantine Explorations employees had died in a firefight, holding off the corporate takeover long enough for their database of wormhole coordinates to be deleted. The only reason the physical data storage still existed was that the attackers had broken in and killed the techs before they could vaporize it. Iris’s note ended: Tempting to think that they were trying to deliberately protect? conceal? the colony. Possible? Just not likely.

I didn’t think it was likely, either. But like Iris, I thought the fact that three different news sources had reported versions of the story indicated that the incident or a variation of it had actually occurred.

All the humans were quiet as they read the report. (Yes, it feels like it takes them forever. I sorted through my media storage but I knew they would finish before I could get anything started.)

“That’s strange,” Overse said softly. “Were they trying to protect the colony? Or just their investment?”

“You just like a mystery,” Arada told her, most of her attention on the report.

“I like mysteries in fiction, not in our lives,” Overse retorted.

ART ignored them. My crew’s mission was to ascertain whether the colony was still inhabited, and if so, attempt contact, and prevent interference and exploitation by salvage corporations, whether by evacuating the inhabitants or, if the colony is actually viable, providing assistance.

Amena leaned her elbows on the table. “But why do you have to do that? If people from the colony survived, then there’s nothing another corporation could do, right? If the original corporation that sent the colony is gone, then the people are free.”

“Unfortunately, that’s not the way it works here,” Overse told her. Her expression had that grimly frustrated quality that was common when my humans talked about the corporates. “Another corporation could move in and take over.”