This was exactly the kind of contract that bond companies supply SecUnits for, the kind of contract I had done more times than I still had in my memory. But from Wilken and Gerth’s conversations over the past twenty cycles, it was clear there was no bond company, no SecUnits. I tried not to take it personally.

(If a bond company with SecUnit security had been involved, I would have had to abort this … whatever it was I was doing. The change in my configuration would fool scans but not another SecUnit, and any Unit that detected me would report it to their HubSystem immediately. I sure as hell would have reported me. Rogue SecUnits are fucking dangerous, trust me on that.)

While I was waiting for Ship to finish its docking procedure, I figured the clanking of the docking process would mask any noise from small movements. I pulled my knapsack around, opened the skin of my right arm where it met the edge of my energy weapon, and inserted all the memory clips I’d bought into the space. They felt weird and bulky, but I’d get used to it. I was going to leave my knapsack here in the locker.

We docked, and Wilken and Gerth gathered their gear and went out the airlock into the station. As I unpacked myself from the locker, I used the station’s public feed to hack its security system. Most of the cameras weren’t active, and the scans were checking exclusively for environmental safety and damage detection. They were more worried about their equipment failing than people attempting theft or sabotage, but maybe that was because there weren’t that many people.

Once I’d repacked the locker and made sure I hadn’t left any traces of my presence, I poked around a little to see if the humans had left anything behind. No luck. I hesitated, considering Ship’s drones. With not many cameras to rely on, drones would be nice. But the repair drones were much larger than the ones I was used to working with, mostly to accommodate the little arms and hands they needed for maintenance. I decided depriving Ship of any of them wasn’t worth it.

I did make a few other adjustments. I had Ship note itself in the port’s schedule as under maintenance and made it think it needed my authorization to leave. Since Ship took care of itself and the company that owned it didn’t even have so much as a kiosk in this system, I didn’t think anybody would bother to check on it as long as it didn’t outstay its schedule by more than a few cycles. With so few ships in dock, I didn’t want to get stuck here.