What they were calling a shuttle was actually a local space exploration/transit vehicle, with two levels of crew habitation areas plus a cargo hold that had been converted to bio lab space. It didn’t have the drive to get through the wormhole, but it could go anyplace else around the system. No bot pilot, just the kind of minimal automatic pilot system that I was more used to seeing on atmospheric craft. Not that helpful if everyone capable of operating the ship’s higher-level functions were injured or incapacitated. On the other hand, you couldn’t deliver killware if there was no bot pilot to kill.

The shuttle had no independent SecSystem, either. I had seen on some media from outside the Corporation Rim that internal security was less of an issue there, that the focus was on potential external threats more than it was on policing your own people. I hadn’t thought it was true, but it did mesh in with the lack of interest in monitoring the station staff in their private quarters. Also with the way my PreservationAux clients had behaved. It made me wonder what Preservation might be like, but I squelched that thought. It was probably a boring place where everybody would stare at SecUnits, just like everywhere else.

Miki was giving me full access, so I took a little tour via its memory of previous trips. It was a nice shuttle, way nicer than anything the company would have provided; even the upholstery was clean and repaired. It was another sign of GI’s commitment to their reclamation project; it would have come here in a big transport’s belly cargo module, or in tow via a dedicated supply hauler like Ship.

I would need to ride Miki’s internal feed the way ART had ridden mine, though unlike ART I couldn’t do it over the distance between a station and a planet. The good part was that there were plenty of places to hide onboard the shuttle, even without packing myself in a cabinet. The bad part was that I would have no systems to see through, no eyes and ears except for Miki.

Yeah, I was thrilled.

Miki, I’m going to need to use your systems to monitor your— I almost said clients. It took almost a full second for me to be able to use the word Miki wanted to hear. —your friends. I need you to be my camera, and let me use your scanning ability. Sometimes I might need to speak through you, pretending to be you, to warn Don Abene and your friends about things I believe are dangerous. Can you let me do that?