“The testimony of a human outweighs that of a serf,” Captain Sokol noted. “Square Deal moves to have Lilia’s testimony stricken from the record.”
“That would be in keeping with local law,” Representative Finwell said. “But the Association prefers to retain all sources of data on a controversy. Motion denied. Now, let’s see that household footage. Has it been certified?”
“Unfortunately the estate security system was compromised at some point after Mr. Sato’s death, so our analysts were unable to certify its authenticity. But it was obtained just forty minutes after the events in question, and none of Mr. Sato’s serfs are registered as having any skill at hacking or altering recordings. The Security Directorate believes them to be substantially correct.”
“Very well, then. Let’s have a look.”
This time the holographic images had sound, so I got to listen to myself talking with Lilia as we entered the house. Then things got weird. The stun turret shot me, but the conversation between Lilia and the trolls was completely different.
“Why did the house stun her?” Lilia exclaimed. “She was going to help us!”
“I don’t know,” Jenki said. “I’d better make sure she’s alright. Good thing I had a medkit on me.”
“I’ll call down to the security room, and see what’s going on,” Renit said.
“She’s okay, right? She has to be. Oh, she’s going to be so mad!” Lilia fretted.
“Her vitals look good,” Jenki assured her. “We’ll just have to apologize when she wakes up. Maybe if we grovel a lot she won’t punish us too bad.”
Then there was a slight jump, and we were back to the real recording. Funny, I hadn’t realized how dangerous I looked when I was tearing those trolls apart. By the time I grabbed Lilia I was covered in blood. No wonder she was so scared.
Minami opened his mouth as the recording ended, but I beat him to the punch.
“That isn’t what happened, Your Honor. That recording has been falsified from timestamp 3:19 to 7:41. If you look close you can even see the jump at 7:41, where the fake images don’t quite match up with the real ones.”
“Of course you’d say that,” Minami scoffed. “As if anything could justify your abuse of that poor elf. She even told you that you’d tripped her submission reflex, and you threatened her again anyway.”
Not again. This was just like what Kovy had pulled back on Felicity. Was I always going to lose to the social predators?
“Why should my crewmember believe a con artist who’d already lured her into an ambush?” Captain Sokol said. “For all Alice knew she wasn’t even a real elf. Alice, can you tell us what really happened?”
Hope. My captain was standing up for me, and he knew how to win this kind of fight. I didn’t have to do it alone. I just needed to give him something to work with.
“I can do better than that, sir. Am I allowed to submit a recording? The stunner knocked me out for a bit, but my onboard sensors were running the whole time and I still have the data.”
“Personal data stores can’t be certified,” Minami objected. “She’s had hours alone in her cell, and we have no idea what skills or software she might have. By now her logs could show anything.”
Representative Finwell rewound the house recording to 7:30, and played it again until after the jump.
“She’s right about the discontinuity, Captain Minami. I’m forced to conclude that the household security system was compromised, in which case her personal logs are an equally valid account. Go ahead and show us what you have, Miss Long.”
A network connection popped up, and I spent a few milliseconds puzzling out how to feed the court AI the data stream I wanted to give it. I really did have recordings of everything my senses had picked up in the last twenty-four hours, but I had to pick out a subset that could be converted into something humans would be able to understand.
What would Finwell say, if I admitted that this wasn’t coming from a recording device? That I had a perfect memory, and there was an elaborate mechanism in my subconscious that went through all the day’s experiences while I slept looking for lessons to learn? That was sort of like what humans do when they dream, right?
Yeah, one more thing to keep my mouth shut about.
“Obviously my eyes were closed most of the time, so the video part of this is from my passive sonar system,” I told everyone. “That’s why everything looks translucent, and there’s no color. But the audio is the important part.”
My sonar can usually get millimeter resolution off of ambient noise, so the hologram gave us a pretty good view of everyone’s bones and internal organs as well as what they were doing. It was really disturbing, watching Jenki brainjack me all over again. But I reminded myself that Lilia’s talk of rebels and mass murder was the important part.
Naturally we had to go through it again step by step. I might have been a little pale when Finwell zoomed in on Jenki’s brainhacking device to get a better look at it.
“Captain Minami, do you have a forensic analysis of the scene to submit? Or at least an inventory of items found there?”
“That, ah, didn’t seem necessary at the time, Your Honor.”
“So there may be several squads of rebels in powered armor at large on the station? I believe the Association is going to be requesting a larger security detail.”
“But, Your Honor, surely this is absurd. Who would have ordered these serfs to form some kind of, of rebel terrorist cell? That’s conspiracy theorist talk.”
“There are at least three interstellar organizations that foment serf rebellions in the Kerak sector, and there are plenty of captains who would collaborate with them for the right price,” Representative Finwell said severely. “I suggest you take this information seriously. Is the elf still in custody?”
Minami consulted his datapad. “She was ordered to return home, and remain there until further notice.”
I had to facepalm at that. “So she’s long gone by now. Heck, her group had hours to pack up all their gear and move it someplace else.”
“No doubt.” Representative Finwell gave an aggravated sigh. “But this does give us an easy method of verifying your story. Captain Minami, please have your people check the elf’s status.”
It took all of two minutes for station security to determine that Lilia wasn’t answering her com, and neither was anyone else at the house. Confirming that the place was abandoned didn’t take much longer.
“So much for her facade of innocence,” Finwell said. “Miss Long, I take it her mention of marines was the reason for your rather aggressive methods of motivating Lilia during your escape?”
“Yes, Your Honor. I was terrified that they’d catch up to me before I could get away. I can handle a troll or two in hand to hand, but I can’t scratch a suit of powered armor. I didn’t even have any weapons on me, and my security bots are pretty much all defense.”