The passive devices they'd planted in Leutnant Krentz's apartment hadn't been strictly audio. In fact there had been a number of concealed cameras put into place. Three of them in his bedroom.
Of course nobody had told Leutnant Krentz that his activities with the Terran girl would be filmed in high resolution and examined in minute detail. He was primarily an analyst after all. Such knowledge might have tripped him up, or even made him forget his responsibilities.
"She seem strong to you?" One of the technicians said as they observed the recordings of the pair's most intimate moments.
"Excitement of the moment," the other remarked.
"I don't know," the first said. "That's sustained activity. She's, what? say forty kilos? No indication of developed muscle mass. She shouldn't be able to support his weight like that for that long. At the very least, you'd expect some sign of injury afterwards."
LIC was all about these sort of hidden camera stings. Given so many of the Commonwealth's problems could be traced to corrupt nobles or business leaders, it was often useful to score the leverage you needed. Here though, it served a different purpose; to learn everything they could about the Commonwealth's supposed benefactors, hopefully before it was too late.
"They're all augments, aren't they?" the other technician said.
"Yeah, but..." the first tech turned away from the action on the screen and paged through audio logs. "Here it is. She said in the bar augmentations are mission specific, and her job is information warfare. That sounds like she should be baseline human otherwise, don't it?"
"Maybe she lied?" the second tech suggested.
"Maybe she's got no idea what a baseline human would be like," the first tech responded. "Maybe human don't apply to them anymore."
----
-Helenstern Laboratory-
Anya noted the disgust and suspicion in the tech's voice as she voiced her theory, even before the computer stress analysis had flagged his agitation. It wasn't too surprising. The Commonwealth had only a small sample size of societies that practiced human enhancement to such a degree on such a large scale, and all of them had been bad experiences.
The recordings they were analyzing made her uncomfortable for several reasons. She never had privacy of her own, even with her newer, kinder caretakers. The casual way the Leutant's privacy was being violated for arguably very sketchy reasons was nothing new to her. But then, actual people were supposed to have rights, weren't they?
There were other feelings... sensations brought on by the images she was seeing. The worst of them was... she wondered if it was jealousy?
"I'm not comfortable with this." she said aloud.
It took a moment for a voice to come over the intercom in response. "Any insights you can glean could be vital," the doctor on the other end replied.
"It's just distracting. I don't know what you expect me to see watching two people watching two other people have sex." Anya said with a little bit of indignation.
"What about the technician's theory?"
"She doesn't have a theory," Anya replied. "She has a supposition. If you want me to look into the biological limits of human anatomy and how to alter it, I can do that without watching this." Mentally, she'd already added it to the research queue, because she knew they'd ask.
The doctor wasn't quite quick enough on his mike to completely mute his sigh. "Fine," he said as the video feed cut out. Anya didn't have direct control of her computer feeds at the moment, because of her stunt yesterday. They couldn't completely disconnect her from the interface without risking her life, but they could lock out the vast majority of the command protocols, leaving her as something not to dissimilar to someone sitting at a regular computer console with its administrative functions locked out.
They said it was for her protection, so that she couldn't access the higher level interfaces again and risk further shortening her life, but it also kept her confined to the tasks they defined for he to do, and stripped her of what passed for any autonomy she had left. So here she was, looking for little hints about the Hegemony's intentions among mindless minutia instead of doing something actually useful.
So among the hundreds of research queries she'd been making to the system were just a few, here and there, directed to batch commands she'd hidden on the network long ago. A competent person on the other end could certainly see something was up if they watched each search command run. But even hobbled as she was, she could still enter search terms faster than any unaugmented person could read, or any technician would want to try to read, particularly in real time. If she was careful they might not even notice.
"Let's move on to other things," he continued. "Any thoughts on this Axum Arabic thing?"
Everything, every scrap of data LIC got about the Hegemony was being routed to Anya, no matter how apparently insignificant, and often almost immediately. The data set was mountainous, ranging from observations of personnel to minute variations in observed performance in the fleet of spacecraft keeping station at the L1 point. The biggest, most strenuous part of her work was sorting it all and organizing it in order of priority, based not so much of how important it was, but how important her handlers would assume it to be.
The "Axum Arabic thing" had only popped up in the queue a few minutes ago. This Major Stern woman had probably only just mentioned it. But Anya's handlers had already learned of it and passed it on, and as she expected they wanted answers immediately. There was literally no time for a truly deep dive into the topic, so she could only work with what she could gleen through a quick database search. Probably the exact same database search that had led to the mention in the first place. They were having her duplicate someone elses work simply because it seemed more credible coming from her.
"The connection to the Axumite Providence is almost certain," Anya said. "While there are several distinct cultural groups currently in existence that identify themselves with the ancient African kingdom of Aksum, the Axumite Providence is unique because of its majority Arabic speaking population, where Oromo or Amharic dialects would normally be expected. This was because the original expedition was drawn from all across Northern Africa, and chose the name to honor a historical, almost legendary African nation state in a bid to instill unity, rather than any close cultural ties to ancient Aksum."
"Which means?" the doctor asked, almost sounding impatient.
Anya sighed. "There is probably nowhere else in the known galaxy where you would find a dialect of Arabic that could be described as 'Axum Arabic.'"
There was a pause before the doctor responded. "I will pass your analysis along."
She could have added more, of course. Like how it was extremely suspicious that the girl would have casually dropped a mention of an obscure dialect that could only really be traced to one specific region of virtually unexplored space. But she didn't. Because they didn't ask. And because it wasn't her job.
If the LIC were competent in their jobs, they'd catch it themselves. Anya didn't really care one way or another.
"Let's move on," the doctor said. "The movements of the Terran personnel on these transport ships..."
-----
~THS Haystack Rock~
"Ugg..." Niki said as she laid her head on the desk. The headache and the shakes were making it difficult to concentrate on her work.
"You didn't eat enough at breakfast," Beverly said as she set a ration bar on the desk. "You know better than that."
Niki rolled her head to one side where she could kinda look at Beverly. "I wasn't going to eat all his food," she said. "He has to pay for that. Not just luxuries. Staples. He has to pay actual money for pancakes. Can you even imagine that?"
Beverly actually laughed in response. "And you wanted to do aid work in the Providence?" she said.
The mention of the Axumites did nothing to improve Niki's mood, for a whole collection of reasons, so instead of responding she sat up and snatched the ration bar, ripping the package open and munching on it.
Beverly tilted her head slightly. "Did you remember to..."
"Yes," Niki snapped, and even she would acknowledge it sounded bitter. It felt a little bit like lying, even though she'd told him the truth. She really did know how to speak French, Berber, and Axum Arabic. But she'd only shared it because she was told to, because the Director General wanted the Lyrans pointed in that direction. "So why'd you make me do it?"
"Orders," Beverly said. "Nobody tells me why."
Niki could guess though. The Hegemony had invested heavily in the Axumites these last few decades. Building up infrastructure, helping them develop their technology, selling them jumpships to boost their trade network, and also establishing military bases and a sling shot array in range of Terra.
If the Lyrans or anybody else took the bait, a hostile expedition would find itself facing off against a battle fleet and an entire network of defensive systems and bases very far from home and, most importantly, nowhere near actual Hegemony territory.
And if they just came to poke around without looking for a fight, they'd at least find a thriving population that the Hegemony was legitimately helping. An excellent example of what cooperation could bring.
Niki was young, but she'd been around long enough to know that this was just how the Director General did business with potential rivals. He could be your best friend or the guy who buried you, the choice was yours.
"We've got time before the DG's big speech," Beverly said. "Take a break and process those calories."
