‘Questions.’ Eloy shook his head. ‘You’d think with all the questions, you’d have some damn answers by now.’

‘Eloy, come on,’ Tessa said. She knew he wouldn’t like her taking the patroller’s side – and the terse look he threw her confirmed that – but this wasn’t helping. ‘How many people do you know who could do with some extra scrap to melt?’ She nodded at the patroller. ‘She’s got a hell of a list to narrow down.’

The patroller gave her a thankful glance. ‘Precisely,’ she said. ‘And there’s no telling if the culprits are the same as the previous times. Nothing we’ve found here so far can tell us if this is an organised group, or a copycat, or a first-timer. Someone hit your worker’s bots, and they made off with some scrap. That is not a lot to go on, but we’re doing our best here.’

‘Yeah, well, while you’re doing your best, we’re falling behind. I have to go to my supervisors and make excuses for why you can’t keep this from happening to us.’ Eloy gestured at Tessa. ‘She can’t do any of the shit she needed to do today because of this.’

Tessa rankled at Eloy using her as fuel for berating the patroller, but there was a kernel of truth in there she couldn’t argue with. The crime at hand had a stupid irony: someone had been impatient enough with cargo bay processing times that they’d resorted to theft, thus setting the processing schedule back further for everyone. That was the part that really pissed Tessa off, more than falling behind in her work, more than finding Sahil knocked out, more than having to spend what should’ve been a quiet morning listening to Eloy take things out on people who didn’t deserve it. The theft benefited the thief, and maybe the thief’s friends or family, but that was it. They’d taken things out of the hands of people who also needed them, who had grit their teeth and followed the rules and made do without.

Sahil and the volunteer patroller came back. Eloy looked over. ‘What’d they get?’ he asked.

Tessa squinted. ‘You feeling okay?’ she asked.

Sahil was still looking a bit rough from his bot hack – dark around the eyes, paler in the cheeks. But he nodded. ‘Just groggy,’ he said, giving her a faint smile. ‘Medic said it’d be like this for a few hours.’ He turned his attention to the boss. ‘So, teracite, mostly. Looks like they grabbed a few handfuls of sixtops, too, but not much. Just whatever they could put in their pockets as they left, I guess.’

‘How much teracite?’ Eloy said.

‘A good amount,’ Sahil said. ‘I’d say . . . about a hundred kems, give or take.’

‘Oh, fucking hell,’ Eloy snapped. Tessa said nothing, but she felt the same. A lot of good things could’ve been done with that. Medical equipment. School computers. Shuttle upgrades. But instead, somebody was either going to melt it down for home use – personal smelters were everywhere these days – or sell it for creds. She hoped the thieves would go for the former option. The idea of somebody using the stolen stuff to repair their hex was easier to stomach. The latter meant luxuries that were nice but not necessary, and that . . . that was worth an Eloy-style rant or two.

‘They’d need an autocart for a haul that size,’ Ruby said, tapping her chin with her stylus. She looked to her second. ‘What does that tell you?’

‘A merchant,’ the volunteer said. Tessa had missed his name, but he was older, and had the look of someone who had been excited to get his name pulled for this job. She didn’t blame him. Tagging along after full-time patrol to keep them honest beat the pants off sewer duty. ‘Either that, or someone who had access to bay-to-bay transport.’

‘Yup,’ Ruby said.

Eloy frowned. ‘That is not much to go on.’

‘No,’ the patroller said, gathering her gear bag. ‘But it’s something, and it’s more than we had when we walked in here.’ She picked up the empty tea mug resting on the desk beside her. ‘Where should I . . .’

‘Just leave it,’ Tessa said. ‘I’ll take care of it.’ She smiled – the kind of smile you gave someone when the circumstances sucked but you appreciated them being there. ‘Thanks for the help.’

The patrollers said their goodbyes and left. A silence sat uncomfortably in the workroom.

‘I’m sorry, Eloy,’ Sahil said. ‘If I’d—’

Eloy put up his hand. ‘Shit happens,’ he said.

Tessa frowned. ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she said, speaking the words someone else should have. ‘You sure you’re okay?’

‘I’m okay. Really.’

‘I’m gonna come check up on you at home later.’

‘Fine, fine,’ Sahil chuckled. ‘Eloy, do you need anything else from me?’

Eloy was somewhere else. He gave Sahil’s question a halfhearted headshake. He seemed to have barely registered it.

‘What’s up?’ Tessa asked.

Eloy let out a sigh that frayed around the edges. ‘I was going to bring this up at the next bay meeting, but you might as well know now. The board’s talking about AIs.’

Sahil looked confused. ‘AIs for what?’

‘For us,’ Eloy said. ‘AIs instead of us.’

‘Wait, what?’ Tessa said.