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Description
It has been a very, very long time since anyone here has managed to get away with murder, and I’m not about to let it happen now.

I’m my Primus, which means it’s my job to sit back and coordinate. I’d rather be out there scouring the place for clues, but I don’t have much of a choice — that’s my instances’ job right now. With nearly twenty instances active I really need one of me doing this.

One of our citizens, Aquila Valerius, has just met his very permanent end. Someone went through a lot of trouble to do this. Aquila had four instances active on different parts of the planet, three of which were dispatched via microbotic assassins. They were a relatively standard type: keyed to a particular DNA strand, replicating in the blood, latching together to form a clot. It’s an old design with new defenses. Brain aneurisms killed them while they slept. The fourth one had more up-to-date bioech, just upgraded last month. He woke up while it was happening and made it to a replicator — probably stumbled in half-conscious. That would help us a lot if something hadn’t deleted him. Valerius wasn’t reckless, either — he had two backups. One’s deleted, and one’s missing, presumed destroyed.

Right now my #4 through #8 are scouring this crime scene, while #2 and #3 coordinate at the other scenes. I’ve got an assistant running five instances here. Another officer has the replicator and the backup sites, but I’m not sure the six of her will find much.

If we’re very, very lucky, this will end up being kidnapping rather than murder. The local Chief Justice is pretty pissed off about this. He understands just how bad this is going to be when it gets out, which is why there’s only five of us (counting my boss, Investigaor Fenitus) who know what happened.

My assistant comes up to me and shows me a blank screen. “You wanted a dump from his dermal ‘bots? Here it is. Totally blank. They observed the whole memory log, wrote zeroes, and observed again. It’s dust.” We were using datapads in case there was a trap left behind for our meshes, but apparently it’s not necessary. I thank him and swear under my breath.

Replicator logs in the home are blank. Dermal ‘bots are blank. Cold-storage backup is blank — one reason I think it’s not a Stored job. Outside surveilance shows nothing, but these things could have been hiding in him for days...no, no wait. When was his last dupe?

I check with Fenitus to get a surveillance override ok, and run through the public replicator logs, and the power and processing utility logs for his house. A power surge about the right size a week ago says that the three dupes we found were created then, which means it must have happened after that... unless someone programmed the replicator to add in assassin ‘bots.

One of my instances pulls me aside and I talk to myself for a while. Micro-wear measurements on the floor show a couple visitors, but there’s no traces of DNA — no skin flakes, no hairs, nothing. Someone scoured the whole place with microbots. We got here only three hours after the crime; for them to have gone through so fast... they’re almost certainly nearby. Then I look at the replicator and my heart sinks — if this guy can erase logs, he probably just piled the ‘bots in there and deleted them.

The two of us swear. This is going to be hell. This whole investigation is going to have to be face-to-face.

I order a raw elements dump from the replicator, and hope for the best. Then I start asking around about Valerius on the infosphere, and prepare for the worst. The Chief Justice isn’t going to be happy about this.

Description
It has been a very, very long time since anyone here has managed to get away with murder, and I’m not about to let it happen now.

I’m my Primus, which means it’s my job to sit back and coordinate. I’d rather be out there scouring the place for clues, but I don’t have much of a choice — that’s my instances’ job right now. With nearly twenty instances active I really need one of me doing this.

One of our citizens, Aquila Valerius, has just met his very permanent end. Someone went through a lot of trouble to do this. Aquila had four instances active on different parts of the planet, three of which were dispatched via microbotic assassins. They were a relatively standard type: keyed to a particular DNA strand, replicating in the blood, latching together to form a clot. It’s an old design with new defenses. Brain aneurisms killed them while they slept. The fourth one had more up-to-date bioech, just upgraded last month. He woke up while it was happening and made it to a replicator — probably stumbled in half-conscious. That would help us a lot if something hadn’t deleted him. Valerius wasn’t reckless, either — he had two backups. One’s deleted, and one’s missing, presumed destroyed.

Right now my #4 through #8 are scouring this crime scene, while #2 and #3 coordinate at the other scenes. I’ve got an assistant running five instances here. Another officer has the replicator and the backup sites, but I’m not sure the six of her will find much.

If we’re very, very lucky, this will end up being kidnapping rather than murder. The local Chief Justice is pretty pissed off about this. He understands just how bad this is going to be when it gets out, which is why there’s only five of us (counting my boss, Investigaor Fenitus) who know what happened.

My assistant comes up to me and shows me a blank screen. “You wanted a dump from his dermal ‘bots? Here it is. Totally blank. They observed the whole memory log, wrote zeroes, and observed again. It’s dust.” We were using datapads in case there was a trap left behind for our meshes, but apparently it’s not necessary. I thank him and swear under my breath.

Replicator logs in the home are blank. Dermal ‘bots are blank. Cold-storage backup is blank — one reason I think it’s not a Stored job. Outside surveilance shows nothing, but these things could have been hiding in him for days...no, no wait. When was his last dupe?

I check with Fenitus to get a surveillance override ok, and run through the public replicator logs, and the power and processing utility logs for his house. A power surge about the right size a week ago says that the three dupes we found were created then, which means it must have happened after that... unless someone programmed the replicator to add in assassin ‘bots.

One of my instances pulls me aside and I talk to myself for a while. Micro-wear measurements on the floor show a couple visitors, but there’s no traces of DNA — no skin flakes, no hairs, nothing. Someone scoured the whole place with microbots. We got here only three hours after the crime; for them to have gone through so fast... they’re almost certainly nearby. Then I look at the replicator and my heart sinks — if this guy can erase logs, he probably just piled the ‘bots in there and deleted them.

The two of us swear. This is going to be hell. This whole investigation is going to have to be face-to-face.

I order a raw elements dump from the replicator, and hope for the best. Then I start asking around about Valerius on the infosphere, and prepare for the worst. The Chief Justice isn’t going to be happy about this.