Within a matter of hours, Aryn had reviewed all the surveillance footage. Because there was nearly none. He sat in his office in the Liaison Tower, a narrow cubicle with a wide display covering one wall that was supposed to be used to show a pleasant view and make the tight room less claustrophobic. Before him, a pair of holographic projections hovered, fast-forwarding through the sleepy movements down the streets near where the bodies had been found.

His attention, however, was on the screen of his PADD and the two additional projections he’d popped out beside it, with such a deep focus that if there was a knock on the door before Q’ira walked in, he didn’t hear it.

‘I got something – woah.’

Aryn jumped, nearly knocking his teacup over as he spun in his chair. ‘I – sorry – did you want something…?’

While he had reluctantly worn his uniform to work in the tower, she was dressed down in the same kind of casual civvies she’d wear on a border world if she didn’t want to be paid too much attention, the emerald skin on display from her tight tank-top largely covered by the worn canvas jacket thrown on over it. She’d burst in with some enthusiasm but now stood in the doorway, staring at the wall display.

‘I thought you were going over the camera footage,’ she said.

Aryn snorted. ‘Such as it is in Alpha Centauri City. I have a handful of traffic management feeds. At least, until Cassidy can pull surveillance footage out of private holders.’

Her eyes snapped back to the twin holographic projections. ‘This happened in the middle of the industrial district.’

‘A little off the beaten path.’

‘Yeah, but right in the city. You shouldn’t be able to walk ten feet without being picked up by a camera.’

Aryn clicked his tongue, spinning back to the screens. ‘Maybe in the Klingon Empire, or Romulan territory, or the Cardassian Union. Maybe even on the odd frontier world. This is the heart of the Federation, though. Privacy laws exist. And more than that…’ His eyes turned skyward. ‘Why would you need to watch the streets constantly?’

Q’ira looked around and rolled over the short chest of drawers on wheels to use it as an improvised stool. ‘In case someone murders three people and dumps the bodies.’

‘Do you know how low the murder rate is in the Federation heartlands?’ he said gently. ‘In the Federation in general? And the most prevalent type are various crimes of passion. Not cold-blooded, deliberate executions.’

‘Okay, then – street crime.’ Q’ira shrugged.

‘Also rare. And even if it’s not, to have an effective surveillance network requires a vastly, vastly greater investment of resources than a myriad of social support measures which reduce crime rates or improve detection rates. Ninety-nine percent of the time, it’s simply not the best way to keep a population safe.’

She looked suspicious, like this was some naïve Federation trickery. ‘Then why’s it done everywhere else?’

‘There’s a difference,’ said Aryn, voice unconsciously going up a pitch as he found himself picking up momentum, ‘between surveillance as an actual harm-reduction protocol, and surveillance as a means of social control. To deny the populace their privacy in their day-to-day behaviours, to make the presence and involvement of the state absolute.’ He spun on his chair and plucked up a fresh PADD. ‘I can suggest some book chapters if you -’

‘Stars, no!’ she said, and looked immediately abashed at such a brash cut-off of his enthusiasm. ‘I mean, um. There’s work to do right now.’

Remembering what she’d said when she walked in eased his deflation. ‘Oh, yes – you said you have something?’

‘So maybe you’re onto something with the Federation heartlands stuff.’ She edged her makeshift stool closer to his screens, bringing one down to swipe over to a map of the area around where the bodies had been dumped. ‘I’ve been hitting concrete on these streets and it’s amazing how talkative people are?’

Aryn’s lips curled despite himself. ‘They have no reason to be suspicious. Even after the occupation.’

‘And people see things computers don’t. Like a street-sweeper operator about to go on shift mentioning a vehicle he spotted within the right time-frame he reckoned didn’t belong. Because while someone might use a Hartak K-11 van for, say, a corporate catering gig in the commercial district, it doesn’t have the engine power to be a common sight for industrial transport when the cargo usually weighs more…’

He was already reaching for the console’s controls, tapping in commands and bringing up information. ‘Well, if we had a sufficiently large dataset, something like that might come up from a computer analysis, but instead relying on local expertise can fill in the gaps -’

‘Hey, don’t be like that – this is a win,’ she said, a little petulant. ‘You had your tech and I had my charms and I’ve got the lead.’

‘You have a report,’ he pointed out. ‘Do you have any more on the vehicle?’

She sagged at that. ‘It was grey. He also complained a lot about the sweeping work post-occupation and how his gear wasn’t rated for the rubble, which sounds all sympathetic but the guy came across as more annoyed at what it would do to his drones than the fact he’d been bombed…’

‘People deal with trauma differently. I’ll see what we’ve got in the footage we have, but when Cassidy gets us the rest, this will be critical.’

Q’ira’s brow knotted. ‘What is the rest? If crime rates are so low, and it doesn’t help anyway, why do, I don’t know, warehouses record things?’

‘Their monitoring tech isn’t for security,’ Aryn explained. ‘If they have a device monitoring, say, the access ramp to their warehouse, it’s not to try to catch someone breaking in. It’s part of their system of keeping track of deliveries. It’s just they might also catch, say… a specific van going down that street at that time.’

‘So why can’t we have it?’

‘Because if law enforcement got it, they’d not just get information on the bad guy – suspected bad guy. They’d get everything that happened in that time window. Information on the personal behaviour of every single civilian and business activity in the dataset. Why should agents of the state have any right to that?’

Her frown remained. ‘If you’ve got nothing to hide…’

‘History – and our neighbours – remind us that the more you empower the state to have access to its citizens’ private lives, the more the state feels entitled to involve itself in those private lives,’ Aryn mused. ‘To get their hands on this footage, AC police need to justify the necessity to a court. Which includes explaining why there’s no other way, and how they’ll mitigate the abuse of privacy of everyone who isn’t a suspect. Or even the suspect – they’re still not guilty of anything yet, after all.’

‘That all sounds great,’ said Q’ira sardonically, ‘until the crime-free paradise gets interrupted by someone dumping three bodies.’

‘Which seems very likely a consequence of the completely unprecedented military occupation that happened in AC’s streets,’ he pointed out. ‘And it’s why we, through Starfleet, can fast-track requisitioning those records. After Mars, the Federation passed a swathe of emergency legislation to help Starfleet better respond to crises, better reinforce security and safety. That’s what we’re invoking to chase up that surveillance data.’

‘Hold up.’ She raised a hand. ‘So it’s basically forbidden for the Federation to sniff into the private lives of its citizens without a bunch of hoops to jump through, except for if Starfleet super seriously needs it?’

Aryn hesitated. ‘Since 2399, there’s been some movement to pull back that legislation,’ he admitted. ‘But it’s proving itself right now in the crisis.’ A lot of post-Mars legislation had also paved the way for operations like the Rooks, but he felt that, at least, was drifting off-topic. ‘The point is that letting us get our hands on this specific footage might be very important right now, in this specific case, but these are exceptional circumstances. In the day-to-day of Federation citizens’ lives, there needs to be a damned good reason why their privacy’s being invaded.’

Her gaze had drifted as he spoke, though, back up to the display on the wall. ‘Uh huh. So this is a really delicate situation which needs us to take it very seriously.’

‘Of course.’

‘So why are you paying more attention to… what looks like old data from the Blackout?’ Her nose wrinkled as she took in the charts and figures on the wall display.

‘Oh.’ He hesitated. ‘I’ve had a paper reviewed by the Journal of Subspace Physics about the Blackout phenomenon in Alpha Centauri. Specifically, about the warp field calibrations we made to sustain a higher warp factor than the Vaadwaur. They want me to make some changes.’

She looked dubious. ‘You figured out this major strategic edge – like one of the most important advantages Starfleet had over the Vaadwaur the whole campaign – and they’re saying your paper isn’t good enough?’

Aryn made a small, frustrated yet dismissive noise. ‘They want a wider data source, so I’ve had to ask Captain El Sayed from the Memphis for his astrophysics division’s dataset…’

‘But it worked,’ she pointed out. ‘So why is the dataset from the Blackbird not good enough?’

It was a valid question, one he’d asked himself, but still Aryn squirmed in his chair. ‘I suppose for the paper to have more long-term merit, further information on the localised subspace harmonics is useful… anyway, El Sayed only just got back to me, but I think the dataset’s incomplete…’

She was watching him with a level, assessing gaze that only made him more uncomfortable. ‘Uh huh.’ She stood, pushing the chest of drawers back into position with her foot. ‘I was gonna ask if you wanted to come out for drinks with Nallera and me later, anyway. But you’ve got that look.’

‘What look?’

‘Like you’re gonna spend the night staring at this. Am I wrong?’

‘…no.’ He winced. ‘Besides, Cassidy might get the footage in at any moment. I want to be there when it comes in, and anyway I’ve got to jump on it when it does, so I should get through as much of this subspace analysis as…’

‘I thought as much.’ She patted him on the shoulder in a way he couldn’t help but feel was a little condescending as she left. ‘Have fun, Prof.’