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Preservation is lucky, and Aylen is more keenly aware of that than most.
Over the span of her twenty-odd years and counting career, she has seen only three murders. For a population the size of Preservation, it’s an impressive record. A record they—and, more importantly, the generations before them—all worked hard to maintain. Their infrastructure eliminates most of the motivation for theft, for fraud, for most crime in general—that makes their stats better than most of their Corporation Rim counterparts automatically. The availability of mental healthcare, workplace arbitration, and social protections cut the murder rate even further, until it's practically nonexistent.
Practically, anyway…It does still happen. On the rare occasions that it does, the cases are seared into Aylen’s mind like wounds that won't quite heal. They never stop being a devastating aberration. They never stop feeling unreal.
The first one, she’d seen had been during her first year as a Special Investigator. An argument turned accident turned murder in the heat of the moment. There had been no deception, no evasion, not even an attempt to hide what had happened—the woman had turned herself in, weeping, already bowing under the grief. It had hardly even been an investigation, but the sound of those sobs would never leave Aylen’s memory.
The second, ten years later, was more intentional. A romantic rivalry was taken too far, a perceived threat eliminated, and a trail of shocked partners left behind to wonder what signs they had missed. That case had taken longer. With more details to unravel and a less cooperative defendant to work with, the process had been more complicated, but ultimately worked out the same. And in some ways, it had even begun the same. Human nature being…human, albeit in the worst possible way. Emotions run amok, poor judgement taking center stage, accidents tumbling into permanent consequences…it happened. As terrible and heartrending as it was, it happened, no matter how carefully any world strived to prevent it. Any world that had humans would eventually have murder.
And then there was…this.
A murder aboard Preservation Station was anomalous enough, but a murder committed by a bot and orchestrated by outside actors? It was unfathomable. It was…terrifying. It was the most-discussed case in decades the instant Aylen filed her report. She had caught two of her younger colleagues debating whether or not it should “count” against the stats. After all, it hadn't been a Preservation citizen…It hadn't even been on Preservation soil, technically. Why should offworlder problems stain Preservation records?
Aylen had promptly seen to it that both junior investigators were signed up for additional continuing education courses from the Ethics division, grinding her teeth and struggling to avoid committing some violence herself.
Of course it counted.
That man had been a person, killed for trying to help other people. If he didn't count, then nothing and no one counted. But, Aylen supposed, the attitude that insisted he wasn't important was what had gotten him killed. To the corporation that ordered his death, he was little more than an obstacle to be removed before their workforce dried up. That, perhaps, was what made this murder settle into Aylen's bones like a chill more than either of the other two had.
The other murders had been human, in motive as much as in perpetrator. It wasn't that one was a better outcome or a more acceptable occurrence than the other, but this one was cold, industrial, carried out solely because of…greed? Avarice? A soulless devotion to the bottom line? Whatever it was, it felt unsettlingly alien. Especially since it isn't the kind of crime that would've even been possible in Preservation space ten or fifteen years ago, before their port began to be successful and their visitor counts began to rise. They aren't a massive galactic presence, but they are no longer a blank space on the star charts, either. And now that they are known, the Corporation Rim is attempting to seep in, just as it always tries with polities that survive and grow enough to be worth noticing. Preservation has an unfortunate number of things to notice on that front. They're a place with no scarcity, no closed doors…no significant protections, apart from the Station Responder and a singular rogue Secunit.
And Aylen wonders exactly how much longer they can be lucky—in more than just their statistics—now that the Rim is knocking on their door.