Check Surveillance

You pull up the video feed from the cameras in the cargo hold. Rewind them back to when you first entered the hold, hit play, and . . . nothing. Not a single goddamn thing. You’re visible on camera, right before you disappear down the aisle where you were attacked. And after a minute, you hear the sounds of the fight, but none of the three assailants appear on the recording. Nor, to your immense annoyance, is there anything visible of the box they’d removed.

The footage isn’t looped, either. Your attackers must have been hiding themselves with active digital masking: specialized tech that uses lasers directed at the cameras to mask/overwrite the incoming light. There are even more sophisticated versions that compromise the camera’s software right through the lens, but that sort of thing is restricted tech. Civilians aren’t supposed to get their hands on it. Not that that ever stopped criminals.

You also don’t see anything of the figure who saved you. Not on the camera by the entrance to the hold, and not on any of the others.

Shit. Maybe the station mind can help. But you’d have to leave the hold to find one of the access consoles.