According to one of Rebecca Stein's roleplaying friends (albeit, one who was in the habit of making these things up), there was an old human saying about not being seen. Despite being deep in her “Rivkah Maccabeus” persona, her mind flashed back to it as she prepared the next phase of her operation.
“There are four ways not to be seen. The first is to skulk about in shadows...”
That was what the SSRR Harriet Tubman had done on the first phase of it's journey, after picking up five hundred some-odd escaped slaves from a minor agricultural world deep inside the Faroic Hegemony. The monitoring stations were few and far between in that area. The ship was less than a pixel, and dim enough to fade into the background noise.
It was also how Rivkah had gotten from her hotel room on this space station to the authorized-personnel-only technical core: dark mottled clothing, shadows, light-footed movement and the occasional straight vertical jump the architects didn't realize anyone could make.
“...the second is to convince them they don't want to see you...”
That was how the ship would pass through the last sector before reaching human space. Morale was such that Faroic troops refused to work on the human border. The Hegemony had accepted the inevitable and hired Rangri mercenaries to staff those posts instead. Rangri were fearless, but easily bribed.
It was also how Rivkah had gotten into the long range sensor room inside the technical core. She'd promised one of the mid-level officers that she'd get the commander fired. After the failure she was about to cause on his watch, he would certainly deserve to be.
“...the third is to look like something else...”
That was how the ship had passed the second sector. Sympathizers on Incondnosa had written a fake firmware update. In addition to misidentifying SSRR vessels, it had specific errors in the auto-update routine and in the debugging routines that otherwise might have detected it. Nothing short of reinstallation from fresh media would restore that listening post.
It was also how Rivkah had gotten onto the station in the first place. Officially, she was “Miriam Evens,” a doctoral student at the University of Callisto here to present her latest geochemistry paper. The student id was real, thanks to an old friend of Rebecca's in the admissions department. The paper was real too, except for one fictional co-author. She was grateful to have such good friends.
“...but the best way not to be seen is to find the bastards who are looking for you and gouge their eyes out!”
Rivkah brought her rock-hammer down on the station's long-range subspace radar emitter with a satisfying flurry of sparks.
Next in Series: To Remind Us
In celebration of Harriet Tubman on the $20
Also, happy Passover