After a long day of socializing and shooting, Kovic headed back to his bunk, taking stock of the day's events.

'At least Mix is keeping an eye on Ryder too. She's a newcomer too, but if she's paid any attention, she'd have noticed some oddities about Ryder and SAM. If she does go to Scott, no harm, no foul. As far as they're concerned, I'm an old colleague of Alec's who's curiosity got piqued by some strange commands in helmet-cam audio.'

'Meanwhile, I should probably check up on the status on my backup.' A lone unread email sat in Kovic's inbox, reading "Apologies, but the mod you've requested is backordered two weeks for fabbing." To any other reader, even SAM, it'd appear that Kovic was waiting for a new weapon mod to be fabbed and shipped. It couldn't have been further from the truth. Laszlo didn't need any more mods for his Pioneer, or his M5.

In reality, the email came from a Nexus dockworker (who also happened to do double-duty at one of the larger fabrication facilities on the station) on the Tempest ground maintenance team. The man had helped kill a militia officer during the uprising a year prior- Kovic wasn't out of cryo by then, but retrieving supposedly-purged security footage was a trivial task. As long as the dockworker did as instructed, the footage would remain on a hard drive stored in the bottom of Kovic's sea bag, inaccessible to anyone without the AIS agent's fingerprints and voiceprint. In this case, the dockworker had simple instructions- place a provided device inside wall paneling in the Pathfinder's quarters, then retrieve it during the next maintenance stopover. The device was a time-triggered audio bug, and completely disconnected from any networks aboard the Nexus or Tempest. The only way to retrieve the recordings inside was to connect the bug to Kovic's personal computer via a hard line.

It had never been tested against a SAM, but Kovic hoped that once installed, any electronic "noise from the device would be drowned out by the rest of the ship. The only weak link was the dockworker placing the bug, but the man didn't know who Kovic was, and they had only met face-to-face once, to exchange the device. It wasn't a perfect plan, but Laszlo was operating alone in Andromeda (unless other AIS operatives were skulking around the Nexus) and needed ears in the Pathfinder's private quarters, fast. There were too many unanswered questions to delay further.