Over the course of her career in radio news, Autumn Belfontaine had been in plenty of sticky situations. Her very first political assignment had been to cover a demonstration that turned into a “police riot.” She’d gotten out mostly because her news director had told her to stay on the periphery and do man-on-the-street interviews, which meant she didn’t have to push her way out of a crowd.
Just coming up here to the Moon had started as a brief visit to cover the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the original Apollo landing. When Captain Waite had discovered she was the daughter of Lucius Belfontaine, he’d invited her over here to Shepardsport for a visit. She hadn’t expected to get the go-ahead to extend her stay — rescheduling a spaceflight wasn’t exactly like changing an airline ticket — and now she wondered whether someone knew the Expulsions were in the works.
However, she’d never expected to be handed a USB stick full of hot video files by one of the DJs. Although Shepardsport Pirate Radio was all about getting the truth out when the Flannigan Administration was trying to suppress it, there were still limits.
Not to mention the problems created by the uncertain provenance of these files. Given Brenda’s evasive answers about how she’d gotten them, Autumn was pretty sure someone had been poking around on the dark side of the Internet. Malware was everyone’s first concern about those iffy parts of the information superhighway, but for someone in the news business, there as also the problem of whether these could be considered reliable sources.
She knew all too well about the stories that had blown up in various reporters’ faces. Some of it was just plain dishonesty, with sources and accounts fabricated out of whole cloth. But there were more than a few cases of reporters who wanted to believe a little too badly, and had failed to do their due diligence on following up.
On the other hand, if she could get confirmation on some of this material from sources she could trust, she had one hell of a story. No, not just a story, but two, which needed to be treated separately.
Time to do some digging. Now that she knew what to look for, things might be getting a whole lot easier to track down.