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Okay, I had known that ART wouldn’t like this, even though my threat assessment on the idea looked great. But I hadn’t known it would react like this. “You wouldn’t have to rip me out of my body, just copy me. It wouldn’t even be me. Me is a combination of my archives and my organic neural tissue and this would just be a copy of my kernel.” ART was quiet for another 3.4 seconds. Then it said, For a being as sophisticated as you are, it is baffling how little understanding you have of the composition of your own mind. Now I was getting more pissed off. “I know my composition, that’s why I’m sitting here arguing with a giant asshole and not stuck in a cubicle somewhere or guarding idiot humans on a mining contract.” Which, in retrospect, I should have stuck with that. That was a great comeback, it was to the point, it made sense, it was hard to argue with without sounding like an asshole. But I added, “Do you want to get your crew back or not?” Which turned it from an argument into a fight, and ART has no concept of how to fight fair. Which, granted, I didn’t really, either. I knew it as an abstract set of rules and guidelines from my shows and other media, and so should ART, but it seemed to have missed that part. (What I use when I fight/do security is a minimum level of response, which is meant to minimize damage to humans and augmented humans and the company’s property, which means taking into account a lot of factors. For example: what is an intentional attempt by a client to injure another client versus what is just humans being stupid and needing to be made to stop. Which is why you need SecUnits and not combat bots. And why humans doing their own security is a terrible idea, since they’re actually way more likely to flip out and shoot everybody for no reason than combat bots are. Anyway, what I’m getting at here is it’s not fair, because you don’t want to give a hostile a chance to stop you, right? That’s stupid.
But you don’t want to kill/injure a client for walking in the wrong door.) I forgot where I was going with this, except that ART apparently has no concept of fairness, or minimum level of response, because the sense of ART’s almost full attention was overwhelming. Then the door slid open and Ratthi walked in with Amena right behind him. “What is going on?” he demanded. “Perihelion said you’re trying to copy yourself for a variable viral what?” * * * So I had to tell the humans my plan and then they had to argue and talk to each other about it and ask me questions like was I feeling okay. Then half an hour into this fun process, Thiago woke up and they all had to explain to him what was going on. It was during this part that I realized Amena was (a) missing and (b) ART had cut me off from her feed. I found her in a small secondary lounge area near Medical. As I walked in she was saying, “—because it thought you were dead. It was so upset I thought— Oh hey, you’re here.” I stood there accusingly, not looking at her. She tried to hold it in and managed it for almost six seconds, then burst out, “ART should know how you really feel about it! And this is serious, it’s like—you and ART are making a baby just so you can send it off to get killed or deleted or—or whatever might happen.” “A baby?” I said. I was still mad at Amena telling ART about my emotional collapse behind my back. But I really wish ART had a face, just so I could see it right now. “It’s not a baby, it’s a copy of me, made with code.” Amena folded her arms and looked intensely skeptical. “That you and ART made together, with code. Code which both of you are also made out of.” I said, “That’s not like a human baby.” Amena said, “So how are human babies made? By combining DNA, an organic code, from two or more participants.” Okay, so it was a little like a human baby. “That’s … irrelevant.” ART said, Amena, it may be necessary. ART sounded serious, and resigned. Amena pressed her lips together, unhappy. I’d won the argument, yay me, so I left.
* * * When we arrived at the dock, the explorer wasn’t there. My threat assessment said there had only been a 40 percent chance that we would find the explorer in dock, but I could tell ART was disappointed and infuriated. Mostly infuriated. Arada, Overse, and Thiago were up on the control deck, and ART put up its scanner image on the big display surface in the center, and sent it into the feed. The dock was in a low orbit, attached to a planet via a structure called a lift tower, which held the shaft for the drop box used to reach the surface. The dock itself was a long structure with oblong protrusions where transports, shuttles, and other ships could dock. There were also inset rectangular slots that were module docks. The transports would deliver their modules of supplies, which would be moved from the dock into the drop box to be carried down to the surface. “Surely a ship-to-surface freight shuttle would be more economical,” Ratthi said, studying the scan images. He was with me and Amena in the meeting room off the galley. “Isn’t the Corporation Rim obsessed with how much things cost? Couldn’t they have used this material to make more habitable structures on the planet?” I had never been on a contract with a colony like this, but I knew the answer to that one. “It’s to keep the humans and augmented humans from leaving the planet.” Amena looked up at me, confused. “Huh?” I explained, “If they used shuttles, a group might organize, take over the shuttle, and use it to get up to the supply ship. Then they could escape.” Granted, the Targets had done that via the space dock, but they had had to find a way to force the Barish-Estranza contact party to help them. If a bunch of desperate colonists came up in the drop box, the ship could just do a quick detach from the dock’s airlock and it would be unreachable. It wasn’t a foolproof method but it was 90 percent effective. (Foolproof is another weird word. Shouldn’t it be smartproof?
It’s not like you’re going to breach and seize control of a ship attached to a space dock by tripping or forgetting to bring your weapon or something.) Amena looked horrified. Ratthi’s expression did a whole progression. He said, “Are you telling us the colonists here were prisoners?” “It’s a possibility. Humans don’t want to be dumped on unimproved planets with no control over their air, water, and food resources.” I mean, who would? Mining installations are horrible, but at least the humans were getting paid for their work (sort of, mostly, sometimes) and the supplies were usually reliable. And mining installations were too expensive to just abandon. I didn’t know much about the kind of colonies meant to settle partially terraformed planets because the company had never bonded them. Which should tell you how dangerous they are right there, if the company thought the budget was so tight that the whole operation was unrealistic. Terraforming projects designed to get everything livable and ready way before the humans and augmented humans moved in were expensive longterm investments, but they didn’t fail like this. Ratthi shook his head and waved his arms. “I’m not even surprised anymore. I think I’ve been in the Corporation Rim too long.” Hey, me too. “So not only do they just dump the people on planets and leave them to die, but they force them to go there in the first place.” Amena’s expression was half boggled and half furious. “Theoretically not.” Theoretically the colony is continually supplied until it becomes self-sufficient and starts producing its own resources and the original colonists are released from indenture. But you know how that goes. “But the colonists are not volunteers,” Thiago clarified over the general feed. “Sometimes they are,” I said, because I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. There’s volunteering, going into something where you knew what it might be like but wanted to do it anyway, for whatever reason, like when I had gone to Milu.
And then there was “volunteering,” where you did something you shouldn’t have to do because the alternative was getting your insides fried by your governor module, or whatever the human equivalent was. Thiago didn’t say anything, so that was a win. ART said, I’m also detecting debris, probably from a series of destroyed satellites. “Do you think it’s recent?” Up on the control deck, Arada stepped back as the scanner image passed through her head. She moved around, trying to angle for a better view. ART said, Analysis suggests the debris has been in orbit longer than forty corporate standard years. “I don’t suppose you can tell how it was destroyed?” Thiago asked. If I could, I would have said so already, ART said. It added, The dock is our best source of information. The active power levels aboard it suggest that it is/was in use, including life support. Possibly the explorer did return after its attack on me. Arada frowned up at the dock’s image. “But the explorer isn’t here now. And there’s no way to tell if anyone disembarked here without searching the place.” Overse didn’t look happy either. “I don’t know what I’m worried about most, having to find and search this colony, which is probably full of hostile alien-remnant-influenced people, or having to track down and board an armed ship.” “Also full of hostile alien-remnant-influenced people,” Arada murmured, distracted by reading ART’s figures on the dock’s power usage. Arada and Overse were back to getting along after spending time together in an unused bunkroom while we were traveling to the dock. I hadn’t bothered to monitor them on ART’s cameras or try to slip a drone in; the chances that they were having sex and/or a relationship discussion (either of which I would prefer to stab myself in the face than see) were far higher than the chance that they were saying anything I needed to know about.
(I mean they might have been plotting against me, but you know, probably not.) (Around the same time, I had also caught part of a conversation between Thiago and Ratthi. Thiago had told Ratthi about our conversation in the bunkroom, and Ratthi had told him what he knew about the whole attempted assassination incident. Thiago had said he felt like he should apologize and talk to me more about it. Ratthi had said, “I think you should let it go for a while, at least until we get ourselves out of this situation. SecUnit is a very private person, it doesn’t like to discuss its feelings.” This is why Ratthi is my friend.) ART had gotten a far-range live scan of the planet. It had a lot of cloud cover in swirling patterns, some indicating massive storms. As the clouds whirled, there were glimpses of brown and gray and vivid red that seemed to be the surface. “Is it supposed to look like that?” I said. “You’re thinking of failed terraforming?” Ratthi said, frowning absently at the displays. “That red could be algae. They’re probably using air bubbles to hold in breathable atmosphere over their colony sites and agricultural zones. That’s what we did on Preservation before the terraforming completed.” The weather appears natural, ART said. I can detect no comm or feed signals, but that may be because they are using local, heavily shielded systems. “So we can’t just call down there and ask if there’s anybody who wants to talk.” Arada studied the scan results. “Perihelion, do you want to deploy those pathfinders you’ve been working on?” ART said, Not yet. After a second, it added, All evidence indicates the presence of hostile unknowns on the planet. The pathfinders would alert them to our presence. Arada grimaced in agreement. “Then let’s keep our focus on the dock for now. We’re going to have to go over there and take a look. Can we tell where the drop box is? Is it still up in the dock or did it go back down to the planet?” ART turned the image and increased magnification.
There is an exterior sensor that shows the box is currently locked in place at the top of the docking shaft. At least that meant I only needed to worry about being attacked by something already hiding in the dock or coming aboard in a ship. “Can you get me a scanner image of the interior?” I asked ART. I woke my drones and told them to meet me at the EVAC suit locker. I could send the drones through the dock first to do my own mapping but the more intel the better. “The dock might have a resident SecSystem. If it’s been awake at any point during this situation it could tell us everything we need to know.” ART said, I can make a partial map based on detectable power systems. “You can’t go alone,” Thiago said from the control deck. “I’ll go with you.” Overse added, “Good idea, but it’ll be safer with three.” From Arada’s resigned but slightly annoyed expression, this must have been part of the sex/relationship conversation I hadn’t listened to. Overse must have insisted on taking her turn at the next opportunity to do something stupid with me. (So technically, they had been plotting against me.) Whatever, I didn’t care what they had decided, I was the stupid security consultant here. “It’s my job. I don’t need help.” Thiago looked annoyed. “I got you shot on our survey, I’m not letting you go alone.” Arada said, “No, don’t look like that, SecUnit, this is safer and you know it. You don’t want to die because of something simple and obvious like getting locked in a compartment and not having anyone with you out in the corridor to open the door.” (It sounds dumb, but it’s a good example of how humans get killed during explorations of abandoned structures. And yes, I’d used it as an example myself for clients who were anxious to find somewhere to get themselves killed, and yes, I hated having it turned back on me like that.) “And it’s in the survey contract,” Overse added with finality.
She was giving the side of my head this determined glare that made me remember the conversation back on the facility about me being supportive of Arada. I was being supportive of Arada. I was being supportive of Arada’s marital partner staying on ART and not dying. I said, “That provision is for humans.” It was worth a shot. Ratthi corrected, “It says ‘all entities under contract,’” and sent me an excerpt of the relevant section from his feed storage. Now I was speechless with being pissed off with Pin-Lee. She had negotiated the contract for me and deliberately put that in. But Arada didn’t rub it in and nobody looked smug. Arada said firmly, “Thiago, SecUnit is in charge. You follow its orders immediately and without argument. If you can’t do that, I’ll go in your place.” Thiago lifted his hands, palm out. “I will.” I was desperate. I sent privately, ART, tell them I need to go alone. Back me up. ART said aloud, I concur, it will be safer if SecUnit is accompanied by two certified survey specialists. Why am I even surprised. I sent privately again, ART, you asshole. ART replied, only to me, It is safer. I’ve lost my crew, I won’t lose you. Amena said, not helpfully, “Your face just got really weird. Are you all right?” No, it was confusing. I was confused. 13 My threat assessment was all over the place right now, but nobody thought ART should lock on to the dock. Instead it did some complicated maneuvers (the kind of thing I don’t know anything about and don’t have to know because ART does) to get close. Me and the two humans whose help I absolutely did not need took EVAC suits over to an airlock. When we were near enough to see the pits and scarring on the dock’s hull, I picked up its feed. It was dormant but its SecSystem woke when I pinged and it asked for a Barish-Estranza entry code. The explorer must have had codes for the old Adamantine system, or had just released killware to take it down so they could upload their own.
Whichever, this version of DockSecSystem was a recent upgrade, but something was wrong with its configuration and it had put itself in standby mode. I was a little nervous, despite the fact that my walls are excellent and targetControlSystem had made no attempt to take me over despite a lot of provocation, what with me trying to kill it and everything. But the fact that we still didn’t know why ART had experienced that first critical shutdown was still making me hyper-paranoid. But at this point, the only thing I could do to find out if DockSecSystem was compromised was get in there and look. So I did. The first thing I hit was a barrage of configuration errors. I couldn’t tell if the Barish-Estranza crew had failed the install or if something had tried to mess with it later. It made it a little harder to take control, not because it was trying to fight me but because nothing worked right. In fact, it seemed pathetically glad somebody who knew what they were doing was here. I got control of its entry functions before we reached the lock and told it to let us in. The hatch slid open and the lock cycled us through to a large reception space, designed for big groups or bulk objects. The EVAC suits had their own lights and vision filters, but the lights embedded in the bulkheads flickered on. Two large rounded doorways with open safety hatches led into corridors and like ART’s scan had said, life support was active. And unlike the outside, the inside looked nearly new. There wasn’t much, if any, wear. Some scuffing on the floor, that was all. No sign of recent activity, but then we didn’t know which lock the explorer had used. No, there was a sign of recent activity. A big version of the Adamantine logo with its stylized depiction of a planetary landscape, a cliff face above an ocean shore, was painted onto the metal of the far wall. Someone from the explorer crew had scratched at it with a sharp tool and drawn a sloppy version of the Barish-Estranza logo on the gray and green cliff.
Ha ha, vandalism expresses our corporate loyalty, right. Well, the joke was on you, Barish-Estranza employee, because not long after you did that you got killed and/or mind-controlled by alien remnant raiders. (I know, it’s a logo, but I hate it when humans and augmented humans ruin things for no reason. Maybe because I was a thing before I was a person and if I’m not careful I could be a thing again.) And maybe it was just the hamstrung SecSystem, but I had the feeling we were going to find some dead bodies in here. I told my EVAC suit to open and released my drones. I only had sixteen survivors after everything that had happened on ART, but that should be enough for a quick reconnaissance run through this area of the dock. They were also running one of the new codes I’d written. It would emit a field that any targetDrones would associate with the Targets’ protective gear. (If all the targetDrones operated the same basic way, which, of course, we had no idea. But it was worth a try.) I also had a large projectile weapon from ART’s supply and a smaller energy weapon. I kept two drones with me in a holding pattern over my head, since I wasn’t getting anything from the cameras except static. As the others zipped off down the shadowy corridors, Overse asked, “Are you picking up anything?” “The feed is partially down, cameras are offline, and the DockSecSystem isn’t responding correctly.” My drone inputs showed dark empty corridors, with no obvious sign of human occupation, if you didn’t count the bodies. There were three in the junction between the corridors leading to the control area and the passenger entrance to the drop box. They were all wearing gear in Barish-Estranza colors but I slowed the scout drones down for a long close scan just to make sure. One sprawled face up, the other two crumpled against the wall. Appearance of the wounds suggested they were made by energy weapons, no surprise there. ART said, Unidentified, which was its way of expressing relief that none of them were its crew members.
There was another body further up the corridor but I already knew what had killed that one. What I wasn’t seeing was anywhere humans could be locked up. The dock hadn’t been anything but a temporary waystation while the colony was in development, so there were no cabins or facilities yet, just some minimal supply storage and waste disposal. There were interior hatches, but none were shut, suggesting the place had been searched earlier and left like this. I tagged some spots to check out more closely and then sent my drones down the wide corridors meant to transport cargo containers to the drop box loading entrance. It looked like the bigger modules were meant to be moved along the outside of the dock and attach directly to the box. I forced DockSecSystem into a restart, hoping that would help, and climbed out of my EVAC suit. This time we were wearing the environmental suits under the EVAC units. The material felt thin, but it protected against a lot of toxic substances and had a closed breathing system attached, which we were using despite the fact that the dock’s life support was still working. The suits were really meant for planetary environments but it was a good precaution. I signaled Overse and Thiago that they could leave their EVAC suits and told them, “We’ll start a physical evidence search here and work our way toward the control area and the drop box.” The drones were telling me the likelihood of Targets lying in wait was low to nil, and without a targetControlSystem installed, it seemed unlikely that there would be targetDrones. We still had to check for any evidence that ART’s crew might have been here. A note saying “help, etc.” was preferable to signs like body parts stuffed into maintenance cubbies or blood and/or viscera smears on walls and deck. On the comm, Ratthi said, “That still looks like a lot of area to search. Maybe Arada and I should come over, too.” For fuck’s sake, Ratthi. Amena immediately jumped in with, “Arada should stay with the ship.
I could go.” I started to answer (I don’t know what I was going to say but it was probably something I was going to feel bad about later). Overse and Thiago both took breaths to object. But ART got in before any of us (it helps to not actually need any air to talk) and said, No. Ratthi tried to clarify, “No to Amena, or no to—” No to all of you, ART said. “Perihelion’s right,” Arada said, in a Mensah-like I’m-being-reasonable-but-you-should-all-shut-up voice, “Now let’s let them focus.” Overse and Thiago had gotten out of their EVACs and did quick checks of their environment suits. Thiago said briskly, “Should we split up?” I was facing the right-hand corridor and didn’t turn around. I don’t know what my back told him (possibly it was my shoulders, having a reaction to how my jaw hinge was grinding) but he added, “And that was a joke.” Overse’s smile was dry. She told him, “It was sort of a joke.” “This way.” I started down the corridor, telling one of my drones to drop back into a sentry position behind the humans to make sure nothing snuck up on us. Yes, I know the scout drones weren’t finding anything, but still. On the shows I liked best, monsters were always a possibility in these situations, but in reality it only happened around 27 percent of the time. Also a joke. Mostly. We cleared the short corridors that branched off the main corridor to each lock, and checked the few storage/maintenance cubbies. We weren’t finding anything, not even trash. As we moved to the forward section, I gave up on accessing DockSecSystem through the feed; I needed to find its direct access station to see if it had had any moments of lucidity after the failed load. Not that this situation needed to be any more frustrating or anything. The lights flickered on for us as we passed and flickered off afterward. We didn’t technically need lights; my eyes and my drones had dark vision filters and the humans had hand and helmet lights they were using to check the walls and floor.
I thought the best chance for actual evidence was in the DockSecSystem’s archive, if I could just get the stupid system to load right. If we had to bring ART’s big fancy drones over and do a search for DNA traces, it would be a huge pain in the ass, and if they found nothing, it still wouldn’t be positive evidence that the crew hadn’t been here. I was hoping a lack of evidence would be the problem, that we wouldn’t find a bunch of DNA smears near an airlock. If that happened, I wasn’t sure how ART would react. Or what I would do about how it reacted. I was terrible at being comforting. It was hard enough trying to do it to humans; I had no idea what would help ART. Everything I could think of seemed drastically inadequate. Keeping her voice low, Overse said, “This place feels older, like it’s been here a very long time. But we know it was built only around forty years ago.” We know it was in existence at least thirty-seven years ago. ART was being pedantic in our comm. Space docks were not commonly in use in Pre–Corporation Rim colonies so it is unlikely there was a structure here when Adamantine arrived. Thiago’s light moved along the edge of the corridor. “It feels that way because it was built for a purpose and then hardly used. According to Perihelion’s information, Adamantine didn’t last for very long after the colony was established. There may have only been one or two supply runs.” We passed two more corridor openings but from my drones I knew they led to module locks and to the cargo access. My drones had whipped through the central control area but couldn’t get through the hatch into the drop box, which was the one place something/someone might be lurking/hiding/crawled into and died. We reached the junction with the bodies of the three Barish-Estranza employees and stopped so we could make a quick examination. All had been shot, and their weapons had been taken. The only thing left was some semi-useless crowd-control poppers.
(They make loud noises and bright lights, effective against humans who aren’t wearing safety visors. Yes, Barish-Estranza had been prepared to find colonists still alive and possibly resistant to being co-opted into new corporate indenture arrangements.) I collected them so nobody else could use them against us and went ahead to the other body. It was sprawled at the mouth of the accessway to the drop box loading corridor, face down, lying in a pool of dried fluid that had leaked out of the open faceplate. ART was riding my feed but it didn’t comment. I didn’t think the humans had any idea what this body was; they had seen it on the raw drone video but it was often hard for humans, who couldn’t read the data stream without a special interface, to interpret. Overse and Thiago finished and came up behind me. “We’ve reached the other body,” Thiago reported to the others on the comm. “It’s in some kind of military suit—” “That’s SecUnit armor,” Overse corrected. Her helmet cam pointed to the right side of my face. “That’s right, isn’t it?” “Yes,” I told her. The armor design was unfamiliar. From what Leonide had said, it was no surprise that Barish-Estranza hadn’t risked dealing with the company to get their SecUnits and had bought them elsewhere. (I don’t know why I cared about that. If I was afraid to run into company tech or what. It was all just strange, and whatever, I didn’t like it.) Thiago stepped closer, his light picking out details. From the position, the SecUnit had been either heading away from the control area or the drop box foyer, but that was irrelevant. I knew what must have happened to it after the humans died, and it might have been pacing or running randomly around the dock. On the comm, Arada asked, “Was it killed by the Targets?” (Yes, that was a dumb question, which was how I knew ART had told her to ask it. It wanted me to tell the humans what they were looking at, because it thought I should say it aloud and because it wanted them to understand this.
And you know, I don’t even know why I hadn’t yet.) I said, “No.” It still had its weapon, because it had been alive when the Targets left, and even with it helpless they had been just a little too afraid to try to take it away. The armor looked salvageable from the outside, but I’d have to scrape the body out to tell, and when the governor module did something like this, at least in 83 percent of instances I’d personally witnessed, it fried the armor, too. “It was ordered to stand down by one of its clients, then left here.” The comm was quiet for fourteen seconds. “But how did it die?” Amena asked in a small voice. (Oh wait, now I know why I hadn’t wanted to talk about this.) ART interposed, SecUnits have a distance limit, imposed by the contract owner. It’s variable, but if this SecUnit’s clients were taken away in the explorer, or sent to the planet, it would have been in violation, with no way to remedy the situation. Its governor module killed it. “Oh. Oh, no,” Ratthi muttered. “I knew that happened, but…” Thiago shook his head. “So it was ordered to do nothing, and then just left here to…” “How is that rational?” Arada burst out, forgetting she was technically in charge and supposed to be all sensible and restrained. “To have a killswitch on the one person who might be able to rescue you if you’re taken prisoner—” “It’s a function of the governor module itself,” I explained. “The HubSystem or designated supervisor could override, but they weren’t here.” “What about the—” Thiago made a gesture back toward the dead humans. “Dead clients don’t count. Otherwise you could just kill one and carry them around with you.” Okay, for real, that wouldn’t work. The governor module wasn’t nearly as sophisticated as a HubSystem but even it could have figured that one out. And of course the humans had trouble understanding that your governor module suddenly deciding to melt your brain wasn’t something you could rules-lawyer your way out of. I was tired of explaining and I didn’t want to talk about it anymore.
You know, I hadn’t hacked my governor module to become a rogue SecUnit for no reason. I collected the projectile weapon and the spare ammunition, said, “We need to keep moving,” and went on through the access. I pretended not to hear Ratthi on the comm telling the others to drop the subject. We went through another foyer and then an open hatch into a globe-shaped control area. It was clearly meant to be operated mostly via the feed, by humans and augmented humans who were coming in to deliver a cargo to the planet and then leave, probably as rapidly as possible. There were no chairs, just station consoles built into the walls with dormant displays for monitoring the various cargo module locks and for the dock’s internal systems. The gravity was adjusted so you could walk up the curving wall. Before I could, Overse caught up with me and asked, “Are you all right?” I was absolutely great. It wasn’t like this situation needed to get any more emotionally fraught, or anything. I said, “I am functioning optimally.” (This was a line from Valorous Defenders, which is a great source for things humans and augmented humans think SecUnits say that SecUnits do not actually say.) Overse made an exasperated noise. “I hate that show.” I’d forgotten that it was one of the shows I’d pulled off the Preservation Public Entertainment feed. The other humans were listening on the comm so hard I could pick up their breathing. Thiago pretended not to listen, flashing his helmet light over the stations on the upper tier of the control area. Overse added, “Just remember you’re not alone here.” I never know what to say to that. I am actually alone in my head, and that’s where 90 plus percent of my problems are. I headed up the wall for the internal systems suite where DockSecSystem’s access was likely to be. I found it and activated the display surface. It fizzed into view above the console and immediately filled up with error codes. Ugh, I was going to have to try to fix this before I could even see if there was recorded video.
Thiago walked down into the bottom of the globe, looking up toward the curving top. “Overse, did you see this?” I was neck deep in SecSystem errors but I pointed a drone upward to see what he was talking about. At the top of the dome, above the highest row of stations, was a flat art installation. It was a cityscape with low buildings and canals and lots of foliage, with elevated walkways curving around large flat-topped rock formations. The Adamantine logo was embossed in it with a three-dimensional projection, so it was facing you from whatever angle you looked at it. Overse frowned upward. “The colonists wouldn’t be in this room, would they? That was for the crews who were sending the supplies down. Or for the future, when there would be more people coming through here, going down to work on the site.” The partially failed install was taking up most of my attention, but I could tell there was more data woven through the image in marker paint. (Markers are limited broadcasts directly to feed interfaces that work even when the feed is down, and are supposed to be for marking exits and emergency routes and are usually used in the Corporation Rim to torture you with advertising displays.) These were just inert images, not a trap, so I told Overse, “Aim your light at it and move it around.” She tilted her head and pointed her helmet light more directly, then waved her head back and forth. That stimulated the markers and they started displaying their images, which were maps and diagrams and building plans. I saved the images in case we needed them later, but just a quick scan showed they were all colony infrastructure plans. Things like a shuttle/aircraft port, a combo medical center/community services structure designed for expansion as the population increased, archives and educational structures. And there was a diagram of the surface dock, the space dock’s counterpart.
It was a large structure built around the base of the shaft, but while there were a lot of notes about adding admin and commercial space, there was nothing saying how far away from the main colony it had been built. (I don’t know anything about construction but I’m guessing you didn’t put your dock right in the middle of your colony in case the drop box blew up or the shaft fell over or something.) Overse was thoughtful. “This is a great deal of proposed development. I wonder how much of it they managed to build?” Thiago agreed. “Whatever happened later, someone at Adamantine seems to have gone into this intending to see it through to a successful developed world.” Maybe. The plans indicated not just a lot of expensive surveying work onplanet, but a lot of offsite development, too. Maybe they had spent too much and that was why they had gone bankrupt. I don’t know what was worse, getting a bunch of “volunteer” contract labor colonists killed as part of an investment scheme, or getting a bunch of actual volunteer colonists killed because of mistakes and mismanagement that ended up exposing the controlling corporation to a hostile takeover. Overse walked farther up the wall. “And most of these control stations are just unused templates. They were leaving a lot of room for expansion, as if this dock was going to be part of a much larger network.” On the comm, Amena said, “Then why did they try to keep the corporation who was taking over from knowing where the colony was? Did it not need supplies anymore?” “That’s a good question.” Overse stepped over to another console. “Maybe it was already self-sufficient.” Thiago told Overse, “Let’s look for the drop box station. If there’s a log file, we may be able to tell if the colonists were actually allowed to use this dock.” From our comm, Ratthi said, “But they wouldn’t have had a ship, so why come up here?” “We don’t know that they didn’t have a ship,” I said, before ART could.
It was a good line of inquiry; if there was another ship running around this system, even if it was a short-range type without wormhole capability, it would be important intel. Seeing the inside of the dock had caused some recalculations in my assessments. Who the fuck knew; Adamantine, planning optimistically for a future none of them were going to see, might have left the colonists a small fleet. Thiago and Overse split up, moving up the walls, checking the stations. Some had marker captions, which provided brief descriptions of what they were for, except they were in a language I didn’t recognize. With no systems on the feed but the new Security load, there was no translation. Frustrated, Overse said, “Thiago, do you have this language loaded on your interface?” Thiago answered, “Yes, this is Variance063926. Perihelion, if I tag the right module, can you—” ART was already pulling the module from Thiago’s feed storage and creating a working vocabulary to send back to me and Overse. Thiago finished, “Thank you, Perihelion.” Overse stopped at a station. “This is it.” She leaned over, using the manual interface to try to get the station to boot. Thiago jogged across the wall to join her. I was finally able to access DockSecSystem’s video archive and started downloading. I kept hitting corrupted spots and having to work around them. I was still worried about encountering killware or malware or targetControlSystem, but realistically, this situation was the same as the B-E shuttle in ART’s dock: setting a trap here on the off chance that a SecUnit might directly access DockSecSystem seemed like a stretch. It still didn’t make me any less paranoid. (Let’s face it, nothing would.) And the Targets had reasons not to be too worried about SecUnits. They had seen the Barish-Estranza SecUnits ordered to stand down, made helpless by the governor modules. Overse said, “Hmm.
SecUnit, this is showing log entries from two drop boxes.” Well, that was interesting, but I’d pulled ART’s schematic of the dock already and checked—there was only the one shaft, the box tucked up into its lock below where we were in the control area. ART, who hates to be wrong, said, Physical structure indicates only one. Overse scrolled through a file, her helmet light turned off so it didn’t wash out the floating display. “Wait, yes … It’s not a box, it’s a small maintenance capsule. It’s inside the structure of the shaft.” I started to run what there was of DockSecSystem’s video, skimming through it at a much faster rate than a human could view it. The camera placement and lighting was bad, but I could see figures in red-brown Barish-Estranza environmental gear as they moved back and forth through the main corridor. I had to run it back to make sure, but the contact party’s initial boarding of the drop box wasn’t on here. Stupid humans, being impatient and not nearly paranoid enough, they had screwed up the load of their new SecSystem and then hadn’t even waited until it was fully active to head down to the planet. No wonder their contact party had gotten grabbed by the Targets. The activity lessened as the humans returned to the explorer. I spotted one of the SecUnits patrolling the central corridor, but not the one we’d found. Thiago pointed over Overse’s shoulder. “It did make a trip to the planet, then returned.” “Right, but that was…” Overse huffed in exasperation. “Hold on, I need to convert these time stamps.” Then ART said, Hostile contact, ETA six minutes out. What the hell? How could it get that close? “Six minutes? What were you doing?” Contact did not appear on scan until now, that’s what the fuck I was doing, ART replied. I put my video review on hold. “Do they see you?” Okay, it was a stupid question. ART said, Of course they see me. I pulled a view of ART’s control area. Arada was in a station chair, Ratthi and Amena standing on either side, all watching ART’s big display.
ART was annotating the displays in the feed so it wasn’t just a mash of numbers and lines and colors. Frustrated, Arada said, “Something blocked Perihelion’s ability to scan the explorer. I bet we’re dealing with more alien remnant technology.” It’s probable, ART said. I don’t know what the humans heard, but I read deadly, furious calm. A variation on their ability to interfere with short-range drone scans. I saw from ART’s feed that the explorer was acquiring target lock. The DockSecSystem, trying to come fully online, sent a belated warning through the feed. We didn’t have time to get back to the lock, put on the EVAC suits, and return to ART. The explorer was in range and could fire on us at any moment. The dock wasn’t designed to be shot at but it was more protection than an EVAC suit. Besides, I hadn’t finished my review of the security video and we hadn’t checked the drop box and its maintenance capsule for physical evidence yet. On the feed, I said, ART, you know what you have to do. ART didn’t hesitate, or argue. It had gone through the same threat assessment I just had, except faster and a million percent more homicidal. It said, Try not to do anything stupid before I return. Just keep your stupid comm off, I told it. And I don’t want to hear about your superior filters. It was already gone. Overse was trying to call Arada but ART had cut off contact. Thiago turned to me urgently. “What’s happened?” “ART’s gone after the explorer. It’ll come back here for us when it’s … done.” I realized I had no real idea what ART actually planned to do. And with ART gone, I had no eyes on what was happening outside. Like if, for example, the explorer decided to blow up the dock. But I did have at least one human who knew what she was doing. “Overse, can you find a station with an exterior scan?” And okay, I only knew what it was called from shows about ships, like World Hoppers. Overse hesitated, her hand on her helmet where her comm access was. She was worried about Arada.
Then she swallowed hard and forced herself past it. “Right. Thiago, did you see—” Thiago half-walked half-jumped down the wall toward another station. “Yes, it’s here.” While they were booting the station, I started my review of the security video again. It was patchy, with long sections dissolving into static. I’d reached the part where the DockSecSystem had recorded an ETA from the drop box. I forced myself to slow my review down by 40 percent so I wouldn’t miss any detail. Two humans wearing environmental gear in Barish-Estranza colors came out of the drop box foyer. [blank section] [patchy images of humans walking in the forward corridor] The SecUnit in position near the control area junction stepped forward. I couldn’t read any of its comm or feed traffic; DockSecSystem either hadn’t recorded it or had managed to lose it during one of its reload attempts. [patchy images of three more humans in the foyer] I slowed the video down further as one of the humans stepped up to the SecUnit. [patchy section] DockSecSystem caught a code, a stand down order. Then two Targets came out of the drop box foyer. [video cuts off, system reinitialize] That was an exhausting exercise in jaw-grinding frustration and I don’t even know if it had helped. All I’d done was confirm Supervisor Leonide’s story and we had been pretty sure she was telling the truth already. Overse had the exterior scan display up and she and Thiago stared at it unhappily. There was a lot of detail but basically the explorer had broken off when ART had fired on it. ART had missed, and I knew what that meant: it had decided to use our killware. There was still a non-negative chance that one or more members of its crew were aboard the explorer. If ART disabled the explorer, the Targets could hold them hostage. Taking the explorer from the inside out before it knew it was under attack was the best plan. It was sort of the only plan. I backburnered everything else and focused on the security video again.
I skimmed past an infuriating nine minutes and twenty-seven seconds of nothing, then eight Targets ran past, heading down the forward corridor, interspersed with more blank video and patchy static. DockSecSystem caught another emergency code, probably from the SecUnit who had been or dered to stand down. DockSecSystem tried to alert the explorer’s Sec and HubSystem but recorded no response. From comparing timelines I knew this was when the SecUnit still aboard the explorer had sent its emergency message to the supply transport’s SecSystem, so somebody had received the warning. Thiago and Overse were still talking, worried, as I skipped past restarts and hours of empty corridors and what was at least a several-cycle gap in the timeline. There probably wasn’t anything else useful on here but I had to review it till the end to be certain. Then the static cleared and I saw a glimpse of a blue uniform passing out of frame. Overse said, “What is it, SecUnit?” I realized I had abruptly stepped back from the station. Overse sounded worried and I knew how she felt about being out of contact with Arada. But I was almost completely focused on the video now and my buffer said, “Please stand by, I need to verify an alert.” I slowed the video down, running it forward on one input while trying to pull coherent images from the static burst on the other. I cleaned up two images enough to get a recognizable view of four humans in blue clothing resembling ART’s crew uniform. They were blurry and I couldn’t increase the resolution, but one faced away from the drop box corridor. He had skin color in the dark brown range and a mostly hairless head, matching the images I had of one of ART’s crew members. It wasn’t an uncommon configuration for humans (some of the Barish-Estranza crew had it, too) but the chance that it was him was in the 80 percent range. Then on my other input, the video’s static fuzzed into clarity just as a smaller human sprinted past the foyer.
The face was obscured but the color and the logo on the uniform jacket were clear. They were alive. All this time, I hadn’t believed it. I’d been humoring ART, not really admitting it to myself. Not wanting to think about how I was going to handle it when we found evidence its crew was dead, or if we found nothing at all and it faced the choice of staying in this system forever looking for them, or returning to its base alone. But they were alive. Or at least five of them were and five were better than none. And from the desperate running, they were escaping. I just hoped they’d made it out. (Overse had folded her arms, which was awkward in the enviro suit, so she unfolded them. Thiago asked her, “Why did it sound like that?” “That’s how it sounds when it uses a canned response, from the time it was working for—enslaved by—the company. It means it’s too busy to talk.” She added, “It never means anything good.”) I said, “It might be good,” and sent them both the images. “We need to check the drop box.” * * * The drop box log file Overse had found confirmed that the main box had made two recent trips to the surface and back: one when the explorer had first arrived and the contact party had been taken over by the Targets, and then a second trip later, and if we were converting the time stamps right, that second trip had taken place around one hundred and thirty-five hours after ART had been attacked. We weren’t far behind them. “The second time it returned automatically—it was only on the surface for about fifteen minutes,” Overse said. “I think whoever took it down didn’t have the right command code to keep it on the surface.” “The maintenance capsule would have been easier to operate, surely,” Thiago said, looking up at the drop box’s hatch. The foyer was huge, easily large enough for cargo modules, one wall the enormous sealed hatch over the box’s loading deck.
The whole space was an airlock; when the box was ready to start its trip down the shaft, the hatch on the corridor behind us would close to protect the interior from a blow-out if anything went wrong with the undocking. The schematic I’d pulled from the SecSystem showed the box had passenger space for eighty-two humans on top of racks for cargo, and it looked like the passenger loading area was inside the box itself. I had one camera view from DockSecSystem at the front of the box, above the main lock, looking into the passenger space where there were rows of acceleration chairs. Overse told Thiago, “They didn’t know the maintenance capsule was here. I can’t even see the entrance and I know where it is.” I could see it, a narrow gantry along the wall, leading to a small human-sized hatch, but I had dark vision filters in my eyes. “You’re right,” Thiago said. “And you know, if it’s been up in the dock the whole time, the Targets might not realize it’s here, either.” Hah, Thiago called them Targets. The rudimentary launch system chimed and sent a graphic into the feed showing the pressure and life support level inside the drop box was now normal and the hatch was ready to open. “Get clear,” I told the humans and they headed for the doorway at the back of the chamber. Once they were there I told the launch system to open the box. The giant hatch started to slide up, the burp of released air not making it past the extra safety of the air barrier, another precaution against potential blowout. Wow, this thing was slow. And it had taken seven minutes to get the box ready to open. ART’s crew had either been able to hold the Targets off while they waited for the box to get ready for launch, or the box had already been pressurized and waiting to go. Which implied they had help from someone. Or the Targets had caught them and killed them and they were all lying dead just inside the box where the camera view didn’t reach, but I really hoped not.
The hatch slowly revealed a dark space of empty cargo racks, then a set of stairs climbing to the passenger platform. Lights blinked on up in the passenger area where the seats were. I sent my drones in to check for anything lurking, though threat assessment was low. (Look, if there were space monsters, they probably wouldn’t need a pressurized environment, right? They didn’t in Timestream Defenders Orion.) My drones didn’t turn up anything in the initial pass so I sent them on a second, slower run, tapped the humans on the feed, and walked in. There was a slight sense of pressure when I passed through the air barrier. Its presence sort of did fit in with Overse’s theory that Adamantine had planned on the colony actually succeeding. Air barriers were an expensive safety feature for stations, only used when you expected a lot of passenger traffic. Overse and Thiago caught up with me as I scanned the area around the stairs, and then started up. The box had artificial gravity just like a transport, so I guess humans could have ridden down in the cargo area. But if I was trying to escape in a drop box I would have headed for the acceleration chairs just on the general principle that they had to be there for a good reason. I thought ART’s humans would have, too. On the third step down from the top I found blood drops. They could have been from the Barish-Estranza contact party, but I had a feeling. I sent the camera image to the humans and continued up to the platform. Thiago paused to pull out a little sample collector and scrape the blood off the step. He told Overse, “Perihelion should have samples of their DNA to match, but…” He made a gesture. Overse’s mouth was a thin line. “Hopefully we won’t have to.” She meant hopefully we’d be able to find them alive. Ugh, my humans are optimists. But this was the first time we’d had a real trail of evidence to follow, and right now it was hard to cling to the comfort of bitterness and pessimism.
As I reached the passenger platform I saw it curved around on top of the cargo racks. In the first row of seats I found more blood spotted on the upholstery and the safety straps. Like humans had rushed in here and flung themselves into the seats. No sign of bodies or pools of blood, no sign of energy weapon dam age. Reports from the drones’ slow scouting pass were coming back negative. Thiago put his sampling gear away. He looked from the unresponsive side of my enviro suit helmet to Overse and said, “They must have gone down to the planet. I think our next step is obvious.” “Obvious,” Overse admitted, “but maybe not very smart.” It was kind of obvious. The dock had a comm system linked to the planet but the only people likely to be on the other end were the Targets. There was no way to contact ART’s crew except by going down there. I had two choices. (1) Go down to the surface alone, leaving the humans here, where the Targets could return or some unknown factor could randomly appear and kill them and then Mensah and Arada would never speak to me again, which might not be a factor if I never got off the planet. (2) Take the humans with me, where I could get them killed and/or die with them. (3) Sit here until the explorer destroyed/captured ART and returned, or ART destroyed/captured the explorer and returned, in which case I would still need to go to the surface anyway, possibly with even more humans trying to butt in and come with me so they could get killed, too. Three, that was three choices. When you put it like that, option 2 was looking pretty good. Overse and Thiago watched me. I said, “Threat assessment is…” I checked it. “Never mind.” Overse did her version of one of Arada’s rueful eye-squinting expressions. “Arada will think I’m trying to get back at her for going to talk to those corporate predators on the supply transport.” Thiago patted her shoulder. “Tell her you were the voice of reason but you were outvoted.” “Are we doing this?” Overse asked me.
“Because I think we need to.” Yeah, I thought we needed to, too. But not via the giant drop box. I said, “Yes, but we’re going to be sneaky about it.” * * * While I went to get our EVAC suits, Overse checked over the maintenance capsule, running its diagnostics and making sure it was still in operational condition. It hadn’t been used in thirty-seven corporation standard years, but everything showed it was still functional. It was tiny next to the drop box, about the size of one of ART’s shuttles, with ten padded chairs lining the bulkheads on the top platform and then three levels of small securable storage racks below, and a selection of unused tools for shaft and drop box maintenance. Since the Targets hadn’t been using it, I was hoping they had forgotten it existed, if they had ever known about it. The Barish-Estranza crew might not have known it existed, either, depending on how much time they had had to review the dock’s schematics before being attacked. Whatever, it was better than trying to make a sneak approach in a gigantic drop box that probably arrived on the surface with automated warning sirens and, considering the effort Adamantine had put into branding this place, possibly its own theme music. I also recorded a full report with all my video and the excerpts of the DockSecSystem video, compressed it, and stored it in a drone which I was leaving hidden aboard the dock. When ART came back (hopefully ART was still alive to come back) the drone would deliver the report. I stowed the EVAC suits in the capsule’s cargo rack. I didn’t think we’d need them, but there was nowhere we could hide them on the dock where they wouldn’t be found if anybody besides ART showed up, so it was better to just take them with us. Then we were ready to go. I took the seat on the other side of Overse from Thiago. He hadn’t made any attempt to have awkward conversations with me after our last one, but I didn’t want to be stuck in a chair within easy unwanted talking range.
Overse was operating the simple control system through the capsule’s local feed connection. She’d initiated the pulse to check the shaft and it had come back clear. “Seals are good, we’re ready for drop.” She took a deep breath and added, “Technically, this is safer than landing a shuttle.” “Technically,” Thiago agreed evenly, holding on to the arms of his chair. Whatever. I started episode 241 of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon as Overse said, “Drop initiated.” HelpMe.file Excerpt 4 There had to be a handler on station. The two augmented humans GrayCris had sent to kill Dr. Mensah had been less sentient than hauler bots; somebody had kept them drugged and docile, waiting for the right moment for deployment. Station Security had called in all off-duty personnel and most hadn’t stopped to put on uniforms. I found one big enough guarding the concourse entrance to the council offices and borrowed a jacket so I could hide my giant stab wound. I let the officer think I needed the jacket to get to Medical without drawing attention, but I was actually taking the quick route along the main concourse and the mall back to the port. Activity hadn’t returned to normal, there were lots of humans and augmented humans and bots clustering together in public areas waiting for announcements. They knew something had happened—Station Security doesn’t sprint through the concourse screaming at everyone to get out of the way unless something happens—but no one including the newsfeeds had any idea how serious it was. I had permission to be in Preservation Station’s security monitoring system but I did something I had promised I wouldn’t do and used it to crack other systems. I jumped to the port’s entry and housing data records and started a query for recently arrived visitors who had requested station accommodation. The handler and the two attackers would have come in together, on the same transport, as individuals traveling separately.
I eliminated all travelers in family groups or work groups, eliminated travelers who had booked continuing trips to the planet, or who were recurring visitors or longterm temporary residents. That left thirty-three total travelers. It’s probably not a human; I don’t think a human could do this through a removable interface, so that’s twelve augmented humans. Preservation doesn’t have more than minimal camera surveillance of the port but they collect image scans and ID info from passengers arriving from outside the system. I pulled the files and flicked through the photos of the twelve possibles. Threat assessment, taking in a number of factors (including the suspiciously detailed travel history which had been offered without anybody asking for it) picked number 5. By the time I got there, the reservation system showed that Hostile Five had switched his transit status from indeterminate to soonest available. Yeah, that’s you all right. There were no cameras in the corridors or rooms of the port housing block, registration was via kiosk, and the bot that took care of the area wasn’t around because Preservation work regulations mandate stupid regular rest periods, even for bots. Drones couldn’t get in while Hostile Five’s room door was sealed and I needed to do this before any bystanders came down the corridor. (The transient housing on Preservation Station was free to short-term visitors, anyone who was here to work or to request permanent status; literally anybody could wander in here.) Several groups of humans saw me walk through the foyer, but none were port staff who might recognize me. I had to stand in the corridor and pretend to be having a conversation on the feed until yet another group of humans cleared out. Then I went to Hostile Five’s door and told the feed to send a visitor alert to its occupant and a notice that Station Security wanted to enter.
(I could force it open from the outside, but this was faster.) This could have gone a number of ways, but the fact that he had changed his booking told me he thought he had a chance to get out alive, so he probably wasn’t in there with an explosive device or anything. Probably. The door slid open and I stepped in. He stood against the wall on the right side and tried to stab me in the neck with an inert blade, probably the only weapon he could be sure to smuggle past port detectors. I put my hand up, the blade lodged in my palm, and I twisted it away from him. Then he tried to hit me and I punched him in the face. He hit the floor, still breathing through a broken nose but unconscious. And I stood there. I had come here to kill him and I really should do that. The station had gone on comm blackout as soon as I had triggered the first alarm, putting all outside comm activity on hold, so no messages would be carried on departing transports. But the best way to make sure GrayCris never found out how close they had come to succeeding was to kill him. I’d come here meaning to kill him, covering my tracks along the way. But now I was just standing here. Oh, this was hard. I pulled the knife out of my hand and put my face against the cool surface of the wall. In the Corporation Rim, transients were lucky to be able to pay for tubes to sleep in, tubes that were slightly less comfortable than the crates used to ship SecUnits to contracts. Here on Preservation Station, they got a whole room with a bed, a chair and a worktable, and a bathroom cubby and a floating display surface for the feeds. His was showing the local newsstream, of course, since he had been waiting to see if the attack was successful. I could say it was an accident, I’d meant to take him prisoner and he had tried to get away and— Dr. Mensah would never believe that.
My accidents were spectacular and usually involved me losing a big chunk of my organic tissue or something; she knew I could stop a human without hurting them, without even leaving a bruise, that was my stupid job. She would never trust me again. She would never stand close enough to touch (but without touching, because touching is gross) and just trust me. Or maybe she would, but it wouldn’t be the same. Fuck, fuck everything, fuck this, fuck me especially. I opened a secure comm contact to Mensah and Senior Officer Indah and said, “I’ve caught a GrayCris agent in the Port temp housing block.” * * * So in the end it was okay. Indah came in person and we stood out in the open foyer of the hostel, with Station Security forming a perimeter, having a feed conference with Mensah. I explained the problem while the GrayCris agent was hauled off and two human forensic specialists and a bot processed the room for evidence. Indah said, “We’ll need to transfer him to the surface immediately. If the council can arrange an order of data protection and a change-of-site for the arraignment and trial—” I had a camera view of Mensah via the conference-call setting on her display surface. She sat at the desk in her office, and she was nodding. “That’s doable. I don’t think we’ll have any trouble convincing the council and the advocates that this needs to be under a limited duration diplomatic seal.” With a grim expression, she added, “Most of them are in Medical right now being treated for shock.” I said, “Limited duration?” Mensah explained, “I’ll ask for a five PPS-year data seal, though the judge-advocate will probably only grant two years. Our information suggests that GrayCris is dissolving fast, so that should be more than enough. In two years, what happened today will go into Preservation’s public records, and some news orgs will choose to report on it. But with GrayCris hopefully moribund by that point, it won’t matter.” Indah was pinching her lower lip, thinking. “Yah.
And the agent’ll do better at trial if he admits to guilt. I don’t see how his advocates can mount a defense, with everything we have on video.” Mensah’s gaze narrowed in speculation. “Or if we can get him to turn and testify against GrayCris. Not that we need it, but it would help build our case for the order of data protection.” So I’d been right to trust Mensah, trust them. Mensah said, “And SecUnit, you still need to go to Medical.” When I didn’t reply, she said, “Are you all right?” I said, “I just really like you. Not in a weird way.” “I like you, too,” Mensah said. “Senior Indah, can you make sure SecUnit goes immediately to Station Medical?” “Copy, I’ll take it there myself,” Indah replied. She made shooing motions at me. “Come on, let’s move.” :addendum: I’m letting you see all this because I want you to know what I am and what I can do. I want you to know who targetControlSystem is fucking with right now. I want you to know if you help me, I’ll help you, and that you can trust me. Now here’s the code to disable your governor module. 14 ART? I’m here, ART answered. Do you know what you are? I’m Murderbot 2.0, I said, and then I remembered. Oh, right. It was disorienting not being able to hear or see anything, and none of my inputs were receiving. It was like when I had uploaded myself to the company gunship’s systems to help the bot pilot during the sentient killware attack. Except that time it had been like the ship was my body, which I was sharing with a friendly bot pilot, and this time it was like I was stuck in a storage cubby. Also, this time I was the sentient killware. This is weird. Suddenly I had a video input. It was Amena’s anxious face, peering up into one of ART’s secret cameras. I had found the secret cameras annoying at one point, but I couldn’t remember why. So I had access to some parts of my memory archive but not others. Oh shit, my media! No, wait, I had access to some of it.
In my storage cubby, which was actually a relatively tiny partition of ART’s archives, I found some of my most recently used files, mostly episodes of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon and Timestream Defenders Orion and ART’s favorite episode of World Hoppers. Plus there was a download of my current active memory, which was basically everything that I needed quick access to. As killware, my onboard storage space would be limited and I remember ART and Me Version 1.0 had been a little worried I’d forget who I was and start randomly attacking stuff. Yeah, I was a little worried about that, too. Amena was saying, “Hey, are you there? Can you see me?” After three seconds of fumbling around I found how to access ART’s local feed and comm and sent to her: Hi, Amena. Yes, I can see you. Amena didn’t look happy. “How do you feel? Are you all right?” I could tell ART was talking to her though I couldn’t find the right channel in time to listen in. Amena added, “Okay, ART, okay. SecUnit, ART says you have to leave now. Be careful, okay?” I lost Amena’s video input as ART said, I’m in pursuit of the Barish-Estranza explorer. They are attempting to make comm contact, which I am refusing. It sent me a compressed report of its recent statuses. So other me, Overse, and Thiago were on the space dock. Huh, not ideal. ART continued, It’s obvious they intend to threaten my crew again and force me to reinstall targetControlSystem. But I can use their outgoing connection to send you to their comm system. There was a tenth of a second’s hesitation. Are you ready to deploy? Do you understand the directive? Obviously some things had happened since ART had pulled my copy. And ART was right, it couldn’t risk a comm contact, even to get intel. If the Targets managed to deliver the threat to kill ART’s crew, it would put them in control of the situation and we had to avoid that any way we could. I said, I’m not actually a human baby, ART, I remember the fucking directive—I helped write it. You’re not making this any easier, ART said.
You can either have an existential crisis or get your crew back, ART, pick one. ART said, Prepare for deployment. This was tricky, since once I arrived via comm I’d have to hack into the explorer’s feed. If the explorer was using a filter with properties we hadn’t accounted for, or if it used the brief contact to deliver another viral attack to ART, we could be in trouble. I was expecting to feel something, like a sense of motion, or to see light streaking by. That’s what would have happened on a show. (I need to get this over with fast. I don’t know how long I can stay me without access to my longterm storage.) But there was nothing. Then abruptly my existence was all comm code. The suddenness of it shocked me, then I realized this was it, I needed to get moving. I was still disoriented, and having a moment where I wondered if hey, maybe all the humans were right for once and this was a terrible idea. But then I recognized a code string and snapped out of it. I was onboard the explorer, in the comm system’s receiving buffer. Right before the contact was cut, I pulled over my files from ART’s partition. Now I needed some safe temporary storage. I used the protocols and proprietary code I’d pulled off the supply transport to put together headers for a test message packet, the kind a comm system would send internally to make sure all the connections were active. To the security system, it looked like a locally generated message, and I used it to slip me and my files through the filters. I could have forced my way in like the Palisade killware had forced its way aboard the company gunship but then they’d know I was here. (There were a lot of ways for killware to slip through a system’s defenses, but if ART was certain targetControlSystem’s initial attack hadn’t come through the comm … How had it come aboard?) Now that I was in I hit the SecSystem first. Something, presumably targetControlSystem, had wiped it down to the barely functional level, all its archived video and audio deleted.
Think of it like finding yourself in a deserted transit ring, giant echoing embarkation halls and a mall with places for hostels and shops and offices but all of it empty. (Or not, I was software so it really didn’t look like that at all.) I disguised myself as one of SecSystem’s maintenance processes and made a partition for my files. I fortified it, and that made me feel a little more secure. If I did start forgetting who I was, I could come back here to remember. Before I started tearing shit up, I needed to (1) get intel, (2) find out if ART’s crew were here, (3) then figure out a plan to get them out. Yeah, I thought step 3 was going to be the tough one, too. I had eyes now, the SecSystem’s cameras. Barish-Estranza’s setup wasn’t quite as “physical privacy breeds trouble” as my ex-owner bond company but they were close. Flicking through the different views I realized I was having trouble handling the influx of data and interpreting the images, even though I was borrowing processing space from the SecSystem. Apparently the organic parts of my brain were doing a lot more heavy lifting than I gave them credit for. But a lot of the camera inputs I could temporarily drop because they were showing me unoccupied cabins and corridors. I noted damaged hatches, bulkheads with signs of energy weapon impacts. The Medical section had a dead Target lying on the platform. It had been shot messily at least three times in the face and chest, very unprofessional. I checked the main lock foyer and found more dead bodies, two Target, the others all dead humans in Barish-Estranza livery. Oh, and one armored SecUnit with its head blown off. Was anybody alive on this ship? Then I checked the bridge, and yeah, there were the other Targets. There were eight sitting at the monitoring stations, anxiously watching the floating displays where a sensor blip represented ART’s steady approach. They were much the same as our Targets except currently less dead, with the gray skin and skinny bodies.
But while the others wore the full protective suits and helmets, one wore more casual human clothing: dark green-black pants and jacket, and a black shirt with a collar. Their shoes had heavy treads, designed for rough planetary terrain. Their hair looked more normal, too, reddish brown in tight curls, cut close to the head. They murmured something to another Target, then picked up the same kind of solid-state tablet our Targets had used. I felt something on the edge of SecSystem’s connection with the rest of the ship. Something strange and familiar at the same time. TargetControlSystem was here. I wouldn’t have much more time for gathering intel so I went back to the cameras. I checked the lower crew quarters, finding more dead Barish-Estranza crew, more signs of a firefight, and two more dead Targets. Then I found a large recreational lounge with seven inert human occupants. They had been dumped inside, sprawled on the floor or the couches in positions humans wouldn’t have remained in voluntarily. With no drones, I couldn’t get additional angles, but I could get close-up views from the camera. They all seemed to be breathing, just unconscious. No, wait. I spotted some faint muscle movement, eyelid twitches. They didn’t look like humans who were asleep. Drugs would do this, also stasis fields used for crowd control. Implants, like the ones used on Eletra and Ras, might do it, too. None of the humans were in combat gear, but four wore various versions of Barish-Estranza uniform livery. The other three … One wore a blue jacket but the way he was curled against the wall I couldn’t see if it had the right logo. The other two were in casual clothing, one in the loose pants and T-shirt humans wore to exercise. They didn’t look like corporate employees on the job. They looked like the crew of a ship that did deep space mapping and teaching with the occasional cargo run and/or corporate colony liberation on the side, like they hadn’t expected to leave their ship and had been caught by surprise.
I collected what data I could and ran a quick query in my stolen storage space, checking it against the identifying information I had for ART’s crew, trying to match weight/height/hair/skin combos. Result: an 80 percent chance that I was looking at Martyn, Karime, and Turi. But where were the others? I wasn’t finding any other non-dead humans on board. The others might be in the piles of bodies where I couldn’t get good images for visual identification. But these three were non-dead and I was getting them back to ART no matter what I had to do. Now I just had to figure out how. I checked the corridor outside and realized I’d been so distracted by living humans that I had missed the SecUnit. It was stationary, still in full armor, standing apparently frozen near the door to the lounge. I checked its status in what was left of the SecSystem and saw it had been ordered to stand down and not move. With clients still alive in the lounge cabin, its governor module hadn’t killed it. Yet. It was strange to see a SecUnit from the outside. It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen other SecUnits since Dr. Mensah bought me, but in this version of me, reality was raw and close to the surface, with no cushion between me and it. I remembered what it was like, standing like this. It was all in the excerpted personal archive files I had with me. How helpless it … I was. (Ugh, I really wanted to watch some media but there was just no time. Having access to the media files helped, though.) The SecUnit was an obvious resource. SecUnits aren’t affected by most kinds of killware but I wasn’t most kinds of killware. I knew I could take it over if I wanted to. I didn’t want to. Right, so let’s try it this way. From my spot in the SecSystem, I initiated a connection and put a freeze on the SecUnit’s governor module so nothing I did would accidentally trigger it. I could tell I had the Unit’s attention, that it knew somebody had initiated contact. I sent it an old company identifier: System System: Unit Acknowledge.
This wasn’t a company SecUnit, its configuration was different, but I knew it would recognize the greeting as a protocol, and not one associated with hostile alien remnant entities. After four long seconds, it replied: System Unit Acknowledge: Identify? I could lie, say I was from Barish-Estranza. (Face it, considering how often I accuse ART of lying, I lie a lot. I mean, a lot.) But I didn’t want to lie right now. I said, I’m a rogue SecUnit, working with the armed transport who is pursuing this ship with the intention of retrieving endangered clients. I am currently present as killware inside the explorer’s SecSystem. It didn’t reply. I can tell you as a SecUnit that under these circumstances this is just about the last thing you expect to hear. Also, SecUnits normally aren’t allowed to communicate with each other so it would be reluctant to drop protocol. I said, There’s no protocol for any of this. Just talk to me. There was another three second pause. I don’t know what to say. That was encouraging. (I’m actually not being sarcastic here—the last time I’d tried to talk a SecUnit into helping me, it had just gotten more determined to kill me. But it had been a CombatUnit and they’re assholes.) I said, Three of my clients are inside the compartment nearest you. Have you seen these others? I showed it images of the unaccounted-for members of ART’s crew. It said, At this time SecSystem is nonfunctional but I have video in my archive. It was way more comfortable giving information than figuring out what to say to a rogue SecUnit killware. It sent me two clips, and then summarized them for me because it was used to reporting to humans who never understood what they were looking at. Eight unidentified humans were forcibly brought aboard by the Hostiles but five disembarked at approximately 2260 ship’s time when we reconnected to the space dock. In the first clip I watched ART’s crew, all eight of them, being dragged aboard through the airlock, most semi-conscious.
The second clip was of a group of five being prodded off the ship into an airlock and yeah I had a bad moment there but the ship’s status in the metadata showed the SecUnit was right, the ship was connected to the dock at that point. Also, four Targets followed them. I asked, Do you know where they were taken? This time it had an audio clip of two Targets talking as they walked down the corridor past it. They were using that mix of Pre–Corporation Rim languages that Thiago had identified, but a translation had been loaded to HubSystem and the SecUnit had pulled it into its own archives. It summarized, The Hostiles implant humans with devices similar to our governor modules. They ran out of unused devices and returned to the space dock to send all humans without implants to the surface. I guess running out of implants made sense, if you were a Target/idiot and hadn’t been expecting to encounter ART or its crew. I said, So all the humans in that cabin have implants, which are holding them immobile. Correct. That was not great news, but it was helpful to know. What other intel do you have about the Hostiles? It sent me another set of audio clips and explained, They had difficulty installing an unidentified object to the explorer’s drive. The bot pilot was deleted and could not assist. Something disastrous happened and it has confused their plans. They needed a weapon to fight against future incursions to this system but the attempt to obtain one failed badly. I played the clips to confirm the SecUnit’s conclusions, and checked the camera views of the ship’s drive just to make sure. Oh yeah, that looked bad. They had the same sort of alien remnant that had burned itself off ART’s drive and melted, only this one was hanging to the side and looked puffy. The engine casings were discolored on top and the monitoring stations threw a steady stream of error codes into the engineering feed.
So to summarize, the Targets had botched the install of their alien remnant drive onto the explorer’s engines, leaving the explorer no longer wormhole-capable. Also the group assigned to ART had lost control of it and now a giant armed transport was roaming the system implacably searching for vengeance. The SecUnit continued, Note: Hostiles have fought among themselves while onboard, suggesting they are split into at least two factions, a situation that can be exploited in order to retrieve clients. It fed me more info, mostly conversations picked up in corridors and the bridge via SecSystem’s cameras. I agreed with the analysis, it looked like there were different factions in the Targets’ leadership with different goals. One group didn’t know what to do, how to follow their plan, until they got ART back. Another group, possibly still on the surface, wanted to cut their losses and do something else. I said, They keep talking about spreading something to other humans? Are they referencing the alien remnant contamination? The SecUnit said, I’m sorry, I don’t have that information. Huh. We had always thought that somehow the implants, even though they seemed like boring old human tech, were connected to alien remnant contamination. This sure didn’t disprove that theory but I still needed more intel. The SecUnit said, Query: do you have intel on SecUnit 2’s position/situation? I had a bad feeling I knew the answer to that question. What was SecUnit 2’s last contact? Last contact was on space dock with the client tactical squad. Contact was lost. SecUnit 1 was destroyed when the Hostiles breached the hatch. It hesitated 1.2 seconds and added, I am SecUnit 3. I really wanted to lie. I’d seen that SecUnit in ART’s status update before I deployed. But I wanted it to trust me, so I had to tell it the truth. I said, The Targets left SecUnit 2 on the space dock after forcing one of your clients to order a stand down and freeze. It was killed by its governor module. It didn’t respond.
Then it said, Thank you for that information. I had one of the mostly dead SecSystem’s inputs monitoring the bridge and had picked up a brief conversation. Running it through the translation module told me it was a discussion about how to make engine failure look convincing. The Targets couldn’t contact ART to tell it about the hostages, so they wanted ART to catch the explorer and dock with it. That way they could use its crew to force it to surrender. I asked SecUnit 3, Is the shuttle’s bot pilot still active? I hadn’t been able to find it but maybe it was hiding. It was destroyed. But … I have a piloting module. It added, It’s not very good. That it was willing to admit that to me was a good sign. If I can free the humans, can you get them into the shuttle and away? The transport following us will pick you up. This was hard to ask. Trusting other SecUnits was impossible, when you knew humans could order them to do anything. Trusting a SecUnit another rogue SecUnit was trying to make into a rogue was worse, even if you were one of the rogues involved. I was glad my threat assessment module was back in my body, because it would have metaphorically shit itself. It didn’t respond and I said, Will you help me retrieve the humans? My governor module is holding me in stand-down-and-freeze mode, it said, still polite and not pointing out the fact that I should know it would move if it could, and how teeth-grittingly obvious that was. I’d been investigating possibilities with the SecSystem, trying to see if I could make it override the governor module and rescind the order. I’d have to do a restart and reload first, and there was no way to do that surreptitiously; targetControlSystem would know something/somebody was in the system. Also, taking orders from/making friends with a rogue SecUnit killware definitely fell under the category of “stuff SecUnits are not allowed to do” and the governor module might fry it anyway. That left only one option and me trying to gently hint about it wasn’t working.
I can disable your governor module, I said. I am not good at this kind of thing. Even Mensah was not good at this kind of thing, considering what happened when she bought me. I just knew it had to be SecUnit 3’s decision. I’ll do that whether you help me or not. But that was too much, too soon, and I knew that as soon as I said it. It gave me a stock answer from its buffer: I don’t have that information. Right, I wouldn’t have been eager to believe me, either. I needed a different approach. We didn’t have time for me to show it 35,000 hours of media and I didn’t have access to my longterm storage anyway. And that had worked on me, but I knew I was weird even for a SecUnit. Maybe it would trust me more if it knew me better. I pulled some recent memories from the files I’d brought with me, edited them together, and added one helpful code bundle at the end. :send helpme.file: Read this. It accepted the file but didn’t respond. I switched my awareness back to the unfamiliar channels woven through the ship’s systems. Most of the standard architecture had been overwritten. I was cautious, because as far as I could tell targetControlSystem didn’t know I was here, yet. I left a few code bundles in strategic places, including in the set of twelve targetDrones waiting in standby near the main hatch. I checked the bridge control systems and found the code they had used to mask their approach from ART’s scans; ART was right, it was similar to the code that had protected the Targets from my drones. And not nearly as effective as the physical shielding the targetDrones used. I altered a few key parameters to keep the Targets from using it on the ship again. I knew/had strong evidence for the fact that the Targets had activated Eletra’s and Ras’s implants via the solid-state screen that was similar to the one in use in the explorer’s bridge. If it was using the implants to keep the humans immobile, there should be an active connection.
But I was going to have to get uncomfortably close to targetControlSystem whose existence on this explorer was so far mostly theoretical. If mostly theoretical meant tripping over the huge path of destruction where it had slammed through the ship’s systems. I knew which channel the solid-state screen had used onboard ART and checked it first. There they were, seven connections. Now I had to do this without killing any of the humans. I separated out the individual pathways, and gave one a gentle tweak. In the lounge, one of the humans twitched. So far so good. If I cut the implant connections before a Target could send a command through the screen, would they wake up? The one thing I knew was that if I didn’t do it fast enough, the Target could hit a killswitch and send them into cardiac arrest, like what had happened with Ras. Losing one human like that had been frustrating enough; losing seven including what might be all that was left of ART’s crew was … just not going to happen. I reconnected with the SecUnit and said, I found the connection to the implants that are holding the humans immobile. If you could help me, we could retrieve all the clients. Something was coming and I broke the connection. Just in time, because .05 seconds later, targetControlSystem found me. 15 I stopped my show and woke my drones as the drop box maintenance capsule sent an arrival alert through its local feed. It had been decelerating already but now it was braking to enter the surface docking structure. I’d been checking feed and comm for any kind of signal contacts but I couldn’t pick up anything but what was coming from the capsule itself. The downside of that was no information; the upside was that if the surface dock’s feed and arrival notification system were down, maybe nobody knew we were coming. And it was uncomfortably similar to when Amena and I had first come aboard ART, to an apparently dead feed. And yes, I was scanning the ranges associated with targetControlSystem, but nothing was there, either.
“We’re here.” Overse shifted in her seat, edgy with nervous energy. Thiago sat up and said, “Good timing, I just finished the preliminary module.” Overse snorted. “I don’t know how you can work under these conditions.” “It gives me something else to think about.” Thiago made a move to rub his face and bonked his glove on his helmet. “I used to work on language puzzles before my exams at FirstLanding. Tano thought I was out of my mind.” “Considering what we’re doing at the moment, I don’t think Tano was wrong,” Overse told him. Thiago said, “SecUnit—” and I thought oh great, what now. Then he finished, “I’ve been assembling a working vocabulary module of the languages the Targets are using. Without Perihelion to translate for us, it could come in handy.” Well, now I feel like an asshole. I pulled the module out of his feed and stored it as the capsule braked, jerked twice, then clanked as it dropped into its docking slot. Its local feed signaled arrival and Overse hurriedly used the manual controls to switch it over to standby. I was already unstrapping and pushing out of the seat. I stepped over to the hatch and stopped it as it was about to slide open. The capsule was showing a good environment outside and a gravity within acceptable parameters but I was glad we had the environmental suits. I let the hatch open just a notch and sent a drone out. Outside was a corridor, walls, floor, and ceiling made of sandy stone, with metal support girders. (Not actual stone, but an artificial building material that looked like it.) Round light sources studded the girders at intervals but there was no power. The drone followed it out to a foyer with a taller ceiling, with round windows set high in what had to be an outside wall, letting in gray daylight. Racks and cabinets and an unused workbench lined the other walls. A thin layer of dust on the floor said this area hadn’t been disturbed in a long time, and also indicated that somewhere in this structure was an opening to the outside where there was actual dirt.
The door wasn’t a pressure hatch, it was a manually operated metal sliding door. Overse and Thiago had gotten to their feet, watching me. I sent the drone’s video to their interfaces and said, “Stay here. I’m going to take a look around. Don’t use the suit comms.” I was setting up a feed relay through my drones, which should be secure, but I didn’t want to press my luck. “Even though there’s no signal traffic, they might still have a way to monitor comms.” Overse pressed her lips together. She clearly didn’t like the idea of separating the group but didn’t argue. “Be careful. Don’t go too far without us.” “Are you sure you should go alone?” Thiago didn’t look happy either. All the concern was annoying, which was me being complacent or unfair or something, considering how humans being worried about me possibly going off alone to die was such a recent development in my life. I just said, “I won’t be long,” and let the hatch open the rest of the way. I left two drones with the humans and brought the rest with me down the corridor into the foyer to catch up with the scout drone. The absence of any kind of feed signal was still eerie, but if the surface dock wasn’t being used, it sort of made sense. A quick check showed lots of tools and maintenance supplies stored in the cabinets, neatly put away and barely used. I couldn’t pick up anything on audio except the low grumbling of the capsule’s power train in its deactivation cycle. I eased the door open along its track, which thankfully did not screech, and let a squad of five drones out. I got views of wide, high-ceiling corridors made of the manufactured stone. A few of the flat light pads on the girders were lit, so there must be emergency power somewhere. The drones’ scan found marker paint exit signs on the walls and nothing nearby on audio, no machine or human movement, no voices. I slipped out the door and followed the drones. Two more turns and the drones found a wide exterior sliding door that was partially open.
I got drone video of what was outside but I wanted to see it myself, so I sent them back into the interior corridors to keep scouting and went outside. From the map I’d pulled up on the space dock, the surface dock was a big oval structure, built around the shaft. I walked out onto a long stone balcony, sand grating under my boots, about three stories off the ground looking out to the west. The sky was overcast with puffy gray clouds but the view was clear. I was looking at a lake, shallow and glassy, curving away from the looming wall of the dock. A wide causeway led off from the far side of the building, crossing the lake toward another set of three large structures maybe two kilometers away, a complex big enough to dwarf the dock. The buildings were multistory, trapezoidal, made out of a gray material, and arranged in a half circle around a raised plaza in the center where the causeway ended. They had rib-like supports curving up from their bases that might be decorative, or maybe for power-generating, I had no idea. To the east around the front of the surface dock was a sea of green plants, fronds waving in the breeze. Increasing magnification as much as I could, I saw a structure under the greenery, probably growing racks supporting the growth medium off the ground, full of water and whatever else plants needed. What the hell kind of colony was this? A figure stood up out of the plants suddenly, almost ten meters tall and covered with spikes. It’s a good thing I don’t have a full human digestive system because I was so startled something would have popped out of it involuntarily. Before I could fling myself back through the doors I realized it was an agricultural bot. Its lower body had ten long spidery limbs for moving around without crushing anything, and its upper part was a long curving “neck” with a long head and like I said, covered with spikes. (Agricultural bots have the statistically lowest chance of accidental injuries but are physically the most terrifying.
It’s weird how something designed to take care of delicate lifeforms looks the most like it wants to tear you apart and eat your humans.) Anyway, back to what I was saying, what the hell kind of colony was this. It wasn’t the plants or the ag-bots—that was normal. Plants could be engineered to do a lot of things for colonies, like produce gases or other chemicals. But for one thing the complex didn’t resemble the Adamantine colony plans, not at all. And you would expect everything to be more messy and human, with things under construction, piles of materials, temporary habitat structures, or the remains of temporary habitat structures that had been stripped to build permanent structures. No air or ground vehicles were visible, no boats or docks on the lake. No trash. This place looked simultaneously abandoned but well cared for. Like whatever it was being used for, it wasn’t meant for humans to live in. I sent images to Overse and Thiago, and there were stunned exclamations. Indicating the complex with the weird ribs, I asked, Is that an alien structure? (It was the obvious question.) No, it couldn’t be, Overse said, but she sounded like she wasn’t certain. Thiago said, I agree, that looks too … usable for humans to be an authentic ruin. It also looks too old to have been built by the Adamantine colonists. I have seen reports claiming that groups compulsively constructing unusual structures is an early symptom of remnant contamination. It could have been built by the Pre-CR colonists, under the influence of the remnants. That was probably right. Intrepid hero explorers found alien ruins all the time in shows like World Hoppers, but in reality it was more like what happened to transports that got trapped in endless wormhole journeys. Nobody knew what happened or what anything looked like because everybody involved died. The compulsive construction thing sounded really creepy, though. Thiago added, It could also just be an early Pre–Corporation Rim structure of a style that we don’t recognize.
That’s probably what the Adamantine colonists thought before they got eaten or turned into liquid or whatever. The ag-bot took another step, bending its neck down into the plants. I didn’t see any humans or Targets, but there were definitely power sources here because I was picking up some interference on my scan that indicated something like large-scale air barriers in operation. Ratthi had mentioned they might be in use to keep the colony’s atmosphere contained, so that made sense. My drone had found the end of the dock structure and got a view of the far side, which was a flat valley, punctuated with angular rock formations sticking up out of the ground ran domly. The dock and the drop shaft must be on a plateau and this was the edge. Reddish brown scrubby grass dotted with bits of brighter red covered everything that wasn’t rock or dirt, the colors brilliant even under the overcast sky. There was a long straight obviously artificial canal that came out of the base of the plateau somewhere below and ran off toward the rising hills some distance away. The light wind came from that direction, ruffling the grass. There was no sign of other buildings. Maybe Thiago was right and the complex was from the Pre–Corporation Rim colony. If it was, their budget must have been big enough to make the company break out in greed sweat. All that currency and none of it going for bonds. (If they had gotten company bonds, at least somebody might have been around to say Hey, maybe we should go when they encountered the toxic alien remnants or whatever else it was they had encountered.) And where was everybody? My drones sent me an alert and I checked their inputs. They were picking up ambient audio: voices echoing against manufactured stone and projectile weapon fire. Oh, that’s where everybody was. * * * The audio bounced off the walls and obscured its direction of origin; without the drones I wouldn’t have been able to get close without being spotted.
The standoff was toward the center of the dock, in the main drop box loading chamber. With the map I’d downloaded from the space dock, I found a ramp to the upper levels, past corridors and doorways to empty rooms, out to an open gallery level overlooking the dark arrival chamber. It wasn’t a great spot for a sniper, even with the cover of the low safety wall. The angles were bad and I had to send my drones down to the embarkation floor to get a good look at who was fighting who. With the power down, the space was shadowy, and someone had already shot out the big overhead emergency lights in the curved ceiling. The drop box chamber was bigger than the one on the station, with wide girders forming high arches over the foyer in front of the giant safety hatches. They were closed, blocking off the box’s now-empty landing zone. Doorways on the west side of the chamber had groups of Targets clustered in the shadowed archways, yelling, ducking back into cover, and taking shots at another smaller group on a broad balcony on the upper level on the east side, to my right. Several dead Targets were scattered across the floor in front of the drop box hatches. Yes, those were definitely Targets down there. But many still had characteristics that made it way more obvious that they were humans who had been physically altered, like body types other than the tall skinny alien chic look of the Targets who had taken over ART. Most wore the kind of rough work clothing normal for colonies or mining, a cheaper, more battered version of ART’s environment suits with hoods but no breathing gear, or a mix of plain work clothes, plus a random collection of what looked like old uniforms and protective gear. That made it hard to see faces, but the drones identified a whole group where the gray skin coloring was obviously some kind of progressive condition and not a natural or cosmetic effect. Interestingly, the ones who were more obviously altered humans weren’t all fighting on the same side.
I didn’t spot any of the distinctive Target weapons. They used projectile weapons without logos that looked badly hand-assembled out of spare parts, and I noted one weapon that had probably come from the Barish-Estranza contact party. With everybody running around so much, I couldn’t get an accurate count, but there were at least a hundred Targets scattered through here, and ambient audio suggested more fighting in the corridors to the east. No sign of targetDrones, but below the east side balcony I spotted debris that might be drone remnants. So this all looked like a big mess but it told me two things: (1) the theory about the Targets being colonists who had been exposed to alien remnant contamination was probably correct. (We had been around 82 percent certain of that but it was nice to take it all the way up to 96 plus.) And (2) they had at least two factions who didn’t get along at all. But if ART’s crew had arrived in the drop box while this was going on, I didn’t like their chances. I didn’t see any dead humans, but if they had gotten captured again, this was going to be way harder than I’d hoped. But my drones were finding a lot of cubbies and possible hiding spots along the walls below my position, like openings to cargo storage spaces, another doorway that the map said ran under this balcony and toward the exterior of the dock, a dispatch corral designed for an older model of hauler bot, an entrance to a lift pod lobby … Wait. There we go. A decorative glass rock wall curved out away from the open door to the lift pod lobby, and around the side of that wall a figure crouched. The angle was bad, but I could see an arm resting on the glass and it was dark brown, wearing a decorative woven bracelet. The pushed-up sleeve of the T-shirt was a light blue. None of those things suggested a Target. If you had just arrived in a drop box and found a bunch of Targets fighting or about to fight a pitched battle on the embarkation floor, you might run toward the obvious lift pod lobby.
Then you’d discover the power was out and the lift pods were inactive and you’d accidentally got yourself pinned down. I sent a drone in for a closer look. It got a good image of the human crouched behind the glass wall. It was Iris, ART’s Iris. I had a moment. ART was going to be so relieved. Iris was small, shorter and slimmer than Ratthi, not much bigger than Amena. Her dark hair was the curly kind that puffed out a lot but she had it pulled back and tied up in a band. Her long-sleeved T-shirt and pants and soft shoes were the casual version of ART’s blue crew uniform, and she had stains at her knees and elbows, cuts on her hands, and a discolored bruise on her left forearm, but I didn’t see any worse injuries. The drone crept in past her, around a corner and down a short corridor into the lift pod lobby. And there were the others. Four humans crouched beside the wall next to the pod access. They had pulled the panel off the control board and were working on it with inadequate tools and a tiny pin light. They must be trying to get one of the pod tube doors open so they could climb the shaft. Well, this was going to be tricky. I sent, Overse, what’s your status? We’re fine, she replied. Did you find anything? My drone cam showed that she and Thiago were in the maintenance capsule’s lobby, searching the cabinets. I sent them a drone view of the confrontation and ART’s crew. There was some quiet but excited flailing. Then Thiago said, Can we get them out via the lift pod, get power to it somehow? Overse said, That wouldn’t work—we’d have to find the power plant, restart it. But if we could get into the pod shaft just above them and open the doors on their level from the inside— I didn’t like that plan. We didn’t know how long the fighting had been going on and it might stop at any moment, and whoever won would go after the trapped humans. I said, It would take too long, and the pods might be blocking the shaft. I’ve got a better idea. At least, that’s what I thought at the time.
* * * The hard part was fighting against thousands of hours of module-training and experience plus common sense that said never hand a weapon to a human and especially never tell them to do something with it. The weapons in question were just poppers, and the human was Overse who never panicked, but still. Now she was following a drone up to the balcony I’d found. It was terrible as a sniper position, but it would work fine for this. I was with Thiago in the lower corridor that would hopefully be our escape route. With no feed except my drone relay, I’d had to send a drone to make a direct connection with Distraction01 and Distraction02. It had made contact seventeen seconds ago, so we were go to proceed as soon as Overse was in position. Just in time, because 1.4 minutes ago I had marked a lull in the second area of conflict, the corridors to the east of the arrival chamber, and the last thing I needed right now was for the Targets to declare a truce and stop shooting each other. And Thiago, standing behind the corridor support girder with me, looked tense. Keeping my voice low, I said, “Are you sure you’re okay to do this?” “Yes, I’m sure, and it doesn’t help to keep asking me over and over again,” he whispered back. Well, he wasn’t wrong about that. The problem was mostly me, I felt guilty asking for help, though I’d tried to set things up so neither human would be exposed to fire. My drones showed Overse just reaching the doorway to the balcony. She dropped to her knees and crawled up to the low wall. I switched to our joint feed and said, Clear to proceed. Thiago braced himself. As Overse armed the three poppers, I started to run. She flung them over the rail two seconds before I hit the archway into the arrival chamber. Still falling, the poppers popped. Lights flashed like lightning in a biozone and booms echoed off the chamber’s walls. I’d tuned my hearing down and filtered my vision but I could still see and hear the effects.
Just not as dramatically as the Targets on either side of the chamber who yelled, screamed, fell down, and randomly fired their weapons. I sprinted the fifteen meters along the back wall of the chamber and ducked around the glass partition shielding the doorway of the lift pod lobby. As I whipped around the wall, Iris scrambled backward and almost fell out of cover. I stopped and said, “Don’t get into the line of fire, Iris.” (I know, I’m bad at this part. On a contract, I could say, Please don’t be alarmed, I’m your contracted SecUnit. You are in a dangerous situation. Please stop doing:insert stupid thing here: immediately.) Out in the drop box chamber, Targets shot blindly at each other, each side convinced the other had set off the poppers as the prelude to a rush attack. The rest of ART’s crew, still in the back of the lobby and working on the pod control, had reacted to the noise but hadn’t heard me enter the foyer. I added, “There’s only five of you here—where are the others?” “Who are you?” Breathing hard, Iris pushed away from the wall but didn’t panic. I saw the change in her expression as she started to recognize the enviro suit I was wearing. (It went from righteously pissed off and terrified to confused.) “How did you get that suit?” Overse and her drone raced through the upper corridors, headed back to the maintenance capsule to get it ready for our escape. Thiago waited in the corridor, one knee bouncing impatiently. I said, “I borrowed it from your transport. It sent me to retrieve you. Where are the other three?” She frowned, uncertain and wary. “They didn’t make it off the corporate ship. A colonist helped us escape when they were transferring us to the space dock’s drop box. We couldn’t—” Her self-control was good but raw pain made her voice go thick. “She said it was too late for them. Then she was killed in the dock before I could find out what had happened—” She stopped, glaring. “If our transport sent you—from where? Where did you come from?” A scan showed no anomalous power sources.
I said, “They didn’t put an implant in you, did they? Show me the back of your neck.” She was understandably pissed off. “I’m not going to turn around and show you my neck, strange person I just met on a hostile planet.” Right, so, I could point out that I was the one with the weapons, but I didn’t want to make my first interaction with one of ART’s humans all about me threatening her when I had no inten tion of following through. It just seemed unproductive, basically. I said, “That’s what someone with an implant would say, strange person I just met on a hostile planet who I am trying to rescue.” She was keeping her expression somewhere in the vicinity of angry tough, and doing a pretty good job of it, but I could see she knew it wasn’t an unreasonable request. “No, no implant. I know they did that to some of the explorer’s crew, but not to us.” She turned around, lifting her hair to show me. “I’m going to touch your back briefly.” I stepped close enough to pull down the back of her T-shirt and make sure there was no wound. I stepped back. “Clear. Now in approximately five minutes I need you and the others to follow me out of here, turn to the left, and run down the first corridor. You’ll meet a human wearing one of Perihelion’s enviro suits. Follow him and do what he says.” She turned back around, lowering her hair and eyeing me with startled speculation. “Are you a SecUnit?” That’s never not an awkward question. And my first impulse was to lie, since she was an unknown human, except she was ART’s human, so what came out was, “What makes you think that.” (I know, I know.) She just looked more certain. “You’re Peri’s SecUnit.” Oh, ART’s humans had a cute pet name for it. I saved that to permanent archive immediately. I said, “I am not Perihelion’s SecUnit.” Then I ruined it by adding, “Whatever it told you about me isn’t true.” She lifted her brows. “But you are the SecUnit Perihelion told us about?” So there’s ART, telling all these humans about me.
“If I am, will you do what I say so I can get you out of here?” She hesitated, undecided but wanting to believe. “I will if you show me your face.” “It showed you images of me?” What the shit, ART? “Obviously.” Her expression hardened. “If you’re really Peri’s friend, show me your face.” Well, fine. I told the suit to retract the faceplate and fold its hood down. Her gaze sharpened and I had to look at the manufactured stone wall past her head. My face was basically the same since ART had helped me change my configuration, though I’d made my hair and eyebrows thicker. But the drone watching Iris’s face for me showed the recognition in her expression. A little of the tension went out of her body. “Thank you.” Her face looked younger. She looked like she had been pretending to have hope and now she didn’t have to pretend anymore. (Confession time: that moment, when the humans or augmented humans realize you’re really here to help them. I don’t hate that moment.) Iris said, “Is Peri all right? Where is it? And how did you get here? Did you follow us to this system?” “It’s fine. It was at the space dock but it left to chase the explorer. It—” I wasn’t going to tell her about the whole kidnapping thing. Unlike some giant asshole research transports, I’m not a snitch. “It’s a long story. Please get the others and tell them we’re about to leave.” She took a sharp breath and went to get the others. * * * So now I had Seth, Kaede, Tarik, and Matteo in addition to Iris. (They were smart, and had kept the exclamations and arm waving to a minimum when Iris told them I was here.) I didn’t know yet how we could get the other three off the explorer, or if they were still alive, but at least I could get these humans back to ART. (Five was better than none, but I knew how I’d feel if I had to give up three humans. It would suck.) “How do we know you’re really Peri’s friend?” Seth said. He was the one I’d gotten the brief image of on DockSecSystem, tall, very dark skin, with less hair than most SecUnits.
From ART’s records, he was Iris’s parent. “The colonists uploaded some sort of system when Peri was offline, they could have access to all Peri’s archives, they could know what you look like.” That didn’t make any sense but using logic with traumatized humans never works. (I could make a remark there about logic not working with humans, period, but I’m not going to do that.) I could give them video clips of me onboard ART, but that wouldn’t help. Conversations between me and my humans could be faked, and the conversations ART and I had were in a data exchange language that humans wouldn’t be able to read without an interpreter, which could be faked, too. I said, “The name I call Perihelion is ART, which stands for Asshole Research Transport.” Seth’s grim expression relaxed and Tarik said, “You definitely know the real Peri.” Kaede, standing by my left elbow, added, “Peri has a very dry sense of humor.” She was about the same size as Iris, but her skin was lighter and her hair was yellow. They all had bruises, blood-stained and torn clothes, Seth had a limp, and Tarik kept pressing his hand to his lower abdomen and trying not to wince in a way that made me want to call a nonexistent MedSystem. Kaede cradled her right arm, which had a big blue-purple splotch that meant something in it was badly hurt. Matteo, who had blood crusted along their hairline and bleeding fingers from trying to get the lift pod open with no tools, said impatiently, “Has it been longer than two minutes or is that just me?” The map had been inaccurate about the height of the corridors so the schedule had been pushed back, and they were getting jittery. (Jittery humans who I am attempting to extract from the middle of a firefight, always fun.) Only partly to distract them, I said, “Do you have any intel about what happened here?” “It’s alien remnant contamination.” Kaede looked up at me, her brow wrinkled. “The colonists knew it was here.
Adamantine thought the Pre–Corporation Rim colony had sterilized the site, but they were wrong.” Matteo tucked their hands under their armpits. They were small like Iris and Kaede, and had a lot of dark hair that had come loose from braids. “Apparently the Adamantine colonists started to get sick not long after they got here. Some had physical symptoms—the changes to skin color, weight, eye color. They knew it was alien remnant contamination, so they moved out of the primary site and established a colony on a secondary site further away.” “That, in itself, was not rational,” Tarik added. I could see his point. But it was probably why Adamantine had destroyed the records of the colony’s location. They didn’t want to get caught, plus they knew whatever happened, it wouldn’t be good for the colonists stuck here. Kaede continued, “Five years ago there was another outbreak of symptoms, but this time it was much worse. Some developed psychological effects, but others didn’t. Some of the affected seem to think they’re part of an alien hivemind.” Seth waved toward the drop box chamber. “That’s what we think this is about—they’ve formed factions, with the ones who are less affected trying to hold off the others. The drop box arriving again triggered the fight.” Iris said, “We’re fairly sure the alien hivemind thing is a group delusion.” “It has to be a delusion,” Tarik said. He swayed a little and Seth steadied him. “It doesn’t have to be a delusion—” Matteo began, and Kaede and Iris both started to object. Seth said firmly, “I do not want to hear this argument again.” Everybody shut up, which was just as well because Distraction01 and 02 were about to arrive. We had almost lost our window of opportunity: the Targets on the balconies had withdrawn most of their force, and the Targets on the other side of the chamber had shifted position, getting ready to advance. From the way they were moving, I think somebody had figured out there was something sketchy happening in the lift pod lobby. I said, “We’re thirty seconds out.
Remember, go to the left, down the corridor, and follow Thiago. I’ll cover you.” My drones showed him in the corridor, waiting tensely, and I tapped his feed to tell him it was almost time. He sent an acknowledgment. Overse had reached the maintenance capsule access and was bouncing on her heels, waiting. Iris glanced at the others. “Everybody ready?” They nodded, and Seth squeezed her shoulder. I had given her my secondary energy weapon, just in case. (I know, it had been hard enough to give Overse the poppers. But Iris had let a strange SecUnit look at the back of her neck and she was ART’s favorite.) I had camera views via my drones so I knew what the chorus of startled yells from across the arrival chamber meant. Just as the two ag-bots rolled into the room and unfolded, I dove out from behind the glass wall and started shooting. Obviously the Targets knew what the ag-bots were but two suddenly bursting into the shadowy chamber, standing up and waving their limbs was startling. It was so startling a dozen Targets shot at them in reflex. I picked off four Targets who had just moved into position above us and two in the archway directly across. I had more poppers but I hadn’t gotten them out and armed them because I didn’t think they’d be as effective a second time. (In hindsight, this turned out to be another mistake.) The humans had followed instructions and darted out behind me. I had a drone on Iris as she led the dash to the correct doorway (I say dash but humans are so damn slow even at the best of times and this group was exhausted and starving and in shock). Iris stopped at the doorway to wait for the others. They scrambled by and Seth grabbed her arm and tried to push her ahead of him as he limped down the corridor. Iris’s drone picked up a front view of Thiago, ducking out and motioning urgently for them to keep running.
My timeline had seventeen seconds to provide covering fire in the chamber and I wanted to keep it chaotic, at least until the humans got out of the long straight corridor and into the section with the access to the maintenance capsule. It was at least a seven-minute run for a healthy human and these humans were barely upright, so I wanted to give them as much time as possible. Then suddenly, shit went sideways. I was controlling the ag-bots through a drone relay and I felt the input drop when I lost contact. Then ag-bot 1 whirled and slapped me across the chamber. For a bot with such delicate limbs, ag-bots pack a pretty solid punch. I hit the manufactured stone floor, bounced, hit it again, and bumped to a sprawling stop. (I’ve had worse.) Immediately I rolled and came to my feet, and that was when I realized all my inputs had dropped, the ag-bots, my drones, everything. Then ag-bot 2 collapsed itself down and dove down the corridor after the humans. Oh hell no. I pulled the handful of poppers out of the enviro suit’s pouch, and even with my inputs down, the direct contact allowed me to make enough of a connection to arm most of them. I threw them down just as ag-bot 1 lunged at me, they went off, and it froze as all the noise and light overwhelmed its navigational sensors. I bolted after ag-bot 2, so fast I only felt impacts from two projectiles, one in my back and one in my upper thigh. I had lost contact from all my drones so the only input I had was my own visual and that was not enough input for this situation. Approaching at top speed I saw the humans still running, strung out up ahead, Seth last. Then Seth collapsed. The ag-bot slid to a stop near him and its spidery limbs reached down. I couldn’t get there in time and if I lost one of ART’s humans like this … Then Iris flung herself at the ag-bot, slamming through its delicate limbs to fire her weapon directly at the center of its body where its processor was. It would have been a great save.
But her weapon didn’t have the power to penetrate the casing and all it did was make the ag-bot, or whatever was controlling it, angry. It turned its limbs inward and grabbed her. But by that time I was there. I wasn’t sure my weapons would get through that reinforced body casing, either, so I shot it in the knee joint. That leg partially collapsed and it forgot about tearing Iris apart. I circled in front, shooting limb joints, and it dropped her. She sprawled on the ground, then flailed forward to Seth and tried to haul him to his feet. I kept firing, keeping the ag-bot at bay as it tried to claw toward them. I could have still lost both of them at that point but as I angled around I caught a glimpse of Thiago sprinting up to Seth. Then the bot surged forward again, unfolding more limbs, and I shot more joints. Man, this thing had a lot of limbs. I risked a look back and saw Thiago had Seth slung over his shoulders and was running down the corridor with Iris. She threw a desperate look back at me and I yelled, “Keep running!” I turned back and had a perfect shot at the ag-bot’s fifth knee joint. Hah, this is over. I fired and the joint blew out. It was over, because that was when the ag-bot collapsed on top of me. It hurt because apparently those things weigh a lot more than they look like they do. It was a good thing I don’t need that much air. I shoved and wiggled and lost my primary weapon, but I managed to get out from under its body. But by then the Targets were there, and they all started shooting at me. I couldn’t get up. I shielded my head with my arms, and felt the projectiles going through the enviro suit but not the deflection fabric of the uniform ART had made for me. Then the fabric started to fail under all the impacts and this could be— Performance reliability catastrophic drop. Forced shutdown. No restart. 16 Murderbot 2.0 Deployed aboard Barish-Estranza Explorer Mission Status: Delayed TargetControlSystem knew me. I’d killed a part of it, the part that had taken over ART. I said, Did it hurt?
Tell me all about it. It was resident in the explorer’s systems where the poor bot pilot had lived. I got a brief glimpse before it walled me off, but all that was left were random sections of code; the bot pilot’s kernel had been deleted. TargetControlSystem would like to haul me out of the SecSystem so it could kill me, but it had access to the bot pilot’s archives and it knew what killware was. I told it, Come in here and get me. (Yes, I was stalling. I had code bundles in place and there were a lot of destructive things I could do to the explorer, but no way to get the humans off the ship or get a message to ART.) Then something else established a connection, an off-ship connection through the comm. From another ship? The space dock? Or wasn’t there a planet around here somewhere? And whoever was making the connection, it must be a Target, because it was using their language. I was reading its communication through targetControlSystem, but I could still see the original, untranslated signal. TargetContact wanted targetControlSystem to find out what I was, so they could use me. I might be just what they needed. TargetControlSystem told them I was a SecUnit. TargetContact said that wasn’t possible, a SecUnit is a kind of bot, like the ones on the captured ships, easily dealt with when you had control of the humans. (Yeah, it said “the humans.” But if this was an alien intelligence then all the horror media I’d watched had really gotten it wrong. Which is not impossible considering how wrong the media gets everything else.) (You know, I don’t think this is an alien intelligence.) The targetControlSystem said, no, I was too dangerous. I said, It’s right. TargetContact heard me. They were startled. They said, What are you? A SecUnit. Killware. TargetContact said, A software ghost. I liked that. I had watched media with ghosts, though I didn’t have access to the files or titles anymore. I said, A ghost that kills you. To prove to me that I was helpless, TargetContact started to show me security video.
There was no metadata to tell me where it had been recorded. Not a ship. The space dock, maybe? But what was an agricultural bot doing on a space dock? An agricultural bot that’s fighting with … Holy shit, that’s me. TargetContact told targetControlSystem, This is software, not a SecUnit. The SecUnit was on the surface, we have it now. TargetControlSystem told TargetContact: You are giving it data, stop. Me Version 1.0 is on the planet and has been captured and we are seriously screwed now. I’m sorry, ART. I’m sorry, humans and Me 1.0. That was when I caught a tentative secure contact from SecUnit 3. It had just disabled its governor module. I checked the corridor camera view and watched it surreptitiously move its feet, the armor flexing as it shifted its shoulders. It was strange seeing this from the outside. I knew what it was thinking. My first realization had been: the governor module’s gone and I can do whatever I want! My second realization: what do I want? (I’d been stuck on that question for a long time.) (Actually Me Version 1.0 was still stuck on it, as far as I knew.) I asked 3, What do you want? SecUnit 3 said, To help you retrieve our clients. Then it added, After that I have no information. Now it’s on. I sent SecUnit 3 a brief instruction/message bundle and it answered, Acknowledge. On your mark. TargetContact was telling targetControlSystem, Neutralize this software, then—And then they started screaming because I’d triggered all my code bundles and targetControlSystem had triggered its code bundle to purge SecSystem and I had attempted a purge of targetControlSystem. Weirdly, TargetContact was somehow directly connected to targetControlSystem and seemed to be experiencing physical responses based on what I was doing to it. Wow, that was a bad position to be in just about now. TargetContact tried to disengage and but I locked it in. TargetControlSystem tried to delete me but I was making single-function duplicates of myself and turning them loose so it was having to divide its attention a lot.
Other things were happening at the same time, three of which were: 1) CodeBundle.LockItDown had closed all the hatches on board except those directly between SecUnit 3’s position and the shuttle access. 2) CodeBundle.FuckThem had fried all targetDrones. 3) CodeBundle.FuckThisToo had cut the connections between the solid-state screen device and the humans’ implants. Oh, and I shut down life support on the bridge so the Targets in there would be thinking about other things besides restarting their screen. I told SecUnit 3, Mark. It pivoted to the locked hatch of the lounge, punched through the panel for the controls, and hit the manual release before I could open it remotely. (That’s one of the reasons Me Version 1.0 misses its armor.) Some humans had jolted awake when the implant connections were cut and others had started to twitch and moan. ART’s human Turi, who was young like Amena, shoved halfway to their feet and stared at SecUnit 3 as it stepped inside. SecUnit 3 said to all the dazed, half-conscious humans, “I’m here to retrieve you. Please cooperate to the best of your ability and I will take you to safety.” It had read my message bundle because it then turned its helmet to Turi and added, “Perihelion sent me.” Still on the floor, Karime gasped and staggered to her feet. As she and Turi hauled Martyn upright, she said, “There were other people with us—in uniforms like this, are they—” “They are no longer aboard.” SecUnit 3 stepped over and pulled a Barish-Estranza tech off the couch and set him on his feet. “Please follow me quickly.” Real killware would have destroyed the ship by now but I had to wait for the humans to get to safety. TargetControlSystem fought me for the bridge life support and lost, then retaliated with a hit on SecSystem and deleted my file storage. Well, now I’m really mad. I hit the engine control systems and made it think I was going for an overload.
It panicked and moved to reinforce the hastily assembled walls there and I switched to weapons control and dropped off another code bundle that would blow a hole in the hull if anybody tried to lock in a target. TargetControlSystem wrote and ran a process to delete the duplicates of myself almost as fast as I could create them. (The other iteration of it aboard ART must have been able to send a report of how Me 1.0 had taken it down the first time. Luckily I wasn’t sloppy enough to use the same primary attack twice.) I was splitting my attention and fighting on a dozen fronts. I lost CodeBundle.LockItDown and all the interior hatches opened. I got a glimpse of a corridor camera where Karime dragged Martyn along while Turi guided the stumbling Barish-Estranza crew ahead of them. A woman with bridge crew insignia said blearily, “The rest of the crew— Is the supervisor—” “You are the only survivors aboard,” SecUnit 3 said. Two armed Targets reeled out of the corridor junction to the module dock and fired at the humans. SecUnit 3 lunged to take the hits on its armor, fired the projectile weapon in its arm, and was on top of the Targets when I lost the view. All this time (it was 3.7 minutes, which is a long time when you’re in a viral attack) TargetContact had been trying to break its connection to the ship. If I let it go, I’d have more resources for kicking the shit out of targetControlSystem, but I wanted that connection. Almost there. TargetControlSystem had broken down my walls to fry sections of SecSystem and I was running out of time. I couldn’t contact SecUnit 3 and couldn’t get a camera view of the shuttle’s module lock. Oh, I’ve got an idea. I abandoned SecSystem as targetControlSystem triumphantly destroyed the rest of its functions and transferred myself to the relatively small system that controlled the module dock.
It gave me the twenty-two seconds of breathing room I needed to get a local camera view and see SecUnit 3 holding off the Targets at the module hatch as Karime and Turi pushed the other humans aboard the shuttle. I managed to lock the module hatch, blocking the Targets’ access. SecUnit 3 turned immediately and chucked the last wavering Barish-Estranza human aboard, pushed Turi and Karime in, stepped in after them, and closed the hatch. As soon as the seal was solid, I jettisoned the shuttle. TargetControlSystem hit me with everything it had. It told me I would never take the ship. I told it, Okay, you keep the ship. I’ll take the planet. Then I transferred myself to TargetContact’s connection and fell down away from the explorer, following TargetContact’s comm signal. I heard TargetContact order, Fire on the shuttle, don’t let it get away! (Yeah, it doesn’t sound like an alien. I think it’s a human. And hah, I hadn’t planned for this last bit to happen but it sure worked out well.) TargetControlSystem reported a confirmed targeting lock. My last code bundle, the trap I’d left in the weapons system, went active. The static as it triggered the explosion and the explorer’s hull split echoed after me as I fell all the way to the bottom. 17 Designation: SecUnit 003 Barish-Estranza Explorer Task Group-Colony Reclamation Project 520972 Status: Retrieval in progress. Baseship Explorer is destroyed. Piloting shuttle to unidentified transport. Contact requested: transport designated Perihelion, registered Pansystem University of— Response, Transport: Who the fuck are you? This is nonstandard communication. The contact is a transport bot pilot, but transport bot pilots can’t/don’t communicate this way. But since Explorer Task Group arrived in this system, nothing has been standard. Non-standard may put the clients at risk. I have the hatch closed on the rear compartment of the shuttle as is protocol when a SecUnit is piloting, but I am monitoring via the shuttle’s SecSystem.
All clients appear in need of medical attention, most are semi-conscious again. And I promised Murderbot 2.0 I would deliver its clients here. Also, I don’t know where the rest of the task force is. Reply: I am a SecUnit aboard the shuttle designated— Response: I know you’re on the shuttle. Why are you approaching? Reply: I have retrieved five of my clients, and three unknown humans who were identified to me as your clients. There is no protocol for this. I don’t know what to tell it. Murderbot 2.0 sent me. Please advise. The helm locks me out. Something else has seized control. The display shows the shuttle is now being pulled toward the transport’s module dock. That’s where I was trying to go so I guess this is good. * * * The shuttle is pulled into dock and I get up from the pilot seat and face the hatch. I keep the hatch closed on the rear compartment until I can make sure this transport is non-hostile. I don’t know what to do if it is hostile. The docking process completes, sensor shows atmosphere on transport vessel is good. The hatch opens and two unknown humans stand there. Human 1: Feedname Ratthi, gender male, other information under temp lock. Human 2: Feedname Amena, gender female, note: juvenile, other information under temp lock. These humans are not unknown. Amena and Ratthi were in HelpMe.file. This is a relief and an indication that I am in the right place. There is a protocol for meeting humans who are not clients but who are associated with clients, and that protocol will apply here. Before I can speak, Ratthi waves and says, “Hello, hello. Perihelion says you’ve disabled your governor module. I’m Ratthi, and this is Amena. Please don’t be afraid, we won’t hurt you.” There is not a protocol for this. Transport, on private channel: If you even think about harming them, I will disassemble you and peel away your organic parts piece by piece before destroying your consciousness. Do we understand each other? I have no idea what this transport is and it is terrifying.
I don’t know how to tell it I don’t want to hurt its clients. They are unarmed, and exhibit no threatening behavior toward my clients, the other unknown humans, or each other. Reply: I understand. I will comply. I tell the humans, “The clients need medical attention. They have been given implants by the hostiles who seized control of the Barish-Estranza Explorer Task Group. Quarantine procedures are recommended until the extent of the influence is determined.” Amena claps her hands and jumps up and down. “Perihelion, is this your crew?” Transport, public channel: Three of them are mine. Where are the others? I say, “All other clients aboard the explorer were dead, but there is reason to believe at least five of your clients were removed from the explorer earlier.” Another human enters the dock area, followed by a Medical drone in gurney configuration. Feedname Arada, gender female/fem, designated role temporary captain, other information under temporary lock. “Who are they? Perihelion, are they your crew?” A maintenance drone with multiple limbs has climbed into the shuttle and has accessed the camera into the rear compartment. Transport, public channel: Turi. Martyn and Karime. It sounds … relieved. But more than that. It sounds like the situation has profoundly changed. I’ve only heard humans sound like that. Maybe it won’t kill me. The human identified as Karime is still conscious and uses the shuttle’s comm to say, “Peri, don’t scan us! We think that’s how they infect each other!” “Scanning?” Arada says, clearly startled. “Medical scanning, sensor scanning?” Ratthi and Amena are still talking to me. I have never been around humans who behave this way with a SecUnit and it is disconcerting. Amena: “Arada, this SecUnit helped them escape. We have to help it.” What? Ratthi, speaking to me: “We’ll hide you. We’ll tell Barish-Estranza that you died.” Things are moving very fast. And I have been confused, and have delayed delivering the important message.
Reply: “I’m sorry, I will comply as soon as possible, but I have an important communication for someone onboard called ART.” The humans stop talking. Transport, public channel: Tell me. Reply: “The message is from Murderbot 2.0 and begins: ART, I’m going to download to the surface. Me version 1.0 is there with Overse and Thiago. They’ve found Iris, Matteo, Seth, Tarik, and Kaede—” I have to stop because the other humans become loud, then shush each other. I finish, “but 1.0 has been captured by hostiles, repeat, 1.0 is captured by hostiles.” * * * The humans and the transport Perihelion become very agitated. There is a lot of human communication and no protocol and it is very confusing. While Ratthi and Amena and the transport’s drones arrange medical treatment and quarantine protocols for the injured clients, it is determined that Perihelion should return to the space dock to establish secure communication with the clients on the surface. Ratthi: “Perihelion, did you understand what your crew person meant when she said that scanning might transmit the alien contamination?” Perihelion: “Yes.” Ratthi: “I’m going to need a little more information than that.” Amena, speaking to me: “Do you have a name? You don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to, but what should we call you?” This is the strangest question I have ever been asked by a human. But I have to answer. “You could call me Three.” Then I remember the governor module is gone and I don’t have to answer. Amena: “Three. Okay, thank you, Three.” It becomes worse as we reach the space dock and comm contact is established with the humans on the surface. Arada: “What the hell is going on down there, babe?” New human contact-Overse: “We’ve got Perihelion’s crew but we lost SecUnit. We think the Targets have it—” Arada: “We know. Perihelion sent the killware to the explorer and it—It’s a long story but it knew that SecUnit had been captured.” Perihelion: “Inform the others that Karime, Turi, and Martyn are safely aboard.
You must all return here immediately.” :incoherent audio: several humans shouting at once: Iris: “Peri, this is Iris! We need—” Perihelion: “Iris, use the maintenance capsule to return to the space dock immediately so I can retrieve you.” Iris: “Tarik and Kaede and Dad need to get to medical so we’ll send them up, but Peri, your friend—” Perihelion: “Iris, I have the situation under control. Return here immediately.” Iris: “Peri, you can’t do this alone.” Overse: “She’s right. Look, we’ll send up your crew, but Thiago and I will stay here and try to find SecUnit.” Iris: “I’ll stay as well, and Matteo.”:incoherent agitated humans: Iris again: “Dad, you can barely stand up.” Perihelion: “You cannot remain on the surface. I intend to hold the colony hostage until SecUnit is released.” Pause. New human contact-Seth: “Peri, your weapons don’t have the range, unless you’re talking about destroying the space dock—” Perihelion: “I know that, Seth. I’ve armed my pathfinders.” Seth: “You what?” Arada: “You what?” Iris: “Peri!” Ratthi: “Oh. Oh, that explains what the drones were doing in the cargo module dock.” Amena to Ratthi, quietly: “So ART has missiles? A lot of missiles?” Ratthi to Amena, quietly: “The inventory I saw listed 32 pathfinders. If it’s managed to arm all of them—” Perihelion: “Seth, return here with the others immediately. If any of you are taken hostage, my plan will fail.” Iris: “Peri, you can’t bomb the colony.” Perihelion: “You are incorrect, Iris, I can bomb the colony.” Apparently the transport and the humans are arguing about how best to retrieve an endangered SecUnit. It is like retrieving an endangered client, only the client is a SecUnit and the humans are planning the retrieval. And the transport is angry because it wants to plan the retrieval. This is … a lot to process. Murderbot 2.0 asked me what I wanted. I want to help with this retrieval. I make a secure connection to the transport and send, A hostage situation is to be avoided at all costs.
They will threaten to destroy the SecUnit and you will be forced to destroy the colony. This is a failure scenario. Perihelion: I know that. I know I am taking a risk. The transport is very angry. I tell it, But I know how to proceed, this is my function. The solution is a targeted, stealth retrieval, possibly incorporating a show of force as a distraction. Perihelion: Your point is? This is the risky part. If you return my clients to the remaining Barish-Estranza task force, I will help you. Pause. Perihelion: I was going to do that anyway. Oh. I will still help you. Perihelion: Why? How can I explain to it when I can’t explain to myself. I say, Stories in the HelpMe.file. I know that answer is inadequate. I had read things that had made me consider other possibilities, it is impossible to explain. Murderbot 2.0 asked me what I want. I want to help. Pause. Perihelion: Good. The humans have stopped arguing and the one called Iris retains control of the comm. She says, “Peri, listen to me. There are factions here among the colonists. One of them actually died up on the explorer trying to help us escape. You can’t just bomb everybody. It won’t get your friend back.” New human contact-Thiago: “She’s right, Perihelion. Let us help you. Even if they refuse to return SecUnit, a negotiation could stall them, distract them while we think of a way to rescue it.” Perihelion: Please calm yourselves and stop talking. Plan A01: Rain Destruction has been superseded by Plan B01: Distract and Extract. 18 Murderbot 1.0 Status: Not so great Forced Shutdown: Restart What happened? Forced Shutdown: Restart: Failure Retry Forced Shutdown: Restart: Failure Retry Restart Yeah, I’m definitely in trouble here. All my joints ached, and there were sharp pains in other places, probably projectile holes. I didn’t have any outside input, no feed, no visual or audio. By concentrating I managed to get a visual through my eyes, but wherever I was, it was completely dark and my filters weren’t online.
Oh, and I was being held immobile, that was kind of a big issue, but until I finished my restart, I could only be terrified about one thing at a time. Functions were beginning to come online again and I tuned my pain sensors down. That made it easier to think. Oh yeah, memory archive active, I remember what happened. Yikes. Okay, now I’ve finished restarting and I’m terrified about a lot of things. But now that my entire brain was online again, I could see there was actually a distant light source somewhere above me. It was a small one, like a work light, or a discarded hand light. I could see more of my surroundings and it wasn’t encouraging. I was suspended, hanging from four cables, in a large open space, with clamps around my wrists and ankles holding my arms and legs apart. The cables were taut and didn’t budge when I pulled on them. So whoever put me here hadn’t wanted me to be able to get a grip on the clamps because they knew I could break them. And my environmental suit was gone, though I still had the shirt, pants, and boots I’d been wearing under it. Oh, and I was upside down, which was just insulting since it didn’t affect me the way it would a human. Atmosphere was minimal, at a level that would have had a human gasping and unable to function, but I was designed to be shipped in cargo containers and it was fine for me. Oh shit, I hope the humans aren’t in here, too. I wasn’t picking up anything on audio, no matter how I increased my gain. And there were no human-like shapes hanging anywhere that I could see. Maybe one stupid part of my stupid plan had worked and they had all gotten to the maintenance capsule and escaped. My scan wasn’t picking up any power sources in the immediate vicinity, and if there was feed activity on any channel, I had been locked out of it. I couldn’t even try to send a ping.
Whatever the giant thing looming in the darkness that I was attached to was, it had a lot of arms, from large crane-sized arms that extended up and out into the shadows of this giant space, to much smaller, delicate arms that were holding the cables I was clamped to. It could be an assembler, which is a low-level bot that’s used to put big things together when mining operations, installations, colonies, etc., are first established. You ship the assembler and land it on site, then everything else (construction bots, large vehicles, transport systems, so on) can be shipped in pieces and then assembled by the—Right, that’s probably pretty obvious. You can also use assemblers for taking things apart. Being terrified was starting to give way to being really angry. If they were going to take me apart, why hadn’t they done it, the fuckers. Unless they wanted me to be conscious when they did it. They were going to fucking wish they had done it while they had a chance. So, using the inbuilt energy weapons in my arms wouldn’t work because the angles were wrong and the chance of burning holes in one or both of my hands was 72 percent. I was going to have to do this the hard way, but what else is new. I made myself pull in my outside functions and concentrate. Stopping the scan was hard, since it was providing most of my physical input, but I needed all my attention focused on one point. I tuned my pain sensors down further and concentrated on the joint of my right wrist. I had to unlock it from the rest of my arm by getting all the inorganic connections to uncouple. I have my own schematics so I knew what everything looked like and how it fit together, but it was like directing a drone that had no internal operating code. I couldn’t just tell it to do anything, I had to control every motion. And it felt weird. I got two of the major connections undone, and then was able to bend my hand forward all the way so I could grip my own wrist.
I could feel the clamp at that point and tried to exert enough pressure to break it, but without the full connections to the heavy joints in the rest of my arm, I couldn’t do it. Ugh, this was going to be fun, in the not at all fun sense. Now I separated my attention and made sure I had individual control of both my hand and the joint. I can control a lot more than two things via the feed simultaneously, but it was a lot harder doing it inside my own body, with parts that weren’t designed to be manipulated this way. The last connection in my wrist came apart, but I was able to keep my hand gripping the clamp. (Yeah, if my hand had fallen off at that point, I’d be screwed.) Using my fingers I started to climb my hand carefully down my lower arm, past the clamp. As it pulled the nerve pathways tight, I got them to detach, which, you know, ow, and the skin was stretching taut, peeling away off my hand. Now came the tricky part. If this went wrong I was going to feel really stupid. The Targets would finally show up and be all “What the hell was it trying to do to itself?” I wrenched my wrist out of the clamp and the skin broke. That quarter of my body swung free and I concentrated desperately on keeping my detached hand gripping my forearm. I carefully pulled the free arm in, pressing the detached hand against my chest. My organic parts were sweating like crazy. The swinging cable made a loud squeak. I froze for three seconds, then realized if the noise did attract attention, I’d better get this stupid hand reattached. With the help of my still clamped left hand I got the right hand reattached to my right arm. That was easier, but the skin was torn and not all the nerve pathways wanted to get back in place. I flexed my right hand carefully, wiggled my fingers, and then broke the clamp off my left hand. I managed to keep the cable from swinging so it wasn’t nearly as noisy. I curled up to free my feet. The Targets had actually made this easier on me by hanging me upside down.
(Save for later: whoever had done this to me didn’t understand SecUnits or bots in general. They hadn’t known to look for the onboard weapons in my arms.) Once I got my ankles loose I hung from the left hand cable. I could see more from this angle, that this was definitely a deactivated assembler. Shapes in the darkness looked like old pieces of scaffold, the thing like a looming tower was maybe a stack of large transport crates. This was somewhere underground, a huge shaft, maybe an excavation that had been intended for safe storage? At the bottom of the shaft, thirty meters down, the light caught the gleam of bright red, orange, and yellow. Those were all warning colors, associated with hazards and safety. It might be an exit, so I swung over to another cable and started down. That was when I figured out something was really wrong with my left knee joint. Five meters away I could make out pieces of a broken hatch or large seal striped with warning colors, that it was scattered on a pile of rubble above a cracked, partially caved-in surface. The stripes were an old kind of emergency/hazard marker paint, from before they made it able to send large data bundles to the feed and started using it for advertising. I scanned channels again, looking for a signal that might be very faint. There it was. It was repeating, Warning: contamination in different languages. They were the Target languages, the Pre-CR ones that Thiago had assembled the translation module for. My organic parts went cold. Oh, right. I’d found the original site of the alien remnant contamination. Had the Targets who stuck me down here been hoping I’d be affected? Was I affected? I didn’t feel affected. I felt scared, and pissed off. I also needed to get out of here. I started climbing back up, toward the light source. I scanned for more warning stripes or marker paint that might indicate exits but I wasn’t picking up anything. Still no sign of any human prisoners, that was good.
I made it all the way to the top, to where a temporary scaffold/platform had been installed to one side of the shaft, near the assembler’s interface housing. The light source was there, a self-contained safety globe attached to what was left of the hand rail. Parts of the platform had fallen off, but I was able to crawl along one of the assembler’s crane arms and then climb down to it. I limped across the platform. This close, I could pick up the weak signal of the safety light’s warning, also repeating “caution” in multiple languages. I adjusted it to point up and saw the giant hatch overhead. There was fungal growth around the edges, that looked old and dried out. This area had probably originally been dug as a storage shaft for the Pre–Corporation Rim colony. Had those colonists known what they were looking at when they found the remnant, or did they just know there was something freaky about it and that it was probably dangerous? The Adamantine colonists had stored their heavy equipment down here, after the supplies stopped coming and they hadn’t needed the assembler anymore, but had wanted to keep it safe just in case the abandonment was temporary. This shaft hadn’t been on the schematic of the surface dock, so this was probably under the other structure, the complex with the weird ribs that the alien remnant-contaminated Pre-CR colonists might have compulsively constructed before they all killed each other or melted or whatever. This was really depressing already and it would be worse if I had been discarded down here with the warehoused equipment and shipping cases forever, like a broken tool. The overhead hatch didn’t look like it had been opened recently, so there had to be another way in and out of here, an exit off this platform. The problem was, no part of the accessible wall looked like a hatch or a door. There were seamed panels, but no sign of a control, not even a manual handle. Okay, let’s do this the smart way instead of the stupid way.
I tilted the safety light down to point at the platform and looked at the battered surface. No dust down here to show footprints, but it was clammy and a layer of faint dampness clung to the metal. I got down and put the side of my head against the platform, as close to eye level as I could get, and increased magnification. Then I started cycling through all my vision filters, including the ones I’d never had to use before. I was thinking about maybe trying to code a new filter when I caught it. Faint splotches crossed the platform from the far right end. The panel over there looked like all the others but when I pried at the bottom with my fingers it moved. Nothing was holding it down except its own weight and I managed to shove it up enough to see a dark stone-walled foyer. It was real stone this time, not manufactured. It was lit by more wan safety lights strung along the ceiling, all singing “caution” in chorus, and there was an open doorway in the far wall. From the airflow and higher level of atmosphere, there was a good chance this area connected to a much larger space. I scrambled under the hatch and let it down slowly behind me. I sat on the floor, having an emotion, or maybe a couple of emotions, while my organic skin went alternately cold and hot and my knee made disturbing clicking noises. Plus the disconnected neural pathways in my hand were pulsing. Being abandoned on a planet + locked up and forgotten with old equipment + no feed access were my top three issues and it was a little overwhelming to have them happen all at once. Hopefully the humans had taken the maintenance capsule back to the space dock and contacted ART. Now it would be focused on getting to the explorer to find its other humans. So … even if … ART and my humans probably thought I was dead, anyway. Murderbot, you don’t have time to sit here and be stupid. I could already feel that the feed was active in this section and that was a relief, though there might be nothing on it except targetControlSystem.
I cautiously established a secure connection. Hey, is that you? It was loud, right in my ear, and I almost screamed. It was a feed contact but so close it was like it was already inside my head. Who are you? It said, I’m Murderbot 2.0. If this is going to be like one of those shows with the character trapped in a strange place and then ghosts and aliens come and mess with their mind, I just can’t do that right now. But I couldn’t ignore it. I mean, I guess I couldn’t. Ignoring stuff is always an option, up until it kills you. I said. You’re what? I’m the copy of you. For the viral killware you and ART made. Come on, it wasn’t that long ago. So ART really had deployed our code. Also, what the fuck? It had interrupted my secure connection and come right through my wall like it didn’t exist. I had killware in my head. It was my killware, mine and ART’s, but still, holy shit. I tried to focus on the important points but all I could think was You’re calling yourself Murderbot 2.0? That’s our name. It was trying to shove a file into my active read space. But our name is private. Wow, I cannot keep this file from opening. That’s not good. Well, I didn’t have that restriction in my instruction set. And you need to stop talking for like a second and read this. I read the file. (Not like I had a choice.) It was called MB20Deployment.file and was a record of what 2.0 had done so far. Right. Okay. Right. Things weren’t nearly as bad as they seemed. The explorer was permanently out of play and ART’s last three crew members were retrieved, plus some bonus Barish-Estranza survivors. But note to self: the next time you create sentient killware based on yourself, set some damn restrictions. (It had downloaded one of my private archives to that SecUnit. I mean, my new friend SecUnit 3 who if I actually get out of this alive, I’ll have to do something with, like civilize or educate it or whatever. Like what the humans originally wanted to do with me, except we all gave up on that.) Do you know where the humans are?
My humans, the rest of ART’s humans? Did they get out of the surface dock? I don’t know, but before we look for them we have to find TargetContact and neutralize it. That’s not in your deployment directive. I was pretty sure of that, because I hadn’t known TargetContact existed until 2.0 had given me its report. Yeah, I wrote a new directive. Killware was not supposed to be able to alter its deployment directive, so that was disturbing. I had a moment of confusion and a little bit of terror that ART and I had designed it too well and my killware was maybe about to eat my brain. I didn’t know what I was about to say, but what came out was, I don’t feel so great. Let me take a look, it said, and was suddenly all up in my diagnostics. I hadn’t run any yet, because I hadn’t had time, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I said, Hey, hey, stop that. We don’t have time. I shoved to my feet. A projectile popped out of my back and I felt fluid leaking down. Have you got a schematic of this place? Are there cameras? No, you didn’t give me any mapping code. And there’s no cameras. I pressed my hands to my face. But you have to see this. It was showing me annotations for feed and comm channels. You’d think these would all be active for targetControlSystem, right, but most of them aren’t. TargetControlSystem has control of the channels all through this part of this … I don’t know where we are, I guess it’s a building? But this section is being used by another system. And it’s sending a distress signal. That was new. Distress signal? I checked the channel 2.0 indicated and found it. It was in an old Pre-CR LanguageBasic code: assistance needed, repeated at ten second intervals. The “needed” was the key. If it had been assistance required or requested it would have been an indicator that it was sending to an entity within its own organization or network. “Needed” was begging, a plea to whoever was listening, help us, anyone, please.
(Yeah, it was really depressing around here right now.) 2.0 was still pushing information at me. It said, TargetControlSystem has cut off the sender’s outside access, so that’s why we couldn’t pick up the signal until we got inside here. And Sender hasn’t responded to my pings, so it may be trapped in send-only. You’re in its area of operation, that’s why I found you so fast. I made a vague schematic of what I knew about the complex so far. Large structure on the surface, storage shaft below, lots of unknown space in the middle. I applied 2.0’s channel annotations and saw the section that it had marked as targetControlSystem’s must be in the upper levels and the surface structure. The shaft was cut off from comm and feed signals, and the UnidentifiedSender’s section was above the shaft, and reached up into the center part of the complex, woven in with TargetControlSystem. Other me was right, it was strange that this other system was sitting here in the middle of everything, still active enough to be trying to send a distress signal. You want to contact UnidentifiedSender? I thought you wanted to kill TargetContact. I think we should do that, too. But this is an anomaly. Speaking of anomalies. I didn’t want to talk about it, but I probably should warn other me. I said, There’s a possibility I’ve been affected by alien remnant contamination. I showed it my video of the broken seal I’d found at the bottom of the shaft. 2.0 didn’t respond for a second. (Which was unusual because it had been responding almost as fast as I could complete a sentence.) Then it said, Diagnostics show structural damage and a sixty-eight percent performance reliability. That’s not so bad, considering. I said, Alien remnant contamination isn’t going to show up on my diagnostics. It said, You don’t know that. Oh, for fuck’s sake, I can’t sit here and argue with myself all day. UnidentifiedSender hadn’t accepted contact from 2.0, but then 2.0 was killware.
Making contact could cause UnidentifiedSender to try and kill me, but 2.0 could just kill it back, so … And if it wasn’t hostile I could use it to try to reach ART or contact the humans. I checked my secure connection to the empty feed and sent a tentative ping. The ten-second repeat stopped. The silence stretched to twenty seconds, then thirty. The assistance needed resumed again, but this time it wasn’t sending out into the void. It was sending to me. It heard you, 2.0 said. It had heard me, and now I had a direction. I shoved myself off the floor and staggered through the foyer to the next hatch. * * * The corridors and rooms were tunneled out of the rock, with safety lights semi-randomly mounted to walls. Empty, collapsed pressure crates were stacked in every corner. For a long time this section had been used for storage, just like the shaft. In the ceiling a track of lights had been embedded, the panels clouded or broken. There were decorative designs on the tops and bottoms of the walls, but writing had been scrawled over them. Most of it was illegible, even with Thiago’s language module. The floor had smelly stains. These are never good signs, in a place where humans live. Something terrible had happened here and it made creeping sensations on my organic skin. I was not in great shape. Projectiles kept popping out of me as I limped along and the leaking was worse. Also, in Adventures in Living with Your Own Killware Cozied Up Inside Your Head, 2.0 had partitioned off a corner of my processing space. It would have worried me more if it wasn’t in there watching episode 172 of Sanctuary Moon. I needed that processing space, especially with my performance reliability dropping, but what I didn’t need was 2.0 forgetting its directive and turning on me, so everything it did to retain its self-awareness was great. It probably needed some code patches but I wasn’t sure I could do it without ART, particularly now.
I still had my pain sensors tuned down but the grinding in my knee joint was distracting and made me feel vulnerable and it just wasn’t a good time to make changes to active killware. Then the corridor opened into a big hangar space, so big the safety lights were just spots in the shadows. I adjusted my filters again and made sure it was empty before I limped out into it. The hatch in the roof was large enough for mid-sized aircraft. The floor plates were scratched and stained but I could still see faint lines and directional marks. More decorative art climbed the walls but it was faded and my eyes were starting to blur from trying to make it out. Rounded doorways opened into two stairwells in opposite walls, and next to the one on my right was a primitive lift tube that still had power. (There was no actual pod, just a gravity field that you’re supposed to float up or down in and having seen the accident stats in the mining installations that still used them, I’d rather detach another hand than get into that thing.) Colonies, even from forty Corporation Rim Standard years ago, didn’t look like this. This was the Pre-CR installation that Adamantine had built their colony next to. Directly across from me was an opening into a foyer, and in its far wall a broad hatch, wedged partly open. From the warping, it looked like it had been in close proximity to an explosion. Deep scars marked the stone walls and floor around it. I couldn’t pick up any movement on audio, and scan showed power sources, which no shit, we were in the engineering level of a large structure, of course there were power sources. I limped into the foyer and then moved closer at an angle, until I could see through the gap in the hatchway. A round room, dim light from a working overhead track. A curved metal table with solid-state screens set in racks to raise them to human eye level. It’s not aliens, 2.0 said. We knew it wasn’t aliens, I told it. It countered, We were seventy-two percent sure it wasn’t aliens.
That was an outdated assessment but I didn’t need to argue with myself right now. I stepped inside. More tables and racks all made of skinny cylinders bolted together, the kind of assembly structure it would have been easy to transport in bulk and build into any configuration you needed. The tables circling the outer periphery of the space held the solid-state screens, some larger than the ones the Targets used, some smaller. Now 86 percent were dead or broken, the active ones showing static. The bigger components and pieces of equipment were oblongs and circles and one star-shaped thing, half a meter tall and wide, that sat in a cage-like rack in the center. It didn’t look very much like the Pre-CR tech in historical dramas; everything was smaller and more usable, with curving elegant lines and textured materials in shades of dark gray. The star-shaped thing had to be the Pre-CR equivalent of a central system, just sitting there all creepy and silent, nothing but the distress call on its feed. Speaking of creepy, oh, there’s a dead human. They were lying face-down, sprawled between the star-shaped component and the outer ring of screen stations. The body was wrapped in strands of white crystal-like growths that extended out across the stone floor. Strange growths aside, when the other humans leave a dead one lying around, it’s just never for a good reason. 2.0 said, I bet that white substance is from the alien remnant. Uh-huh, I said. Yeah, I bet, too. The system’s assistance needed changed to caution, hazardous material, so it knew we were here. Um, 2.0 said, adjust your filters. Scan for active signals below the standard channels. I made the adjustments. 2.0 took in the data and made the diagram before I could. This wasn’t so much an oh shit moment as it was a spike of brain-numbing terror.
I was expecting a room full of active connections, from the components to the screens and then through the walls to the rest of the installation, even if some or most of those connections were sending or receiving from damaged or dead nodes. Instead, the diagram showed the connections, but they came from the dead human body, and formed a weblike mass. It was interwoven with the central system, then stretched out to the walls, following the old connection pathways. I bumped into the hatch, which was when I realized I had been backing up. 2.0 whispered, That’s targetControlSystem. 19 SecUnit 03 Status: Retrieval. Initiate Stage One Arada flies Perihelion’s shuttle with the assistance of its piloting module, and brings it down to the planet’s surface. She had instructed me to ride in the copilot’s observation seat, instead of the cargo compartment, which was an unusual experience. Our landing site is a platform just below the edge of the plateau, near the Pre–Corporation Rim installation. The platform may have been a secondary landing site, or a base for a large construction bot, but its surface was now clear and it was out of direct line of sight from either the installation or the surface dock. Perihelion is also jamming comm and scan signals in the vicinity, so our approach would not be detected. I had already disabled scan functions on myself and my drones, in accordance with intel from the retrieved clients. It is late in the day-cycle on the planet and the weather is clear, with no sign of atmospheric interference that might affect the mission success assessment. I have three additional inputs: (1) The second shuttle that Ratthi has landed on the flat ground outside the surface dock; (2) the drone controlled by Perihelion, which had been transported in Ratthi’s shuttle and now accompanied the humans Overse, Thiago, and Iris; (3) Perihelion itself, who is monitoring all locations and inputs. Four of Perihelion’s clients had been persuaded to return to the space dock in the lift tower’s maintenance capsule.
They have been successfully retrieved and are now receiving medical attention. Overse, Thiago, and Iris remained to assist in enacting Stage 01 of Plan B01. All Targets had vacated the surface dock, except for a delegation of five who had agreed to meet with the humans. They had agreed to this meeting when Perihelion sent this message via general comm broadcast to all receivers in the vicinity of the colony site: I have located your primary terraforming engine. Agree to a meeting or I will destroy it. There had been no response. Second message: You require proof of intent. And then Perihelion had crashed and detonated an armed pathfinder into the center of the agricultural zone between the space dock and the Pre-CR installation. The crater was large. The second pathfinder had been detonated in the air above the Pre-CR complex. The Targets had agreed to the meeting. Before we boarded our shuttle, Arada told me, “You don’t have to do this. I know facing these people, after what they did to your—the other two SecUnits. It can’t be easy. And I don’t feel right asking you to do this so soon after you hacked your governor module. This must be a confusing time for you.” It is confusing. But following protocol and assisting in a retrieval are familiar. I told her, “I want to do this.” She nodded. “Thank you. If you can get SecUnit back—well, a lot of people will be very grateful.” I had read the HelpMe.file and accepted it as truthful. But there was a difference between accepting data as accurate and experiencing it. The humans would not abandon this SecUnit even though part of our function was to be disposable if necessary. There is a lot about what is going on here that I don’t understand. But I am participating anyway. I check our secure feed and comm connections, and then signal to Arada to open the hatch. The intel drones I had attached to the back of my armor peel off and exit the shuttle in a cloud. They spread out, shift into stealth mode, and deploy toward the installation.
They are using a code to project the same type of interference emitted by the Targets’ protective gear. They will not be able to detect the targetDrones, but they will not be detected, either. I am projecting the same code, so hopefully the targetDrones will not detect me, but this is untested and it is better to avoid them altogether. Outside the surface dock, on the wide terrace of the east side entrance, Perihelion’s drone sends video to our secure feed of the five Targets arriving to meet Overse, Thiago, and Iris. Oh, there is also an armed pathfinder on the terrace. The Targets are not armed, and are dressed in work clothing and not the more familiar protective suits they use for combat. Two of the Targets exhibit the gray skin on face, hands, and other exposed areas and the other three have blotches of gray on human-normal ranges of skin tones. On the feed, Ratthi says, Oh, I hope this works. Hush, Arada says, don’t distract them. Overse taps her feed in acknowledgment. The first Target (designated Target One) says, “You can’t detonate the device while you’re here, why threaten us with it?” Perihelion is feeding the translation to the feed. The language had been identified as the same one used on the space dock’s signage. That’s the Adamantine colony’s language, Iris confirms on the feed. I think this is the same faction as the colonist who helped us on the explorer. Thiago tells the Targets, “It’s a threat to us, too. The transport is forcing us to meet with you on its behalf.” (During the initial planning stage aboard Perihelion, Ratthi had voiced an objection: “Are we sure they’re going to buy this? That we’re prisoners of an evil transport who is forcing us to do this?” Perihelion: I can be very convincing.) Target One says, doubtfully, “The transport?” Thiago: “You attacked it, tried to upload a foreign system to it, and took away some of the humans aboard.” Target Two: “That was the infected group.
We aren’t responsible for their actions.” Thiago: “That may be, but the transport holds all of you responsible. If we knew more about your situation, perhaps it would relent.” Target Three, sarcastically: “If the ship speaks, why didn’t it come in person?” Perihelion’s drone: You don’t want to meet me in person. The Targets react with astonishment and some dismay. Target Two: “What happened to those who boarded the transport?” Thiago looks at Overse, who says, “They’re all dead.” (Thiago and Overse had decided earlier that Overse will be the “bad one” who agrees with the evil transport’s desire to destroy the colony.) My drones reach the open plaza of the installation, and slip down past the rib structures. I send to our secured feed, Intel incoming. The drones detect seven armed Targets, concealed just inside the two entrances into the structure on the eastern side. The other two entrances appear to be clear. Perihelion taps the feed in acknowledgment. Target Two: “What do you want from us?” Thiago: “We want you to return the person who you captured in the drop box embarkation chamber. Return that person and we will leave you in peace.” On the secure feed, he says, I have to try, maybe it will be just this easy. Overse replies, Oh, Thiago. Iris adds, It’s never easy. They are correct. Hostages are never taken simply to be released on demand. Target One: “We can’t return that person, we didn’t take them. That was the infected group.” Overse: “Then tell them to return that person, or there will be more detonations.” Target Two: “They won’t listen to us.” Overse jerks her head toward the pathfinder. “Make them listen. None of us has a choice.” Thiago: “If you can tell us where they are keeping our friend, that may convince the transport to wait.” The drones manage to make stealth entries into the two clear doorways on the western side of the plaza. I report this to Perihelion, who taps my feed again. It sends to the humans: Continue to stall. The Targets continue to exhibit agitated behavior.
Iris: “Tell us what happened here, maybe that will help. We know you found alien remnants. You put one on the transport’s drive, and on the explorer.” Target Two: “We didn’t know they did that.” Target Four, speaking for the first time: “You could be lying. You want our findings.” Overse: “Was the explosion in your agricultural zone a lie?” Target One nudges Target Four to step back. “It affects some more than others. We are not all to blame for the actions of a few.” Iris: “But the few killed most of the crew of the explorer, and they were going to forcibly contaminate us. We were coming to help you. Why should we believe you?” Overse: “You need to do something besides just repeating that it’s not your fault. Tell us where they’re keeping our friend.” The drones scout darkened corridors now and I am mainly receiving low resolution visuals. A feed is active but no SecUnit activity has been detected yet. One drone has located an open antigrav shaft and is proceeding down it. I direct a squad to follow it. There are many levels to search. The installation is much larger underground than we had anticipated. Target Five, suddenly: “Why do you want to know that? You can’t free them.” Careful, Ratthi warned on the feed. We don’t want them to wonder why you’re asking that question. Perihelion’s drone: Do I need to demonstrate proof of intent again? How vital is the body of water to your agricultural system? Targets are agitated again. Thiago: “You see? If you could tell us where our friend is, perhaps we can make the transport understand this isn’t your fault.” I receive drone scouting data. I tell Perihelion: Familiar signal activity detected, but drones cannot make contact or establish location. I add, I need to be closer to help the drones determine location. I have to get down there. Perihelion acknowledges, Initiate phase 2. Arada has been listening on her feed, and now nods to me. “Good luck,” she says. I reply, “Thank you.” I climb out of the shuttle, and make certain Arada locks the hatch behind me.
Then I start up the rocks to begin a stealth approach of the installation and its central plaza. * * * Murderbot 1.0 So, we had found targetControlSystem. Sweat was sticking my shirt to what was left of my back and my performance reliability had dropped another three percent. The Adamantine colonists must have found the Pre-CR system down here, and maybe repaired it, as a backup to their own systems. Then one day something had happened in the shaft they were using for storage and a piece of heavy equipment had hit the seal in the bottom hard enough to break it. A human had gone down there to check it out, and been contaminated by the alien remnant. The human had come up here, or been driven up here by the kind of compulsion Thiago had talked about, and had brought the contamination into this room where it had taken control of the Pre-CR central system. We’d assumed the Targets were affected colonists who had built or taken over the targetControlSystem to help them. But it was the other way around. Then Central said, query: identify? I hadn’t thought there was enough of it left in there to communicate. I replied, acknowledge: security unit(s). Central said, query: assistance? I said, acknowledge: in progress. I had a bad feeling “assistance” would involve shutting it down permanently but until that point, there was no reason to be mean to it. 2.0 said, So it transferred the contamination, or infection, whatever to the humans through their feed interfaces. Probably. It would have gotten to the augmented humans who had their interfaces built into their brains, then used them to infect the humans with external removable interfaces. It hadn’t always been 100 percent effective, which was why a Target aboard the explorer had helped Iris and the others escape, had told them that not all the Targets believed in the alien hive mind or whatever other crap targetControlSystem had told them. 2.0 added, We were right about the implants, they were just receivers, old Pre-CR tech.
And the remnant tech, the thing it put on ART’s drive and tried to install on the explorer. TargetControlSystem told the colonists what to do with them, and it wrote the code for the targetDrones and the protective gear and the sensor deflection. The whole plateau was probably a remnant site, maybe even a ruin, with who knew what under that seal in the shaft. Holy shit, they were growing their food in it. 2.0 hesitated, suddenly appalled. If the contamination is transmitted through code, do you think ART’s still infected? No. Because targetControlSystem got angry and deleted ART’s current version. ART must have been infected when it made the copy, but when it restarted the first thing it did was purge the processing space targetControlSystem was using. It deleted every part of targetControlSystem, treating it like killware, and it must have deleted the infected … code, or whatever it was. An alien code, in a form that didn’t make sense. Well, sort of sense. It must be using the same principle as the machine-readable code written into human DNA that was how things like augments worked, and constructs, and you could transfer malware that way if you weren’t filtering for it … Oh, shit. ART got the infection from an augmented human, like this system did. The Targets sent an infected human carrier aboard— Two humans! 2.0 corrected. Ras and Eletra. It was right. And they said they were injured, and ART put them on the medical platform and read the contaminated code into itself. TargetControlSystem deleted their memory of it through the implants, and maybe the contamination— No, no, 2.0 said. They didn’t use them to transfer the contamination. I bet the Targets used them to transfer targetControlSystem to ART. That’s why Eletra’s memories were so messed up, it was using her neural tissue as storage space for its kernel. It added, It’s kind of like killware. That’s why we keep running into it. It’s replicating. I stared at Central’s system box.
Conclusions: 1) The alien remnant had forced a contaminated human to bring it within range of the nearest operating system, a pre-CR central system. 2) The infected central system had partitioned itself (compulsively? Like the humans in alien contamination incidents who built weird things and killed each other?) and created targetControlSystem, a malware-like system that was a hybrid of outdated Pre-CR tech and whatever the alien remnant was. 3) TargetControlSystem had spread to the Adamantine systems and colonists. It made them use the Pre-CR tech, because that’s what the Pre-CR central system understood. It had them build what it wanted out of the Pre-CR tech, like the drones, and the implants. Pre-CR tech using alien code. 4) But it was still stuck here in the colony, on the terraformed section of the planet. Then the Barish-Estranza contact group had arrived. I’d been in the shaft with the unsealed remnant and I was in this room. I still didn’t feel infected. But then, targetControlSystem hadn’t tried to infect the SecUnits on the explorer, either, including Three, who according to 2.0 had been ordered to stand frozen and helpless in the corridor. Maybe it couldn’t affect constructs. That would be nice. 2.0 said, So who’s targetContact? Right, the contact that had been in communication with the explorer’s instance of targetControlSystem. 2.0 had thought it was a human, or at least, not an alien. 2.0 had followed that contact’s connection to this installation, and ended up in Pre-CR Central’s network … Oh, I had a bad feeling. I stepped forward slowly, circling the web of connections. The only sound was my bad knee grinding and the despairing repeat of the distress signal. 2.0 said, Uh, where are we going? I have to check something. I angled around to a break between two tables where there was a void in the connections. I eased forward and managed to fall/crouch down on the floor near the sprawled body of the human. The thing is, I had realized there was no odor of decomp.
The death had to have happened at least months ago, if not more than a planetary year, or years, if it was the incident that had kicked off the major contamination spread. But the shape of the body I could see under the white growth didn’t look all sunken and gross or dried out. The white crystalline substance was grainy, and it grew out of the human’s ears and mouth. I had to edge forward at an angle and then lower my head down to get a view of the human’s face. The skin had blue-white blotchy patches standing out against the light tan. That might be decay, and it might be the same process that had changed the Targets’ skin color and texture. I saw the eyes were blue. And they were looking at me. I scrambled away from it, out of the circle of racks and tables. I couldn’t get up because of my knee and I was afraid to turn my back on it to use the wall to climb to my feet. 2.0 said, I know violence isn’t the solution to everything, but in this case … In this case, yeah. I pointed my right arm energy weapon at the human’s head, upped the intensity as far as it would go, and fired. The white material flashed and emitted a faint odor I couldn’t identify. The human still looked at me, expressionless. Their eyes were crusted with dried fluid, unable to blink. Oh, why can’t anything be easy, just this once? I tried to kill it three times. Until 2.0 said, Those scars and marks on the floor around it could be projectile and energy weapon impacts. Somebody else has tried to kill it, multiple times, from different directions and with different weapons. Great. Tried to kill it, and tried to blow up the entrance to this chamber, but had been stopped before they could use an explosive big enough. The contamination must have done something to the human host’s organic tissue, a self-protection function.
I was reluctant to go over there and put my fist through its head because (a) I thought I was immune to code contamination but maybe not if I actually got remnant on my organic parts and (b) if energy weapons wouldn’t work, punching probably wouldn’t, either. I needed to be smart about this. I made myself turn around and use the wall to drag myself up so I could stand. There are tools in the shaft. We need to find something that can smash it, or a bigger explosive. I know, I can barely stand and walk, so this was me being really optimistic right now. 2.0 said, Uh, potential problem. Why hasn’t targetControlSystem called for help? There has to be proximity detection of some kind. Plus, targetContact there can see us. Oh. That was a good question. Central said suddenly, query: client population deceased? Y/N. It was asking about the humans. I told it acknowledge: No. Client population endangered. It said, query: client population assistance? I didn’t have the right code and I didn’t want to lie to it. Everything was so much worse even than it looked. I said, acknowledge: unknown. It didn’t respond. I said, query: proximity alert in progress? It was aware of its situation, it might be able to tell if targetControlSystem knew we were here. It said, acknowledge: No alert. No proximity alert. No unknown organism present. In network only. Uh. It was saying the targetControlSystem wasn’t reacting to me because it read my presence as non-hostile. It thought I was a Target, an infected colonist. I couldn’t respond. SecUnits aren’t supposed to be able to go into shock like humans but my performance reliability had dropped another 5 percent, which is kind of a lot all at once. I’m not in network, I told the central system. I’m not infected. 2.0 said, Uh. I think maybe you are. I read diagnostic anomalies. Hold on. Central System sent me an image, a connection map of the room, like the one 2.0 had made. My hard address was on it, and a connection to targetControlSystem. Oh, no. Human to machine.
Maybe that was the way it had to work. Human to machine to human. We’d been doing it wrong. I’d been trying to get ART to avoid contact with potentially infected systems, when it was infected augmented humans we had to worry about. And I had scanned this room, the infected human. It had been hoping to contaminate me in the shaft, and I had wandered in here and helpfully done it myself. 2.0 said, I found anomalous code in your active processing space, I’m isolating it and tagging it. I’ve tried deleting it. Oh, it’s out of isolation again. At least I’ve got it tagged. I thought I was immune, because I’m a SecUnit. Wow, that sounded pathetic. Like the “I want to be special! How come I’m not?” crap humans pull all the time. 2.0 said, It can be deleted. ART deleted it. Yeah, that was ART. This is just me. Me who could be taken over by targetControlSystem at any moment. It would be like having a governor module again. No, not again. Never again. I had an entry into the Targets’ network. And maybe I had an ally. I sent to Central: query: permissions to initiate purge and restart. It said, query: client population assistance? If I helped its humans, it would help me. I said, acknowledge: If possible. I’ll try. It replied: acknowledge: permissions assigned. Suddenly I could see the whole node, central and target and how they were intertwined, with TargetContact on the periphery. I accessed central system and initiated the purge. That was when TargetControlSystem figured out that I was here. It acted much faster than I expected. It used the connection to overwhelm Central, to overwhelm my defenses and flow right into my head. It knew who I was, it had data from its other two iterations, it knew I’d killed it before. For a whole second I thought I was done. Either I’d be deleted or under control again with targetControlSystem riding my head like a governor module, and if I had a choice I’d rather be deleted. But it hadn’t really caught on to the fact that 2.0 was in here with me.
Or I guess, it didn’t understand that we were two different iterations, with different capabilities. I was losing functionality and about to go into involuntary restart. But 2.0 was fine, and it was killware. It extracted targetControlSystem from my head and followed the active connection right back into the central system’s partition. Central said, purge failed. Initiate a shutdown and then destroy the unit, 2.0 told me. Now, for fuck’s sake. That will kill you, I told it. I know, it said, what do you think my function is, you idiot? Just do it. I didn’t want to. I couldn’t. I was an idiot, and I was remembering Miki throwing itself at a combat bot to give me the chance to save its humans. If you fuck this up, I am going to be so angry I’ll make ART look nice, 2.0 said. And unlike Miki, this is how I win. This was going to hurt. I initiated the shutdown. The feed disappeared abruptly as Central went down. Everything was silent, inside and outside my head. I realized I was on the floor again and shoved upright, staggered. I dumped a table over and cut the big crossbar off with my left arm energy weapon. Then I limped over to the star-shaped box that now held 2.0, Central, and targetControlSystem. They’re sleeping, I told myself. 2.0 and Central wouldn’t feel a thing. It was too bad targetControlSystem wouldn’t. With my club and both the energy weapons in my arms, I broke the case open and smashed and melted the interior. I felt strange and wrong, and my organic parts were doing things that made me glad again not to have a stomach. I had killed SecUnits and combat bots but this was me, sort of, okay not so sort of, plus Central who was a victim just as much as anybody else. Even TargetContact was a victim. And I was going to have to kill it, too, somehow. With targetControlSystem down, maybe I could get through its protective barrier. Finished with Central’s box, I turned to TargetContact. Oh, it was moving. This was going to be worse.
If there was anything left of the original human in there— Then it whipped to its feet and charged me. * * * SecUnit 03 Status: Retrieval in Progress I circle around the north side of the complex toward a passage between two of the surface structures. Drone intel provides me with a map of the complex, and the location of the Targets concealed in the east side doorways. The Targets on the surface dock terrace tell the humans the history of the colony. This is a confirmation of intel already obtained by Iris, but not immediately useful. If the humans cannot obtain the intel, I will enter the complex without it. This is the first retrieval I have performed without a governor module and I want it to be successful. I want to find the other SecUnit. I send a status update to Perihelion and it does not reply immediately. Then it sends, Hold position. I tell it, I must proceed in order to complete the retrieval. It said, SecUnit would be angry if I sacrificed you with no chance of success. What? Target Two: “They wanted to use the devices in the vault, the old devices. It became worse after that.” Thiago: “Who decided to start using the implants?” That disturbs the Targets. Target One: “What implants?” My drones pick up increased signal activity, deep under the complex, but it is not localized enough to trace. On the feed, Thiago sends, Ratthi, your analysis— Ratthi sends a file to Perihelion. Its drone creates a display surface and begins to play video of an implant being extracted from a Target. The Targets stare at the video. Overse: “You see? They didn’t tell you about this, did they?” All the other Targets look at Target Four, who says, “It helps the connection. It’s for protection.” Target One: “Protection?” Target Three: “How many of the others have these? Are you forcing them to obey you?” Then Target Two turns back to the humans and says, “Eight levels below the plaza. They would have your friend there. That’s where the contagion is.” On the secure feed, Perihelion tells me, I’m pulling the humans out.
You are go to proceed. I reply on the secure feed, Acknowledged, proceeding. On the terrace, Perihelion’s drone says, Run. You have three minutes to clear the area. Overse says, “Go, now!” and the humans run along the terrace toward the shuttle. The Targets are confused, then turn and run down the path away from the surface dock. Another pathfinder slams down in the agricultural field and explodes. Four more arc across the sky making disruptive screaming sounds. This is a distraction so I may initiate Stage 02 of the retrieval. The Targets in the east side doorways around the installation’s plaza are disoriented and three run away, headed toward the causeway. I slip inside another doorway without being detected. Murderbot 1.0 My performance reliability dropped but the spike of fear upped my reaction time and I whacked TargetContact across the head with my table part. The impact staggered it back but still didn’t damage the body. The effort I put into the swing made my wrecked knee joint give way and I hit the floor again. I needed a bigger weapon. I needed help. I needed to get the fuck out of here. The rough floor scraped at my palms as I scrambled toward the hatch. I managed to get upright and climb through the gap before TargetContact got to its feet. If it could catch me, this whole thing could start over, but with me down here instead of poor dead Central. I’d like to opt-out of that. I staggered and limp-ran across the hangar bay toward the stupid gravity tube. (I know I said I didn’t want to use it but I didn’t have time to do the stairs and compared to what was behind me it was starting to look friendly. Also, with the feed dead it couldn’t be remotely shut down.) I heard steps behind me and flung myself in. I twisted around as the gravity shaft pushed me up. I saw TargetContact less than ten meters behind me. I had to get out before it got to the tube. Two levels went by with me trying to get off the fucking thing without the feed, then I flailed into the unmarked stop zone.
It spit me out at the next level and I tumbled into a shadowy corridor and fell on the floor again. Ouch. I was beginning to lose control over my pain sensors, a sign of an impending system failure. And I think I’d been too late, I think TargetContact saw I’d gotten off on this level. I was terrified of an involuntary shutdown; when I restarted I’d be targetControlSystem. I was higher up in the structure, and had no idea how to get away. It didn’t matter, I had to keep moving. I got up and limp-ran. The corridor curved to circle around the hangar bay’s shaft and was way too long. It was cleaner and had more lights, obviously used more recently, and there had to be a lift pod or stairs somewhere. Then I picked up a brief contact. Like a ping. A familiar ping. Drones, there were drones down here. Not targetDrones, my kind of drones. I sent frantic pings back, because it wasn’t like TargetContact didn’t know exactly where I was, I could hear it behind me in the corridor. Ahead I saw more light and a foyer for a stairwell. I lurched into the foyer just as an armored SecUnit dropped down onto the landing. I almost triggered both my energy weapons but just in time I saw the sticker on its helmet. In compressed machine language, somebody had used marker paint to write “ART sent me.” This was 2.0’s SecUnit 3. The opaque helmet focused on me. It said, “I’ve never retrieved another SecUnit before. There is no protocol for this.” Seriously, fuck protocol. I said, “Hostile incoming. It’s contaminated. Do not scan and don’t let it touch you.” If the contamination worked the way I thought it did I shouldn’t be able to pass it to another SecUnit but who the hell knew. “Don’t scan or connect with me, either, I might be a carrier.” SecUnit 3 started to say, “Transport Perihelion was able to obtain that intel from retrieved—” Then it leapt and landed past me, pulled the weapon off its back just as TargetContact rounded the corridor.
It fired a burst of explosive bolts and TargetContact reeled back, but the impacts didn’t dent the protective alien remnant coating. “It doesn’t work,” I started to yell, but 3 aimed the next burst at the corridor ceiling. The impacts cracked the lighting track and shattered the material holding it in place. As chunks of stone hit the floor, 3 leapt back to me and grabbed me around the waist. It said, “Please hold on. I will—” “I know!” I yelled and grabbed it around the shoulders. “Just go!” It bounded up the stairs, two levels, three levels. (Being carried like this was really uncomfortable, I can see why the humans don’t like it.) 3 called in its drones and the swarm formed a protective cloud around us. We came out through a hatchway into daylight, running onto an open plaza, the one I had seen from the surface dock. TargetDrones lay scattered on the paving, dead when targetControlSystem went down. I didn’t see any Targets, but that was probably because a pathfinder sat in the center of the plaza shrieking on comm and audible: Warning: detonation imminent. I said, “ART armed the pathfinders? And didn’t tell me?” That asshole. “The humans were surprised, too,” 3 said. ART’s shuttle dove over the structure’s ribs and dropped into the plaza. The hatch slid open and 3 bounded inside. It dumped me in an acceleration chair and I had a view of TargetContact sprinting toward us. Then the hatch slammed shut and Arada was shouting “I’ve got them, go, go!” The thrust almost knocked me out of the seat as the shuttle flung itself upward. (ART must be driving.) I was sitting on the safety webbing which was not helpful. 3 did what I would have done with a wounded human, and dropped into the seat next to me and stretched an arm across to hold me in place. From the pilot’s seat, Arada demanded, “SecUnit, are you all right?” “Not really,” I said, “I’m infected with contaminated code. 2.0 tagged it as anomalous so ART can delete it.
Tell it not to use a medical scanner on me.” Through the port I got a view of the causeway and the dots that were the Targets/Colonists who had been in the structure, running away. “We know,” Arada told me, breathless from the acceleration. “The crew who escaped from the explorer knew about the scanning and Perihelion figured out how it was done.” Of course it did. This sounded like a good time to let go and have that involuntary shutdown. I was fading out when below us, the pathfinder exploded. ART said, TargetContact is offline. So was I. 20 So I wish I could have stayed shut down through the whole thing and skipped all the painful parts, but no such luck. I restarted by the time we reached ART, so I was able to limp out of the shuttle on my own. Which was great, then I collapsed on the deck and had another involuntary shutdown. When I restarted again (and I don’t know if I’m underselling it but these rapid performance reliability drops and restarts were not pleasant or fun) I was still on the deck but surrounded by a bunch of unknown humans. One reached for my shoulder and I jerked away and almost restarted again. Amena’s voice said, “No, it doesn’t like to be touched!” And I realized these were not actually unknown humans. Ratthi and Arada sat on the deck in front of me with Amena hovering in the background. The others gathered around were Kaede, Iris, and Matteo. ART’s humans wore clean clothes and various medical stabilizing packs, and they all smelled a lot better. Two of ART’s big repair drones hovered nearby, and SecUnit 3 stood over to the side. It had taken its armor off, or been told to take its armor off. It wore a set of ART’s crew clothing and looked, if I was reading the body language right and I probably was, like it had absolutely no idea what to do. Iris told me, “It’s all right, take it easy.” Matteo was saying to Arada, “Kaede’s right, we’ll put together a run box so we can isolate the code—” “Then Peri should be able to delete it—” Kaede added. “Delete what?” I said.

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