Network Effect

Chapter 10

Well, this was just great.

The humans started to disperse, Arada and Overse toward engineering, Ratthi going back to Medical to get the pathology suite ready. Amena helped Thiago clear the meal trays off the table. He touched her shoulder. “My daughter, are you sure you’re all right to speak to this corporate?”

“I’m fine, Uncle.” She was exasperated and did this shrugging shoulders-flopping arms thing that illustrated that very well. “I don’t think Eletra would try to hurt me. And she knows SecUnit is here. And ART.” She glanced at me, guiltily. “It said I could call it ART.”

Of course it did. I felt the hinge of my jaw grind.

Thiago squeezed Amena’s shoulder. “Just be careful.”

“I will,” Amena told him, already heading back into the prep area where the nearest recycler was. “I’m going to get her some fresh clothes, it’ll give me an excuse to go in there.”

Thiago looked at me and I looked at the wall. He said, “I want to thank you for everything you did for Amena.”

Was it grudging or was I just in a terrible mood? I don’t know, I have no idea, so I didn’t respond.

Amena came out with a packet of clothing from the recycler and I followed her down the corridor toward Eletra’s bunkroom. From ART’s camera view, Eletra had gotten up to get another container of water from the bathroom, so it was a good time for Amena to casually stroll in and offer the clothes.

Then ART secured a private channel with me and said, I don’t need your help.

That’s not what you thought when you kidnapped me, I told it.

I meant, you don’t have to speak to me if you don’t want to.

Fine, whatever, I don’t care. I said, Do you want the fucking help or not?

ART dumped its archive on me and I was immediately drowning in the giant mound of data that comprised its second-by-second status checks. Fortunately, after keeping track of the company’s shit-tons of mined data, I knew how to deal with it. I started by defining what the gap in ART’s memory archive might look like, which I was guessing would be a giant interruption in the constant incoming reports from subsystems like life support, navigation, etc. It was tricky, because for ART these were not like discrete reports from connected systems, but more like the sensory input I would get from the pads on the tips of my fingers. It was a lot more complicated than the way my own archives stored data. But once I had an idea of what I was looking for, I constructed a query.

I stopped at the top of the bunkroom corridor and let Amena go on alone. I didn’t want Eletra to see me or to realize I was lurking out here, since I thought that might impede Amena’s ability to get her to talk. Amena reached the hatch and sent Eletra a note on the feed: Hello, I brought you some spare clothes, can I come in?

While Eletra opened the hatch with the feed control and they sorted through the clothes, I checked my inputs for the others: Arada and Overse had stopped in the corridor that went toward the engineering module. Arada hugged Overse, and Overse kissed her and said into her ear, “You can do this, babe. You’re a bulkhead.”

“I’m a wibbly bulkhead,” Arada muttered.

(The wibbliness was why I trusted Arada. Overconfident humans who don’t listen to anybody else scare the hell out of me.)

Arada stepped back and smiled at Overse. “Got to get to work.”

ART had dispatched the medical gurney earlier and it had been moving methodically around the ship picking up messy dead Targets. Now it floated into Medical where Ratthi waited, Thiago following it in. There was a lot of congealing blood and fluids. “Oh, this is not going to be fun,” Ratthi muttered.

“No,” Thiago agreed grimly. “I’ll get the biohazard gear.”

ART added to its action list: Repair and reactivate drones. Collect targetDrones for examination and destruction.

In the bunkroom, Amena was asking, “How are you feeling?”

“Better.” Eletra folded a jacket in her lap. “I know you’re going to ask, but we didn’t know those implant things were in us. I don’t remember that at all.”

Interesting, ART said.

I was still mad, right? But it was interesting. I said, Because you have a gap in your memory archive?

Yes. It can’t be the same cause, of course, but it’s the same operational approach. Take a prisoner, cause a memory disruption.

I hate it when ART is right. It was the same operational approach and we really needed to find out if the Targets had used alien remnant tech to cause the memory disruptions or not. I said, The mix of outdated human technology and alien remnant could mean the stupid Pre–Corporation Rim humans established a colony on an interdicted alien remnant site.

Not necessarily, ART said. Before I could argue, it added, The site might have been undiscovered, not interdicted.

ART had a lot stricter standards about what constituted evidence than humans did. It was always wanting to prove things actually existed before it would make plans for what to do about them. (Yes, it was annoying.)

ART said, It’s possible to theorize that something from the original Pre-CR colony may have remained on the site when the Corporate colonists arrived. But it seems strange that the later colonists would preserve and use outdated tech.

I didn’t want to admit it, but ART wasn’t wrong about that, either. This tech wasn’t useless, but I’d taken targetControlSystem down with an attack that was practically from ancient history. (That’s how I’d known about it, from watching historical dramas.) So the facts we know are: that there was a human site in existence before the corporate colony. And that somebody found alien remnants at some point.

ART created a feed graphic (yes, another one) labeled Perihelion and SecUnit’s Initial Suppositions with an access list that included all the humans except Eletra. The first bullet point was: Fact (1) Corporate colony was established on an early Pre–Corporation Rim human occupation site. Questions: Are alien remnants present? If yes, were they original to the site or introduced later? Was the Pre-CR site established because of the presence of alien remnants? Was the corporate colony established because of the presence of alien remnants?

The humans all paused to read it. Amena, listening to Eletra talk about her family, covered her moment of distraction with a cough. (Eletra’s family was in a hereditary indenture to Barish-Estranza and was trying to build up enough employment credit to get her and her siblings and cousins transferred into management training. I knew Amena well enough by now to recognize she was feigning polite interest to disguise horrified interest.)

My queries on ART’s status data started returning results, and I backburnered everything to check them.

Huh.

ART had said it had one forced shutdown and reinitialize, when its crew disappeared and the Targets showed up. Then a second forced shutdown when the targetControlSystem had deleted it. So when had targetControlSystem been loaded into ART’s systems? Presumably its invasion of ART’s systems had caused that first forced shutdown.

Except there were more gaps than that.

I wished Pin-Lee was here. And, though I hated to admit it, I wished Gurathin was here, too. Both were analysts, and while I was way better at it than they were, at least I could have shown them what I was looking at.

I said, ART, look at this.

I was aware enough of ART to know that it was doing several things at once: helping Arada and Overse collect scans from what was left of the alien remnant on its drive, directing the MedSystem’s pathology unit for Ratthi, working on the translation of the Targets’ language with Thiago, guiding the reinitialization and diagnostics of its damaged propulsion systems, plus monitoring all its other ongoing processes. But I suddenly had 86.3 percent of its attention. (For ART, that was a lot.)

It examined my query results. A human in this situation would have said, “That’s not possible.”

ART said, Intriguing.

I needed to put these in a timeline. I looked for major events like wormhole entrances and exits and navigation changes so I would know what they looked like in the status data. ART pulled generic examples for me and I started another query set.

In the bunkroom, Amena had been cautiously working around to the subject of the colony. With a serious expression, she said slowly, “Look, I know you don’t want to reveal things that your … corporate supervisors or whoever don’t want you to, but we really need to know about this lost colony.”

Eletra bit her lip. “It’s proprietary information.”

For fuck’s sake. On our private feed connection, Amena sent, I’m not sure what she means by this. Somebody owns the information?

Yes, I told her. She’s afraid of her salvage corporation. She needs to be more afraid of being recaptured by the Targets.

Amena said, “I understand that but the Targets—those gray people—they could show up again. Especially because no one knows how they got on this transport in the first place, or what happened to the crew.” She lifted her hands helplessly. “Whatever happened to them could happen to us. And it’s more likely the longer we’re stuck here.”

Eletra put her hand on her own shoulder, as if trying to reach for the place where her implant had been. “I thought the new people were the crew?”

ART butted in with, Tell her they are.

Amena nodded earnestly. “Sure, yes, they are, but we’re—they’re missing the crew members who were here when the Targets took over the ship.”

Eletra’s frown deepened. “Why can’t we leave the system?”

“The normal space engines aren’t working yet. But even if we could get to the wormhole, the transport won’t let us go. You heard it. It’s programmed not to leave without its crew, the rest of the crew. And it’s really mean, and determined.” On the feed, Amena said, Sorry, ART.

Apology accepted, ART said. I felt its attention shift in the feed. (Imagine it staring meaningfully at me.) (It could stare all it wanted, I’m not apologizing.)

Amena added, “And we already know about some things, like the alien remnants around the Pre–Corporation Rim colony.”

Both ART and I shut up (I know, I was surprised, too) and waited to see if that would work.

“Oh.” Eletra slumped a little. “I don’t know very much. Ras and I are—were—both environmental techs, and everything was need-to-know. Our briefing said the colony was originally seeded by an early polity, probably via cold sleep ship. It was discovered about forty years ago and re-seeded through the wormhole by a company called Adamantine Explorations, that kept the location private. Then they went down in a hostile buyout and the databases were destroyed—” Amena looked confused and Eletra helpfully explained. “Somebody was probably trying to force the incoming management to pay for the code keys to get the data. But you know, that’s not a very good idea. They might take it out on the seized assets. And it’s bad enough being bought out like that without the management coming in with a grudge against you.”

Amena blinked a lot, apparently as an attempt to control her expression. (I’ve tried it, it doesn’t work very well.) On the feed, she said, When she says seized assets, she means the employees, right? The people?

Correct, ART said.

Eletra continued, “But anyway, the storage media was saved and Barish-Estranza bought it at some point later and they were able to re-create the data, and they launched this salvage project.” She hesitated. “There were rumors about alien remnants. Supposedly some of the recovered data referenced them. But that could have just been rumors.”

Amena said, “So what was Barish-Estranza going to do about the alien remnants, if they were there? You have to have a special license to recover them, right, even in the Corporation Rim?”

“That’s above my pay level.” Eletra touched the back of her neck uneasily. Physical reactions are supposed to be useful for determining whether humans are telling the truth or lying or are secretly planning to murder their whole survey team, etc., and sometimes they were. But also sometimes humans just secreted agitated brain chemicals for no apparent reason, or because something was physically wrong, like their digestive systems malfunctioning. But ART’s scan of Eletra showed she was experiencing signs of physical distress when she talked about the implants. “Was that what was in us?” she said. “Those implants? Did they have strange synthetics? Your coworker took one apart.”

I pulled a preliminary report from Overse’s feed, mostly just the raw data she had collected for the scan. She hadn’t had time to write up any notes from it.

“No, she said it was very simple tech.” Amena bit her lip, trying to look like she was thinking and not reading the feed. ART had completed the report and noted that the implants had no alien components but that they might be receivers for a more esoteric transmitter. It had added “examine all Target technology” to the group worklist and added the line (2) primitive human technology designed to work with alien power sources or strange synthetic materials to Perihelion and SecUnit’s Suppositions chart. “She thought it could have been connected to alien remnant tech.”

Eletra slumped and looked sick.

My query results for establishing a timeline of ART’s forced shutdowns returned and I matched them with the gaps I’d already identified.

That was when I hit the first oh shit moment.

ART, I said.

ART took in my report.

The moment of shock lasted less than .01 second but subjectively it seemed much longer. Then ART did what I should have done first and spoke to Amena on our private feed connection: Amena, leave that compartment.

I added, Now, Amena, it’s potentially dangerous.

Amena was agitated, but channeled it into squinting thoughtfully and pushing at her hair. She looked more like a human who had forgotten to do something rather than one who had just been told they were in danger. “Oh, my Uncle’s calling me on the feed.” She pushed to her feet, backing toward the hatch. “I’ll check back with you later.”

Eletra just nodded wearily.

Amena let the hatch close and then ran down the corridor to me. “What is it?” she whispered.

I took her arm and guided her around the corner. I was having a release of adrenaline from my organic parts and I felt weird and cold. There was no way an implant could have been put into Amena, she’d never been out of my and ART’s sight, but I scanned her again anyway. “ART encountered the Barish-Estranza transports before its first forced shutdown,” I told her. “Whatever attacked it and kidnapped its crew, came from one of their ships.”

Amena’s eyes widened. “Oh shit.”

We had another meeting, this one in the feed, again with Eletra’s connection cut. This time ART let me do the video conference image but I was too rattled to make it fancy.

Arada and Overse were still in the engineering pod, Ratthi and Thiago were still in Medical. Amena and I ended up sitting in the hatchway of the galley, so I could be close if Eletra decided to do something other than lying in the bunkroom like a traumatized recovering human. Which she might still be, even though we had evidence indicating against it. Amena was nervously eating processed imitation vegetable fragments out of a container from the galley. (She had asked me to let her listen in on the conference but to mark her feed as on private. She told me, “If you need me to do something, I’ll do it, but a lot of things have happened and I just need a minute.”)

(Thiago asked where she was and I said, “In the restroom,” and she glared at me.

I am not your social secretary, Amena, you want a better lie, make up one yourself.)

I had converted my timeline into a format humans and augmented humans could read, annotated it, and put it up in the feed. It showed that ART’s initial arrival in this system via the wormhole was its last substantiated memory. After that, everything was a reconstruction based on the status data. It looked like:

1.  ART’s arrival in the system.

2.  ART receives a distress signal with a Barish-Estranza Corporation signature. Sensors show one contact, a configurable explorer ship. There is no sign of the second B-E vessel, the supply transport, that Ras and Eletra said they were aboard when they were attacked. The distress call is marked as a request for medical assistance.

3.  ART tractors the B-E explorer’s shuttle into its module dock.

4.  Unsubstantiated but probably bad stuff happens.

5.  B-E explorer then links up with ART’s module dock, presumably to take ART’s crew prisoner and leave the Targets onboard, if the Targets hadn’t already boarded via the shuttle. (I’d taken a look at the shuttle via ART’s cameras, and going down to search it was next on my action list.)

6.  ART leaves the system via the wormhole.

7.  ART exits the wormhole at Preservation Station, after a trip barely lasting an impossible three hours, telling us the alien remnant tech was definitely in place on its engines at that point.

8.  After sending and receiving communications from Preservation Station, ART goes into standby for five ship-cycles. ART then targets our facility when it arrives, firing multiple times, missing spectacularly due to supplying faulty targeting data to its own weapon systems.

(I couldn’t tell exactly when targetControlSystem had been uploaded to ART’s systems, but it was before this point because the status updates told the story of a subtle but intense battle over the weapons. ART’s crew had been held hostage for its good behavior, but it hadn’t been willing to kill our survey team even after it knew it had me in its tractor. TargetControlSystem must have figured out who was jogging its arm every time it tried to fire, because that was when ART had been deleted, causing the equivalent of a giant seismic event in its status updates.)

I could see the others on ART’s cameras, digesting the information with increasingly concerned expressions. Overse said, “So the memory Perihelion had of firing on a corporate transport never actually took place?”

ART didn’t answer. I think it was upset. I was also upset, but somebody had to be the adult here. (I was used to ART being the adult.) I said, “From the navigation, sensor, and status data I reviewed, weapons were not fired until ART encountered our facility in Preservation space. And there is no archival video or interior sensor data of the docking with the B-E explorer, or of the arrival and docking of the shuttle Eletra and Ras said they were aboard.” I didn’t like to say it aloud, but I had to. “ART was compromised not long after the first contact with the explorer and its shuttle. Something first removed and then significantly altered sections of its personal memory.”

The humans were quiet, taking that in. Then Ratthi said, “Poor ART. Excuse me, poor Perihelion.”

Arada grimaced in agreement. “It’s disturbing. The B-E explorer must have arrived in the system first and was attacked. Taken over? By our friends the Targets. But if the supply transport actually exists, where is it now?”

Overse frowned. “It might have been destroyed. We have to assume Perihelion’s crew are being held prisoner on the explorer.”

“Is the explorer armed?” Ratthi asked worriedly. “I hate being shot at.”

Again, ART didn’t answer. I said, “Probably.” For a reclamation project in a technically uninhabited system, it would be easier for Barish-Estranza to afford a license and bond for an armed ship.

Thiago paced in front of the med platform, his arms folded. “Perihelion and I have translated the speech that SecUnit recorded and it was … confusing at best. The Targets—and we are going to have to come up with something else to call them—spoke of a need to complete their mission, but never said what the mission was.”

Ratthi added, “And they all have implants like Eletra’s.”

The other humans looked like they didn’t know what to think about that. I didn’t know what to think about it, either.

Arada said, “But could you tell if there was alien remnant exposure?”

“The scan isn’t showing anything that matches the list of known strange synthetics or organic alien remnants.” Ratthi glanced at Thiago for confirmation. “But that doesn’t eliminate the possibility.”

Thiago said, “Statistics suggest there are many undiscovered alien remnant sites, and many others that no one has been able to get close enough to to analyze their component materials. And the scan is turning up traces of unidentifiable elements in their bodies. We can’t tell if they’re naturally occurring elements or strange synthetics until we have planetary survey data to compare them to.”

Ratthi gestured and sent some scan results into the feed for the others to look at. “And those suits they’re wearing do have a factory code stamped on them. I can’t read it and Perihelion’s database can’t identify it, though that might be because of the reinitialization or the memory archive issues. But I suspect they came in the supplies for one of the two colonies, either the original one or the corporate colony seeded by Adamantine.”

Thiago said, “What we do know for certain is that the Targets were altered to look as they do. We don’t know if they did it to themselves or if it was an accidental exposure to a dangerous alien remnant. If they weren’t all dead, we could ask them.”

Yeah, that was aimed at me.

“If they weren’t all dead, they’d be trying to kill us, or stick implants in us,” Amena grumbled, still off-feed and crunching vegetable matter.

Overse spread her hands. “Where does this leave Eletra? Were SecUnit and Amena meant to rescue her and her friend? Were they meant to be … spies, possibly?”

“I think that’s too far-fetched.” Arada’s forehead scrunched in thought. “The Targets couldn’t have any idea SecUnit would be capable of seizing control of the ship when they brought it aboard. They thought they were looking for a weapon, not a person, so why set an elaborate trap with spies?”

Overse slumped in her chair, frustrated. “Right, that’s true.” She looked tired. I suspected it was a bad idea to have a meeting when all the humans were running out of brain capacity.

Ratthi added, “I think Eletra is telling the truth, that her memories were altered, just like Perihelion’s were.”

“You just want to believe the best about everyone,” Overse said, still a little skeptical.

Ratthi snorted. “No, that’s Thiago. I’m optimistic but a realist.”

Thiago looked mildly insulted.

“No, that’s me,” Arada corrected, and smiled at Overse. “I’m an optimist.”

“We know, honey.” Overse squeezed her shoulder.

Thiago said, “Amena, are you back on the feed? What is your opinion of Eletra? Do you think she told you the truth, that she didn’t remember what happened?”

Amena seemed surprised to be asked for an opinion, but she swallowed what she was eating and said on the general feed, At first I thought so. They were both so worried about proprietary information and getting in trouble, that seemed real to me. Now … I don’t think she’s afraid enough. She was frustrated, trying to think how to explain. I think she’s either lying, or something has messed with her mind so much that she doesn’t know what happened, and now she’s afraid to admit it.

Arada looked up at the ceiling. “Perihelion, can you tell us anything else? What do you think happened?”

ART hadn’t said anything, and that was beginning to worry me. ART likes to give its opinion and I’m not even sure “likes” is the right word there, but basically, ART gives its opinion whether you like it or not. It was beginning to feel strange that it hadn’t weighed in yet to tell the humans they were missing something obvious or weren’t approaching the problem the right way or whatever.

When it still didn’t respond, I said, “ART is trying to reassemble its log data right now. It’ll be out of contact for a short time.”

Amena squinted suspiciously at me. “Is that true?” she whispered.

I made a gesture I was hoping she would interpret as “Please don’t tell them I’m lying.”

Arada said, “Thank you, SecUnit.” She scratched her fingers through her short hair, like she was trying to get her thoughts together. This was definitely a problem; the humans needed to recharge or sleep or whatever or their decision-making abilities would be even worse than usual. She continued, “So, right, none of this fundamentally changes our objectives. We still need to find Perihelion’s crew, but at least now we know our first step is to track down the explorer.”

I was hoping ART would comment, even if it was going to say something like “or else,” but there was nothing.

Thiago had been looking thoughtful, which I tried not to see as a bad sign. He said, “Arada, I’d like to get Eletra back into Medical for a thorough neurological scan. Also, that will give me a chance to speak to her myself. I’ll review Amena’s full report and then see if I can get us any more information.”

Arada told Thiago, “Good idea. Optimism aside, we need to know if she’s lying and plotting something or if she genuinely thinks she’s telling the truth. Let’s try to get as much information as we can before … before anything else happens.”

I established a private connection to Arada’s feed and told her, You all need a rest period.

Arada hesitated, then she winced and rubbed her temple. You’re probably right about that. I’ll talk to the others.

I put the vid display back on standby. Amena scraped the last vegetable matter out of the container and said, “Is ART really working on something?”

“Sure,” I said. She stared at me. “Maybe.” I secured a channel just for the three of us, me, ART, and Amena. I sent, ART, answer me. You’re scaring Amena. Ugh, I needed to be honest or this wouldn’t help. I added, You’re scaring me.

It was a relief when ART said, I’m continuing the repair of my normal space drive and examining long-range system scan data to determine possible search patterns for the explorer.

“Are you okay?” Amena asked.

No, ART said.

I hadn’t expected ART to admit it. Really hadn’t expected. Right, so, that isn’t good.

Amena took a breath, visibly regrouping, and nodded. “Sure, I can see that. But we’re not any worse off now than we were before you two figured this out. In fact, we’re better off, because now we’re helping you find out exactly what happened. And it’s always better to have more information to act on.” Her glance at me was wry. “My second mother says that.”

ART pinged me for a private connection and I let it establish one. It said, My crew. What if they never left?

I knew what it meant. I said, ART, there was nothing indicating that humans were killed or injured onboard. I checked. It was the first thing I checked for in the quarters module. There was nothing. And you’ve scanned yourself. The Targets trashed some cabins and left debris and their own fluids, they wouldn’t have cleaned up after a … I hesitated but I had to be completely honest about what I thought or ART would know. They wouldn’t have cleaned up after a mass murder. I’ve seen mass murders, ART, they leave a lot of mess.

It didn’t reply, but I could feel it listening.

I said, Once we get your drones fixed, we can have them check again for bio traces, but I don’t think we’ll find anything. I think that whatever happened, your humans were fine when they left here.

ART said, Is that an indication they left voluntarily?

It was a point to consider. Doing what ART would normally do (if it wasn’t emotionally compromised) and looking at just the verifiable data, we didn’t know if the crew had been abducted, left voluntarily, or escaped. Since ART’s two shuttles were still docked, we knew the crew hadn’t used them to leave.

(Or the crew could have tried to escape and been spaced. I wasn’t going to mention it, because ART had to know that it was a possibility. But it might have eliminated it from its decision tree, knowing it couldn’t function otherwise. There was no point in considering it, not now. We had to search until we found an answer. If that was the answer … we’d deal with it then.) I said, We need to do a full inventory, particularly of your hand weapons storage. If your crew had to abandon you when the Targets compromised your systems, they may have forced their way onboard the explorer.

The pause was long, 3.4 seconds. Then ART said, Agreed.

And it hit me then that ART had been desperate and terrified since the moment the Barish-Estranza explorer had sidled up and done whatever it had done. It had tricked its captors into taking it to me not because it had some kind of grand strategy but because it needed me.

I hate emotions.

On the private channel between ART and me, I said, I apologize for calling you a fucker.

It said, I apologize for kidnapping you and causing potential collateral damage to your clients.

Amena was watching me, her brows drawn together. “Are you two talking?”

“Yes.” I had to look at the wall now.

Amena was still worried. “Are you fighting again or are you making up? Because it looks exactly the same from the outside.”

We’re making up, ART told her.

“Good.” Amena looked relieved. “Good, right. What’s next on our list?”

I went to search the Barish-Estranza transport shuttle. I wasn’t expecting to find anything but it was on the action list, so why not.

ART had notified Arada that while it was working on the engines, it was also prepping a squad of pathfinders just in case we had to search the colony planet. (I hope it didn’t come to that. I don’t like planets.)

Pathfinders are like drones for space, basically, active scanners that would zip around the planet collecting environmental information and terrain imaging, plus looking for comm signals, possible energy sources, and whatever might be planning to kill us. It’s the kind of thing that my ex-owner bond company did via satellite when they prepared to issue safety bonds for a newly opened survey planet. Except the company satellite would mainly be mapping the entire planet, and the pathfinders would be looking for potential locations where ART’s crew might be. They were really expensive, not something normal survey teams had access to. Arada was impressed.

(You couldn’t rent pathfinders from the company, not only because of the cost. They made planetary exploration safer and more targeted, so therefore less need for massive bond companies to rent you all sorts of expensive planetary exploration gear and sell you expensive safety bonds.)

I was monitoring Thiago’s casual conversation with Eletra while the med platform was doing a deep scan on her. Overse was in the maintenance bay reassembling the repair drone I had found in engineering so it could start repairing the other damaged drones. Arada was reviewing the scans of the alien engine remnant, but everything that was left of it seemed to be melting or decomposing so most of the data was garbage. (As Overse pointed out, the thing was illegal to have anyway so if it melted completely it would be for the best, but it looked like it was still going to leave a residue that would have to be scraped off ART’s engines.) Ratthi was shepherding a biohazard cleaning unit through the corridors and picking up pieces of dead targetDrones.

Amena followed me to the shuttle, dragging her feet. (She really needed to sleep. I hadn’t heard anything from Arada about it so I put Humans need to take rest periods on the general action list. Up in the central corridor, Ratthi saw it and muttered, “Please, yes, soon.”)

I did a brief visual check on both of ART’s shuttles, just to verify that they were empty and hadn’t been tampered with. The Barish-Estranza shuttle was parked inside the same docking module, attached to a module lock, which had an extendable tube to enclose the hatch. ART had said there was no one inside the shuttle, and no active bot pilot, but I made Amena hang back down the corridor with her assigned drones while I approached. The hatch was sealed, but not code-locked, which made sense when we thought Eletra and Ras were telling the truth about being captured trying to escape from their doomed transport. (Now that we were certain it hadn’t happened that way, who the hell knew?)

ART had cut the shuttle off from the feed. I touched the lock cautiously. (Considering the inactive state of its onboard systems, I wasn’t expecting alien killware or a sentient virus or something else unspecified to leap across and infect me, but the fact remained that something had happened to ART despite all its protections, and alien killware was still a possibility.) I still couldn’t pick up any feed activity, so I pushed up one sleeve and adjusted my energy weapon to deliver a pulse that caused the seal to disengage. The hatch slid open, releasing a puff of slightly stale air. It didn’t have the algae/growth medium smell associated with the Targets; in fact, it had traces of the dirty sock smell associated with humans. But then an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Or past absence. Whatever, you know what I mean.

I used my own scan, making sure there was no movement or active weapons inside, and stepped in.

The shuttle wasn’t a model I had been in before, but the configuration was similar to a standard transport shuttle. It was small, sized for ten humans at most, no cabins, a toilet facility that folded out from the bulkhead (ugh). The individual seats were in a spiral in the main compartment, so they would have to be cycled around to release each passenger for disembarking. It was obviously meant for short trips between ships or from ship-to-station. The cockpit had a seat for a human pilot next to the currently absent bot pilot’s interface console. The upholstery showed signs of ordinary wear and tear. The single passenger compartment was generally clean but there were scuff marks on the panels and padding. There was only a .01 percent chance it had been constructed as a trap by an alien intelligence. (It was a theory, okay.)

On our private feed connection, Amena said, Is it empty? Is there anything strange in it? Can I come closer?

You can come to the hatch, but not inside. I started searching for physical evidence. I would need to check all the storage compartments, anywhere there might be a hidden space that could conceal something. The drive housing still had the factory seal from its last maintenance check, so it probably hadn’t been infected with illegal alien remnant technology. I’d have to break the seal and do a visual inspection anyway, just to be certain. I also needed to pull the logs, but I’d have to do it via a display surface. Even with an inert operating system, I didn’t want to take any chances.

Amena came up to the hatch and leaned inside to look around. “If you need me to do anything, I can do it.”

I pinged her feed to acknowledge.

She watched me search for seven minutes and forty seconds, then said, “Can I ask you a question?”

I never know how to answer this. Should I go with my first impulse, which is always “no” or just give in to the inevitable? I said, “Is it contract-relevant?”

Big, adolescent human sigh noise. “I just want to understand something.”

I gave in to the inevitable. “Yes.”

She hesitated. “Right, umm. So my second mom really didn’t ask you to break up me and Marne?”

I had answered that question already, back when it happened. I could get mad at her asking it again, but granted, I do lie a lot. “I wasn’t lying to you. She doesn’t know anything about it unless you told her.”

I finished the search of the cabin and pinged ART. It generated a display surface with a disabled feed interface so it couldn’t transmit anything that might be in the shuttle’s systems to ART, me, or anything else.

Amena still had questions. “Then why did you do it? You didn’t—you don’t—care about me. You didn’t really even know me then.”

Why does ART like adolescent humans? This was exhausting. “I have files on all the members of Dr. Mensah’s family and their associates. I alerted on Marne because I ran threat assessments on all humans and augmented humans attempting to approach or form new relationships with Dr. Mensah or her family or associates after the GrayCris incident. Marne registered as a threat to you.”

Amena thought about that while I made a connection between the console and the sequestered display surface. Then I started to run the shuttle’s raw log files on the display, filtering out anything that wasn’t text. I was recording the information visually, and then I could convert it back to data fields and search it more quickly. That way we’d get the log information without any underlying code that might be hidden in it. (There are visual elements that could cause me problems, but I could screen for those and granted, the chances that the log file might be protected against a SecUnit doing a visual download were running under 5 percent.) (I know, I’m paranoid, but that’s how I’ve avoided being rendered for spare parts all this time.) Amena said slowly, “I guess if he wasn’t … He would have wanted to explain himself, instead of running off and refusing to speak to me again.”

As far as my threat assessment was concerned, running off and never seeing her again was an excellent result. I was pretty sure Amena wouldn’t want to hear that, though.

She continued, “I thought he was nice. I’m not … I know at the time I said I knew what I was doing, but I’m actually not very good at meeting new people.”

I knew from threat assessments on Ratthi’s associates that he had a lot of relationships with all genders of humans and augmented humans and he and they all seemed very happy about it. Amena should ask him for advice. I didn’t think she wanted to hear that, either.

Then Amena said, “Do you love my second mother? Thiago thinks so.”

I should have known this was going to turn into an interrogation. I said, “Not the way he thinks.”

Her face went all dubious. “I don’t think you know what he thinks.”

He doesn’t know what I think, either, so there. I was distracted converting a dumpload of raw log info from a visual image back into searchable data and if I got the fields wrong it was going to be a giant mess. I probably should have just stopped talking, but I didn’t want to hurt Amena’s feelings. I said, “Your second mother is…” Client wasn’t the right word, not anymore. “My teammate.” I could see I had to clarify. It was really hard finding the right words. “Before your second mother, I had never been an actual member of a team before. Just an…”

Amena finished, “An appliance for a team.”

That was it. “Yes.”

“I see. Thank you for letting me ask you questions.”

ART must be recovering because it had to butt in with, Tell her you care about her. Use those words, don’t tell her you’ll eviscerate anything that tries to hurt her.

ART, fuck off.

The thing ART has in common with human adolescents is that it doesn’t like to hear the word “no,” either. It persisted, Tell her. It’s true. Just say it. Human adolescents need to hear it from their caretakers.

I’m not a caretaker, I told ART. I finished the log conversion and checked my drone view of Amena. She was leaning in the hatchway, her head propped on the seal buffer. (That isn’t a good place to put your head, just FYI.) From her expression, she was either falling asleep or deep in thought. Or possibly both. I said, “You need to sleep.”

She yawned. “Okay, third mom.”

Arada finally ordered the others to take a rest period, though it took her a while to really understand that ART and I would still be active and there was no reason for the humans to take shifts. (I finally had to tell her that I had a list of things I needed to get done and it would go much faster if they would all stay in one place and shut up for a while and sleeping was the most efficient use of that time.)

Overse had finished repairing the repair drone and sent it off to begin the rebuilds of ART’s other drones. She was sleeping on a couch in the lounge next to the galley with Ratthi, who had finished the biohazard cleanup. There was snoring.

Arada was sleeping in one of the station chairs on the control deck. (They’re very comfortable, so it’s not as bad as it sounds.)

The medical scans had finished and Thiago walked Eletra back to her bunkroom. He hadn’t gotten much more out of her than Amena had, though his questions were more subtle. With his prompting, Eletra had gone over her augment clock and was now severely confused. It showed their transport had been in this system for forty-three corporation standard days. She was certain that was wrong. It was more support for the theory that Eletra had undergone some kind of memory manipulation. The initial scan analysis showed no genetic manipulation, no hidden devices or non-human biologicals.

All my remaining drones were on sentry duty, but I made Amena go to an unused bunkroom near the galley because it was easier to defend if we were attacked by something. (It was unlikely, but so was everything unexpected that had happened so far. My risk assessment module had given up generating reports three hours ago.)

Amena tried to just lie down on the bare bunk and pillow her head on the sealed bedding pack but I made her get up and unfold it and do it right. (“You’re mean,” she groaned.)

I opened another bedding pack so my bunk would be more comfortable to sit on. I had a lot of coding and analysis to do so I wouldn’t be caught unprepared again. I needed to create workarounds for the drone-resistant camouflage on the targetDrones and countermeasures for the Target’s helmets and gear. I also needed to anticipate how targetControlSystem would countermeasure my countermeasures so I wouldn’t be screwed by an on-the-fly software update. I needed to analyze the solid-state screen device and find out if it really was a Pre–Corporation Rim relic. And I had to analyze the new data files I had just created from the shuttle’s logs.

I pulled in the data Ratthi had uploaded to the feed during his pathology examinations and the scans of the Targets’ suits and helmets. Overse had also done some helpful hardware analysis of the targetDrones. Then I got my queries and processes running so I could get started on the code. I also split off an input and started World Hoppers episode 1. I’d seen it before (lots of times before) so I didn’t need to give it my full attention.

(I really, really wanted some time to pull a new show out of longterm storage and watch a few episodes so I could really relax, but World Hoppers in background would help. It was also bait.)

After twenty-seven minutes, it worked. I was aware of ART looming in my feed. (Imagine sitting in front of a display surface and someone eight times your size shoulders in and sits in the chair with you.) It was watching World Hoppers, and also backseat driving my coding and doing its own analysis of the data. The solid-state screen device does resemble known schematics of Pre–Corporation Rim technology, ART reported, showing me a scan and the matching examples. But it is not a factory-built unit; it was assembled from components gleaned from other devices of similar age. No trace of alien remnant or known strange synthetics detected.

That made sense. It could have been a replacement unit built by humans in the Pre–Corporation Rim colony. Or a unit built by the later abandoned corporate humans, with parts desperately scavenged from the old colony, as their own tech resources failed and they struggled to survive.

Yeah, corporations suck.

I liked the code we were coming up with, but I didn’t think it was enough. None of it was making my threat assessment stats look any better. I told ART, Everything we’re doing is defensive. We need an attack.

I’ve considered constructing a killware assault, but the data I managed to retain from targetControlSystem suggests it would be ineffective. ART displayed some analysis for me. Both Ratthi and Overse have theorized that some elements of the Targets’ Pre–Corporation Rim technology—for example, the implants—may be acting as receivers for esoteric alien remnant tech, like the object that affected my drive. A standard killware assault on the Pre-CR systems would not be able to take into account the alien system, not unless it was variable and could alter its behavior based on the protections and obstructions it encounters. I can’t code that with the resources I have available.

It was talking about something similar to the self-aware virus that GrayCris and Palisade Security had deployed against the company gunship, where I’d crashed myself and nearly wrecked my memory archive helping the bot pilot fight it off. Which gave me an idea, but I didn’t know if it was something we could implement.

Then Thiago crossed through the galley, came down our corridor, and leaned in the doorway. Watching him through ART’s camera view, I saw him glance at Amena, who at the moment was an inert pile of limbs under a blanket with a pillow jammed into her face. (Humans do everything weird, including rest.) Then he looked at me. Keeping his voice low, he said, “May I join you?”

ART engaged the sound/privacy field on Amena’s bunk. I thought about saying “no.” But I thought he wanted to sleep on one of the bunks within sight of Amena because he didn’t trust me to take care of her. So I marked my killware idea as save-for-later and said, “Yes.”

He sat down on the bunk across from me, pulled the bedding pack out from under it, but then set it aside.

Oh good, we’re going to have a chat.

“If you have a moment, I was hoping we could talk,” he said.

I could have said that I didn’t have a moment what with writing code to save humans from whatever the stupid Targets were but I did have a moment. ART had constructed a simulation of the software fix that had protected the Targets’ helmets and gear from my drone strikes and was running tests of my new targeting code for my drones. The targetDrones’ camouflage was harder to crack due to being a physical effect rather than something caused by signal interference. None of the filters I’d come up with for the drones’ scan or targeting functions would work, at least according to the simulations. Continuing to ram my head into that particular wall wasn’t going to get me anywhere until I thought up an alternate approach. So instead of being an asshole, I just said, “Go ahead.”

He said, “I know you don’t believe it, but I was glad you came along on this survey.”

Oh, please. I could have played the audio recording I had of what he had said to Dr. Mensah about me, but that was a little incriminating with the whole listening to private conversations in secured spaces and personal dwellings thing. I said, “So you didn’t have serious reservations?”

There was that little flash of surprise some humans have when I say something that doesn’t sound like what their idea of a SecUnit should say. He said, slowly, “I did.” It had been too long for a human to remember what he had said verbatim and he didn’t know I was quoting him. Still, his eyes narrowed a little. “And I know you’ve saved our lives.” He hesitated.

There was an unvoiced “but” on the end of that sentence. I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on this, so I said, “But you don’t like the way I did it.”

His gaze went hard and he said, “I don’t. And I don’t like the fact that Amena saw you do it. But that’s not the problem.”

On our private connection, ART said, Don’t ask the question unless you already know the answer.

Right, so I didn’t listen to ART. I said, “What problem?”

ART did the feed equivalent of rolling its eyes and started another episode of World Hoppers.

Thiago said, “You have leverage over Ayda.”

That one got me. Fortunately ART was keeping track of the processes so I didn’t screw up the data analysis. It also provided a definition of the word leverage. I know what it means, I told ART privately. And I did, but not the way Thiago meant. I think. I said, “I don’t tell Dr. Mensah what to do.”

Thiago’s jaw went tight. “I’m sure you didn’t. But she’s afraid to carry out her duties as council leader. She won’t apply to continue her term. That’s because of you. You’ve made her afraid of shadows. She never needed ‘security’ before you came to Preservation. Now she thinks she can’t do her job without it.”

There were so many things wrong and unfair and yet true about that I started dropping inputs. ART picked them up and transferred them to our shared workspace. I said, “I didn’t come to Preservation. I was brought there in an inactive state after incurring a catastrophic failure while saving Dr. Mensah’s life.”

“I know that.” Thiago waved a hand in frustration. “I’m saying—”

No, I get to talk now. “There was a security threat. After Dr. Mensah returned to Preservation Station, three GrayCris operatives were sent to kill her. They failed but there was a sixty-five percent chance that more operatives would be sent. That percentage started to fall after the bond company destroyed Palisade Security and all of GrayCris’ operational facilities.”

It was GrayCris’ own fault for ordering Palisade Security to attack an expensive company gunship and Palisade’s fault for escalating past standard operational parameters, but try telling GrayCris that. And it wasn’t like the company was afraid of GrayCris, but they had to teach them a lesson. (The lesson was: if you’re going to fuck with something bigger and meaner than you, use a quick targeted attack and then run away really fast. (This is the way I always try to operate, too.) GrayCris’ attack had not been quick and targeted and they had failed to run away effectively.)

Thiago had his mouth open but I was still talking. “There was, and is, still a potential danger from individual dependents or employees of GrayCris but threat assessment determined that the percentage is low enough for Dr. Mensah to resume normal activities with the assistance of Preservation Station Security.”

It took Thiago fourteen seconds to digest that. “There was an attack? Why didn’t she tell us— It would have been in the newsstream—”

I pulled the video from my archive and quickly edited in the views from the Station Security helmet cams and the one lousy security cam in the lobby of the council offices on station. ART studied it curiously. I sent it to autoplay in Thiago’s feed.

His gaze went distant, then startled, then increasingly appalled.

ART watched the full video, running it back and forth. I had sent Thiago the part where I was on top of the council table trying to snap Hostile One’s neck while Hostile Two was on my back stabbing the absolute crap out of me. Six Station Security officers were draped around the room in various states of consciousness, with Officer Tifany, the only one still functional, hanging on to the stabbing arm of Hostile Two and punching him repeatedly in the head. ART commented, What is that human stabbing you with?

Part of a broken chair.

“They’re SecUnits?” Thiago asked, horrified.

I can see why he might think that. I said, “They’re augmented humans who were chemically enhanced. They don’t feel pain, their reflexes and reaction times are accelerated. They have the physical strength of a SecUnit, but not the feed connectivity or processing capacity. So they’re harder to detect, and even more disposable.” To be fair, at this point GrayCris probably couldn’t get any other security companies licensed to produce and/or deploy SecUnits to contract with them. Between the high-risk assessment and the lack of operating funds and the cheating/attacking contract partners, GrayCris wasn’t a good client.

Thiago took a breath, made himself calm down. “But they won’t send anyone else? You said the threat percentage dropped—”

“It’s at an acceptable level.” And it hadn’t been easy to get it to that level, either.

Thiago watched me with a concentrated intensity I didn’t like. ART’s camera didn’t have a full-face view, but it was obvious even with the angle. “Then why did she decide not to take a second term?”

“She didn’t quit because she was afraid, you asshole, she quit because she needs to start the trauma support treatment at Central Medical. She didn’t tell anyone in her extended family because being taken hostage—”

In our private connection, ART said, Stop.

ART has different ways of telling you to stop doing what you’re doing, with different threat levels, and this was toward the top of the list.

I stopped. ART explained, You’re violating her privacy.

I was pissed off, because of course ART was right. I said, What do you know about it?

My MedSystem is certified in emotional support and trauma recovery.

Ugh, ART did know everything. It was so annoying. I finished, “She wanted me to go on Arada’s survey. I told her I would, but she had to agree to start the treatment. That was the leverage I had.”

He was still watching me, and I couldn’t tell if he believed me. His expression was conflicted and I think he was still shocked at the recording. (It had looped through to the end of the clip where stupid Hostile One finally went inert and I rolled myself, Hostile Two, and Tifany off the table. Now Hostile Two was trying to strangle Tifany and I was prying him off her.)

ART said aloud, in its polite-but-actually-not-a-suggestion voice, We have work to do, Thiago, and you’re missing your rest period. Perhaps you should go.

It startled Thiago, but he pushed to his feet. He said, “You’re right, I’ll go.”

I stopped the clip and watched him on ART’s cameras. He went back to the galley lounge and took one of the other couches. He sat there for a while rubbing his face, then got up to get water from the galley and take a medication tab.

What is that? I asked ART.

A mild pain reliever, for headaches and muscle discomfort.

When Thiago went to lie down on the couch, I relaxed a little. He had thought I was taking advantage of Dr. Mensah? I still wasn’t even sure what he meant. Did he think I was making her feel sorry for me? Hey, I hadn’t asked her to buy me. I hadn’t even been there when it happened, I had been still stuck in a cubicle in reconstruction at that point.

I wish I could feel all vindicated, but I didn’t think that confrontation had gone well for either me or Thiago. I think he knew now that his view of the situation was inaccurate but I had gotten mad and stupidly admitted to blackmailing Dr. Mensah to go start the trauma treatment. So. I didn’t know what was going to happen, if, you know, we survived and stuff and got back to Preservation. Like I needed something else to worry about right now.

ART said, You haven’t seen the obvious solution to the targetDrone camouflage problem.

Obvious? I said. (I know, I was just making it worse. ART wouldn’t have framed it that way if it wasn’t something that was going to make me feel like an idiot for missing.)

ART said, Modify your drones with a camouflage field that will display the same interference pattern as the Targets’ helmets and gear. They still won’t be able to strike the targetDrones, but then your supply is so limited that attack is now no longer viable.

Well, now I feel even more stupid.

ART said, You have time for a recharge cycle.

I was going to tell it I didn’t need one. And I really didn’t. But I knew what I did need. I shifted everything over to our shared workspace and pulled up the first episode of Timestream Defenders Orion. I asked ART, Do you want World Hoppers or something new?

ART considered, poking thoughtfully at the tag data for the new show. It said, New, as long as it’s not realistic.

I’d downloaded Timestream Defenders Orion off the Preservation media archives because it was pretty much the opposite of the whole concept of realistic. I started the first episode.

We watched it while ART finished our code, occasionally sending sections to me to check over. (Possibly it was humoring me. ART might still have memory archive gaps, but there was nothing wrong with its other functions.)

Twenty-six minutes to the end of the designated rest period, ART said, Using the data from the shuttle, I’ve located one of the Barish-Estranza vessels. My engine repairs are complete and I am moving to intercept.

HelpMe.file Excerpt 3

(Section from interview Bharadwaj-108257394.)

“It’s normal to feel conflict. You were part of something for a long time. You hate it, and it was a terrible thing. But it created you, and you were part of it.”

:session redacted:

(File detached from main narrative.)

I was sitting on top of Hostile Two to make sure he was dead. He had been apparently dead at least twice, so this wasn’t misplaced caution. Tifany was on her knees beside me, her weapon pointed at his head. “You’re too close,” I told her.

She looked at me, the skin around her eyes so swollen and puffy I’m not sure how well she could see. Then she edged back out of potential arm’s reach.

Behind me, in the one stupid security camera, I saw the human second response team and their medical assistance bots belatedly crash through the door. I checked the time and wow, scratch that “belatedly.” This had been a fast incident, even by SecUnit standards of fast.

The Preservation council meeting room was a big oval with a long table in the middle, the walls lined with tall narrow windows, two entrances/exits on either end of the room. The one the second response team had come through led to the foyers and station government’s public offices where humans came to take care of things that couldn’t be taken care of on the feed, I guess, I actually had no idea. The other door led into the private offices where the occupants of the council room had managed to evacuate to when the incident occurred.

Senior Officer Indah circled around the table and knelt down where I could see her. She said, “Is that person dead?”

“Probably but there’s a seventeen percent chance he might revive,” I said.

Tifany, her voice a strained rasp, said, “He came back twice. We need a containment unit.”

Indah’s brow furrowed. “On the way.” She reached over to Tifany and carefully coaxed the weapon out of her hands. “You’re off duty now, officer.”

Tifany said, “Yes, senior,” and folded over onto the floor.

“She’s had a hard day,” I told Indah.

“I inferred that.” Indah tapped her feed and a spidery-legged medical bot picked its way past me to crouch beside Tifany. Making comforting noises, it scanned her and immediately injected her with something. Indah said, “You need medical assistance, too.”

I had a stab wound so large you could see the metal of my interior structure, but Senior Indah was too polite to mention it. The medical bot extended a delicate sensor limb toward me. On the feed I told it anything it touched me with would get torn off and thrown across the room. It pulled the limb back and used it to check Hostile Two instead.

“Is there any hope for the subject?” Indah jerked her chin toward Hostile Two.

I didn’t think there had been a person inside Hostile Two since before the first time we killed him. “Probably not.”

I stayed in position until containment arrived to take care of our mostly dead Hostile Two and the hopefully all the way dead Hostile One. Tifany and the rest of the first response team had already been carried off to Station Medical. I went the other direction, further into the council/admin offices because I needed to see her.

I found her only three unsecured doors away, but at least it was an office without a balcony or windows onto the admin mezzanine. I walked past Station Security and admin personnel. They should have tried to stop me but (a) it wasn’t like they didn’t know who I was and (b) it was a good thing they didn’t try to stop me.

Mensah was watching the door and when I walked in her shoulders relaxed. She knew the hostiles had been secured and that the first response team had survived; she had command access to the Station Security feed and she’d been monitoring it from in here. There was a security lockdown on the public and private council feeds right now and we needed to get them restored soon, before anybody outside the offices noticed. We had to keep GrayCris from knowing this attack had nearly succeeded. It would give them too much intel about what to do next.

Mensah met me in the middle of the room and did the hand thing that meant she wanted to grab me but knew I wouldn’t like it. She said, “You need to go to Medical.”

There was dried blood on the tunic she was wearing, and on the right knee of her pants. Hostile One had charged at her across the council table and I’d stopped him literally a half-meter away from her. She could have reached out and patted his head.

And that was after chasing him all the way here from the transit ring, while Hostile Two was trying to kill me. Slowing down Hostile Two long enough for me to mostly take out Hostile One was what had sent the entire first response security team to Station Medical. They were just lucky Two had been focused on trying to get past them and not slaughtering every human in the way.

I said, “I can’t go to Medical yet. There’s something I have to do first.”

Her expression was drawn. “Do you need help? Indah’s called in the off-duty personnel. I can get you a team.”

“No, I just want to make sure I know how they got onto the station.” She nodded and let me go.

So yeah, I’d lied to her.