Network Effect

Chapter 11

I sent a wake-up call through the comm. While the humans in the galley lounge were staggering around trying to get conscious, ART fed the visual and scan images into the general feed. Amena rolled out of her bunk, blearily focused on the images, and muttered, “So is this good or bad or what?”

“It’s ‘or what,’” I told her.

ART’s scan image showed the Barish-Estranza supply transport, a mid-sized configuration with capacity to carry multiple landing shuttles and large terrain vehicles. Crew complement was estimated at thirty plus. The schematic looked like several rounded tubes bundled together with odd sharp pieces sticking out in places. The visual image just showed the long dark shape, light from the primary star catching the top of a curve.

ART said, Long-range scan indicates systemic damage though some systems including life support show operational. Aft and starboard hull and the engine housing show signs of three distinct weapons strikes, but the pattern does not match my weapons system.

That last part was good. If ART had been the one to fire on the supply transport, it would have meant my adjusted timeline was wrong and that I’d been wading in ART’s ocean of status updates for nothing.

Amena stumbled out of the bunkroom and followed me to the galley where Thiago, Overse, and Ratthi were.

“So there was a space fight, just not the fight Perihelion remembered.” Ratthi had gotten some packets and bottles out of the prep area for the humans. Amena took one of each and sat down at the table.

“We think the Barish-Estranza explorer vessel was armed, correct?” Arada was still on the control deck, much more alert, looking at the multiple displays ART had put up for her. One of ART’s newly repaired drones floated around behind her, using light filters to disinfect the stations and chairs. Arada absently stood up and moved her drink bottle so it could do her station. “Any chance we can tell if it caused the weapon strikes?”

Not without an analysis of the explorer’s weapons system for comparison, ART said. Scan indicates minimal power in the engine module. That may be the reason they have not attempted to flee through the wormhole.

Thiago rubbed his face, trying to wake himself up. “If they fought with their own explorer, they might be more willing to talk to us. Can you tell if there’s anyone aboard?”

I assume so. ART was dry. They are attempting comm contact.

“Don’t answer it,” I told ART. “That’s probably how you got into this situation in the first place.”

Ratthi waved his drink bottle in what he thought was ART’s direction. “Yes, please be careful. There was a terrible virus on a company ship and we all nearly died and SecUnit’s brain was compromised.”

SecUnit’s brain is always compromised, ART said. And I was not breached via the comm. My comm system is filtered to prevent viral attacks and I have engaged extra protections.

“That’s probably what you said right before it happened,” I told it. But ART insulting my intelligence was a good sign. It sounded almost normal again.

Amena sighed and wiped crumbs off her mouth. “Hey, you two, it’s too early for fighting.”

Arada was doing her mouth-twisted expression again. She said, “Perihelion, if you think it’s safe, can you allow contact?”

Overse hastily swallowed her food. “Babe, is that a good idea?”

Arada made an open-handed shrug gesture. “I don’t know how else to figure out what’s going on here, babe. If we can get a visual and they’re all gray people wearing alien remnants on their heads, then at least we’ll know they probably won’t want to help us.” She added, “And if we’re a lot more lucky than we usually are, they’ll have some idea where the explorer with Perihelion’s people is.”

That wasn’t unreasonable. My threat assessment module didn’t like it, but if we could get intel this way it might mean we could find ART’s humans sooner.

Thiago pressed his steepled fingers to his mouth, then said, “I agree. We know the explorer is compromised. If it attacked them, or if there’s another ship we haven’t encountered yet, we need to know.”

Ratthi shrugged agreement. Overse didn’t look happy, but she didn’t argue. Amena was still eating, eyes wide.

ART said, Accepting contact.

A new display appeared above the scan results on the control deck. The static swirled artistically into an image of a human or augmented human wearing the same red and brown uniform as Eletra and Ras. With impatience, the human said, “Unidentified transport, are you receiving this?”

ART pulled feed information from the transmission and ran it across the display. Name: Supervisor Leonide, augmented, Barish-Estranza Exploration Services ID, gender: female, femme-neutral.

I wasn’t surprised she was a supervisor. (I had worked with a lot of human corporate supervisors and after a while they were fairly easy to identify.) Her skin was one of the mid browns that was common to a large percentage of humans but it had an artificially smooth even tone that indicated cosmetic enhancement. (My skin was less even than hers and it gets completely regenerated on a regular basis due to me being shot in the face.) Her dark hair was wrapped around the top of her head and she had small metallics and gemstones set in the rim of one exposed ear. I thought there was a 49 percent chance that she was a much more important supervisor than the feed signature indicated.

Arada sat up and squared her shoulders. The drone snatched the empty food packet from the console beside her and retreated out of camera range. She ran her fingers through her short hair and said, “Right. When you’re ready, Perihelion.”

Of course. ART put up another display showing Arada. It had changed the color of her jacket from Preservation Survey gray to the blue of its crew uniform, edited out the water bottle on the console beside her, and artistically adjusted the lighting. Arada planted a serious expression on her face as ART said, I’ve sent my identifier and a Corporation Rim feed indicator stating that you are Dr. Arada of the Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland.

Arada said, “Supervisor Leonide, we see your transport is in distress.”

“We are, and would appreciate any assistance.” Leonide’s expression was opaque but vaguely critical. “But this system is under claim by Barish-Estranza, so I wonder why you’re here.”

Amena made the huffy noise indicating disbelief and/or incredulity. For the love of light, Ratthi said on the feed, disgusted. Are they really worried about that now?

ART was in Arada’s feed supplying an answer, and Arada repeated, “We have a contract for sustainability evaluation and mapping with the Pan-Rim Licensing Agency and this system was listed as a priority. I assure you, the University is not a terraforming entity, and we have no intention of violating your claim.” Arada’s serious expression was a little too fixed, but it got more natural when she added, “I see you’ve taken damage—were you attacked by raiders?” The next hesitation wasn’t calculated at all. “We’ve been in this system only a short time, and encountered some … strange activity.”

On a side display in the galley, ART was breaking down Leonide’s opaque expression for us with a feed-superimposed analysis. She was experiencing everything from irritation to reluctant resignation. She said, “There are raiders here. As we’ve discovered.”

Arada pressed her lips together and looked thoughtful. I had a bad feeling she was about to call Leonide a liar—which we all knew Leonide was lying but even I knew that wouldn’t make this interaction any easier. Then Arada said on the feed, I’m going to tell her we have Eletra.

But you just told Leonide we’re Perihelion’s crew, Overse objected. Eletra knows we’re from Preservation.

She knows Amena is from Preservation, I sent.

Yes, ART told me to tell Eletra you all were part of its crew, Amena confirmed.

I was doing a rapid search of my recording of all the conversations in Eletra’s hearing since the others had come aboard, particularly when Thiago had spoken to her. None of the rest of you told her you were from Preservation. And some of you are wearing ART’s crew clothing.

Overse looked down at the T-shirt she was wearing. Oh, you’re right.

ART had thrown in some static to give Arada time to think. Now she said to Leonide, “I don’t think they’re ordinary raiders. We have one of your crew on board, a young person named Eletra. She was captured in a shuttle by some very divergent raiders, who also attacked our ship. She was with another crew member called Ras, but he was injured when he was captured by the raiders and died before our medical facility could help him.”

Leonide’s expression went through some rapid calculations. “How did they get aboard your ship, then?”

(In the feed, Amena was worried. But Eletra’s really confused, she said. She’s not going to be able to tell them much about what happened. Will they believe her? They won’t accuse her of helping the Targets or something, will they? Or do something terrible to her?

She needs more help than we can give her, Thiago told her, and she wants to go home to her family. This may be her only chance.

Much as Amena might want to forcibly adopt Eletra and drag her off to Preservation, Thiago was right.)

Arada was saying, “They were brought aboard by the raiders who tried to take us prisoner. I can let you speak to Eletra if you’d like. She’s physically well, but we know they used some sort of mind-altering tech—”

You’re talking too much, ART told her on the feed, right as I was about to say it. Overse must have thought so, too, because she made a faint noise of agreement. Arada stopped and ART added a little artistic static to give her a chance to regroup and to show her that its analysis of Leonide’s expression revealed a spike of extreme interest at the words “mind-altering tech.” Arada cleared her throat and said, “So, maybe you could be more forthcoming. We’re ready to render assistance if you need it.”

Leonide’s hesitation was more pronounced this time, and her expression said she was conflicted. She said finally, “I’m not allowed to speak further about this on a comm channel not confidential to Barish-Estranza. I’d appreciate the return of our crew member. One of our engine components was destroyed in the attack—if you could sell us replacement components, our pay rate would be fair and generous.”

“We don’t—” Arada was going to say “need your payment” and the humans and I all yelled No! on the feed. But ART had her on a one-second delay and stopped her before it got any worse.

It was a natural mistake on Arada’s part. In Preservation culture, asking payment for anything considered necessary for living (food, power sources, education, the feed, etc.) was considered outrageous, but asking payment for life-saving help was right up there with cannibalism.

Arada coughed and continued, “Of course, we’ll prepare an invoice. But…” She leaned forward. “I think we both know how bad this situation is, and how much danger our crews are in right now. If we could be honest with each other and share information, I think we can better our chances of survival.”

Yeah, she had gone there way too quickly. The other humans had stopped breathing. Amena looked at me with an oh shit expression. Yes, I know, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Arada’s risk assessment module was as bad as mine.

Leonide’s expression was complex. She said, after 8.7 fraught seconds where she might have been consulting with someone on her own feed (hopefully not a gray Target person), “Your crew is still in danger?”

Arada said, “Because I think we met your explorer. It was the ship that attacked us, and temporarily boarded us, and our wormhole capability is now damaged.”

Ratthi made a mmph noise. Thiago was pressing his folded hands against his mouth again.

Leonide’s lips set in a hard line. “I see. I still can’t speak on a nonconfidential channel.”

Arada hesitated and Ratthi whispered to me, “What—can we make the channel confidential? What does that entail?”

I told him, “Not without a Corporation Rim solicitor certified by Barish-Estranza.”

Ratthi groaned under his breath.

On the feed, ART was explaining the same thing to Arada. She said to Leonide, “Would you be willing to come aboard and speak about it in person?”

(I had a camera view of the lower part of the control deck where the drone was now sterilizing the area where Targets One and Three had died. It started working faster.)

Leonide snorted. “Your University’s confidentiality agreement would hardly cover me.”

Arada gave her a good “it was worth a shot” smile, like she had any clue what Leonide meant. Then Leonide said, “But I’d allow you to come aboard my transport for a conference.”

Thiago took a sharp breath. Ratthi’s expression went extremely skeptical. Amena made a derisive noise. Overse said, “Fuck no.”

On our private connection, ART said, Should I cut the contact?

No, I told it, she won’t do it. We already had a way to get intel off the transport. We could send drones along with the supplies—

Then Arada said, “I can do that. If you’ll send me the list of supplies you need, I’ll get my team working on that, and we can arrange the transfer of supplies and your crew person and the meeting at the same time.”

What? The other humans all looked at me, appalled. I was also appalled.

Leonide kept her expression neutral. “Agreed, though I’d like to speak to my crew member first.”

Arada said, “Agreed. Give me a moment to arrange that.”

ART put the contact on hold and said, Clear. And then it did one of my what-the-hell-have-the-humans-done-now sighs.

Obviously, there was a big human argument.

In order to head off the inevitable “I told you so,” I said to ART, I should have told you to cut the contact.

ART said to me, Yes, you should have.

To the others, it said, They’ve sent the list of components. Since we’re now committed to this … course of action, I’ve ordered a drone to pull the material out of storage. And I’m producing standard crew clothing for Arada.

By that point the argument had ended and Arada was still going to the supply transport, though all the humans had elevated heart rates indicating varying degrees of anger and exasperation.

Thiago’s expression was grim. “If we’re going to do this, we need to get Eletra ready to speak to Leonide. Maybe before that, she can tell us something about her. Amena, will you help?”

Amena tried not to look startled. “Huh? Oh sure, Uncle.”

They headed down the corridor. Arada turned to Overse and said, “I know you’re upset but this will save us a lot of time.”

Overse said through gritted teeth, “Rescuing you—or trying to recover your body—will not save us time.”

Ratthi pressed his hands over his eyes and dragged them down his face in a way that did not look comfortable. He said, “We need a plan. What are you going to say?”

In the corridor, Amena was saying, “I didn’t think you’d want my help. I mean, you all think I’m impulsive.”

“No one thinks that, my daughter.” Thiago signaled through the feed to Eletra, telling her they wanted to come in. “Your parents wouldn’t have let you come on this survey if they didn’t trust your judgment.”

From Amena’s expression that was news to her, but the door to the bunkroom was already sliding open.

Overse was still mad, though when Ratthi asked for her help, she followed him down to the storage module to make sure the drones could shift the supply container into the bulk airlock. I could have helped, but I think Ratthi wanted to give Overse a chance to vent and calm down, and I did not want to be there for that.

Amena had just shown Eletra a feed image of Leonide and asked if she was really who she said she was.

At first, Eletra looked relieved. “Yes, that’s Supervisor Leonide. She’s in charge of the supply transport.” Then her expression turned slowly confused. “The supply transport.” She pressed her hands to her head. “Why am I not on the supply transport?”

“Can you speak to Supervisor Leonide on the comm?” Thiago asked her. “Just to tell her what happened to you?”

Eletra nodded, but said, “It’s hard enough telling you, and you all were there.” Her forehead creased again. “Weren’t you?”

“Just tell her what you can,” Thiago said gently, and ART used the display surface in the bunkroom to open the comm contact again.

I was worried enough to monitor the conversation, and I could feel ART’s attention in the channel. But Eletra confirmed her capture by the Targets and said that she had been rescued by the ship’s crew and their SecUnit. She gestured toward Amena. “And a young person, an intern from another survey company.” She knew Ras had been killed but she wasn’t sure how. When Leonide pushed her for details, she said, “The gray raiders, they put some kind of augment or something in us. It did something to us.” She gestured at her head. “It’s messed up my whole perception of time. I can’t remember leaving the supply transport. Or the explorer—”

Leonide told her that was enough, and sent the connection to her cargo factor to arrange the transfer.

Arada’s face was set in a wince, possibly in anticipation of further objections to her plan that everyone clearly hated. We were still standing in the lounge (I was going to change the name on ART’s schematic to “Argument Lounge”) and she looked tired. “Are you mad at me, too, SecUnit?”

I said, “Yes. I’m also going with you.”

Really, I was the only one who needed to get over there, and it would be better than sending drones that I wouldn’t be able to retrieve. But I don’t think Supervisor Leonide, who wasn’t too happy letting Arada visit, would say yes to the question “Hey can our SecUnit come over instead? It just wants to stand in your transport for, say, three minutes? No, no reason, it just enjoys looking at other people’s ships.”

On the feed, Overse said, Yes, please. Arada, SecUnit has to go with you. She sounded normal again. I had a camera view and audio on a tertiary input of her and Ratthi standing in the foyer to ART’s bulk lock, with her waving her arms and talking angrily while he nodded sympathetically and three of ART’s repaired drones hovered around them. It ended with her apologizing to Ratthi for venting at him and being angry at herself for getting angry at Arada during a crisis. I could play it back to listen in on the whole conversation but I could also punch myself in the head with a sampling drill and I was not going to do that, either.

(If I got angry at myself for being angry I would be angry constantly and I wouldn’t have time to think about anything else.)

(Wait, I think I am angry constantly. That might explain a lot.)

Arada’s expression was complicated, then it settled on relief. “Okay. I wasn’t going to ask, but that’s probably a very good idea.” She took a shaky breath. “Thank you.”

You don’t have to thank me for doing my stupid job.

But it is nice.

In the bunkroom, Thiago was trying to reassure Eletra. He told her, “You sound much better. I think speaking to someone you know helped.”

I sent to Amena, Ask her if there are SecUnits on either the explorer or the transport.

Amena did. With what seemed a reasonable amount of confidence under the circumstances, Eletra said, “Yes, there were three on the explorer.”

“But none on the supply transport?” Amena clarified.

Eletra nodded. “Right. The explorer carries the contact party. Everyone on the transport is support staff.”

I told Amena, Ask her if the SecUnits were made by Barish-Estranza, or if they were contracted rentals. I didn’t think they would be company units—the last thing you wanted when you were asserting rights over an unclaimed colony was the company getting its greedy datamining hands all over it.

Amena repeated the question, adding to me, “Rentals” is a creepy way to talk about people.

Yes, Amena, no shit, I know that. (And I knew this was all new and horrifying to Amena but it was just same old same old for me and Eletra and her permanently indentured family. Which was why I was saying this silently to myself instead of out loud to the whole ship.)

Eletra answered, “No, there wasn’t any contracted equipment involved in this job. They didn’t want to chance another corporation finding out what we were doing.”

Thiago watched Amena thoughtfully, as if he suspected she was talking to me on the feed. Then Eletra’s expression started to drift again and he hurriedly distracted her with a question about her family.

Amena said on our private feed, You’re going with Arada?

Yes, I told her.

Amena said, If there were three SecUnits on the explorer, why didn’t they stop the Targets from … taking over, or whatever they did? And the Targets didn’t seem to have any idea what you were.

I told her, The SecUnits on the explorer would have been under the control of a supervisor, either directly or through a HubSystem. If the Targets got control of either, the SecUnits would have to obey an order to stand down. Which is why I hate hostage situations. You have to get in there fast and neutralize the hostage-takers. They can’t make threats and force you to do stuff you don’t want to do if they’re unconscious or dead. If the Targets knew what I was, they may have thought they could order you to stop me.

Amena snorted. Sure, right.

Amena was implying that I wouldn’t listen to her, which, right, I wouldn’t, not in that situation. But also, there was so much about the Targets that we didn’t understand. It was a data vacuum big enough for us all to fall in and die, including ART.

Arada’s expression had gone preoccupied. The Barish-Estranza manager had sent the specs for the needed supplies and transfer logistics and she was going over it with ART in the feed. Then she asked me, “So they’ll know you’re a SecUnit because Eletra will tell them, so … how should we handle that?”

I wasn’t sure what “that” meant. But I wasn’t sure Arada knew what “that” meant, either. Her experience with SecUnits was limited to exclusively me. I said, “I’ll be the SecUnit the University provided for your security.”

I really expected ART to weigh in here, at least with some kind of rude noise. But it didn’t comment.

Listening on the feed, Ratthi was dubious about the whole idea. Wouldn’t you be wearing armor then?

“Not necessarily. Some contracts require SecUnits to patrol living spaces and that’s usually done in uniform instead of armor.” There are standardization guides for the manufacture of constructs but most humans wouldn’t know that. As long as I didn’t have to walk into a deployment center filled with SecUnits and the human techs who built and disassembled us, my risk assessment module thought everything was great. (I know, it worries me when I say that, too.)

Then ART said, Your configuration no longer matches SecUnit standard. ART knew all about that because it was the one who had altered my configuration to help me pass as an augmented human. That combined with the code I’d written to change the way I moved, to add the random movements, hesitations, blinking, and all the things that said “human” to other humans, made it easier to get by, though I’d still had to rely a lot on hacking weapons scanners.

“That’s right.” Arada turned to me, her brow pinching up in worry. “You look different since we first met you. You’ve let your hair grow out a little.”

Some of ART’s changes to my configuration had been subtle—longer head hair, more visible eyebrows, the kind of fine, nearly invisible hair humans had on large sections of their skin, the way my organic skin met my inorganic parts. Other changes had been structural, to make sure scanners searching for standard SecUnit specifications wouldn’t hit on me. “I also got shorter,” I told her.

“Did you?” Startled, Arada stepped back, eyeing the top of my head.

Lack of attention to detail is one of the reasons humans shouldn’t do their own security.

But humans do detect subliminal details and react to them whether they’re consciously aware of it or not. Even on Preservation (especially on Preservation) I ran my code to make my movement and body language more human to keep from drawing attention. I was running it now out of habit. When I stopped it, I’d look a lot more like a “normal” SecUnit even without armor. (Normal = neutral expression concealing existential despair and brain-crushing boredom.)

Arada and Ratthi still wanted to argue, so I said, “If they ask—and they won’t ask—say I’m an academic model designed specifically for your university.”

ART said, I would prefer you go as an augmented human.

What I really needed right now was a giant omniscient machine intelligence second-guessing me. “I don’t care what you prefer,” I said. It was safer this way. We were trying to tell one big lie—that we were ART’s crew—and it would be easier to make that believable if we kept the smaller lies to a minimum. The fact that I was a SecUnit and that Arada had contracted for me as security was true, if in a different way than the corporates would assume. I could have said all that, but instead I said, “It’s my decision and you can shut up.”

“Don’t fight,” Amena said, coming back into the galley. Thiago was heading to the bulk lock to help Overse and Ratthi.

Arada was still watching me dubiously, absently humming and tapping her teeth, and I realized there was another problem. To Arada, I wasn’t her SecUnit, I was her coworker and she was my team captain. That’s a whole different spectrum of body language. Also, she wasn’t even slightly afraid of me, and even my most confident and contemptuous corporate clients had always been just a little nervous, no matter how hard they tried to cover it. (The ones who weren’t confident and contemptuous were incredibly nervous. It hadn’t exactly been fun for me, either.) I asked her, “Can you treat me like a SecUnit?”

On the feed, Overse said, Ummm. She asked Arada, Can you?

“Sure.” Arada shrugged, clearly having absolutely no idea what we meant by that.

Down in the module dock with Ratthi, Overse sighed. She told me, Right. I’ll work on that with her real quick before you go.

I tapped her feed in acknowledgment. Arada demanded, “What?”

I went into an empty bunkroom to change into the crew uniform ART had just made me. It was dark blue, the pants and jacket of a deflective fabric that was way better than what Preservation Station Security had, with lots of sealable pockets for weapons and drones, plus stability-fabric boots so tough I could probably use them to jam a closing hatchway open. It looked like what a human security person would wear, it looked like what a SecUnit should wear instead of a cheaper version of the contract’s uniform. I don’t know, maybe security-company-owned SecUnits wore something like this. It had ART’s crew logo on the jacket, but somehow that didn’t bother me as much as usual.

I was a little worried the hair on my head would be noticed. After Milu, I had made it this length so I wouldn’t look like a SecUnit and now I had to look like a SecUnit again. ART, watching me watching myself in a camera while poking at my head, pointed me to the bunkroom’s attached bath where there was a dispenser for things humans needed. One was a lubricant-like substance that when I followed the instructions flattened my hair down so it looked shorter. That looked more SecUnit-like. Since ART had apparently decided to be helpful and stop sulking like a giant angry baby, I said, “Why do you want me to pretend to be an augmented human? This way is easier.”

You don’t like it, ART said.

“That’s my problem.” I didn’t like it. But if you put everything that had happened to me on a scale of awfulness and assigned exact values to each incident (which I had done once, it’s in my archive somewhere) dealing with corporates who exploited failed colonies, and probably went through SecUnits as fast as Amena did fried vegetable crunchy things, was in the lower third of the chart.

Despite what I’d told Amena, the existence of the SecUnits on the explorer worried me. If they had been captured and not destroyed, they were a way for the Targets to get intel about what I was capable of.

When my crew is at risk, it’s my problem, ART said.

I was getting tired of being told what to do. Self-determination was a pain in the ass sometimes but it beat the alternative by a lot.

I made sure my collar was folded down so you could see my data port (though anybody who tried to stick a combat override module in there was going to get a violent surprise) and walked calmly out of the bunkroom into the galley. Amena was sitting on the table, frowning at me. She said, “What are you two fighting about now?”

ART said, I made SecUnit’s uniform too nice.

Amena nodded. “You do look great.”

I’m not even going to dignify that with a reaction.

Arada came back to the galley in her crew uniform, which was a less combat-ready version of mine. It was casual and practical and she looked comfortable and natural in it, which would help. “Are we ready?” she asked. “Let’s go.”

“Surely they won’t suspect anything,” Ratthi was saying to the others at the bulk dock. “Who runs around with a friendly rogue SecUnit? Besides us, I mean.”