Network Effect

Chapter 12

We used ART’s EVAC suits, which were better than the ones the Preservation survey owned. (They had secondary internal protective suits for planetary exploration, not that we’d need them on the transport.) Though first I ran checks to make sure there was no contamination in their onboard systems. (It was unlikely—the power usage stats said the suits had been inactive throughout ART’s whole memory disruption incident—but I was going to be paranoid until I figured out how ART had been attacked.) (I mean, I’ll be paranoid after that, too, but only about the usual things.)

We were taking Eletra with us, and Arada had offered to bring Ras’s body over, too, but Leonide had said it wasn’t necessary and we could dispose of it. That upset the humans and it sort of upset me, too, which you wouldn’t think it would, since the organic parts of dead SecUnits (and the parts that get shot off, cut off, crushed, whatever) go into the recyclers. But it did. As Ratthi put it, “You’d think they could at least pretend to give a damn.”

ART had closed in to the Barish-Estranza transport and used its cargo tractors to maneuver the container of repair supplies over to the transport’s module dock. Then Arada and I made the short trip to the transport’s starboard airlock, with Eletra’s suit in tow.

(On the way over, I made sure I had a private channel with Arada’s EVAC suit, and I told her, “Remember, I’m not your coworker or your employee or your bodyguard. I’m a tool, not a person.” Overse had told her this earlier but I wanted to make sure she understood.

Arada made an unhappy noise. After 3.2 seconds, she said, “I understand. Don’t worry.”)

Preservation’s ships are different, so stepping onto a Corporation Rim transport was familiar in a weird way. (A weirdly unpleasant way that disrupted the organic parts of my insides.) I had been shipped as cargo to all my contracts, so 90 percent of my experience with transports and bot pilots was after Dr. Mensah bought me and I’d left Port FreeCommerce. At least Eletra hadn’t lied about the lack of SecUnits aboard; there was no HubSystem in place and they were using their own brand of proprietary tech and not company-standard. But the architecture was similar enough that by the time Arada and I cycled through the lock, their SecSystem thought I had full interactive permissions and their bot pilot had accepted me as a priority contact.

I could do a lot with that. They were lucky we weren’t here to hurt them.

The airlock foyer held four humans in the red-brown Barish-Estranza corporate livery, under heavy tactical gear and helmets, all armed with projectile weapons. (My ex-owner bond company would never have paid for such nice equipment. Barish-Estranza must put a lot of effort into their branding.)

Problem? Arada asked me on our private channel that I had made certain the transport’s SecSystem wouldn’t see.

No. It’s security procedure. If it wasn’t, there was going to be a whole lot of trouble for Barish-Estranza.

The first crew person/potential hostile said, “Remove your suits, please.”

That was a relief. Taking out four armed humans while wearing an EVAC suit would have been annoying.

As my suit opened and I stepped out, I detected a subliminal release of tension that made my threat assessment drop by 3 percent. (Note: humans do not generally look relieved when a SecUnit appears, so I doubted they knew what I was. But I was 95 percent certain they were reacting to the fact that I wasn’t a gray Target person.) When Eletra, then Arada stepped out of their suits, the threat assessment dropped a solid 10 percent.

They clearly recognized Eletra, and she recognized them, in a confused way. An unarmed crew member with a personnel resources feed-tag came forward to take her arm and lead her away.

Another crew person said, “This way, Dr. Arada.”

They led us through another hatch and down a utilitarian corridor, then into a meeting room. It had a circle of low-backed padded couches in the center around a large floating display bubble. Everything was newish and well kept (no aging upholstery here) with bars of decorative abstract designs in Barish-Estranza colors on the walls and padded seats.

Leonide was already waiting on the couch. She said, “Dr. Arada,” and gestured to a seat opposite her. The supply transport’s comm vid might have been doing some cosmetic editing, too, because in person faint stress and fatigue signs were visible around Leonide’s eyes and mouth, though she still looked perfect enough to be in a media serial.

“Supervisor Leonide.” Arada nodded. As she sat down, I stepped back against the wall behind her. The crew escort, who had followed us in and distributed themselves around the room, reacted with a little uneasiness. They had guessed I was a bodyguard but I had dropped my pretend-human code while I was still in the EVAC suit and it was starting to register with them that I might not be an augmented human. (Despite the weapons and heavy gear, they were amateurs.) (Amateurs are terrifying.)

Leonide glanced at me, her perfect brow furrowing. “Your bodyguard…” Then her eyes narrowed. “Is that…”

“A SecUnit,” Arada said. I knew her well enough to hear the nervous jitter in her voice but I don’t think anyone else noted it. (They were too busy being nervous about me.) Arada remembered not to glance at me, which was good. She and Ratthi both had a bad habit of doing that when they answered questions about me, like they were checking for permission to talk about me, which is not how humans expect other humans to act around SecUnits.

(SecUnits make humans and augmented humans uncomfortable and on my contracts, my clients had acted in a variety of nervous and inconsistent ways when I was around. (No matter how nervous they were, just assume I was more nervous.) But in a situation like this, it’s more about how other humans expect each other to act and not how humans actually act, which literally might be anything.)

I had camera views via my new friend the Barish-Estranza supply transport’s SecSystem, and I watched two members of our crew escort exchange uneasy looks. Their feed activity was monitored by their supervisors so there wasn’t any private chatter, but one did send a safety notice to their bridge. The SecSystem poked me in response and I told it everything was fine, and it went back to happily interfacing with me again.

“You don’t trust us?” Leonide said, her expression unreadable.

This part, this kind of human dominance posturing, was the part Arada was really afraid she would screw up. Human dominance posturing was not something Arada did, at all. (And yeah, not something I could help with, either.)

I thought there was a possibility that the other humans would notice her nerves, and that it might make them suspicious that Arada’s story about what had happened to us was a mashed-up mess of lies and truth. But the chance they would attribute her jumpiness to the fact that she had brought her rogue SecUnit friend aboard their transport was low. (Ratthi was right about that.)

Arada managed to smile in a way that wasn’t too friendly and said, “I think we trust each other the same amount.” She added, “And I’m afraid our contract requires our SecUnit be present during off-ship first contacts.” (I had told Arada about the magic words “the contract requires it.”)

Leonide’s knit brow unknit slightly and she sent a “maintain position” feed code to her escort, who pretended to think there was something they could have done about me if they hadn’t been ordered not to try. “Of course.”

I watched the tension release slightly in Arada’s shoulders. She knew she had used the right tone and it gave her some confidence. She leaned forward. “Can you tell me what happened to your transport? Because I think it’s very similar to what happened to mine.”

Leonide didn’t react immediately; I suspected she was surprised by the direct approach. Arada saw the hesitation and said, “I can go first, if you like.”

You would think Leonide would go for that, but apparently she wanted control of the conversation. She said, “Not necessary.” She shifted her position slightly. “You understand the former colony planet in this system is now wholly owned by Barish-Estranza.”

Arada kept her expression calm and serious though I knew she still found the idea of owning a planet to be as bizarre as owning me. “Of course.”

Leonide acknowledged that with a nod. “Our arrival here and initial scan of the system was uneventful, and we went into orbit while our explorer approached the colony’s space dock. They reported that it was surprisingly still intact and operational, which was good news for our reclamation effort. Bringing in a new one to assemble would be a considerable expense. Instead of a shuttle, the contact team elected to use the dock’s drop box to reach the surface.” Her mouth tightened. “Possibly that was a mistake.”

I could tell from Arada’s intent expression that she wanted to interrupt, but she didn’t. SecSystem was helpfully giving me all its collected video and audio, already edited and with the major incidents tagged. Its comm and feed data confirmed Leonide’s story so far.

“There was nothing but standard status reports from the explorer for more than fifty-seven hours,” Leonide continued. Actually according to their SecSystem it was 58.57 hours but whatever. “Then the drop box returned.”

Leonide almost winced, and I could tell she didn’t like what she was about to say. “Our contact party had been compromised, but we weren’t aware at first. We’d just sent over a shuttle to the explorer with two environmental techs for a standard maintenance check. I had assumed that shuttle was destroyed in the subsequent … events, until you told me otherwise.”

Leonide stopped and waited, and Arada traded her a little more information. “Your techs, Eletra and Ras, had been implanted with these small devices.” On our private feed channel, Arada asked me, Now?

Yeah, now was good. I stepped forward, causing a chorus of nervous twitches from Leonide’s escort, and set a small sterile container with Eletra’s implant next to Arada’s hand on the couch. As I stepped back, she picked it up and passed it over to Leonide. We’d kept Ras’s implant and the Targets’ implants, though Overse hadn’t had any luck yet getting information from them. We’d figured since they were the more murdery implants, they might tell us more.

Leonide frowned, but thoughtfully, and consulted with an engineering supervisor in her feed. A tech came in to collect the container and carry it away.

Leonide said, “That might explain how they were controlling our contact group. As far as we can tell, when the group returned to the explorer via the space dock, they were somehow forced to take the rest of the crew prisoner. Our security system received a truncated warning of a viral threat, so we were able to cut off feed access before our systems were contaminated. It gave us some moments to prepare, before the explorer fired on us.”

According to SecSystem, the warning had come from one of the SecUnits. It had sent a code burst that had told the supply transport’s SecSystem to cut comm and feed and order the bot pilot into a defensive stance, just in time not to get blown up. The supply transport had then fled, as the explorer uncoupled from the dock. The explorer had fired again at the supply transport, damaged its engines and other systems, then headed away.

It was disturbing data. Raiders would have been intending to lure the supply transport in and take it, too. This looked an awful lot like the whole goal of the Targets was to get off the planet. Once they had secured an armed ship, they hadn’t bothered with the unarmed supply transport, even though it was, you know, full of supplies.

If they had control of the explorer’s crew and bot pilot, they would have been aware that they had just damaged the supply transport’s wormhole capability, ART said.

I don’t know how long ART had been riding my feed, probably the whole time. The SecSystem tried to block ART and I quickly put up a wall and deleted its memory of the contact. (ART really did not care to be challenged by other resident systems and I didn’t want the friendly SecSystem deleted.) I said, You were supposed to keep out of this in case this ship was compromised.

ART ignored that. Possibly the explorer attacked me because the Targets wanted a second wormhole-capable ship. Or a better armed one.

Maybe, though that wasn’t a conclusion that told us much of anything. It was like saying that they had wanted ART because it was pretty.

Arada was asking, “Did you get any visual images of the raiders?”

I had already seen the images, sent in the SecUnit’s codeburst. A six-second video clip of two Targets, bursting through a hatchway. Leonide admitted, “Very briefly in a security vid. They were, as you said, unusually divergent.”

Arada’s expression was grave. “We suspect they’ve been affected by alien remnant contamination.”

“Yes.” Leonide’s expression and tone said she did, too, and it was a source of extreme exasperation. If Barish-Estranza was going to get any return on their investment, they would have to do something about the contamination first, which at best would mean quarantining a large section of the planet and calling in a licensed decontam operation. (If they meant to do this legally and not pull a GrayCris and deal with it by murdering all the witnesses.) “How were you attacked?”

“We had just arrived in the system and started our initial longrange mapping scans.” Arada spread her hands. This was the hard lying part and I put SecSystem’s download on hold so I could concentrate and because it was just too nerve-racking. “We received a distress call from a ship we now know was your explorer. When we came within range, it launched a shuttle. We allowed it to dock and ended up in a battle for our lives and our ship. They were able to take eight members of our crew. If we hadn’t had a SecUnit, we would have lost the ship.”

Leonide’s gaze lifted briefly to me. I was doing the blank SecUnit stare at the wall past her head, which is less effective than the opaque helmet stare, but still gets the job done. She said, “Our Units weren’t so effective.”

Oh, I don’t know about that. If not for that codeburst warning, you and your supply transport would be in tiny pieces.

“Did you see anyone who might have been from the explorer’s crew?” Leonide asked. She managed to make it sound just the right amount of casual.

“Just Eletra and poor Ras,” Arada answered seriously. I thought that was showing too much sympathy, but Leonide was preoccupied and didn’t seem to notice. Then Arada said, “Did you have any idea there were alien remnants on this planet, perhaps at the old colony site?”

Careful, I said on our feed connection. That was getting uncomfortably close to discussing Barish-Estranza’s steadily falling profit margin for this reclamation and its potential liability for exposing employees and assets to active alien remnants.

(Overse was right, alien remnants were the one thing the whole Corporation Rim agreed was bad. Not that there weren’t corporates like GrayCris who would sell them if they thought they could get away with it, but the liability bonds and the chances of wiping out your entire population made it rare.)

Leonide had relaxed a little, maybe lulled into a sense of security by Arada’s general air of earnestness, but now her expression went back to a smooth professional mask. “I’m afraid my contract won’t permit discussing that. Our cargo factor has finished unloading your supplies.” Leonide eyed Arada again, and obviously came to a conclusion. “Before we transmit a certificate of note for your invoice, perhaps you’d like to negotiate.”

Oh, here we go.

Arada frowned, not understanding. “Negotiate what?”

Leonide said, “Your return to your ship.”

Ugh, I hate hostage situations. I vaulted over the couch, grabbed the guard nearest Leonide, yanked him up against my chest and twisted his arm so his weapon was pointed at Leonide. I did it really fast.

The other guards made various alarmed/aggressive noises and pointed their weapons at me but it was a little too late. Leonide, staring at the weapon me and my human shield were pointing at her, sent a code telling them to stand down. They hesitated. My human shield, whose feedname was Jete, tried to send a code through the feed but I’d already cut off access to the rest of the transport for everybody in the room. I increased my forearm pressure on his throat and he stopped thinking about struggling.

Arada had her hands up. It was a reflex but a little embarrassing, frankly. I told her on the feed, Arada, put your hands down. You’re supposed to be the one giving me orders.

Oh, sorry, you’re right. She put her hands down. She had light gold-brown skin and you could really tell all the blood had drained out of her face. Her voice a little shaky, she told Leonide, “I don’t want to negotiate.”

Leonide wet her lips, pulling her composure back together. “Our onboard security—”

“Is useless, right now.” Arada flicked a look at me. I had ordered my new SecSystem friend to seal certain hatches, cutting off this section from the rest of the transport but allowing us a path straight to the airlock. She added, “As you said, our SecUnit is very effective.”

Okay, I forgive her for putting her hands up.

Leonide, playing for time, said, “Where did you get it?”

Arada was too nervous to remember what I had told her to say if someone asked that. She said, “The company.”

(Well, that was a waste of a good cover story about SecUnits produced for academic expeditions. I filed it in case I ever needed it again.)

Leonide’s expression tightened. “Company units have a reputation for being dangerous.”

Arada was beginning to get angry. “I know.”

I had also cut off Arada’s feed from ART so the four humans over there who were currently losing their minds and/or frantically shushing each other wouldn’t distract her. ART, who I couldn’t block because it’s a monster, said, I have a targeting lock on their bridge. The section you’re in will break off and I can tractor you over before you lose too much atmosphere.

The problem with gunships is they want to shoot at stuff. That’s why they’re so expensive to write bond contracts for. I said, No, don’t shoot at us. For fuck’s sake, ART. If everybody would just let me do my stupid job for one minute.

Leonide’s hard expression was tinged with outrage. She had realized she was cut off from the feed and there was no point in stalling for time. “It’s against Corporation Rim standards to allow a SecUnit control over proprietary systems.”

Arada’s gaze narrowed. “Then you should call someone and complain about that.”

Yeah, Arada was definitely mad now. ART slid into her feed to show her its targeting lock. The transport’s bot pilot had noticed the targeting lock, too, and was not happy. I let the bridge supervisor’s pretend-calm-but-really-slightly-panicked feed message to Leonide get through.

Leonide pressed her lips together. I could see it was a concession and I thought Arada did, too. Composed and calm, Leonide said, “There’s no need for all this. I was simply looking for a better deal. Perhaps coming from an academic background, you find that unusual.”

Arada swallowed, and also made herself sound calm. “Well, it was a little rude. I’d like to go back to my ship now.”

And for you to transmit the invoice, I told her in the feed.

“And for you to transmit the invoice,” she repeated.

Leonide tilted her head. “Of course.”

The rest was pretty normal. We backed out toward the lock and dropped Jete in the corridor before I sealed the foyer off from the rest of the ship. I let Arada have her feed back, and Overse said immediately, Are you all right?

I’m fine, babe, Arada told her. Just some corporate power peeing.

Ick.

We got our EVAC suits on. (I had control of the lock so no chance of them spacing us. And with ART’s guns still pointed at them, it would have been a suicidally stupid thing to do.) Then we cycled out of the lock with no trouble.

Once we were in the safety of ART’s tractors, and Arada had responded to all the exclamations from Ratthi, Amena, and Thiago, Arada tapped my private connection and asked, Why did she do that? Did I sound weak? I’m sorry I messed up.

No, it wasn’t you. I think she told us too much, in front of her crew, and she realized it. She wanted to make sure they knew she was in charge. I didn’t say it but I also thought Arada had been too sympathetic, and it had made Leonide feel like she had given too much away.

Arada sighed. But it was worth it. At least we know what to do next, now.

Yeah. We were going to the colony’s space dock.

It was four hours by ART’s clock to the colony planet and its space dock, which would have given us time to get ready, if we had any idea what to get ready for.

“We don’t know Perihelion’s crew is there,” Arada reported to the others as we took off our EVAC suits in ART’s airlock foyer. “But there is a chance the explorer is using it as a base of operations.”

“At worst, it may provide some information about just what is going on here,” Ratthi agreed over the comm. “If the dock’s systems are still active, then they might have information that SecUnit can pry out for us.”

Arada and I tried to stow our suits but one of ART’s drones showed up to elbow us out of the way and take over. ART agreed with Arada’s assessment, because the nav/route info scroll in ART’s feed showed we were already pulling away from the supply transport.

I’d had an idea earlier, now where was it? I checked my save-for-later. Oh right, that idea.

I needed to talk to ART about it.

It was a bad idea. But I had a bad feeling we were going to need it.

I didn’t know how long it would take to do this, so I had to ditch the humans quickly. Fortunately Thiago went to take another rest period (since he’d wasted part of the first one having a stupid argument with me), Overse and Arada went up to the control deck together, and Ratthi was sitting in the galley going over all the collected data from the Targets’ pathology scans and the material analysis of their gear again. Overse thought she had found evidence of alien remnant tech influence and he was trying to verify her results. Amena tried to follow me into the bunkroom and I told her, “Stay with Ratthi.”

Amena stopped and frowned. “Why? What are you going to do?”

I wanted to be in a physically private space instead of just a closed channel on the feed. It was a weird thing I was going to ask ART to do, and I didn’t want humans staring at my face while I did it, even if they couldn’t hear what I was saying. I was going to have to answer Amena and I was in a hurry so I just tried the truth. “I need to talk to ART in private.”

Amena’s expression did something funny and she lifted her brows. “About your relationship?”

I felt ART’s sharpened attention in the feed. I said, “Very funny.” I walked into the bunkroom, told the door to slide shut and set it on lock. I’d already cut the others out of the feed.

ART said, Do you want to watch Timestream Defenders Orion?

Of course I did, but first I had to do this. I said, “I have an idea about how to create a variable killware assault to deploy against the Targets’ systems. You can copy me and use me as the sentient component.” I’d put together a report on the sentient killware Palisade Security had deployed against the company gunship that had taken us off TranRollinHyfa, and now I sent it to ART. The analysis the company bot pilot and I had done during the incident suggested the sentient virus had been built using a construct consciousness, probably from a combat unit. Substituting a copy of my consciousness could produce the same results.

I knew ART wasn’t going to like this, though I didn’t know how I knew that. ART wasn’t a human, or a construct. Humans and constructs were full of overwrought emotions like depression, anxiety, and anger (was anxiety an emotion? It sure felt like one) and I had no idea what ART was full of, except how much it cared about its crew.

6.4 seconds dragged by (seriously, even a human would notice a pause that long) and ART hadn’t said anything. Then it said, That is a terrible idea.

Which just pissed me off. “It’s a great idea.” It was a great idea. ART had been working on a virus code tailored for targetControlSystem and the structure it had built so far was stored in our shared workspace. ART had halted development when it became clear there was no point in continuing without a way to make it variable, because of the combination of targetControlSystem’s archaic architecture and the possibility of a connection to alien remnant tech.

I couldn’t do this without ART’s help. On the company gunship, I’d moved my consciousness into the bot pilot’s processing space to help it fight the sentient killware, but this was different; I’d never copied myself and I wasn’t sure how to start, unless I had a place to put me. I couldn’t just stick Me.copy into ART’s semi-completed code, not without ART’s help. “And you thought of it first, you said we needed killware with a variable component.”

ART said, I didn’t mean you.

That sounds mild, putting it like that, like something ART would say in a normal tone. But it said it with so much force in the feed I sat down hard on the bunk. I said, “Stop yelling at me.”

ART didn’t respond. It just existed there, glaring at me invisibly in the feed.

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.