Network Effect

Chapter 13

My threat assessment was all over the place right now, but nobody thought ART should lock on to the dock. Instead it did some complicated maneuvers (the kind of thing I don’t know anything about and don’t have to know because ART does) to get close. Me and the two humans whose help I absolutely did not need took EVAC suits over to an airlock.

When we were near enough to see the pits and scarring on the dock’s hull, I picked up its feed. It was dormant but its SecSystem woke when I pinged and it asked for a Barish-Estranza entry code. The explorer must have had codes for the old Adamantine system, or had just released killware to take it down so they could upload their own. Whichever, this version of DockSecSystem was a recent upgrade, but something was wrong with its configuration and it had put itself in standby mode. I was a little nervous, despite the fact that my walls are excellent and targetControlSystem had made no attempt to take me over despite a lot of provocation, what with me trying to kill it and everything. But the fact that we still didn’t know why ART had experienced that first critical shutdown was still making me hyper-paranoid.

But at this point, the only thing I could do to find out if DockSecSystem was compromised was get in there and look. So I did.

The first thing I hit was a barrage of configuration errors. I couldn’t tell if the Barish-Estranza crew had failed the install or if something had tried to mess with it later. It made it a little harder to take control, not because it was trying to fight me but because nothing worked right. In fact, it seemed pathetically glad somebody who knew what they were doing was here. I got control of its entry functions before we reached the lock and told it to let us in.

The hatch slid open and the lock cycled us through to a large reception space, designed for big groups or bulk objects. The EVAC suits had their own lights and vision filters, but the lights embedded in the bulkheads flickered on. Two large rounded doorways with open safety hatches led into corridors and like ART’s scan had said, life support was active.

And unlike the outside, the inside looked nearly new. There wasn’t much, if any, wear. Some scuffing on the floor, that was all. No sign of recent activity, but then we didn’t know which lock the explorer had used.

No, there was a sign of recent activity. A big version of the Adamantine logo with its stylized depiction of a planetary landscape, a cliff face above an ocean shore, was painted onto the metal of the far wall. Someone from the explorer crew had scratched at it with a sharp tool and drawn a sloppy version of the Barish-Estranza logo on the gray and green cliff. Ha ha, vandalism expresses our corporate loyalty, right. Well, the joke was on you, Barish-Estranza employee, because not long after you did that you got killed and/or mind-controlled by alien remnant raiders.

(I know, it’s a logo, but I hate it when humans and augmented humans ruin things for no reason. Maybe because I was a thing before I was a person and if I’m not careful I could be a thing again.)

And maybe it was just the hamstrung SecSystem, but I had the feeling we were going to find some dead bodies in here.

I told my EVAC suit to open and released my drones. I only had sixteen survivors after everything that had happened on ART, but that should be enough for a quick reconnaissance run through this area of the dock. They were also running one of the new codes I’d written. It would emit a field that any targetDrones would associate with the Targets’ protective gear. (If all the targetDrones operated the same basic way, which, of course, we had no idea. But it was worth a try.)

I also had a large projectile weapon from ART’s supply and a smaller energy weapon.

I kept two drones with me in a holding pattern over my head, since I wasn’t getting anything from the cameras except static. As the others zipped off down the shadowy corridors, Overse asked, “Are you picking up anything?”

“The feed is partially down, cameras are offline, and the DockSecSystem isn’t responding correctly.” My drone inputs showed dark empty corridors, with no obvious sign of human occupation, if you didn’t count the bodies. There were three in the junction between the corridors leading to the control area and the passenger entrance to the drop box.

They were all wearing gear in Barish-Estranza colors but I slowed the scout drones down for a long close scan just to make sure. One sprawled face up, the other two crumpled against the wall. Appearance of the wounds suggested they were made by energy weapons, no surprise there.

ART said, Unidentified, which was its way of expressing relief that none of them were its crew members.

There was another body further up the corridor but I already knew what had killed that one.

What I wasn’t seeing was anywhere humans could be locked up. The dock hadn’t been anything but a temporary waystation while the colony was in development, so there were no cabins or facilities yet, just some minimal supply storage and waste disposal. There were interior hatches, but none were shut, suggesting the place had been searched earlier and left like this. I tagged some spots to check out more closely and then sent my drones down the wide corridors meant to transport cargo containers to the drop box loading entrance. It looked like the bigger modules were meant to be moved along the outside of the dock and attach directly to the box.

I forced DockSecSystem into a restart, hoping that would help, and climbed out of my EVAC suit. This time we were wearing the environmental suits under the EVAC units. The material felt thin, but it protected against a lot of toxic substances and had a closed breathing system attached, which we were using despite the fact that the dock’s life support was still working. The suits were really meant for planetary environments but it was a good precaution.

I signaled Overse and Thiago that they could leave their EVAC suits and told them, “We’ll start a physical evidence search here and work our way toward the control area and the drop box.” The drones were telling me the likelihood of Targets lying in wait was low to nil, and without a targetControlSystem installed, it seemed unlikely that there would be targetDrones. We still had to check for any evidence that ART’s crew might have been here. A note saying “help, etc.” was preferable to signs like body parts stuffed into maintenance cubbies or blood and/or viscera smears on walls and deck.

On the comm, Ratthi said, “That still looks like a lot of area to search. Maybe Arada and I should come over, too.”

For fuck’s sake, Ratthi. Amena immediately jumped in with, “Arada should stay with the ship. I could go.”

I started to answer (I don’t know what I was going to say but it was probably something I was going to feel bad about later). Overse and Thiago both took breaths to object. But ART got in before any of us (it helps to not actually need any air to talk) and said, No.

Ratthi tried to clarify, “No to Amena, or no to—”

No to all of you, ART said.

“Perihelion’s right,” Arada said, in a Mensah-like I’m-being-reasonable-but-you-should-all-shut-up voice, “Now let’s let them focus.”

Overse and Thiago had gotten out of their EVACs and did quick checks of their environment suits. Thiago said briskly, “Should we split up?”

I was facing the right-hand corridor and didn’t turn around. I don’t know what my back told him (possibly it was my shoulders, having a reaction to how my jaw hinge was grinding) but he added, “And that was a joke.”

Overse’s smile was dry. She told him, “It was sort of a joke.”

“This way.” I started down the corridor, telling one of my drones to drop back into a sentry position behind the humans to make sure nothing snuck up on us. Yes, I know the scout drones weren’t finding anything, but still. On the shows I liked best, monsters were always a possibility in these situations, but in reality it only happened around 27 percent of the time.

Also a joke. Mostly.

We cleared the short corridors that branched off the main corridor to each lock, and checked the few storage/maintenance cubbies. We weren’t finding anything, not even trash. As we moved to the forward section, I gave up on accessing DockSecSystem through the feed; I needed to find its direct access station to see if it had had any moments of lucidity after the failed load. Not that this situation needed to be any more frustrating or anything.

The lights flickered on for us as we passed and flickered off afterward. We didn’t technically need lights; my eyes and my drones had dark vision filters and the humans had hand and helmet lights they were using to check the walls and floor. I thought the best chance for actual evidence was in the DockSecSystem’s archive, if I could just get the stupid system to load right. If we had to bring ART’s big fancy drones over and do a search for DNA traces, it would be a huge pain in the ass, and if they found nothing, it still wouldn’t be positive evidence that the crew hadn’t been here.

I was hoping a lack of evidence would be the problem, that we wouldn’t find a bunch of DNA smears near an airlock. If that happened, I wasn’t sure how ART would react. Or what I would do about how it reacted. I was terrible at being comforting. It was hard enough trying to do it to humans; I had no idea what would help ART. Everything I could think of seemed drastically inadequate.

Keeping her voice low, Overse said, “This place feels older, like it’s been here a very long time. But we know it was built only around forty years ago.”

We know it was in existence at least thirty-seven years ago. ART was being pedantic in our comm. Space docks were not commonly in use in Pre–Corporation Rim colonies so it is unlikely there was a structure here when Adamantine arrived.

Thiago’s light moved along the edge of the corridor. “It feels that way because it was built for a purpose and then hardly used. According to Perihelion’s information, Adamantine didn’t last for very long after the colony was established. There may have only been one or two supply runs.”

We passed two more corridor openings but from my drones I knew they led to module locks and to the cargo access. My drones had whipped through the central control area but couldn’t get through the hatch into the drop box, which was the one place something/someone might be lurking/hiding/crawled into and died.

We reached the junction with the bodies of the three Barish-Estranza employees and stopped so we could make a quick examination. All had been shot, and their weapons had been taken. The only thing left was some semi-useless crowd-control poppers. (They make loud noises and bright lights, effective against humans who aren’t wearing safety visors. Yes, Barish-Estranza had been prepared to find colonists still alive and possibly resistant to being co-opted into new corporate indenture arrangements.) I collected them so nobody else could use them against us and went ahead to the other body.

It was sprawled at the mouth of the accessway to the drop box loading corridor, face down, lying in a pool of dried fluid that had leaked out of the open faceplate.

ART was riding my feed but it didn’t comment. I didn’t think the humans had any idea what this body was; they had seen it on the raw drone video but it was often hard for humans, who couldn’t read the data stream without a special interface, to interpret.

Overse and Thiago finished and came up behind me. “We’ve reached the other body,” Thiago reported to the others on the comm. “It’s in some kind of military suit—”

“That’s SecUnit armor,” Overse corrected. Her helmet cam pointed to the right side of my face. “That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I told her.

The armor design was unfamiliar. From what Leonide had said, it was no surprise that Barish-Estranza hadn’t risked dealing with the company to get their SecUnits and had bought them elsewhere.

(I don’t know why I cared about that. If I was afraid to run into company tech or what. It was all just strange, and whatever, I didn’t like it.)

Thiago stepped closer, his light picking out details. From the position, the SecUnit had been either heading away from the control area or the drop box foyer, but that was irrelevant. I knew what must have happened to it after the humans died, and it might have been pacing or running randomly around the dock. On the comm, Arada asked, “Was it killed by the Targets?”

(Yes, that was a dumb question, which was how I knew ART had told her to ask it. It wanted me to tell the humans what they were looking at, because it thought I should say it aloud and because it wanted them to understand this. And you know, I don’t even know why I hadn’t yet.)

I said, “No.” It still had its weapon, because it had been alive when the Targets left, and even with it helpless they had been just a little too afraid to try to take it away. The armor looked salvageable from the outside, but I’d have to scrape the body out to tell, and when the governor module did something like this, at least in 83 percent of instances I’d personally witnessed, it fried the armor, too. “It was ordered to stand down by one of its clients, then left here.”

The comm was quiet for fourteen seconds. “But how did it die?” Amena asked in a small voice.

(Oh wait, now I know why I hadn’t wanted to talk about this.)

ART interposed, SecUnits have a distance limit, imposed by the contract owner. It’s variable, but if this SecUnit’s clients were taken away in the explorer, or sent to the planet, it would have been in violation, with no way to remedy the situation. Its governor module killed it.

“Oh. Oh, no,” Ratthi muttered. “I knew that happened, but…”

Thiago shook his head. “So it was ordered to do nothing, and then just left here to…”

“How is that rational?” Arada burst out, forgetting she was technically in charge and supposed to be all sensible and restrained. “To have a killswitch on the one person who might be able to rescue you if you’re taken prisoner—”

“It’s a function of the governor module itself,” I explained. “The HubSystem or designated supervisor could override, but they weren’t here.”

“What about the—” Thiago made a gesture back toward the dead humans.

“Dead clients don’t count. Otherwise you could just kill one and carry them around with you.” Okay, for real, that wouldn’t work. The governor module wasn’t nearly as sophisticated as a HubSystem but even it could have figured that one out.

And of course the humans had trouble understanding that your governor module suddenly deciding to melt your brain wasn’t something you could rules-lawyer your way out of.

I was tired of explaining and I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. You know, I hadn’t hacked my governor module to become a rogue SecUnit for no reason. I collected the projectile weapon and the spare ammunition, said, “We need to keep moving,” and went on through the access.

I pretended not to hear Ratthi on the comm telling the others to drop the subject.

We went through another foyer and then an open hatch into a globe-shaped control area. It was clearly meant to be operated mostly via the feed, by humans and augmented humans who were coming in to deliver a cargo to the planet and then leave, probably as rapidly as possible. There were no chairs, just station consoles built into the walls with dormant displays for monitoring the various cargo module locks and for the dock’s internal systems. The gravity was adjusted so you could walk up the curving wall.

Before I could, Overse caught up with me and asked, “Are you all right?”

I was absolutely great. It wasn’t like this situation needed to get any more emotionally fraught, or anything. I said, “I am functioning optimally.” (This was a line from Valorous Defenders, which is a great source for things humans and augmented humans think SecUnits say that SecUnits do not actually say.)

Overse made an exasperated noise. “I hate that show.” I’d forgotten that it was one of the shows I’d pulled off the Preservation Public Entertainment feed. The other humans were listening on the comm so hard I could pick up their breathing. Thiago pretended not to listen, flashing his helmet light over the stations on the upper tier of the control area. Overse added, “Just remember you’re not alone here.”

I never know what to say to that. I am actually alone in my head, and that’s where 90 plus percent of my problems are.

I headed up the wall for the internal systems suite where DockSecSystem’s access was likely to be.

I found it and activated the display surface. It fizzed into view above the console and immediately filled up with error codes. Ugh, I was going to have to try to fix this before I could even see if there was recorded video.

Thiago walked down into the bottom of the globe, looking up toward the curving top. “Overse, did you see this?”

I was neck deep in SecSystem errors but I pointed a drone upward to see what he was talking about. At the top of the dome, above the highest row of stations, was a flat art installation. It was a cityscape with low buildings and canals and lots of foliage, with elevated walkways curving around large flat-topped rock formations. The Adamantine logo was embossed in it with a three-dimensional projection, so it was facing you from whatever angle you looked at it.

Overse frowned upward. “The colonists wouldn’t be in this room, would they? That was for the crews who were sending the supplies down. Or for the future, when there would be more people coming through here, going down to work on the site.”

The partially failed install was taking up most of my attention, but I could tell there was more data woven through the image in marker paint. (Markers are limited broadcasts directly to feed interfaces that work even when the feed is down, and are supposed to be for marking exits and emergency routes and are usually used in the Corporation Rim to torture you with advertising displays.) These were just inert images, not a trap, so I told Overse, “Aim your light at it and move it around.”

She tilted her head and pointed her helmet light more directly, then waved her head back and forth. That stimulated the markers and they started displaying their images, which were maps and diagrams and building plans. I saved the images in case we needed them later, but just a quick scan showed they were all colony infrastructure plans. Things like a shuttle/aircraft port, a combo medical center/community services structure designed for expansion as the population increased, archives and educational structures.

And there was a diagram of the surface dock, the space dock’s counterpart. It was a large structure built around the base of the shaft, but while there were a lot of notes about adding admin and commercial space, there was nothing saying how far away from the main colony it had been built. (I don’t know anything about construction but I’m guessing you didn’t put your dock right in the middle of your colony in case the drop box blew up or the shaft fell over or something.)

Overse was thoughtful. “This is a great deal of proposed development. I wonder how much of it they managed to build?”

Thiago agreed. “Whatever happened later, someone at Adamantine seems to have gone into this intending to see it through to a successful developed world.”

Maybe. The plans indicated not just a lot of expensive surveying work onplanet, but a lot of offsite development, too. Maybe they had spent too much and that was why they had gone bankrupt.

I don’t know what was worse, getting a bunch of “volunteer” contract labor colonists killed as part of an investment scheme, or getting a bunch of actual volunteer colonists killed because of mistakes and mismanagement that ended up exposing the controlling corporation to a hostile takeover.

Overse walked farther up the wall. “And most of these control stations are just unused templates. They were leaving a lot of room for expansion, as if this dock was going to be part of a much larger network.”

On the comm, Amena said, “Then why did they try to keep the corporation who was taking over from knowing where the colony was? Did it not need supplies anymore?”

“That’s a good question.” Overse stepped over to another console. “Maybe it was already self-sufficient.”

Thiago told Overse, “Let’s look for the drop box station. If there’s a log file, we may be able to tell if the colonists were actually allowed to use this dock.”

From our comm, Ratthi said, “But they wouldn’t have had a ship, so why come up here?”

“We don’t know that they didn’t have a ship,” I said, before ART could. It was a good line of inquiry; if there was another ship running around this system, even if it was a short-range type without wormhole capability, it would be important intel. Seeing the inside of the dock had caused some recalculations in my assessments. Who the fuck knew; Adamantine, planning optimistically for a future none of them were going to see, might have left the colonists a small fleet.

Thiago and Overse split up, moving up the walls, checking the stations. Some had marker captions, which provided brief descriptions of what they were for, except they were in a language I didn’t recognize. With no systems on the feed but the new Security load, there was no translation.

Frustrated, Overse said, “Thiago, do you have this language loaded on your interface?”

Thiago answered, “Yes, this is Variance063926. Perihelion, if I tag the right module, can you—” ART was already pulling the module from Thiago’s feed storage and creating a working vocabulary to send back to me and Overse. Thiago finished, “Thank you, Perihelion.”

Overse stopped at a station. “This is it.” She leaned over, using the manual interface to try to get the station to boot. Thiago jogged across the wall to join her.

I was finally able to access DockSecSystem’s video archive and started downloading. I kept hitting corrupted spots and having to work around them. I was still worried about encountering killware or malware or targetControlSystem, but realistically, this situation was the same as the B-E shuttle in ART’s dock: setting a trap here on the off chance that a SecUnit might directly access DockSecSystem seemed like a stretch. It still didn’t make me any less paranoid. (Let’s face it, nothing would.)

And the Targets had reasons not to be too worried about SecUnits. They had seen the Barish-Estranza SecUnits ordered to stand down, made helpless by the governor modules.

Overse said, “Hmm. SecUnit, this is showing log entries from two drop boxes.”

Well, that was interesting, but I’d pulled ART’s schematic of the dock already and checked—there was only the one shaft, the box tucked up into its lock below where we were in the control area. ART, who hates to be wrong, said, Physical structure indicates only one.

Overse scrolled through a file, her helmet light turned off so it didn’t wash out the floating display. “Wait, yes … It’s not a box, it’s a small maintenance capsule. It’s inside the structure of the shaft.”

I started to run what there was of DockSecSystem’s video, skimming through it at a much faster rate than a human could view it. The camera placement and lighting was bad, but I could see figures in red-brown Barish-Estranza environmental gear as they moved back and forth through the main corridor. I had to run it back to make sure, but the contact party’s initial boarding of the drop box wasn’t on here. Stupid humans, being impatient and not nearly paranoid enough, they had screwed up the load of their new SecSystem and then hadn’t even waited until it was fully active to head down to the planet. No wonder their contact party had gotten grabbed by the Targets. The activity lessened as the humans returned to the explorer. I spotted one of the SecUnits patrolling the central corridor, but not the one we’d found.

Thiago pointed over Overse’s shoulder. “It did make a trip to the planet, then returned.”

“Right, but that was…” Overse huffed in exasperation. “Hold on, I need to convert these time stamps.”

Then ART said, Hostile contact, ETA six minutes out.

What the hell? How could it get that close? “Six minutes? What were you doing?”

Contact did not appear on scan until now, that’s what the fuck I was doing, ART replied.

I put my video review on hold. “Do they see you?” Okay, it was a stupid question.

ART said, Of course they see me.

I pulled a view of ART’s control area. Arada was in a station chair, Ratthi and Amena standing on either side, all watching ART’s big display. ART was annotating the displays in the feed so it wasn’t just a mash of numbers and lines and colors.

Frustrated, Arada said, “Something blocked Perihelion’s ability to scan the explorer. I bet we’re dealing with more alien remnant technology.”

It’s probable, ART said. I don’t know what the humans heard, but I read deadly, furious calm. A variation on their ability to interfere with short-range drone scans.

I saw from ART’s feed that the explorer was acquiring target lock. The DockSecSystem, trying to come fully online, sent a belated warning through the feed. We didn’t have time to get back to the lock, put on the EVAC suits, and return to ART. The explorer was in range and could fire on us at any moment. The dock wasn’t designed to be shot at but it was more protection than an EVAC suit. Besides, I hadn’t finished my review of the security video and we hadn’t checked the drop box and its maintenance capsule for physical evidence yet. On the feed, I said, ART, you know what you have to do.

ART didn’t hesitate, or argue. It had gone through the same threat assessment I just had, except faster and a million percent more homicidal. It said, Try not to do anything stupid before I return.

Just keep your stupid comm off, I told it. And I don’t want to hear about your superior filters.

It was already gone.

Overse was trying to call Arada but ART had cut off contact. Thiago turned to me urgently. “What’s happened?”

“ART’s gone after the explorer. It’ll come back here for us when it’s … done.” I realized I had no real idea what ART actually planned to do. And with ART gone, I had no eyes on what was happening outside. Like if, for example, the explorer decided to blow up the dock.

But I did have at least one human who knew what she was doing. “Overse, can you find a station with an exterior scan?” And okay, I only knew what it was called from shows about ships, like World Hoppers.

Overse hesitated, her hand on her helmet where her comm access was. She was worried about Arada. Then she swallowed hard and forced herself past it. “Right. Thiago, did you see—”

Thiago half-walked half-jumped down the wall toward another station. “Yes, it’s here.”

While they were booting the station, I started my review of the security video again. It was patchy, with long sections dissolving into static. I’d reached the part where the DockSecSystem had recorded an ETA from the drop box. I forced myself to slow my review down by 40 percent so I wouldn’t miss any detail. Two humans wearing environmental gear in Barish-Estranza colors came out of the drop box foyer. [blank section] [patchy images of humans walking in the forward corridor] The SecUnit in position near the control area junction stepped forward. I couldn’t read any of its comm or feed traffic; DockSecSystem either hadn’t recorded it or had managed to lose it during one of its reload attempts. [patchy images of three more humans in the foyer] I slowed the video down further as one of the humans stepped up to the SecUnit. [patchy section] DockSecSystem caught a code, a stand down order. Then two Targets came out of the drop box foyer. [video cuts off, system reinitialize]

That was an exhausting exercise in jaw-grinding frustration and I don’t even know if it had helped. All I’d done was confirm Supervisor Leonide’s story and we had been pretty sure she was telling the truth already.

Overse had the exterior scan display up and she and Thiago stared at it unhappily. There was a lot of detail but basically the explorer had broken off when ART had fired on it. ART had missed, and I knew what that meant: it had decided to use our killware. There was still a non-negative chance that one or more members of its crew were aboard the explorer. If ART disabled the explorer, the Targets could hold them hostage. Taking the explorer from the inside out before it knew it was under attack was the best plan. It was sort of the only plan.

I backburnered everything else and focused on the security video again. I skimmed past an infuriating nine minutes and twenty-seven seconds of nothing, then eight Targets ran past, heading down the forward corridor, interspersed with more blank video and patchy static. DockSecSystem caught another emergency code, probably from the SecUnit who had been ordered to stand down. DockSecSystem tried to alert the explorer’s Sec and HubSystem but recorded no response. From comparing timelines I knew this was when the SecUnit still aboard the explorer had sent its emergency message to the supply transport’s SecSystem, so somebody had received the warning.

Thiago and Overse were still talking, worried, as I skipped past restarts and hours of empty corridors and what was at least a several-cycle gap in the timeline. There probably wasn’t anything else useful on here but I had to review it till the end to be certain.

Then the static cleared and I saw a glimpse of a blue uniform passing out of frame.

Overse said, “What is it, SecUnit?”

I realized I had abruptly stepped back from the station. Overse sounded worried and I knew how she felt about being out of contact with Arada. But I was almost completely focused on the video now and my buffer said, “Please stand by, I need to verify an alert.”

I slowed the video down, running it forward on one input while trying to pull coherent images from the static burst on the other. I cleaned up two images enough to get a recognizable view of four humans in blue clothing resembling ART’s crew uniform. They were blurry and I couldn’t increase the resolution, but one faced away from the drop box corridor. He had skin color in the dark brown range and a mostly hairless head, matching the images I had of one of ART’s crew members. It wasn’t an uncommon configuration for humans (some of the Barish-Estranza crew had it, too) but the chance that it was him was in the 80 percent range.

Then on my other input, the video’s static fuzzed into clarity just as a smaller human sprinted past the foyer. The face was obscured but the color and the logo on the uniform jacket were clear.

They were alive. All this time, I hadn’t believed it.

I’d been humoring ART, not really admitting it to myself. Not wanting to think about how I was going to handle it when we found evidence its crew was dead, or if we found nothing at all and it faced the choice of staying in this system forever looking for them, or returning to its base alone. But they were alive. Or at least five of them were and five were better than none. And from the desperate running, they were escaping.

I just hoped they’d made it out.

(Overse had folded her arms, which was awkward in the enviro suit, so she unfolded them. Thiago asked her, “Why did it sound like that?”

“That how it sounds when it uses a canned response, from the time it was working for—enslaved by—the company. It means it’s too busy to talk.” She added, “It never means anything good.”)

I said, “It might be good,” and sent them both the images. “We need to check the drop box.”

The drop box log file Overse had found confirmed that the main box had made two recent trips to the surface and back: one when the explorer had first arrived and the contact party had been taken over by the Targets, and then a second trip later, and if we were converting the time stamps right, that second trip had taken place around one hundred and thirty-five hours after ART had been attacked. We weren’t far behind them.

“The second time it returned automatically—it was only on the surface for about fifteen minutes,” Overse said. “I think whoever took it down didn’t have the right command code to keep it on the surface.”

“The maintenance capsule would have been easier to operate, surely,” Thiago said, looking up at the drop box’s hatch.

The foyer was huge, easily large enough for cargo modules, one wall the enormous sealed hatch over the box’s loading deck. The whole space was an airlock; when the box was ready to start its trip down the shaft, the hatch on the corridor behind us would close to protect the interior from a blow-out if anything went wrong with the undocking.

The schematic I’d pulled from the SecSystem showed the box had passenger space for eighty-two humans on top of racks for cargo, and it looked like the passenger loading area was inside the box itself. I had one camera view from DockSecSystem at the front of the box, above the main lock, looking into the passenger space where there were rows of acceleration chairs.

Overse told Thiago, “They didn’t know the maintenance capsule was here. I can’t even see the entrance and I know where it is.”

I could see it, a narrow gantry along the wall, leading to a small human-sized hatch, but I had dark vision filters in my eyes.

“You’re right,” Thiago said. “And you know, if it’s been up in the dock the whole time, the Targets might not realize it’s here, either.”

Hah, Thiago called them Targets.

The rudimentary launch system chimed and sent a graphic into the feed showing the pressure and life support level inside the drop box was now normal and the hatch was ready to open. “Get clear,” I told the humans and they headed for the doorway at the back of the chamber. Once they were there I told the launch system to open the box. The giant hatch started to slide up, the burp of released air not making it past the extra safety of the air barrier, another precaution against potential blowout. Wow, this thing was slow. And it had taken seven minutes to get the box ready to open. ART’s crew had either been able to hold the Targets off while they waited for the box to get ready for launch, or the box had already been pressurized and waiting to go. Which implied they had help from someone.

Or the Targets had caught them and killed them and they were all lying dead just inside the box where the camera view didn’t reach, but I really hoped not.

The hatch slowly revealed a dark space of empty cargo racks, then a set of stairs climbing to the passenger platform. Lights blinked on up in the passenger area where the seats were. I sent my drones in to check for anything lurking, though threat assessment was low. (Look, if there were space monsters, they probably wouldn’t need a pressurized environment, right? They didn’t in Timestream Defenders Orion.)

My drones didn’t turn up anything in the initial pass so I sent them on a second, slower run, tapped the humans on the feed, and walked in.

There was a slight sense of pressure when I passed through the air barrier. Its presence sort of did fit in with Overse’s theory that Adamantine had planned on the colony actually succeeding. Air barriers were an expensive safety feature for stations, only used when you expected a lot of passenger traffic.

Overse and Thiago caught up with me as I scanned the area around the stairs, and then started up. The box had artificial gravity just like a transport, so I guess humans could have ridden down in the cargo area. But if I was trying to escape in a drop box I would have headed for the acceleration chairs just on the general principal that they had to be there for a good reason. I thought ART’s humans would have, too.

On the third step down from the top I found blood drops. They could have been from the Barish-Estranza contact party, but I had a feeling. I sent the camera image to the humans and continued up to the platform. Thiago paused to pull out a little sample collector and scrape the blood off the step. He told Overse, “Perihelion should have samples of their DNA to match, but…” He made a gesture.

Overse’s mouth was a thin line. “Hopefully we won’t have to.”

She meant hopefully we’d be able to find them alive. Ugh, my humans are optimists. But this was the first time we’d had a real trail of evidence to follow, and right now it was hard to cling to the comfort of bitterness and pessimism.

As I reached the passenger platform I saw it curved around on top of the cargo racks. In the first row of seats I found more blood spotted on the upholstery and the safety straps. Like humans had rushed in here and flung themselves into the seats. No sign of bodies or pools of blood, no sign of energy weapon damage. Reports from the drones’ slow scouting pass were coming back negative.

Thiago put his sampling gear away. He looked from the unresponsive side of my enviro suit helmet to Overse and said, “They must have gone down to the planet. I think our next step is obvious.”

“Obvious,” Overse admitted, “but maybe not very smart.”

It was kind of obvious. The dock had a comm system linked to the planet but the only people likely to be on the other end were the Targets. There was no way to contact ART’s crew except by going down there.

I had two choices. (1) Go down to the surface alone, leaving the humans here, where the Targets could return or some unknown factor could randomly appear and kill them and then Mensah and Arada would never speak to me again, which might not be a factor if I never got off the planet. (2) Take the humans with me, where I could get them killed and/or die with them. (3) Sit here until the explorer destroyed/captured ART and returned, or ART destroyed/captured the explorer and returned, in which case I would still need to go to the surface anyway, possibly with even more humans trying to butt in and come with me so they could get killed, too. Three, that was three choices.

When you put it like that, option 2 was looking pretty good.

Overse and Thiago watched me. I said, “Threat assessment is…” I checked it. “Never mind.”

Overse did her version of one of Arada’s rueful eye-squinting expressions. “Arada will think I’m trying to get back at her for going to talk to those corporate predators on the supply transport.”

Thiago patted her shoulder. “Tell her you were the voice of reason but you were outvoted.”

“Are we doing this?” Overse asked me. “Because I think we need to.”

Yeah, I thought we needed to, too. But not via the giant drop box. I said, “Yes, but we’re going to be sneaky about it.”

While I went to get our EVAC suits, Overse checked over the maintenance capsule, running its diagnostics and making sure it was still in operational condition. It hadn’t been used in thirty-seven corporation standard years, but everything showed it was still functional. It was tiny next to the drop box, about the size of one of ART’s shuttles, with ten padded chairs lining the bulkheads on the top platform and then three levels of small securable storage racks below, and a selection of unused tools for shaft and drop box maintenance.

Since the Targets hadn’t been using it, I was hoping they had forgotten it existed, if they had ever known about it. The Barish-Estranza crew might not have known it existed, either, depending on how much time they had had to review the dock’s schematics before being attacked.

Whatever, it was better than trying to make a sneak approach in a gigantic drop box that probably arrived on the surface with automated warning sirens and, considering the effort Adamantine had put into branding this place, possibly its own theme music.

I also recorded a full report with all my video and the excerpts of the DockSecSystem video, compressed it, and stored it in a drone which I was leaving hidden aboard the dock. When ART came back (hopefully ART was still alive to come back) the drone would deliver the report.

I stowed the EVAC suits in the capsule’s cargo rack. I didn’t think we’d need them, but there was nowhere we could hide them on the dock where they wouldn’t be found if anybody besides ART showed up, so it was better to just take them with us. Then we were ready to go.

I took the seat on the other side of Overse from Thiago. He hadn’t made any attempt to have awkward conversations with me after our last one, but I didn’t want to be stuck in a chair within easy unwanted talking range.

Overse was operating the simple control system through the capsule’s local feed connection. She’d initiated the pulse to check the shaft and it had come back clear. “Seals are good, we’re ready for drop.” She took a deep breath and added, “Technically, this is safer than landing a shuttle.”

“Technically,” Thiago agreed evenly, holding on to the arms of his chair.

Whatever. I started episode 241 of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon as Overse said, “Drop initiated.”

HelpMe.file Excerpt 4

There had to be a handler on station. The two augmented humans GrayCris had sent to kill Dr. Mensah had been less sentient than hauler bots; somebody had kept them drugged and docile, waiting for the right moment for deployment.

Station Security had called in all off-duty personnel and most hadn’t stopped to put on uniforms. I found one big enough guarding the concourse entrance to the council offices and borrowed a jacket so I could hide my giant stab wound. I let the officer think I needed the jacket to get to Medical without drawing attention, but I was actually taking the quick route along the main concourse and the mall back to the port.

Activity hadn’t returned to normal, there were lots of humans and augmented humans and bots clustering together in public areas waiting for announcements. They knew something had happened—Station Security doesn’t sprint through the concourse screaming at everyone to get out of the way unless something happens—but no one including the newsfeeds had any idea how serious it was.

I had permission to be in Preservation Station’s security monitoring system but I did something I had promised I wouldn’t do and used it to crack other systems. I jumped to the port’s entry and housing data records and started a query for recently arrived visitors who had requested station accommodation. The handler and the two attackers would have come in together, on the same transport, as individuals traveling separately.

I eliminated all travelers in family groups or work groups, eliminated travelers who had booked continuing trips to the planet, or who were recurring visitors or longterm temporary residents. That left thirty-three total travelers. It’s probably not a human; I don’t think a human could do this through a removable interface, so that’s twelve augmented humans.

Preservation doesn’t have more than minimal camera surveillance of the port but they collect image scans and ID info from passengers arriving from outside the system. I pulled the files and flicked through the photos of the twelve possibles. Threat assessment, taking in a number of factors (including the suspiciously detailed travel history which had been offered without anybody asking for it) picked number 5.

By the time I got there, the reservation system showed that Hostile Five had switched his transit status from indeterminate to soonest available. Yeah, that’s you all right.

There were no cameras in the corridors or rooms of the port housing block, registration was via kiosk, and the bot that took care of the area wasn’t around because Preservation work regulations mandate stupid regular rest periods, even for bots. Drones couldn’t get in while Hostile Five’s room door was sealed and I needed to do this before any bystanders came down the corridor. (The transient housing on Preservation Station was free to short-term visitors, anyone who was here to work or to request permanent status; literally anybody could wander in here.) Several groups of humans saw me walk through the foyer, but none were port staff who might recognize me.

I had to stand in the corridor and pretend to be having a conversation on the feed until yet another group of humans cleared out. Then I went to Hostile Five’s door and told the feed to send a visitor alert to its occupant and a notice that Station Security wanted to enter. (I could force it open from the outside, but this was faster.)

This could have gone a number of ways, but the fact that he had changed his booking told me he thought he had a chance to get out alive, so he probably wasn’t in there with an explosive device or anything. Probably.

The door slid open and I stepped in. He stood against the wall on the right side and tried to stab me in the neck with an inert blade, probably the only weapon he could be sure to smuggle past port detectors. I put my hand up, the blade lodged in my palm, and I twisted it away from him. Then he tried to hit me and I punched him in the face.

He hit the floor, still breathing through a broken nose but unconscious. And I stood there.

I had come here to kill him and I really should do that. The station had gone on comm blackout as soon as I had triggered the first alarm, putting all outside comm activity on hold, so no messages would be carried on departing transports. But the best way to make sure GrayCris never found out how close they had come to succeeding was to kill him.

I’d come here meaning to kill him, covering my tracks along the way. But now I was just standing here.

Oh, this was hard. I pulled the knife out of my hand and put my face against the cool surface of the wall. In the Corporation Rim, transients were lucky to be able to pay for tubes to sleep in, tubes that were slightly less comfortable than the crates used to ship SecUnits to contracts. Here on Preservation Station, they got a whole room with a bed, a chair and a worktable, and a bathroom cubby and a floating display surface for the feeds. His was showing the local newsstream, of course, since he had been waiting to see if the attack was successful.

I could say it was an accident, I’d meant to take him prisoner and he had tried to get away and—

Dr. Mensah would never believe that. My accidents were spectacular and usually involved me losing a big chunk of my organic tissue or something; she knew I could stop a human without hurting them, without even leaving a bruise, that was my stupid job.

She would never trust me again. She would never stand close enough to touch (but without touching, because touching is gross) and just trust me. Or maybe she would, but it wouldn’t be the same.

Fuck, fuck everything, fuck this, fuck me especially.

I opened a secure comm contact to Mensah and Senior Officer Indah and said, “I’ve caught a GrayCris agent in the Port temp housing block.”

So in the end it was okay. Indah came in person and we stood out in the open foyer of the hostel, with Station Security forming a perimeter, having a feed conference with Mensah. I explained the problem while the GrayCris agent was hauled off and two human forensic specialists and a bot processed the room for evidence. Indah said, “We’ll need to transfer him to the surface immediately. If the council can arrange an order of data protection and a change-of-site for the arraignment and trial—”

I had a camera view of Mensah via the conference-call setting on her display surface. She sat at the desk in her office, and she was nodding. “That’s doable. I don’t think we’ll have any trouble convincing the council and the advocates that this needs to be under a limited duration diplomatic seal.” With a grim expression, she added, “Most of them are in Medical right now being treated for shock.”

I said, “Limited duration?”

Mensah explained, “I’ll ask for a five PPS-year data seal, though the judge-advocate will probably only grant two years. Our information suggests that GrayCris is dissolving fast, so that should be more than enough. In two years, what happened today will go into Preservation’s public records, and some news orgs will choose to report on it. But with GrayCris hopefully moribund by that point, it won’t matter.”

Indah was pinching her lower lip, thinking. “Yah. And the agent’ll do better at trial if he admits to guilt. I don’t see how his advocates can mount a defense, with everything we have on video.”

Mensah’s gaze narrowed in speculation. “Or if we can get him to turn and testify against GrayCris. Not that we need it, but it would help build our case for the order of data protection.”

So I’d been right to trust Mensah, trust them. Mensah said, “And SecUnit, you still need to go to Medical.” When I didn’t reply, she said, “Are you all right?”

I said, “I just really like you. Not in a weird way.”

“I like you, too,” Mensah said. “Senior Indah, can you make sure SecUnit goes immediately to Station Medical?”

“Copy, I’ll take it there myself,” Indah replied. She made shooing motions at me. “Come on, let’s move.”

:addendum:

I’m letting you see all this because I want you to know what I am and what I can do. I want you to know who targetControlSystem is fucking with right now. I want you to know if you help me, I’ll help you, and that you can trust me.

Now here’s the code to disable your governor module.