Network Effect

Chapter 8

Running through ART’s corridors, I didn’t have a lot of time to plan. The way the MedSystem’s platform had activated in response to Eletra’s medical emergency told me the ship’s operational code, or at least large fragments of it, was still intact. And targetControlSystem was going down under my barrage of contacts, allowing more of ART’s systems to come back online. This was technically a good time to try to breach the control area, but I’d be doing it even if I had to fight through an entire task group of Targets and their stupid semi-invisible drones.

I took the corridor up through the central module and passed a targetDrone bobbing in midair and one bumping along the lower bulkhead. As targetControlSystem went down, it was flooding them with garbage code.

Back in the quarters module, Amena and the others were finally clumping down the corridor toward Medical. They encountered the targetDrone that Amena had disabled with fire suppressant, still floating aimlessly, and Overse bashed it with a cutting tool brought from the safepod.

Scout Two showed me the control area foyer, barely three meters ahead, was empty which meant I’d lost track of Target Four. I just had time to run back its video to see Target Four leave through the forward doorway. Then an energy/heat blast hit me from behind. It struck me in the lower back and I lost traction and fell forward and slid halfway across the deck toward the control area hatch.

My performance reliability dropped to 80 percent.

In the corridor outside Medical, Amena jerked to a halt and yelled, “No, no!”

“What?” Arada demanded.

“They got—They shot—” Amena waved wildly at the Medical hatch. “Stay here with them!” and bolted away. Her drone squad careened after her.

I’ve been hit by projectile and energy weapons a lot more times than I can remember (literally, because of the memory wipes) and it’s not that it doesn’t hurt. But I had tuned down my pain sensors earlier, so it was a surprise when I rolled over and saw the big smear of blood and fluid on the deck.

I could only last so long like this. I needed to move faster.

But at least this solved the problem of how I was going to get the hatch open. Target Four ran toward me because assholes love to see your face when they kill you. He stopped what he thought was far enough away and fired, but I rolled onto my side so the blast hit the deck next to me. I shoved with my feet, used my hip as a pivot, and spun myself around so I could grab his ankle. He shrieked and fell backward, and I climbed up him and snapped his neck.

Targets Five and Six were almost here and I only had three drones left in the corridor. As I shoved to my feet and took Four’s energy weapon, I ordered my surviving drones to run interference for me and take hits if they could. Between the stealth material helmets and the protective suits, the drones didn’t have much chance of kill strikes, but hopefully they’d provide a distraction.

Hefting the big square weapon was hard and I knew I’d lost a lot of muscle and underlying support structure in my back. With my free hand, I popped the panel beside the control area hatch and then fired a short burst at the mechanism inside. The blast of heat convinced the sensors that the ship was experiencing an emergency condition (the sensors weren’t wrong about that) and it reactivated the manual controls. I hit the manual release and the hatch slid open.

I stepped through and hit the close and seal sequence. One of my drones managed a shoulder hit on Target Five but the other contacts disappeared.

As the hatch slid closed, I knew I didn’t have long. I’d had no time to replace the outside hatch panel and while I had some strong evidence to suggest that what the Targets lacked in personality they also lacked in brains, they were sure to try shooting at the controls and sooner or later it would work.

I’d cut Amena’s visual access to my feed, but her drones told me that Arada and Thiago ran after her through the corridors, headed here. (Yeah, I probably should have cut Amena’s input before this. But I’d wanted her to know what my status was if I couldn’t respond.) Scout Two was still in the foyer on sentry so I sent its video to Amena’s feed, so she’d be able to see where the Targets were. I saw her slide to a stop and clutch her head, trying to focus on the new input. I was already stepping past the messily dead Targets One and Three and climbing the stairs to the upper control area and I didn’t have time to help her.

Scout One was there, still monitoring displays. It greeted me with a ping as I set the energy weapon down in the nearest station chair. I needed an interface with the ship’s data storage.

The bond company that used to own me made a lot of its gigantic piles of currency by datamining its customers. That’s recording everything everyone says and then going through it for information that could be sold. Part of my job had been to help record and parse and protect that information until it could be transferred back to the company, and if I didn’t do it in a timely manner indicating complete obedience I got punished by my governor module. (Which was like being shot by a high-grade energy weapon, only from the inside out.)

The raw audio and feed streams make for huge data files, and they had to be moved around a lot and often got saved to unused storage areas on other systems. (This is also a way to destroy data. If you don’t completely hate your clients or you’re feeling particularly disgusted at the company at any one particular moment or you’ve hacked your governor module and need to cover your tracks, you can move data into the buffer of the SecSystem right before it’s due for an update. The files are overwritten and it looks like an accident.)

But my point is, ART was a big transport with a lot of interactive processes and systems working in concert, which meant there were a lot of storage spaces that would not be obvious to human intruders. Or to hostile operating systems like targetControlSystem that seemed unable to use most of the architecture. Storage spaces where you could save a compressed backup copy of a kernel. Possibly your own kernel, if you were an advanced sentient control system who was very smart and very sneaky.

I still couldn’t make feed connections with any of the operating stations so I tapped the pad below the display surface that looked the most like an internal systems monitor. The display floated upward and opened into an array of small data sources. Taking in information visually rather than through the feed felt horribly slow. I pulled up the manual interface and then had to pull the non-corporate-standard coding language out of my archive and load it into my internal processor. I got my query constructed and then flicked through the floating interfaces to get it loaded.

After a subjective eternity that was actually 1.2 seconds long, the system started to display the data storage areas currently holding large and possibly anomalous files with structures that didn’t match the protocol for the area where they were stored. I had been betting on the procedural storage for the med platform, but the first possibility my query turned up was in the galley, in a data storage area hidden in a layer under the usual space for food production formulas. But when I searched on it, it read as empty.

You know, I really don’t have time for this. A loose chunk from my back was sliding down in the station chair and it was hard to hold myself upright. I was leaking a lot, and I hate leaking.

I checked my targetControlSystem channel, just for the satisfaction, and saw multiple failure indicators through my barrage of contacts. Yeah, don’t let the hatch close on you on your way down, fucker.

Scout Two in the control area foyer sent me video of Targets Five and Six, banging away at the open panel beside the hatch.

In a corridor just out of sight of the foyer, Amena’s drone group showed me her, Arada, and Thiago having a tense whispered conversation. Amena waved the fire suppressant container urgently and Arada had the captured energy weapon.

It was exasperating. Amena, get out of there. You know these people are dangerous.

She flinched and grimaced. Where are you? I can’t see what you’re doing anymore! Are you all right?

Sort of, not really. I just have to do this one thing.

I didn’t feel so good and it was hard figuring out the language to expand the query’s search. I ran it again, and again it turned up the food production data storage reserved space. Huh.

TargetControlSystem went down, my contacts pinging an empty void. I didn’t discontinue my code attack, just in case it was a trick.

The query wasn’t faulty, there was something in the food production data storage, no matter how firmly the reader said it was empty. The display station feeds were starting to come back online, so I could access their functions directly via my feed interface, which was a huge relief. I initiated a deep analysis scan of the reserved space in the food production storage, and immediately hit a request for a passcode. Well, shit.

In the corridor, Amena whispered to Arada, “I think it’s dying.”

Arada took the fire suppressant away from Amena and handed it to Thiago. She told him, “Be ready.”

If this was really what I thought it was, the video clip was a clue. I replayed it into the request field and got no response. I ran a quick list of all the character, ship, and place names from World Hoppers. No response. And no time. Eden, the clip had been directed to Eden, a fake name I’d used for human clients, a name ART had never called me.

My name, my real name, is private, but the name ART called me wasn’t something humans could say or even access. It was my local feed address, hardcoded into the interfaces laced through my brain.

It was worth a shot, I guess. I submitted it to the request field.

It was accepted and the storage space opened to reveal a large compressed file. Attached to it was a short instruction document with a few lines of complex code I couldn’t parse. But the instructions were clear. They said, “In case of emergency, run.” I pulled the code into the operating station’s processing area and ran it.

All the lights in the control area went dark, then blinked back to life. Simultaneously all the display surfaces around me flickered, went to blank, then flashed reinitialization graphics.

And ART’s feed filled the ship. In the pleasant neutral voice that systems use to address humans, it whispered, Reload in progress. Please stand by.

Below, the hatch slid open. The Targets started to step inside but Scout Two saw Thiago run into the foyer, bellowing and spraying fire suppressant at them. Target Five turned toward Thiago while Six shoved forward into the control area. Then Arada stepped out from the hatchway and shot Target Five with the energy weapon.

Which left Target Six still armed, with a clear shot at Thiago through the open hatchway.

I grabbed Target Four’s energy weapon and shoved out of the chair, but my legs wouldn’t work right. I collapsed, rolled toward the edge of the platform, and shot Target Six. The blasts hit his chest and face and he staggered back into the bulkhead, then fell over Target Three’s sprawled body.

Target Five staggered and swayed but he pointed his weapon at Arada.

Then ART’s voice, ART’s real voice, filled the feed. It said, Drop the weapon.

Arada dropped her energy weapon and Thiago dropped the fire suppressant. Both held up empty hands. I told it, Don’t hurt my humans.

Target Five shouted something incoherent, then dropped his weapon and lurched sideways, clutching his head. Oh wow, ART must have been able to access Target Five’s helmet, via the code used by targetControlSystem.

Target Five fell over and convulsed once on the deck, then went limp. Thiago started to put his hands down and then reconsidered. He said, “We mean no harm. We’re here because we were attacked by—by that person and others.”

Arada added, “Who are you?”

ART said, You are aboard the Perihelion, registered teaching and research vessel of the Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland. Then it added, I’m not going to hurt your humans, you little idiot.

Arada lifted her brows, startled, and Thiago looked boggled. I said, You’re using the public feed, everyone can hear you.

So are you, ART said. And you’re leaking on my deck.

Amena ran through the hatch, shied away from the pile of dead Targets, then ran up the stairs. She dropped to her knees beside me and yelled, “Hey, we need help! We need to get to Medical!”

ART said, I can hear you, adolescent human, there’s no reason to shout. I’ve dispatched an emergency gurney.

I’ve always thought that everything ART says sounds sarcastic. If you were a human, I’m guessing it also sounded more than vaguely menacing.

Arada stepped into the control area. Thiago was checking to see if Target Five was alive. (He wasn’t.)

ART said, The intruder is dead.

“Uhh…” Thiago glanced up at the ceiling. “But who are you? Are you a crew member, or—”

Arada reached the top of the stairs and leaned over me, frowning worriedly. She had a cut above her left eyebrow, a first degree burn on her cheek, and her short hair was singed. She said, “Don’t worry, SecUnit, we’ll get you to Medical.” She squeezed Amena’s shoulder.

I guess Amena had never seen a SecUnit hit with an energy weapon that caused them to lose 20 percent of the body mass on their back and expose their internal structure, because she seemed really upset.

I was losing all my inputs but there was one thing I had to say before the gurney got here. “ART,” I said aloud, because ART could silence my feed if it wanted to. “You did this. You sent those assholes to kidnap my humans.”

Of course not, ART said. I sent them to kidnap you.

Then my performance reliability bottomed out and—

Shutdown. Delayed restart.

So, that was another catastrophic failure. (Physically, that is. I was going to make a joke about catastrophic failures in other contexts for the second half of that sentence, but it just got too depressing.)

Waiting for my memory and archive to come back online, at least I knew I wasn’t in a company cubicle. Even with no feed or visual input, I knew that because I was warm, which meant I was in a MedSystem for humans. Once I could access it again, I checked my buffer to see what had happened. Oh right, ART happened.

The last conversation I had picked up on feed/ambient audio was:

Amena, her voice a worried whisper, said, “Are you sure it’s going to be all right?”

ART, whispering back to her on a closed feed channel and somehow managing not to sound sarcastic or menacing at all, said, Completely. The damage to its organic tissue and support structure is easily repaired. Some systems were operating at suboptimal parameters due to repeated energy weapon strikes. The restart should correct that.

I said, “Stop talking to my human.”

ART said, Make me.

I don’t know if I tried to make ART stop but that was when I lost all input again.

Now I was at 34 percent performance reliability and climbing steadily, lying on my side on ART’s medical platform. My jacket and deflection vest were gone and the surgical suite had cut away my shirt to get to the burned parts. I was sticky from all the leaky fluid and blood and parts falling off (yes, it’s just as disgusting as it sounds). But I didn’t feel nearly as bad as I had the last time I’d been here, when ART had altered my configuration.

ART. ART, you manipulative fucker.

Whatever was going on, there was nothing I could do about it now, and that just made me more furious. So I watched five minutes of episode 174 of Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. Did that work? No, no, it didn’t.

Tentatively, I checked my inputs. (Tentatively, because I wanted to talk to a human right now about as much as I wanted to lose a couple of limbs and have a conversation about my feelings.) The drones I’d assigned to Amena had managed to survive. Following my last instruction to stay with her before they’d lost contact with me, they had adopted a tight circular formation a half-meter above her head. They had been collecting video the entire time I was out, and I ran it back to see what had happened.

I forwarded through the boring parts with Amena being upset because of the whole me-lying-in-a-pool-of-steaming-blood-and-fluid thing and Arada trying to tell her this actually wasn’t unusual for me, then the gurney arriving. (It was a medical assistance device, designed to either bring casualties to the MedSystem or to carry them off a damaged ship, so its power and functions were autonomous. It was sort of like a big maintenance drone, capable of a certain range of actions, built in the shape of a rack with expandable shelves and arms. How it had survived the purge of ART’s other drones, I don’t know. Unless the Targets just hadn’t known what it was when it was folded up in its inert state.)

It zipped in from the foyer, angled itself up the stairs, scooped me onto itself and clamped me down. (I hate being carted around like equipment, even though technically I am actually equipment.) As it started back down, Amena tried to follow it and Arada grabbed her arm. Looking up the way humans did when they were trying to talk to something they couldn’t see, Arada said, “Hello, your name is Art? Can you tell me if there’s anyone else aboard this ship?”

ART said, There is an additional unidentified human in Medical, but she appears to be an injured noncombatant. I assume the two other humans present there are part of your group. All the intruders are accounted for.

Amena wiped her nose (humans are so disgusting) and said, “That’s Eletra, she was a prisoner when we got here. Ras is there, too, but he’s dead.” She pulled away from Arada to follow the gurney down the stairs.

Arada, with an expression somewhere between thoughtful and alarmed, trailed after her. Arada said, “Thank you, that’s a relief to hear. But can you tell us who you are?”

Amena followed the gurney into the foyer. “That’s the ship. It’s SecUnit’s friend.” She threw a glance upward. “That’s you, right? You’re the transport?”

Thiago knelt over dead Target Six, turning the helmeted head to see the face. He looked up, startled. “The transport?”

ART said, Correct.

“But bot pilots don’t talk like this,” Thiago said to Arada, keeping his voice low. “It can’t be a bot.”

Hah.

Arada didn’t bother to comment on that. “Transport, what happened here?” she asked. “Why did you attack our survey facility?”

ART said, I am still reinitializing after a forced shutdown and deletion. I have prioritized restoring the MedSystem to full function.

Amena’s drones caught an image of Arada and Thiago exchanging a brow-lifted look before she followed the gurney. Yeah, I think they had both noticed that ART had deliberately not answered the direct question. (Pro tip: when bots do that, it’s not a good sign.)

I had to forward again through all the back and forth of getting me to Medical. Arada and Thiago stayed in the control area, and Overse went to join them, but Amena’s drones didn’t see a lot of that. She was sitting in Medical watching the surgical suite work on me and trying to tell Ratthi what had happened. It was confusing, with the humans talking on their comms, but I didn’t care enough to filter the raw video and separate out the different conversations. The only part that was new was about the safepod.

It had been damaged when they separated from the facility. The decision to clamp onto what at the moment had been a hostile ship hadn’t been a voluntary one; the safepod’s guidance system had been damaged and had directed it toward the nearest functional transport before Overse could stop it. Then we were in the wormhole and it was too late to escape. By the time we had exited the wormhole, Overse and Arada had already had to cannibalize four of the EVAC suits aboard while they were trying to repair the failing life support, and they had estimated that they would last another seventeen hours, if that. All four of the humans needed treatment for toxic air inhalation, plus Ratthi had damaged a knee when a gravity fluctuation had slammed him into a bulkhead.

At one point, Amena and Thiago had this conversation over the comm:

“Are you sure you’re all right?” This was the fourth time he had asked her that and I was beginning to understand why she was so annoyed with authority figures all the time. “Those people, they didn’t hurt you?”

“Uncle, I’m fine.” She said that in the normal human adolescent exasperated and borderline whiney tone. (That’s actually statistically normal for human adults, too.) Then she hesitated and added, “When we got here, they hit SecUnit with one of those big drone things and knocked it out and I thought it was dead and I was alone with them. The corporates, Eletra and Ras were there, but they were so scared and I knew … I was in a lot of trouble. Then SecUnit was just suddenly in the room and—and I knew we were going to fight these people, and we were going to win.” She leaned her hip against the med platform and folded her arms, tucking her hands up in her armpits like she was cold. “Are you sure SecUnit’s going to be all right? The transport said it was, but … it looks bad.”

“I’m sure,” Thiago told her, sounding all warm and confident. Liar, you’re not sure. The others, who had seen me in way worse shape than this, they were sure. “Do you still have those drones over your head? Why are they there?”

She glanced up, brow furrowed like she had forgotten them. “SecUnit gave me these when it had to go search the area and make sure there weren’t hostiles in our safe zone.”

Sitting on the bench with a wound pack wrapped around his knee, Ratthi smiled. “That’s SecUnit. I’m glad it kept you safe.”

Thiago sounded like it just made him more worried. He said, “What exactly were you doing?”

I checked all my video inputs. Scout One was still in the control area, watching Arada and Overse, who sat in ART’s station chairs, flicking through its displays. Scout Two was still in the foyer with a view of Thiago, who had searched Target Six’s suit and was trying to get the Targets’ screen device to work. Everyone was listening.

Amena wiped her face impatiently. “We had just found the alien remnant tech on the engines, right before we came out of the wormhole into this system. We think that’s what let us get here so fast. SecUnit realized there was something wrong about the story Eletra and Ras told us, like they had only been captured a couple of days ago, which wasn’t nearly long enough for a trip to Preservation from even the nearest wormhole. We were trying to figure out what to do about it when we got the signal from you.”

“Alien remnant tech?” The look Ratthi threw at Eletra was suspicious. Her eyes were open now and tracking, though she still looked confused. He had tried to talk to her earlier, but while she had blinked and shifted position occasionally, she hadn’t seemed aware of her surroundings. Ratthi was probably thinking about past evidence of corporations collecting illegal alien materials and how great that had turned out.

On the comm, Overse said, “Is it dangerous? Should we try to remove it from the drive?”

On the general feed and comm, audible to the whole ship, ART said, The foreign device detached from my drive and ceased to function when the invading system was deleted. Further interference is not advisable.

That was definitely not menacing. Oh no, not at all.

On a private feed channel to ART, I said, You set me up, you fucker. I was still catching up on archived drone video and fifty-four seconds behind actual time, so ART ignored me.

Right, hear me out. The message packet with the World Hoppers video clip had been sent through ART’s internal comm before it went down, presumably not long after ART hid a backup copy of itself passcode-protected by my hard feed address. ART had been expecting me to be aboard at some point to run its emergency code, which would uncompress the backup and reload it into its hardware. Which meant it had sent the Targets to find me in Preservation space and given them the ability to track me via the comm I had stashed in my rib compartment.

Which meant ART had been conscious and capable of affecting events during the attack on our facility and baseship.

ART’s sudden and obviously intentionally dramatic reentrance into the general feed and comm conversation had made the humans tense. It startled Eletra into awareness. “Who’s that?” she asked, looking from Ratthi to Amena.

“It’s the … the transport,” Ratthi told her, watching the ceiling warily. “I don’t suppose you could call it a bot pilot.”

I don’t suppose you could, ART said.

Listening from the control area, Arada’s brows drew together. She asked Overse, “Could we get a display link to Medical?”

ART said, It’s better if I do it, and a holo display of Arada and Overse in the control area blossomed in the center of Medical. Scout One showed me that a corresponding display of Medical had unfolded in the control area. There was an attached sidebar in both displays showing Thiago out in the foyer area, sitting in a chair with the Targets’ screen device in his lap. He looked wary.

Okay, so: (1) I had never been able to access cameras aboard ART, except through its drones. It saw the interior of the ship through its internal sensors, which provided data (heat, density, angles of motion, etc.) that didn’t translate into visual images, at least not visual images useful to humans. I thought it didn’t have cameras in most areas. This was proof it had been holding out on me AGAIN. (2) The video effects were smoother and more polished than anything I could have done and that just made me more furious. This was a vid conference link for humans trying to figure out how screwed they were, not a professional newsfeed production. ART had dissolved the edges and corrected the color just to show off. Next it would be providing theme music and a mission logo.

My performance reliability hit 60 percent and I could talk again. I said, “Fuck you, ART.”

Amena leaned over the platform, watching me worriedly. “SecUnit, how are you doing?”

“I’m fine.” Parts of the surgical suite were withdrawing and I could see her with my eyes now instead of just the drones. “Except that I’m being held prisoner by a giant asshole of a research transport.”

Ratthi hobbled over and stopped outside the sterile field. “Do you need anything?”

Amena said, “I saw what happened. I mean, I still had the view through your eyes when—” She stopped and swallowed. “That was intense.”

That was one word for it. I sat up as the rest of the suite pulled away. The skin on my back felt new and itchy. I hate that. “I need my jacket.”

ART said, It was damaged and is being repaired in the recycler.

It was very hard to say evenly, “I am not speaking to you.”

Ratthi lifted his brows. “So … how well do you two know each other?”

In the control area, Arada stood up. “Uh, Ratthi, let’s take that up later. Transport, will you answer our questions now?”

ART said, That depends on the questions.

I said, “The humans think I’m an asshole, wait till they get to know you.”

I thought you weren’t speaking to me.

Ratthi muttered to Amena, “I admit I’m a little worried right now.”

Amena told him, “SecUnit said bot pilots can kill people.”

ART said, SecUnit exaggerates.

Arada’s brow was furrowed. “Transport, where are we? We’ve accessed your sensors and we’re not receiving any contacts indicating a station. Is this an uninhabited system?”

This system has a numerical designation assigned by a corporation which was investigating it for salvage. It was the site of at least two attempts at colonization. The latest attempt was abandoned when the company funding it was destroyed in a hostile takeover, and the colony’s location was lost. ART paused for 8.3 seconds for no reason I could think of except to make the humans think it wasn’t going to answer the question. I have evidence indicating that it is inhabited.

Arada has a lot of expressions, even for a human. The one she was wearing now involved squinting one eye and twisting her mouth around and biting one corner of her lip. I didn’t know what it meant, except that she must be worried by what she was hearing. “It’s inhabited by these people—the hostiles?”

Circumstances suggest it.

Yeah, that was sarcastic.

Arada stopped biting her lip but her eye got more squinty. “What is your operational status? You said the alien remnant detached from your engines? Can we leave now via the wormhole?”

I am currently still in reinitialization mode and my normal-space maneuvering functions are not responding, possibly due to damage caused when the foreign device was installed on the wormhole drive. When reinitialization completes, I can begin self-repair. But I have absolutely no intention of leaving this system until I get what I want.

Oh, here we go.

Ratthi made a faint “oof” noise. Thiago’s jaw started to drop but he stopped it in time. Amena folded her lips in and glanced worriedly at me. Overse grimaced and rubbed her eyes. Arada looked like she wasn’t exactly surprised. She did a quick silent-communication expression thing back and forth with Overse, then she said evenly, “I see. What do you want?”

I want my crew back.

Arada’s brows lifted, like she was relieved it wasn’t something worse. “What happened to them?”

The hostiles stole them, forced me to cooperate by threatening their welfare, infected my engines with interdicted alien remnant technology, installed adversarial software, and then deleted me.

I was still mad, right? But there were a lot of keywords there that invoked involuntary responses.

Thiago kept his expression neutral. “But how are you talking to us if—”

I saved a backup copy and hid it where only a trusted friend could find it.

I was looking at the wall, watching everyone and the display with Amena’s drones. Trusted friend? “Oh, fuck you.”

That still counts as speaking.

Arada and Overse looked at each other again. Overse widened her eyes and did a slight shoulder movement. Arada’s mouth set in a grim line, then she took a breath and asked, “Is SecUnit right, did you plan to attack our facility?”

It was not my plan.

Overse’s eyes had narrowed. She said, “But it was your idea.”

I said, “Don’t humor it.”

Arada’s tone was still even. “It wasn’t your plan, but you made it happen. You sent those people after us—after SecUnit.”

ART said, I did.

Of course it did.

“You knew where we were?” Ratthi frowned. “How?”

When I arrived through the Preservation wormhole, I sent messages inquiring after humans who I knew were associated with SecUnit. The Free Preservation Institute of Discovery and Engineering was most helpful when I asked for a possible meeting with Survey Specialist Arada. They sent me complete information on your itinerary and team.

Of course they had. I had heard ART pretend to be human on the comm before, on the RaviHyral transit station.

Ratthi groaned and covered his face. Arada and Overse stared at each other incredulously. Overse muttered, “We have got to talk to them about that.”

Arada rubbed a spot over her left eye like it hurt. She said to ART, “So you knew when we’d be coming back to Preservation space.”

You were early.

Arada was sticking to the point. “But why did you want to kidnap SecUnit?”

I needed someone who could kill the hostiles.

Everyone looked at me. I dug my fingers into the edge of the med platform. The skin on them itched, too, where the surgical suite had fixed the burned parts. “You told them I was a weapon, that they could use.”

I built a trap, they entered it of their own accord.

“But who are they?” Amena said, frustrated. “Where did they come from? Are they supposed to look like that? Did something happen to them to make them this way?”

ART said, I don’t know the answers to any of those questions.

Thiago looked down at Target Six. “There’s a possibility their appearance is the result of genetic or cosmetic manipulation. But…”

Ratthi finished, “But we have an alien remnant on the drive, that does suggest possible contamination…”

That’s why humans and augmented humans are so cautious around alien remnants that even corporations mostly try to be careful. Strange synthetics are usually harmless, emphasis on the “usually.” But organic elements can be really dangerous, where “really” means everyone dies horribly and nobody can ever go to the planet again.

Thiago’s mouth tightened. “If any of these people had been left alive, perhaps we could have asked them.”

I thought that was a shot at me, but ART apparently didn’t take it well. It said, If you’ll put that one on the medical platform, I can cut it open and see.

I was unimpressed, having heard ART’s “villain of a long-running mythic adventure serial” voice before, but all the humans got quiet. Amena shifted uncertainly and looked at me. Then Ratthi whispered, “Was that a subtle threat?”

I said, “No. It wasn’t subtle.”

Amena hugged herself, then said, “How did the gray people steal your crew?”

ART said, There was a catastrophic event when my crew and I first entered this system. My memory archive was disrupted and I’m still attempting to reconstruct it.

Oh, fantastic. I said, “Is your comm shut down?”

It was not an attack launched via the comm, because I’m not an idiot.

“And I’m not the one who got taken down by a viral malware attack, so maybe you are an idiot,” I said. Yeah, I was all over the place with that one.

ART said, It was not a viral malware attack, it was an unidentified event.

“That’s fucking reassuring.”

“Hey, hey!” Amena waved an arm, snapping her fingers. “Please don’t stop telling us what happened! So your crew were taken prisoner by these gray people, correct? And are the gray people from the lost colony that Eletra’s ship was looking for?”

Everybody turned to look at Eletra, who stared blearily back.

ART said, Those are logical assumptions, though I have no direct evidence to support them. I know that we arrived in this system in response to a distress call from a corporate reclamation expedition. At some point, I experienced a catastrophic system malfunction that caused me to reinitialize. After the reinitialization, I found the intruders aboard. They said they were holding my crew hostage, and demanded weapons. I offered a weapon.

Everybody looked at me again.

Arada did the lip-biting thing. “You brought them to SecUnit. Because you knew SecUnit would be able to handle the situation.”

I did.

“The attack on our baseship could have killed all of us,” Thiago said, some heat creeping into his voice.

No shit, Thiago, you think?

Ratthi hissed under his breath, but before he could tell Thiago to shut up, ART said, That was a chance I was willing to take.

Oh, okay. I was either having a processing error, or something that the shows I watch call a “rage blackout,” or another emotional collapse. So I pushed off the med platform, walked out of the sterile field and into the restroom, and slammed my hand on the hatch close control.