Rogue Protocol

Chapter Three

I USED THE STATION’S hauler-bot delivery passage to get through the derelict mall and back down to the embarkation zone. The shuttle was docked in the Port Authority area and fortunately there was a working security camera. I was able to get a view of the area and see when it was clear. From Miki’s feed I knew that two crew members were up on the control deck running a pre-flight check and the others were still in their station lab space doing their last check list.

I froze the camera’s feed just long enough to sprint across the shadowy embarkation zone and reach the lock. I submitted the entry code Miki had supplied. The lock cycled open, letting out a breath of recycled air that my scan said was much cleaner than what was on the station. It sure smelled better. I stepped inside, closed the lock, and deleted my entry from the log.

I was listening in on Miki’s feed connection with the human assessment team. I heard Kader, one of the two augmented human pilots up on the shuttle’s flight deck, say, Hirune, is that you?

Hirune replied, What? I’m still in the PA. We’re about to come down.

Oddness, I thought I heard the hatch open.

An entry’s not in the log, the other pilot, Vibol, added. I think your ears are confused.

Now I have to check it out to prove you wrong, Kader told her.

I was already down the passage to the work space, past the bio labs to the supply storage. There was a slot for an onboard hauler bot, but since the cargo space had been converted to labs, the bot had been offloaded. It was more roomy than the supply locker on Ship, and at least I could sit on the deck and lean against the wall, even if I couldn’t stretch my legs out. I didn’t actually need to stretch, but it was nice. It was also completely dark, but with a lively feed in my head, that wasn’t a problem.

Miki asked, Are you okay, Consultant Rin?

I checked again to make sure our connection was secure, that the humans couldn’t hear it and none of the augmented humans could pick up an echo. It was, because I had control of Miki’s feed, but I’d probably keep checking every time it talked to me because that was just the kind of cycle I was having. I’m fine. You can call me Rin. It was slightly less annoying than “Consultant Rin.” It hadn’t been annoying when Tapan, Rami, and Maro had called me Consultant, but … I don’t know, everything was annoying right now and I had no idea why.

Okay, Rin! Miki said. We’re friends, and friends call each other by name.

Maybe I did know why.

I watched through Miki’s eyes as it helped the expedition bring the last few pieces of their equipment and testing supplies down. They loaded it all through the airlock and stowed it away. I listened to them talk on the feed, and they seemed excited to be finally on their way. There were four researchers and two shuttle crew, all long-term employees of GoodNightLander Independent who had worked together before, who had been waiting impatiently here for their security detail to show up. Don Abene grabbed Miki’s arms at one point and smiled into its camera. I was glad I hadn’t made any attempt to control Miki’s movements, because my recoil was so immediate and instinctive I whacked my head against the wall of my storage space.

(Nobody grabs SecUnits. I hadn’t realized this was a perk until now.)

I’m still not good at telling human ages just by looking. Don Abene’s warm brown skin was lined at the corners of her mouth and eyes, and her long dark hair had strands of white in it, but for all I knew it was a cosmetic choice. She laughed and her dark eyes crinkled. “We’re finally going, Miki!”

“Hurray!” Miki said, and from inside its feed, I could see it was sincere.

Miki helped Hirune stow the protective suits, then defaulted to randomly following its human friends around as they stowed their personal gear. I suggested Miki walk out of the lab space and go to the storage area where Wilken and Gerth were unpacking their equipment. Miki didn’t have a weapons scan nearly as sensitive as mine but its vision had magnification capabilities that mine didn’t. (This is one of the differences between a security unit and a bot designed to help with scientific research.)

I asked it to take a good look at the cases the two security consultants were unpacking and it gave me a close-up view, breaking up the image into different angles as Gerth lifted her case into the storage locker. I’d wanted to do this aboard Ship, but they had stowed their gear too quickly, and asking a drone to inspect it would probably have drawn some unwanted attention. Gerth glanced at Miki, stowed the case, and said, “What are you looking at?”

I told Miki, Say, “Don Abene wants me to ask you if you need any help stowing your gear.”

Miki cocked its head and repeated it verbatim, with the kind of perfect innocence only a perfectly innocent bot could manage.

Gerth smiled a little. “No, thanks, little bot,” she said. Wilken chuckled.

“Little bot,” seriously? (Somewhere there had to be a happy medium between being treated as a terrifying murder machine and being infantilized.) I prompted Miki to go back to its friends. As it retreated down the passage, it asked, Rin, why did they not want us to see their cases?

Not everybody wants a pet robot sticking its scanner into their business, but I was distracted and just said, I’m not sure. From the shapes, the cases held weapons, ammo, and a couple of high-end sets of self-adjusting armor, the kind I’d only seen in the media. The company had never given us armor that nice, though in its defense, our armor did get blasted off us at regular intervals. No drones, but then humans aren’t good with security drones; it takes multi-track processing to direct them and most humans just can’t do it without extensive augmentation. Even without drones, they looked like they were prepared for anything. Maybe no reason.

I was trying to decide if I should take the opportunity to steal anything if said opportunity should occur. The self-adjusting armor was incredibly tempting, and would be even better once I made some modifications to the code. But it was enough work to just get myself past the weapons scanners; bringing anything that bulky along was just going to make it more likely that I’d be caught.

Miki went up to the crew area below the control deck where Abene and Hirune sat with Brais and Ejiro. Kader and Vibol were just above us in the cockpit. The humans had turned a couple of the station chairs around to face the curved padded couch, and were watching the bubble of a floating display surface in the middle of the compartment. From the schematics on display, they were going over a proposed route through the facility. I was poking around carefully in their individual feeds, when Abene patted the seat next to her. “Sit down, Miki.”

Miki sat next to her on the couch, and none of the other humans reacted. This was apparently perfectly normal.

“Are you excited to see the inside of the facility, Miki?” Hirune asked it, as she turned the schematic to a new angle. “I’m tired of just looking at maps of it.”

“I’m excited!” Miki echoed. “We will do a good assessment, and then we can have a new assignment.”

Ejiro laughed. “I hope it’s that easy.”

Brais said, “I don’t care if it’s easy or hard, at least we’re moving! Miki was probably getting tired of playing Mus with us.”

“I like games. I would play games all the time if we could,” Miki said.

I had to withdraw back to my dark cubicle. I was having an emotion again. An angry one.

Before Dr. Mensah bought me, I could count the number of times I sat on a human chair and it was never in front of clients.

I don’t even know why I was reacting this way. Was I jealous of a human-form bot? I didn’t want to be a pet robot, that’s why I’d left Dr. Mensah and the others. (Not that Mensah had said she wanted a pet SecUnit. I don’t think she wanted a SecUnit at all.) What did Miki have that I wanted? I had no idea. I didn’t know what I wanted.

And yes, I know that was probably a big part of the problem right there.

I stepped back into Miki’s feed. Don Abene was saying, “—keep in mind that your experience with humans is limited. We think of you as one of our family, but to others, you are a stranger. That’s probably why our security team didn’t want you to look at their things.”

Uh-oh. I ran back Miki’s camera to pick up the part of the conversation I’d missed. Miki had asked Abene why Gerth had reacted that way when it had looked at her and Wilken’s cases. Fortunately, Abene had gotten distracted trying to answer the question while still looking over the facility’s schematic, and hadn’t asked why Miki had gone to see the security team. If she thought to ask about it, would Miki tell her about me? How would it answer that question?

I could take Miki over the way I’d originally planned, except its interactions with Abene and the others were incredibly complicated. I didn’t think I could fake my way through that; my augmented human security consultant act had been hard enough to develop, and I wasn’t trying to fool people who knew me. Or who I was pretending to be. Or whatever.

Trying not to sound nervous and/or enraged, I said, Miki, remember you said you wouldn’t tell Don Abene about me.

I won’t, Rin. Miki was so calm and complacent, my performance reliability dropped by 2 percent. I promised.

I managed to seethe silently. But part of Miki’s coded behavior must include going to Don Abene when it had questions. I was going to need to make sure I answered its questions as thoroughly as possible; obviously “I don’t know” wasn’t going to cut it.

Hirune was asking Abene, “What do you think of our security team so far?”

Abene said, “I’m pleased, actually. They don’t seem to know much about terraforming facilities, but that shouldn’t matter.”

It might, I thought. But SecUnit education modules were crap and all I knew about terraforming was what I had managed to absorb while completely not caring about it, so maybe I wasn’t the best authority.

Through Miki’s eyes, I saw Hirune glance at the other two, who were talking about calibrating something. She lowered her voice. “I suppose. With only two of them, they’re not going to be much help against raiders.”

Abene snorted. “If there are raiders, we’re pulling out and heading back for the transit station immediately.”

By the time you see them, it’s too late for that.

My reaction must have gotten into the feed, because Miki asked anxiously, You’ll keep them safe, Rin?

Yes, Miki, I told it, because that was my story and I was sticking to it.