Martha Wells: All Systems Red

As we left the rocky slope and turned into the trees, the brush and branches screening us from the edge of the plateau, I slung an arm around the other Unit’s neck, deployed my arm weapon, and fired into the side of its helmet where its comm channel was. It went down on one knee, swinging its projectile weapon toward me, energy weapons unfolding out of its armor.

With the combat override module in place, its feed was cut off, and with its comm down it couldn’t yell for help. Also, depending on how strictly they had limited its voluntary actions, it might not be able to call for help unless the GrayCris humans told it to. Maybe that was the case, because all it did was try to kill me. We rolled over rock and brush until I wrenched its weapon away. After that it was easy to finish it off. Physically easy.

I know I said SecUnits aren’t sentimental about each other, but I wished it wasn’t one of the DeltFall units. It was in there somewhere, trapped in its own head, maybe aware, maybe not. Not that it matters. None of us had a choice.

I stood up just as Mensah slammed through the brush, carrying the mining tool. I told her, “It’s gone wrong. You have to pretend to be my prisoner.”

She looked at me, then looked at the DeltFall unit. “How are you going to explain that?”

I started shedding armor, every piece that had a PreservationAux logo on it, and leaned over the DeltFall unit as the pieces dropped away. “I’m going to be it and it’s going to be me.”

Mensah dropped the mining tool and bent down to help me. We didn’t have time to switch all the armor. Moving fast, we replaced the arm and shoulder pieces on both sides, the leg pieces that had the armor’s inventory code, the chest and back piece with the logos. Mensah smeared my remaining armor pieces with dirt and blood and fluid from the dead unit, so if we had missed anything distinctive GrayCris might not notice. SecUnits are identical in height and build, the way we moved. This might work. I don’t know. If we ran away now the plan would fail, we had to get them off this plateau. As I resealed the helmet, I told Mensah, “We have to go—”

She nodded, breathing hard, more from nerves than exertion. “I’m ready.”

I took her arm, and pretended to drag her back toward the GrayCris group. She yelled and struggled convincingly the whole way.

When we reached the plateau, a GrayCris hopper was already landing.

As I pulled her toward Blue Leader, Mensah got in the first word. She said, “So this is the arrangement you offered?”

Blue Leader said, “You’re the planetary admin of Preservation?”

Mensah didn’t look at me. If they tried to hurt her, I’d try to stop them and everything would go horribly wrong. But Green was already getting into the hopper. Two other humans were in the pilot’s and copilot’s seats. Mensah said, “Yes.”

Yellow came toward me and touched the side of my helmet. It took a tremendous effort for me not to rip his arm off, and I’d like that noted for the record, please. He said, “Its comm is down.”

To Mensah, Blue Leader said, “We know one of your people is trying to manually trigger our beacon. If you come with us, we won’t harm him, and we can discuss our situation. This doesn’t have to go badly for either of us.” She was very convincing. She had probably been the one to talk to DeltFall on the comm, asking to be let into their habitat.

Mensah hesitated, and I knew she didn’t want it to look like she was giving in too quickly, but we had to get them out of there now. She said, “Very well.”

I hadn’t ridden in the cargo container for a while. It would have been comforting and homey, except it wasn’t my cargo container.

But this hopper was still a company product and I was able to access its feed. I had to stay very quiet, to keep them from noticing me, but all those hours of surreptitiously consuming media came in handy.

Their SecSystem was still recording. They must mean to delete all that before the pick-up transport showed up. Client groups had tried that before, to hide data from the company so it couldn’t be sold out from under them, and the company systems analysts would be on the alert for it, but I don’t know if these people realized that. The company might catch them even if we didn’t survive. That wasn’t a very comforting thought.

As I accessed the ongoing recording, I heard Mensah saying, “—know about the remnants in the unmapped areas. They were strong enough to confuse our mapping functions. Is that how you found them?”

Bharadwaj had figured that out last night. The unmapped sections weren’t an intentional hack, they were an error, caused by the remnants that were buried under the dirt and rock. This planet had been inhabited at some point in its past, which meant it would be placed under interdict, open only to archeological surveys. Even the company would abide by that.

You could make big, illegal money off of excavating and mining those remnants, and that was obviously what GrayCris wanted.

“That isn’t the conversation we should be having,” Blue Leader said. “I want to know what arrangement we can come to.”

“To keep you from killing us like you did DeltFall,” Mensah said, keeping her voice even. “Once we’re in contact with our home again, we can arrange for a transfer of funds. But how can we trust you to leave us alive?”

There was a little silence. Oh great, they don’t know either. Then Blue Leader said, “You have no option except to trust us.”

We were slowing down already, coming in for a landing. There had been no alerts on the feed and I was cautiously optimistic. We had cleared the field for Pin-Lee and Gurathin as much as we could. They had had to hack the perimeter without that one last SecUnit noticing and get close enough to access the GrayCris HubSystem feed. (Hopefully it was the last SecUnit, hopefully there weren’t a dozen more somehow in the GrayCris habitat.) Gurathin had figured out how to use the hack from their HubSystem into our HubSystem to get access, but he needed to be close to their habitat to actually trigger their beacon. That was why we had to get the other SecUnits out of there. That was the idea, anyway. Possibly it would have worked without putting Mensah in danger but it was a little late to second-guess everything.

It was a relief when we thumped down into a landing that must have made the humans’ teeth rattle. I deployed out of the pod with the other units.

We were a few kilos from their habitat, on a big rock above a thick forest, lots of avians and other fauna screaming down in the trees, disturbed by the hopper’s hard landing. Clouds had come in, threatening rain, and obscuring the view of the ring. The beacon’s vehicle was in a launch tripod about ten meters away and, uh-oh, that is way too close.

I joined the three other SecUnits as we made a standard security formation. An array of drones launched from the craft to create a perimeter. I didn’t look at the humans as they walked down the ramp. I really wanted to look at Mensah for instructions. If I was alone, I could have sprinted for the end of the plateau, but I had to get her out of there.

Blue Leader stepped forward with Green; the others gathered in a loose circle behind her, like they were afraid to get in front. One, who must have been getting reports from their SecUnits and drones, said, “No sign of anybody.” Blue Leader didn’t answer but the two GrayCris SecUnits jogged toward the beacon.

Okay, the problem is, I’ve mentioned this before, the company is cheap. When it comes to something like a beacon that just has to launch once if there’s an emergency, send a transmission through the wormhole, and then never gets retrieved, they’re very cheap. Beacons don’t have safety features, and use the cheapest possible launch vehicles. There’s a reason you put them a few kilos from your habitat and trigger them from a distance. Mensah and I were supposed to distract GrayCris and their SecUnits while this was going on, get them away from the habitat, not end up as toast in the beacon launch.