Марта Уэллс - Network Effect

It’s not like I didn’t already think this situation was really fucking bad, but I was beginning to think it was way fucking worse. Wormhole travel takes multiple cycles. The trip from our survey site back to Preservation had taken four Preservation Standard cycles (which were defined as twenty-eight Preservation Standard hours each) and it was considered a short trip, just to the edge of Preservation territory. There was no way we could be at our destination yet. Or any destination yet.

I tapped Scout One, locked up in ART’s control area, and told it to look again at that display that showed ART’s hull, the wave patterns, and the time countdown.

Scout One zipped back up to that console. The countdown was at two minutes fourteen seconds.

Oh yeah, this… is an issue. I forwarded the input to Amena.

Amena’s drone squad watched her eyes narrow in disbelief. That really looks like it’s counting down to a wormhole exit but that can’t be right.

I was somewhat desperate for it not to be right. Wake Eletra and ask her how long the ship was in the wormhole, how long it took them to get from the system where they were captured to Preservation territory .

Amena scooted around to touch Eletra’s shoulder. After long seconds Eletra stirred. Amena asked the question. Eletra blinked, more aware, and her expression turned puzzled. “We never left the system. We’ve been here the whole time.”

“No, you came through a wormhole to Preservation where we were captured. Now we’re going somewhere else. Remember the gray person said we were in the bridge-transit?” Amena tried to persist, but Eletra’s eyelids were drooping and she didn’t respond. Amena sent to me, She’s still really confused. Earlier they both thought we’d been captured before they were, and they didn’t believe me when I tried to tell them we weren’t.

I told her, This thing on the engine housing is an alien remnant. I think it’s taking us through the wormhole at a much faster rate . Much faster. Not hours instead of cycles, but minutes instead of cycles. ART’s engines had been compromised by a device that was using the wormhole in a completely different way, allowing travel faster than any transport technology that I’d seen in media, or heard about on the newsfeeds. Faster than any human transport technology. I think we’re about to come out into normal space.

Amena shook her head. No, that’s bonkos. The timer must be damaged. We’ve only been in the wormhole for a few hours, we can’t be anywhere yet. The closest inhabited system outside Preservation territory is fifteen days from Station at least—

And then the engines made a noise somewhere between a groan and a clunk. A new display sprung up in front of Scout One: a view of normal space. We had just come out of the wormhole.

Amena froze, staring at the feed view of the new display. Her eyes widened in alarm. Then she said, What should we do?

That was a really good question.

My first thought was to try to destroy the alien remnant. Fortunately instead of doing that I went on to the next thought. (I don’t know anything about transport engines but I know you shouldn’t shoot at them, okay? They’re near the top of the long list of things it’s just obviously not a good idea to shoot at.) I needed more intel before I could do anything about this. I didn’t like the idea of saying “I don’t know” to Amena because humans panic and I almost don’t blame them because right now I feel like panicking and I was not in control of this situation and I could see at least ten instances now where I’d made wrong decisions and being in control of the situation was really important because otherwise it was in control of me and that felt like a short step to being back in the company’s control. And maybe I just had to trust Amena, who had tackled a much larger human because she had thought she needed to save me. I told her, I don’t know .

Amena sat up straight, biting her lip. Then she whispered to herself, “All right, all right. Let’s think.” On the feed, sounding much calmer than she looked, she said, Can you make that drone in the control area move around? If we can see a display that will tell us where we are, or if there’s a station or someplace we can try to send a distress signal…

That… wasn’t a bad idea. I exited the platform and went back up through the gravity well, telling Scout One to do a sweep of any active display surfaces. As its input filled with images, I pulled my archived video of its previous survey and ran a comparison. I was able to isolate five displays with significant changes. I enlarged them and set the images up in our feed so we could page through them. This one, Amena said immediately, this is local navigation. There’s info on the star… it doesn’t say if we’re close to the station… or if there’s a station at all…

I reached the monitoring area with its poor dead repair drone. I could see the display Amena was interpreting, but I’d found another diagram of ART on a new display. An indicator showed something attached to the outside of ART’s hull, on its lab module. Looking at the specifications… For fuck’s sake, it couldn’t be.

I’d shut off our comm because I didn’t want the Targets using it to track us, plus it wasn’t like anybody could contact us while we were in the wormhole. I reactivated it and checked the channel our survey had used. It was active.

Yeah, this was happening. I pinged the channel and got an immediate response, and transferred it to our feed relay. Amena clapped a hand to her head in shock. “What—”

A familiar voice said, SecUnit, Amena, can you hear me?

It was Arada. Amena gasped, Oh, we’re here, we’re here! Where are you?

Arada said, We’re in the facility’s safepod, attached to the hull of the raider ship. You’re onboard, correct? We saw you pulled toward the airlock.

Sometimes I wonder what the point of it all is. They were supposed to be safe on the baseship, arriving at Preservation Station by now. I said, Who’s we?

SecUnit! Arada said, clearly happy to hear from me. Oh, Overse is here, and Thiago and Ratthi. We weren’t able to reach the baseship after jettison and were dragged into the wormhole with the attacker.

Should we try to get to you? Amena asked. She hopped off Eletra’s gurney and bounced on her toes. We’ve got an injured person with us.

Arada said hastily, No, no, the pod’s too damaged. We didn’t expect— Someone in the background, probably Overse, yelled something urgent, but it was muffled and I’d have to analyze the audio to understand it. Arada changed whatever she was about to say to, What’s your situation there?

Oh, there was a lot Arada wasn’t telling us. But I was estimating a 70 percent chance that if we hadn’t exited the wormhole so absurdly early, Arada and the others wouldn’t have survived much longer.

So now I had four more humans to worry about. Fantastic.

Amena was giving Arada a rapid but somewhat garbled report on all the fun we’d been having, and warning her about the Targets.

(The Targets couldn’t be alien, could they? No, that wasn’t possible. Aliens couldn’t look that much like humans.)

(Could they?)

I sent Arada a schematic of the outside of ART’s hull with the airlock in our safe zone highlighted. Arada, can you get to this lock?

There was a pause which told me that their situation was even worse than Arada was implying. I estimated the hesitation was just long enough for her to check the air reserves in the EVAC suits they were probably already wearing due to damage to the pod. Then Arada said firmly, Yes, we can make that. ETA, say, three minutes.