Марта Уэллс - Network Effect

Amena added, “And we already know about some things, like the alien remnants around the Pre–Corporation Rim colony.”

Both ART and I shut up (I know, I was surprised, too) and waited to see if that would work.

“Oh.” Eletra slumped a little. “I don’t know very much. Ras and I are—were—both environmental techs, and everything was need-to-know. Our briefing said the colony was originally seeded by an early polity, probably via cold sleep ship. It was discovered about forty years ago and re-seeded through the wormhole by a company called Adamantine Explorations, that kept the location private. Then they went down in a hostile buyout and the databases were destroyed—” Amena looked confused and Eletra helpfully explained. “Somebody was probably trying to force the incoming management to pay for the code keys to get the data. But you know, that’s not a very good idea. They might take it out on the seized assets. And it’s bad enough being bought out like that without the management coming in with a grudge against you.”

Amena blinked a lot, apparently as an attempt to control her expression. (I’ve tried it, it doesn’t work very well.) On the feed, she said, When she says seized assets, she means the employees, right? The people?

Correct, ART said.

Eletra continued, “But anyway, the storage media was saved and Barish-Estranza bought it at some point later and they were able to re-create the data, and they launched this salvage project.” She hesitated. “There were rumors about alien remnants. Supposedly some of the recovered data referenced them. But that could have just been rumors.”

Amena said, “So what was Barish-Estranza going to do about the alien remnants, if they were there? You have to have a special license to recover them, right, even in the Corporation Rim?”

“That’s above my pay level.” Eletra touched the back of her neck uneasily. Physical reactions are supposed to be useful for determining whether humans are telling the truth or lying or are secretly planning to murder their whole survey team, etc., and sometimes they were. But also sometimes humans just secreted agitated brain chemicals for no apparent reason, or because something was physically wrong, like their digestive systems malfunctioning. But ART’s scan of Eletra showed she was experiencing signs of physical distress when she talked about the implants. “Was that what was in us?” she said. “Those implants? Did they have strange synthetics? Your coworker took one apart.”

I pulled a preliminary report from Overse’s feed, mostly just the raw data she had collected for the scan. She hadn’t had time to write up any notes from it.

“No, she said it was very simple tech.” Amena bit her lip, trying to look like she was thinking and not reading the feed. ART had completed the report and noted that the implants had no alien components but that they might be receivers for a more esoteric transmitter. It had added “examine all Target technology” to the group worklist and added the line (2) primitive human technology designed to work with alien power sources or strange synthetic materials to Perihelion and SecUnit’s Suppositions chart. “She thought it could have been connected to alien remnant tech.”

Eletra slumped and looked sick.

My query results for establishing a timeline of ART’s forced shutdowns returned and I matched them with the gaps I’d already identified.

That was when I hit the first oh shit moment.

ART, I said.

ART took in my report.

The moment of shock lasted less than .01 second but subjectively it seemed much longer. Then ART did what I should have done first and spoke to Amena on our private feed connection: Amena, leave that compartment .

I added, Now, Amena, it’s potentially dangerous .

Amena was agitated, but channeled it into squinting thoughtfully and pushing at her hair. She looked more like a human who had forgotten to do something rather than one who had just been told they were in danger. “Oh, my Uncle’s calling me on the feed.” She pushed to her feet, backing toward the hatch. “I’ll check back with you later.”

Eletra just nodded wearily.

Amena let the hatch close and then ran down the corridor to me. “What is it?” she whispered.

I took her arm and guided her around the corner. I was having a release of adrenaline from my organic parts and I felt weird and cold. There was no way an implant could have been put into Amena, she’d never been out of my and ART’s sight, but I scanned her again anyway. “ART encountered the Barish-Estranza transports before its first forced shutdown,” I told her. “Whatever attacked it and kidnapped its crew, came from one of their ships.”

Amena’s eyes widened. “Oh shit.”

We had another meeting, this one in the feed, again with Eletra’s connection cut. This time ART let me do the video conference image but I was too rattled to make it fancy.

Arada and Overse were still in the engineering pod, Ratthi and Thiago were still in Medical. Amena and I ended up sitting in the hatchway of the galley, so I could be close if Eletra decided to do something other than lying in the bunkroom like a traumatized recovering human. Which she might still be, even though we had evidence indicating against it. Amena was nervously eating processed imitation vegetable fragments out of a container from the galley. (She had asked me to let her listen in on the conference but to mark her feed as on private. She told me, “If you need me to do something, I’ll do it, but a lot of things have happened and I just need a minute.”)

(Thiago asked where she was and I said, “In the restroom,” and she glared at me.

I am not your social secretary, Amena, you want a better lie, make up one yourself.)

I had converted my timeline into a format humans and augmented humans could read, annotated it, and put it up in the feed. It showed that ART’s initial arrival in this system via the wormhole was its last substantiated memory. After that, everything was a reconstruction based on the status data. It looked like:

1. ART’s arrival in the system.

2. ART receives a distress signal with a Barish-Estranza Corporation signature. Sensors show one contact, a configurable explorer ship. There is no sign of the second B-E vessel, the supply transport, that Ras and Eletra said they were aboard when they were attacked. The distress call is marked as a request for medical assistance.

3. ART tractors the B-E explorer’s shuttle into its module dock.

4. Unsubstantiated but probably bad stuff happens.

5. B-E explorer then links up with ART’s module dock, presumably to take ART’s crew prisoner and leave the Targets onboard, if the Targets hadn’t already boarded via the shuttle. (I’d taken a look at the shuttle via ART’s cameras, and going down to search it was next on my action list.)

6. ART leaves the system via the wormhole.

7. ART exits the wormhole at Preservation Station, after a trip barely lasting an impossible three hours, telling us the alien remnant tech was definitely in place on its engines at that point.

8. After sending and receiving communications from Preservation Station, ART goes into standby for five ship-cycles. ART then targets our facility when it arrives, firing multiple times, missing spectacularly due to supplying faulty targeting data to its own weapon systems.

(I couldn’t tell exactly when targetControlSystem had been uploaded to ART’s systems, but it was before this point because the status updates told the story of a subtle but intense battle over the weapons. ART’s crew had been held hostage for its good behavior, but it hadn’t been willing to kill our survey team even after it knew it had me in its tractor. TargetControlSystem must have figured out who was jogging its arm every time it tried to fire, because that was when ART had been deleted, causing the equivalent of a giant seismic event in its status updates.)