Марта Уэллс - Network Effect

They clearly recognized Eletra, and she recognized them, in a confused way. An unarmed crew member with a personnel resources feed-tag came forward to take her arm and lead her away.

Another crew person said, “This way, Dr. Arada.”

They led us through another hatch and down a utilitarian corridor, then into a meeting room. It had a circle of low-backed padded couches in the center around a large floating display bubble. Everything was newish and well kept (no aging upholstery here) with bars of decorative abstract designs in Barish-Estranza colors on the walls and padded seats.

Leonide was already waiting on the couch. She said, “Dr. Arada,” and gestured to a seat opposite her. The supply transport’s comm vid might have been doing some cosmetic editing, too, because in person faint stress and fatigue signs were visible around Leonide’s eyes and mouth, though she still looked perfect enough to be in a media serial.

“Supervisor Leonide.” Arada nodded. As she sat down, I stepped back against the wall behind her. The crew escort, who had followed us in and distributed themselves around the room, reacted with a little uneasiness. They had guessed I was a bodyguard but I had dropped my pretend-human code while I was still in the EVAC suit and it was starting to register with them that I might not be an augmented human. (Despite the weapons and heavy gear, they were amateurs.) (Amateurs are terrifying.)

Leonide glanced at me, her perfect brow furrowing. “Your bodyguard…” Then her eyes narrowed. “Is that…”

“A SecUnit,” Arada said. I knew her well enough to hear the nervous jitter in her voice but I don’t think anyone else noted it. (They were too busy being nervous about me.) Arada remembered not to glance at me, which was good. She and Ratthi both had a bad habit of doing that when they answered questions about me, like they were checking for permission to talk about me, which is not how humans expect other humans to act around SecUnits.

(SecUnits make humans and augmented humans uncomfortable and on my contracts, my clients had acted in a variety of nervous and inconsistent ways when I was around. (No matter how nervous they were, just assume I was more nervous.) But in a situation like this, it’s more about how other humans expect each other to act and not how humans actually act, which literally might be anything.)

I had camera views via my new friend the Barish-Estranza supply transport’s SecSystem, and I watched two members of our crew escort exchange uneasy looks. Their feed activity was monitored by their supervisors so there wasn’t any private chatter, but one did send a safety notice to their bridge. The SecSystem poked me in response and I told it everything was fine, and it went back to happily interfacing with me again.

“You don’t trust us?” Leonide said, her expression unreadable.

This part, this kind of human dominance posturing, was the part Arada was really afraid she would screw up. Human dominance posturing was not something Arada did, at all. (And yeah, not something I could help with, either.)

I thought there was a possibility that the other humans would notice her nerves, and that it might make them suspicious that Arada’s story about what had happened to us was a mashed-up mess of lies and truth. But the chance they would attribute her jumpiness to the fact that she had brought her rogue SecUnit friend aboard their transport was low. (Ratthi was right about that.)

Arada managed to smile in a way that wasn’t too friendly and said, “I think we trust each other the same amount.” She added, “And I’m afraid our contract requires our SecUnit be present during off-ship first contacts.” (I had told Arada about the magic words “the contract requires it.”)

Leonide’s knit brow unknit slightly and she sent a “maintain position” feed code to her escort, who pretended to think there was something they could have done about me if they hadn’t been ordered not to try. “Of course.”

I watched the tension release slightly in Arada’s shoulders. She knew she had used the right tone and it gave her some confidence. She leaned forward. “Can you tell me what happened to your transport? Because I think it’s very similar to what happened to mine.”

Leonide didn’t react immediately; I suspected she was surprised by the direct approach. Arada saw the hesitation and said, “I can go first, if you like.”

You would think Leonide would go for that, but apparently she wanted control of the conversation. She said, “Not necessary.” She shifted her position slightly. “You understand the former colony planet in this system is now wholly owned by Barish-Estranza.”

Arada kept her expression calm and serious though I knew she still found the idea of owning a planet to be as bizarre as owning me. “Of course.”

Leonide acknowledged that with a nod. “Our arrival here and initial scan of the system was uneventful, and we went into orbit while our explorer approached the colony’s space dock. They reported that it was surprisingly still intact and operational, which was good news for our reclamation effort. Bringing in a new one to assemble would be a considerable expense. Instead of a shuttle, the contact team elected to use the dock’s drop box to reach the surface.” Her mouth tightened. “Possibly that was a mistake.”

I could tell from Arada’s intent expression that she wanted to interrupt, but she didn’t. SecSystem was helpfully giving me all its collected video and audio, already edited and with the major incidents tagged. Its comm and feed data confirmed Leonide’s story so far.

“There was nothing but standard status reports from the explorer for more than fifty-seven hours,” Leonide continued. Actually according to their SecSystem it was 58.57 hours but whatever. “Then the drop box returned.”

Leonide almost winced, and I could tell she didn’t like what she was about to say. “Our contact party had been compromised, but we weren’t aware at first. We’d just sent over a shuttle to the explorer with two environmental techs for a standard maintenance check. I had assumed that shuttle was destroyed in the subsequent… events, until you told me otherwise.”

Leonide stopped and waited, and Arada traded her a little more information. “Your techs, Eletra and Ras, had been implanted with these small devices.” On our private feed channel, Arada asked me, Now?

Yeah, now was good. I stepped forward, causing a chorus of nervous twitches from Leonide’s escort, and set a small sterile container with Eletra’s implant next to Arada’s hand on the couch. As I stepped back, she picked it up and passed it over to Leonide. We’d kept Ras’s implant and the Targets’ implants, though Overse hadn’t had any luck yet getting information from them. We’d figured since they were the more murdery implants, they might tell us more.

Leonide frowned, but thoughtfully, and consulted with an engineering supervisor in her feed. A tech came in to collect the container and carry it away.

Leonide said, “That might explain how they were controlling our contact group. As far as we can tell, when the group returned to the explorer via the space dock, they were somehow forced to take the rest of the crew prisoner. Our security system received a truncated warning of a viral threat, so we were able to cut off feed access before our systems were contaminated. It gave us some moments to prepare, before the explorer fired on us.”

According to SecSystem, the warning had come from one of the SecUnits. It had sent a code burst that had told the supply transport’s SecSystem to cut comm and feed and order the bot pilot into a defensive stance, just in time not to get blown up. The supply transport had then fled, as the explorer uncoupled from the dock. The explorer had fired again at the supply transport, damaged its engines and other systems, then headed away.