Марта Уэллс - Network Effect

I was hoping a lack of evidence would be the problem, that we wouldn’t find a bunch of DNA smears near an airlock. If that happened, I wasn’t sure how ART would react. Or what I would do about how it reacted. I was terrible at being comforting. It was hard enough trying to do it to humans; I had no idea what would help ART. Everything I could think of seemed drastically inadequate.

Keeping her voice low, Overse said, “This place feels older, like it’s been here a very long time. But we know it was built only around forty years ago.”

We know it was in existence at least thirty-seven years ago . ART was being pedantic in our comm. Space docks were not commonly in use in Pre–Corporation Rim colonies so it is unlikely there was a structure here when Adamantine arrived .

Thiago’s light moved along the edge of the corridor. “It feels that way because it was built for a purpose and then hardly used. According to Perihelion ’s information, Adamantine didn’t last for very long after the colony was established. There may have only been one or two supply runs.”

We passed two more corridor openings but from my drones I knew they led to module locks and to the cargo access. My drones had whipped through the central control area but couldn’t get through the hatch into the drop box, which was the one place something/someone might be lurking/hiding/crawled into and died.

We reached the junction with the bodies of the three Barish-Estranza employees and stopped so we could make a quick examination. All had been shot, and their weapons had been taken. The only thing left was some semi-useless crowd-control poppers. (They make loud noises and bright lights, effective against humans who aren’t wearing safety visors. Yes, Barish-Estranza had been prepared to find colonists still alive and possibly resistant to being co-opted into new corporate indenture arrangements.) I collected them so nobody else could use them against us and went ahead to the other body.

It was sprawled at the mouth of the accessway to the drop box loading corridor, face down, lying in a pool of dried fluid that had leaked out of the open faceplate.

ART was riding my feed but it didn’t comment. I didn’t think the humans had any idea what this body was; they had seen it on the raw drone video but it was often hard for humans, who couldn’t read the data stream without a special interface, to interpret.

Overse and Thiago finished and came up behind me. “We’ve reached the other body,” Thiago reported to the others on the comm. “It’s in some kind of military suit—”

“That’s SecUnit armor,” Overse corrected. Her helmet cam pointed to the right side of my face. “That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I told her.

The armor design was unfamiliar. From what Leonide had said, it was no surprise that Barish-Estranza hadn’t risked dealing with the company to get their SecUnits and had bought them elsewhere.

(I don’t know why I cared about that. If I was afraid to run into company tech or what. It was all just strange, and whatever, I didn’t like it.)

Thiago stepped closer, his light picking out details. From the position, the SecUnit had been either heading away from the control area or the drop box foyer, but that was irrelevant. I knew what must have happened to it after the humans died, and it might have been pacing or running randomly around the dock. On the comm, Arada asked, “Was it killed by the Targets?”

(Yes, that was a dumb question, which was how I knew ART had told her to ask it. It wanted me to tell the humans what they were looking at, because it thought I should say it aloud and because it wanted them to understand this. And you know, I don’t even know why I hadn’t yet.)

I said, “No.” It still had its weapon, because it had been alive when the Targets left, and even with it helpless they had been just a little too afraid to try to take it away. The armor looked salvageable from the outside, but I’d have to scrape the body out to tell, and when the governor module did something like this, at least in 83 percent of instances I’d personally witnessed, it fried the armor, too. “It was ordered to stand down by one of its clients, then left here.”

The comm was quiet for fourteen seconds. “But how did it die?” Amena asked in a small voice.

(Oh wait, now I know why I hadn’t wanted to talk about this.)

ART interposed, SecUnits have a distance limit, imposed by the contract owner. It’s variable, but if this SecUnit’s clients were taken away in the explorer, or sent to the planet, it would have been in violation, with no way to remedy the situation. Its governor module killed it.

“Oh. Oh, no,” Ratthi muttered. “I knew that happened, but…”

Thiago shook his head. “So it was ordered to do nothing, and then just left here to…”

“How is that rational?” Arada burst out, forgetting she was technically in charge and supposed to be all sensible and restrained. “To have a killswitch on the one person who might be able to rescue you if you’re taken prisoner—”

“It’s a function of the governor module itself,” I explained. “The HubSystem or designated supervisor could override, but they weren’t here.”

“What about the—” Thiago made a gesture back toward the dead humans.

“Dead clients don’t count. Otherwise you could just kill one and carry them around with you.” Okay, for real, that wouldn’t work. The governor module wasn’t nearly as sophisticated as a HubSystem but even it could have figured that one out.

And of course the humans had trouble understanding that your governor module suddenly deciding to melt your brain wasn’t something you could rules-lawyer your way out of.

I was tired of explaining and I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. You know, I hadn’t hacked my governor module to become a rogue SecUnit for no reason. I collected the projectile weapon and the spare ammunition, said, “We need to keep moving,” and went on through the access.

I pretended not to hear Ratthi on the comm telling the others to drop the subject.

We went through another foyer and then an open hatch into a globe-shaped control area. It was clearly meant to be operated mostly via the feed, by humans and augmented humans who were coming in to deliver a cargo to the planet and then leave, probably as rapidly as possible. There were no chairs, just station consoles built into the walls with dormant displays for monitoring the various cargo module locks and for the dock’s internal systems. The gravity was adjusted so you could walk up the curving wall.

Before I could, Overse caught up with me and asked, “Are you all right?”

I was absolutely great. It wasn’t like this situation needed to get any more emotionally fraught, or anything. I said, “I am functioning optimally.” (This was a line from Valorous Defenders, which is a great source for things humans and augmented humans think SecUnits say that SecUnits do not actually say.)

Overse made an exasperated noise. “I hate that show.” I’d forgotten that it was one of the shows I’d pulled off the Preservation Public Entertainment feed. The other humans were listening on the comm so hard I could pick up their breathing. Thiago pretended not to listen, flashing his helmet light over the stations on the upper tier of the control area. Overse added, “Just remember you’re not alone here.”

I never know what to say to that. I am actually alone in my head, and that’s where 90 plus percent of my problems are.

I headed up the wall for the internal systems suite where DockSecSystem’s access was likely to be.

I found it and activated the display surface. It fizzed into view above the console and immediately filled up with error codes. Ugh, I was going to have to try to fix this before I could even see if there was recorded video.