Марта Уэллс - Network Effect

ART said, Of course they see me .

I pulled a view of ART’s control area. Arada was in a station chair, Ratthi and Amena standing on either side, all watching ART’s big display. ART was annotating the displays in the feed so it wasn’t just a mash of numbers and lines and colors.

Frustrated, Arada said, “Something blocked Perihelion ’s ability to scan the explorer. I bet we’re dealing with more alien remnant technology.”

It’s probable, ART said. I don’t know what the humans heard, but I read deadly, furious calm. A variation on their ability to interfere with short-range drone scans .

I saw from ART’s feed that the explorer was acquiring target lock. The DockSecSystem, trying to come fully online, sent a belated warning through the feed. We didn’t have time to get back to the lock, put on the EVAC suits, and return to ART. The explorer was in range and could fire on us at any moment. The dock wasn’t designed to be shot at but it was more protection than an EVAC suit. Besides, I hadn’t finished my review of the security video and we hadn’t checked the drop box and its maintenance capsule for physical evidence yet. On the feed, I said, ART, you know what you have to do .

ART didn’t hesitate, or argue. It had gone through the same threat assessment I just had, except faster and a million percent more homicidal. It said, Try not to do anything stupid before I return .

Just keep your stupid comm off, I told it. And I don’t want to hear about your superior filters .

It was already gone.

Overse was trying to call Arada but ART had cut off contact. Thiago turned to me urgently. “What’s happened?”

“ART’s gone after the explorer. It’ll come back here for us when it’s… done.” I realized I had no real idea what ART actually planned to do. And with ART gone, I had no eyes on what was happening outside. Like if, for example, the explorer decided to blow up the dock.

But I did have at least one human who knew what she was doing. “Overse, can you find a station with an exterior scan?” And okay, I only knew what it was called from shows about ships, like World Hoppers .

Overse hesitated, her hand on her helmet where her comm access was. She was worried about Arada. Then she swallowed hard and forced herself past it. “Right. Thiago, did you see—”

Thiago half-walked half-jumped down the wall toward another station. “Yes, it’s here.”

While they were booting the station, I started my review of the security video again. It was patchy, with long sections dissolving into static. I’d reached the part where the DockSecSystem had recorded an ETA from the drop box. I forced myself to slow my review down by 40 percent so I wouldn’t miss any detail. Two humans wearing environmental gear in Barish-Estranza colors came out of the drop box foyer. [blank section] [patchy images of humans walking in the forward corridor] The SecUnit in position near the control area junction stepped forward. I couldn’t read any of its comm or feed traffic; DockSecSystem either hadn’t recorded it or had managed to lose it during one of its reload attempts. [patchy images of three more humans in the foyer] I slowed the video down further as one of the humans stepped up to the SecUnit. [patchy section] DockSecSystem caught a code, a stand down order. Then two Targets came out of the drop box foyer. [video cuts off, system reinitialize]

That was an exhausting exercise in jaw-grinding frustration and I don’t even know if it had helped. All I’d done was confirm Supervisor Leonide’s story and we had been pretty sure she was telling the truth already.

Overse had the exterior scan display up and she and Thiago stared at it unhappily. There was a lot of detail but basically the explorer had broken off when ART had fired on it. ART had missed, and I knew what that meant: it had decided to use our killware. There was still a non-negative chance that one or more members of its crew were aboard the explorer. If ART disabled the explorer, the Targets could hold them hostage. Taking the explorer from the inside out before it knew it was under attack was the best plan. It was sort of the only plan.

I backburnered everything else and focused on the security video again. I skimmed past an infuriating nine minutes and twenty-seven seconds of nothing, then eight Targets ran past, heading down the forward corridor, interspersed with more blank video and patchy static. DockSecSystem caught another emergency code, probably from the SecUnit who had been ordered to stand down. DockSecSystem tried to alert the explorer’s Sec and HubSystem but recorded no response. From comparing timelines I knew this was when the SecUnit still aboard the explorer had sent its emergency message to the supply transport’s SecSystem, so somebody had received the warning.

Thiago and Overse were still talking, worried, as I skipped past restarts and hours of empty corridors and what was at least a several-cycle gap in the timeline. There probably wasn’t anything else useful on here but I had to review it till the end to be certain.

Then the static cleared and I saw a glimpse of a blue uniform passing out of frame.

Overse said, “What is it, SecUnit?”

I realized I had abruptly stepped back from the station. Overse sounded worried and I knew how she felt about being out of contact with Arada. But I was almost completely focused on the video now and my buffer said, “Please stand by, I need to verify an alert.”

I slowed the video down, running it forward on one input while trying to pull coherent images from the static burst on the other. I cleaned up two images enough to get a recognizable view of four humans in blue clothing resembling ART’s crew uniform. They were blurry and I couldn’t increase the resolution, but one faced away from the drop box corridor. He had skin color in the dark brown range and a mostly hairless head, matching the images I had of one of ART’s crew members. It wasn’t an uncommon configuration for humans (some of the Barish-Estranza crew had it, too) but the chance that it was him was in the 80 percent range.

Then on my other input, the video’s static fuzzed into clarity just as a smaller human sprinted past the foyer. The face was obscured but the color and the logo on the uniform jacket were clear.

They were alive. All this time, I hadn’t believed it.

I’d been humoring ART, not really admitting it to myself. Not wanting to think about how I was going to handle it when we found evidence its crew was dead, or if we found nothing at all and it faced the choice of staying in this system forever looking for them, or returning to its base alone. But they were alive. Or at least five of them were and five were better than none. And from the desperate running, they were escaping.

I just hoped they’d made it out.

(Overse had folded her arms, which was awkward in the enviro suit, so she unfolded them. Thiago asked her, “Why did it sound like that?”

“That how it sounds when it uses a canned response, from the time it was working for—enslaved by—the company. It means it’s too busy to talk.” She added, “It never means anything good.”)

I said, “It might be good,” and sent them both the images. “We need to check the drop box.”

The drop box log file Overse had found confirmed that the main box had made two recent trips to the surface and back: one when the explorer had first arrived and the contact party had been taken over by the Targets, and then a second trip later, and if we were converting the time stamps right, that second trip had taken place around one hundred and thirty-five hours after ART had been attacked. We weren’t far behind them.