Марта Уэллс - Network Effect

It wasn’t the plants or the ag-bots—that was normal. Plants could be engineered to do a lot of things for colonies, like produce gases or other chemicals. But for one thing the complex didn’t resemble the Adamantine colony plans, not at all. And you would expect everything to be more messy and human, with things under construction, piles of materials, temporary habitat structures, or the remains of temporary habitat structures that had been stripped to build permanent structures. No air or ground vehicles were visible, no boats or docks on the lake. No trash. This place looked simultaneously abandoned but well cared for. Like whatever it was being used for, it wasn’t meant for humans to live in.

I sent images to Overse and Thiago, and there were stunned exclamations. Indicating the complex with the weird ribs, I asked, Is that an alien structure? (It was the obvious question.)

No, it couldn’t be, Overse said, but she sounded like she wasn’t certain.

Thiago said, I agree, that looks too… usable for humans to be an authentic ruin. It also looks too old to have been built by the Adamantine colonists. I have seen reports claiming that groups compulsively constructing unusual structures is an early symptom of remnant contamination. It could have been built by the Pre-CR colonists, under the influence of the remnants.

That was probably right. Intrepid hero explorers found alien ruins all the time in shows like World Hoppers, but in reality it was more like what happened to transports that got trapped in endless wormhole journeys. Nobody knew what happened or what anything looked like because everybody involved died.

The compulsive construction thing sounded really creepy, though.

Thiago added, It could also just be an early Pre–Corporation Rim structure of a style that we don’t recognize .

That’s probably what the Adamantine colonists thought before they got eaten or turned into liquid or whatever.

The ag-bot took another step, bending its neck down into the plants. I didn’t see any humans or Targets, but there were definitely power sources here because I was picking up some interference on my scan that indicated something like large-scale air barriers in operation. Ratthi had mentioned they might be in use to keep the colony’s atmosphere contained, so that made sense.

My drone had found the end of the dock structure and got a view of the far side, which was a flat valley, punctuated with angular rock formations sticking up out of the ground randomly. The dock and the drop shaft must be on a plateau and this was the edge. Reddish brown scrubby grass dotted with bits of brighter red covered everything that wasn’t rock or dirt, the colors brilliant even under the overcast sky. There was a long straight obviously artificial canal that came out of the base of the plateau somewhere below and ran off toward the rising hills some distance away. The light wind came from that direction, ruffling the grass.

There was no sign of other buildings. Maybe Thiago was right and the complex was from the Pre–Corporation Rim colony. If it was, their budget must have been big enough to make the company break out in greed sweat. All that currency and none of it going for bonds.

(If they had gotten company bonds, at least somebody might have been around to say Hey, maybe we should go when they encountered the toxic alien remnants or whatever else it was they had encountered.)

And where was everybody?

My drones sent me an alert and I checked their inputs. They were picking up ambient audio: voices echoing against manufactured stone and projectile weapon fire.

Oh, that’s where everybody was.

The audio bounced off the walls and obscured its direction of origin; without the drones I wouldn’t have been able to get close without being spotted.

The standoff was toward the center of the dock, in the main drop box loading chamber. With the map I’d downloaded from the space dock, I found a ramp to the upper levels, past corridors and doorways to empty rooms, out to an open gallery level overlooking the dark arrival chamber. It wasn’t a great spot for a sniper, even with the cover of the low safety wall. The angles were bad and I had to send my drones down to the embarkation floor to get a good look at who was fighting who.

With the power down, the space was shadowy, and someone had already shot out the big overhead emergency lights in the curved ceiling. The drop box chamber was bigger than the one on the station, with wide girders forming high arches over the foyer in front of the giant safety hatches. They were closed, blocking off the box’s now-empty landing zone. Doorways on the west side of the chamber had groups of Targets clustered in the shadowed archways, yelling, ducking back into cover, and taking shots at another smaller group on a broad balcony on the upper level on the east side, to my right. Several dead Targets were scattered across the floor in front of the drop box hatches.

Yes, those were definitely Targets down there. But many still had characteristics that made it way more obvious that they were humans who had been physically altered, like body types other than the tall skinny alien chic look of the Targets who had taken over ART. Most wore the kind of rough work clothing normal for colonies or mining, a cheaper, more battered version of ART’s environment suits with hoods but no breathing gear, or a mix of plain work clothes, plus a random collection of what looked like old uniforms and protective gear. That made it hard to see faces, but the drones identified a whole group where the gray skin coloring was obviously some kind of progressive condition and not a natural or cosmetic effect. Interestingly, the ones who were more obviously altered humans weren’t all fighting on the same side.

I didn’t spot any of the distinctive Target weapons. They used projectile weapons without logos that looked badly hand-assembled out of spare parts, and I noted one weapon that had probably come from the Barish-Estranza contact party. With everybody running around so much, I couldn’t get an accurate count, but there were at least a hundred Targets scattered through here, and ambient audio suggested more fighting in the corridors to the east. No sign of targetDrones, but below the east side balcony I spotted debris that might be drone remnants.

So this all looked like a big mess but it told me two things: (1) the theory about the Targets being colonists who had been exposed to alien remnant contamination was probably correct. (We had been around 82 percent certain of that but it was nice to take it all the way up to 96 plus.) And (2) they had at least two factions who didn’t get along at all.

But if ART’s crew had arrived in the drop box while this was going on, I didn’t like their chances. I didn’t see any dead humans, but if they had gotten captured again, this was going to be way harder than I’d hoped.

But my drones were finding a lot of cubbies and possible hiding spots along the walls below my position, like openings to cargo storage spaces, another doorway that the map said ran under this balcony and toward the exterior of the dock, a dispatch corral designed for an older model of hauler bot, an entrance to a lift pod lobby…

Wait. There we go.

A decorative glass rock wall curved out away from the open door to the lift pod lobby, and around the side of that wall a figure crouched. The angle was bad, but I could see an arm resting on the glass and it was dark brown, wearing a decorative woven bracelet. The pushed-up sleeve of the T-shirt was a light blue. None of those things suggested a Target.

If you had just arrived in a drop box and found a bunch of Targets fighting or about to fight a pitched battle on the embarkation floor, you might run toward the obvious lift pod lobby. Then you’d discover the power was out and the lift pods were inactive and you’d accidentally got yourself pinned down. I sent a drone in for a closer look.