Марта Уэллс - Exit Strategy

Arada said, “What do you think, SecUnit?”

The rebuild process was increasing in speed again, and I suddenly didn’t have any space left for talking to humans. I got up and went back to my room.

Rebuild Process Complete at Cognition Level 100 percent

At thirty-seven hours since arrival, I sat up. I said, aloud, “That was stupid.” Everything was clear, sharp. Note to self, never, ever jump into a gunship with a bot pilot and fight off a construct Attacker code again. You almost deleted yourself, Murderbot.

I climbed off the bed and did a brief sweep of the suite via my cameras. Most of the humans had gone to a dinner event somewhere. Overse and Arada were asleep in Pin-Lee’s room, and Gurathin was sitting up in his room reading academic journals in the feed.

I got my bag, found my jacket and boots and put them on, and slipped out of the suite.

The station’s security was more like Milu: concentrated in areas where something might actually go wrong, and not in occupation spaces or the station mall. They had weapon scanners concentrated around the docks, but hardly any drones, and most of those were being used for small goods deliveries. A lot of effort had gone into the mall area, with rounded structures made to look like they were built out of wood, and a lot of real plants instead of holos, mosaic tiles set into the deck depicting flora and fauna from the planets in the system, with attached tags in the feed providing information about each one. As a distraction for the humans walking around me, they worked great. Everyone was looking down for the tiles or reading the feed, and not noticing stray wandering SecUnits.

None of the local newsfeeds that Ratthi and Pin-Lee and the others watched had said that I was here, and while the newsbursts carried in from the Corporation Rim said Dr. Mensah’s SecUnit had been involved in the escape from TranRollinHyfa, I’d done such a good job cutting myself out of security video, all they had was the old pre-configuration change image from Port FreeCommerce. That was one big thing I didn’t have to worry about.

The other thing that was different about this station mall was that feed advertising was restricted by a distance limit, so the displays were mostly inside the stores. Which were weird. From what I could see in the feed, there were two financial systems, one using hard currency for travelers, and a barter-based system for local citizens.

Fortunately the booking kiosks took hard currency cards.

I’d checked the transit schedules and had time to kill, so I went to a section of the station mall that was listed as a “Welcome Center.” I had never seen anything like it in a port before, but then, I’d never looked, so maybe I’d just missed it. It had kiosks and information displays about all the planets and stations in the Preservation Alliance. A dome overhead duplicated sky views from various Preservation planets, and actual humans and augmented humans stood around to answer questions for humans who wanted to live here. Trying to avoid them, I walked into what I thought was a shop that turned out to be a theater.

I’d never seen a theater in real life before, just on shows in the entertainment media. The story was shown in holo, in the middle of the room, with big comfortable seats all around it, not too close to each other. I know it was just a giant display surface, but still. This one had a three-hour holo show about how the first colonists had arrived. Basically the long version of what Ratthi and Mensah had told me, about the big ship fleeing the doomed colony. It was a good story, even if the tone was a little dry.

After it was over, I went back to the embarkation zone and checked the activity around the transports I’d flagged. Still no increased security presence.

I bought passage with one of Pin-Lee’s cards and found a transient waiting area with actual couches and chairs where I could pretend to sleep while watching media and monitoring the station security feed. Still nothing.

My transport called for boarding, and I didn’t get on.

I checked the station directory and found Mensah had an office in the government admin block in the same section as the Port Authority. Her private quarters was listed, too. (Which is just a bad idea. I know Preservation thinks of itself as some kind of human non-corporate paradise, but let’s be real.) I didn’t want to go to her home anyway, since her family would be there, so I went to the office.

There was some security monitoring to get past, and three augmented humans who were way too easily distracted by fake feed alerts for routine malfunctions. It was a nice office, with a balcony overlooking the admin plaza area and some big display surfaces. I didn’t touch anything except the couch, which I laid down on and watched episodes for eight hours.

I had the station feed backburnered, and there were still no security alerts, no unusual activity around the passenger or bot-piloted transports.

Then I picked up Mensah arriving in the outer foyer with two humans and a small juvenile human, who looked like a miniature version of Mensah. I stood up and waited.

They walked in and stopped abruptly.

I said, “It’s me.”

“Yes, I see that.” Mensah pressed her lips together, hiding her expression, but she didn’t look mad. She glanced back at the other humans, then told me, “Just a moment.”

While she spoke to them, I stepped out onto the balcony. There was an air barrier protecting it from the plaza two levels below, which was better than nothing, I guess. The plaza had a big mosaic tile pattern with real plants in elaborate abstract sculptures around it. Humans and bots wandered across it on the way to the other port offices. Faint steps on audio told me the small human had followed me out. She stepped up to the railing, frowning curiously at me. She said, “Hello.”

“Hello,” I said. “I’m your mother’s pet security consultant.”

She nodded. “I know. She said if I asked you your name, you probably wouldn’t tell me.”

“She’s right.”

We stared at each other for ten seconds, then she decided I was serious. She added, “She also said you saved her from a bunch of corporate goons.”

“She didn’t say ‘goons. ’” It was an archaic word. I knew it without having to look it up because the new series of Adventures in the Free Systems, which was made on one of the other worlds in the Preservation Alliance, had dropped locally twenty hours ago and it had used the word “goons.” I was 93 percent certain that was where Mensah’s small human had picked it up, too.

“You know what I mean.” She folded her arms. She had clearly expected to get more information out of me and was disappointed this was apparently not going to happen. “You saved her, right?”

“Yeah. Want to see?”

She lifted her brows, surprised. “Sure.”

I’d already pulled my video of the last part of our run through the TRH embarkation zone, the fight with the SecUnits and the Combat SecUnit, and our escape in the shuttle. I did a rapid edit to cut out some of the bloodier close-ups, and then sent it to her feed.

Her gaze went inward, then a little glassy as she reviewed it. In the tone of a young human who was impressed but trying not to show it, she said, “Wow.”

“Your mother saved me, too. She shot a SecUnit with a sonic mining drill.”

She finished the vid and frowned at me again. “So, you’re a SecUnit.” She made a half-shrug gesture I didn’t understand. “Is that … weird?”

It was a complicated question with a simple answer. “Yes.”

Mensah came out onto the balcony and pointed firmly toward the seating area back inside the office. Small human waved goodbye and went to sit down. Mensah leaned against the railing next to me and said, “I was afraid you’d left.”