Network Effect

by Martha Wells

  Both Targets turned toward me. They looked like tall, thin augmented humans, with dull gray skin. (Injury, illness? Or an uncommon skin augment/cosmetic modification?) They both wore form-fitting protective suits and partial helmets that left a surprising (surprisingly stupid) amount of the face bare. Narrow human features, dark brows standing out against the smooth gray skin. Both smiled with colorless lips.

  Accusingly, one said (Unidentified One = Target One) to the other, “You said this one was dead.” They weren’t quite identical. Target One was slightly taller and had broader shoulders.

  “Poor thing was dead,” Unidentified Two = Target Two responded, and laughed.

  Poor thing. I think a capillary just burst inside one of my organic parts.

  Three drones hovered behind the Targets, of a model that didn’t match anything in my archives. They were round, as big around as my head, the apertures for cameras or weapons hidden despite their size. The stealth material interfered with my scan, but not with the image in the organic part of my brain. It gave me an uneasy kind of double vision, where my scan insisted there were floating anomalies that wouldn’t appear on my camera, yet I had a clear image in my temp data storage, supplied by my organic nerve tissue.

  I knew the targetDrones weren’t slow, but they looked cumbersome. I needed intel before proceeding. I said, “What did you do to ART?”

  That wasn’t the intel I needed. But it was the intel I wanted.

  Target One cocked its head inquiringly and bared sharp teeth. Another possible cosmetic modification or genetic variance. Target One said, “You’re babbling, poor thing.”

  Target Two, in almost the same tone, said, “These creatures seem to have no control over their vocalizations.”

  I was aware of Amena, watching me with wide eyes, both hands pressed to her mouth. Casualties One and Two, still behind her, stared at me in confusion.

  I clarified, “This transport. What did you do to the bot pilot?” ART was so much more than a bot pilot but I didn’t have a word for what it was.

  Target Two sighed and folded its arms, like I’d asked a stupid question. Target One grinned at me, maliciously. It didn’t know who I was, what I was, it might not even know who ART was, but it knew I cared, and it was going to enjoy what it said next. “We deleted it, of course.”

  I felt my face change. The muscles were all stiff, and not from the hit I’d taken. I’m still not great at controlling my expressions, and I had no idea what I looked like. Behind her hands, Amena whispered, “Oh shit.”

  “Oh, this one looks angry,” Target One said.

  Target Two said, “How boring. Angry, then afraid, then dead. Boring boring boring.”

  Target One began, “You belong to us now, all of you. This is what’s going to happen. You will tell us—”

  I grabbed Target One’s face. Not my best strategic attack, but the quickest way to shut it up. Using its face as a handle, I slung it sideways into the couch built against the bulkhead.

  TargetDrone One came at my head. It was fast but I was ready this time. I ducked sideways and as it stopped and reversed to come back at me, I put my fist through it. I slammed it against the side of the hatch to break the remnants off my hand as I turned.

  Target Two actually looked at the other two targetDrones at this point, obviously wondering why they hadn’t responded.

  The good thing about being a construct is that I can have a dramatic emotional breakdown while still running my background search to find the drone key commands. I’d had a hit and a responding ping from the targetDrones right when Target One had called me boring. (Irony is great.) I sent the order to power down and they dropped to the deck with two loud thunks.

  Target Two’s gray face went surprised, then furious. It was kind of funny. This was a point where if I was a human (ick) I might have laughed. I decided to go with my first inclination and kill the shit out of some ass-faced hostiles instead. I told the Targets, “Angry, then afraid, then dead. Is that the right order?”

  Casualty One whispered, “Oh deity, that’s a—”

  Target One, flailing on the couch, reached for something that was clearly a weapon, clipped to the suit plate on its thigh. I lunged forward and had its wrist before it could close around the weapon. This turned out to be a trick, because it slapped its free hand on my shoulder and I felt a stab of pain from an energy weapon.

  Target One grinned at me with its whole face.

  Projectiles hurt but energy weapons just piss me off. I crushed the wrist I was holding and twisted, caught the arm with the energy weapon and snapped it. (The arm. The weapon, a clunky tube-shaped device about ten centimeters long, clattered to the deck.)

  Target One shrieked in a combination of rage and disbelief that did not make me any less mad. Target Two, with what I have to say was an entirely misplaced confidence, stepped in and shoved another energy weapon at my chest.

  I was moving so fast that later I had to run my video back to analyze my performance. I shoved Target One away and smashed an elbow into Target Two’s face. I tore the energy weapon out of Target Two’s hand along with a few fingers, stabbed the weapon into its chest (it didn’t have a sharp end but I made do) and ripped a large hole. Then I used the weapon, and the large hole, to lift Target Two up and slam it into the upper bulkhead. Three times. Fluid and pieces went everywhere.

  That was satisfying. I think I’ll do it again.

  But I’d taken too long and it gave Target One time to scramble up and bolt for the hatch.

  I started to follow but then registered that Amena was bellowing “SecUnit, look!” at me.

  I looked. On the deck, the two remaining targetDrones were flashing awkwardly placed lights; they were powering up. I sent a power down order but the key wasn’t working anymore. I stomped the first one with a boot and then caught the second as it lifted off. I smashed it on a chair, accidentally taking out a display surface in the process. The two casualties were yelling agitatedly at Amena and I had to run back my audio to understand.

  Casualty One grabbed Amena’s arm and said, “You have to come with us! We have to get away, try to hide!” This close, though ART’s primary feed still wasn’t working, I could pick up some info from her interface. (Feedname: Eletra, gender: female, and an employee ID from a corporation called Barish-Estranza.)

  Casualty Two (Feedname: Ras, gender: male, and another Barish-Estranza employee ID.) “Quick, before they send more drones!” He threw a look at me. I knew that look. “With your SecUnit, we have a chance.”

  Amena turned to me. “We should go with them.”

  I’d already sent a restart command to my dormant drones. Target One wasn’t hard for them to track since it was wounded, leaking fluid, and shrieking. (You know, if you don’t want to be manually eviscerated with your own energy weapon then maybe you shouldn’t go around killing research transports and antagonizing rogue SecUnits.)

  I told Amena, “I have something I need to finish off.”

  “There are too many drones,” Eletra insisted. Her gaze went from Amena to me and back again. She wasn’t sure who she had to convince. “You have to come with us!”

  Amena took a step toward me, wincing as she put weight on her damaged leg. “Are they right? Can you tell if the drones are coming for us?”

  Target One ran through the hatch into the crew meeting area below the bridge.

  The crew meeting area where I’d spent most of my time with ART, where we watched World Hoppers. My drones caught video of another hostile already in there (designated Target Three) standing on the steps that led up to the control deck. The hatch into the meeting area started to slide down. Eight of my drones reached the hatch in time to dart under just before it closed.

  The humans weren’t wrong about the targetDrones, which weren’t responding to my key commands anymore. (Which meant there was a highly motivated controlling system somewhere that had pushed through a quick security update.) I still had access to the Targets’ feed, and from the encrypt
ed traffic, somebody was telling the targetDrones to do something. Which most likely involved converging on our position to kill us.

  I said, “Probably.”

  Amena waved her hands impatiently. “Then let’s go!”

  I tried cutting off the targetDrones’ control feed. It confused some but others still seemed to be receiving orders. There were obviously parts of this system I couldn’t access. Working within it was like trying to operate a projectile weapon when someone had shot half my fingers off. All the data needed to be converted to other formats, nothing was right, it was a pain in the ass. To take full control of it I was going to have to start at the beginning, with penetration testing.

  Exasperated, Ras said, “Just give it an order!”

  Amena snapped, “It doesn’t take orders.”

  I’d wanted to do this up close and personal but that wasn’t an option. The eight drones now inside the control deck with Targets One and Three were on standby near the floor, in surveillance positions. Target One had collapsed against a padded station chair, panting, both damaged arms hanging uselessly. Target Three stepped down to an inactive display surface and activated it with a hand gesture. Weird to see a human or whatever these were do it manually. They hadn’t set their non-standard encrypted feed to access ART’s systems yet.

  Target Three said on the all-ship comm, “Intruders, escapees, slice them open like—”

  The translator fizzled on the last few words so I guess I’d never know what I’d be sliced open like. I cut one drone out of the swarm of eight to observe, and gave the others their instructions. With the protective suit and the partial helmets, I needed to aim for the exposed face.

  Target Three had time to make a gurgling noise and Target One a gaspy scream. My seven drone contacts winked out one by one. Drone Eight continued to record, sending me video of the bodies jerking helplessly, then finally dropping in leaking sprawls to the deck.

  “But that’s a SecUnit—” Ras protested.

  Eletra, her expression increasingly desperate, listened to the comm announcement and its abrupt end. “We have to go!”

  Amena limped forward another step. She grabbed my arm and glared up at me. “Listen to me!”

  I looked down at her and made deliberate eye contact because she had almost all my attention right now and the last person/target who had done that was still dripping down the bulkhead behind me. She was too self-absorbed or brave or some combination of both to realize what she was doing was not smart. She set her jaw and said, “We have to go with them. Now.”

  I gently peeled her small hand off my jacket and said, “Never touch me again.”

  Amena blinked and pressed her lips together, then turned to Eletra and Ras. “Let’s go.”

  Eletra stepped toward the hatch. “This way—”

  Ras said, “Is that thing going to listen—”

  I stepped past Eletra and out the hatch in time to catch the targetDrone waiting there. I slammed it into the bulkhead and shook the remnants off my hands. Following ART’s schematic, I said, “This way.”

  They followed me.

  5

  I called in most of my drones to take scouting positions ahead and cover positions behind us. I was taking the long way around toward Medical. The dim corridor lights brightened as we went by, an autonomic reflex. For a human, it would have been like seeing a dead body twitch. ART wasn’t here, there was no sign of its drones, but some of its lower-level functions were active, the code running even without the controlling intelligence.

  An intruder system, probably some kind of bot pilot, had changed the security key for the targetDrones. And it must be guiding the ship through the wormhole. Transports just can’t do that on autopilot, at least according to World Hoppers and all the other shows about ships that I’d watched. That ART had wanted to watch.

  I designated the intruder as targetControlSystem.

  I hoped it was sentient enough to hurt when I killed it.

  I had a lot of work to do before that point. And the image of the steaming bodies of Targets One and Three inside ART’s pristine control area was taking up way too much processing space.

  I had a few scout drones still in the corridors near the control area and I told them to start mapping any motion and anomalous activity and plot it to my copy of ART’s schematic. I had to find a way to advance-detect the targetDrones.

  A drone (designated: Scout Two), parked on the ceiling of the foyer outside the crew meeting area, picked up activity. More Targets converged on the foyer and tried to get the hatch open, but Target Three had apparently used a manual emergency control to seal it from the inside. The new Targets—let’s call them Four, Five, and Six—fumbled around with the controls but didn’t seem to know how to undo the seal. And whatever was going on with their weird feed and targetControlSystem, they couldn’t seem to access ART’s systems with it.

  ART was dead.

  I wanted to stop and lean my head against the bulkhead, but there was no time.

  Behind me, my drones saw Eletra had an arm around Amena’s waist, helping her walk. Ras limped, too, trying to watch behind us and keep an eye on me at the same time. All three were either shivering or sweating from what was probably shock.

  Right. Humans. Humans with needs. Mensah’s juvenile human, and the two new humans who were obviously hurt.

  Murderbot, you need to get your act together.

  “Do you know how many Targets are aboard?” I said.

  “Targets?” Ras repeated.

  “It means the gray people,” Amena said, gritting her teeth as she put weight on her bad leg.

  “I’ve seen five, but I don’t know if that’s all,” Eletra said.

  “At least five,” Ras agreed. “They had a lot of those bots, drones, whatever they are. We should try to get to the engineering module. Tell your SecUnit—”

  “It doesn’t listen to me, I told you,” Amena said, exasperated.

  I’d already identified six total Targets, with three still active (counting the messily dead ones), so the humans’ intel was useless. (Not a surprise.) I arranged the drone scouts in front of us into a cloud formation and sent them ahead with their scan functions tuned all the way up.

  Scout Two showed me that Targets Four, Five, and Six had stopped ineffectually poking at the hatch. They were hastily adjusting their protective suits, sliding plates reconfiguring their helmets to cover their whole heads. That was a problem. Seven drones to kill two Targets had been overkill (Though one Target had already been wounded. Say seven to kill one and a half Targets.) especially when my supply of drones was limited. I had no real intel on how good their armor was at deflecting drones, and trying to find out might mean wasting another squad.

  I needed the drones as an early warning system for the targetDrones, which with targetControlSystem, might be a much worse threat than the squishy Targets. Plus three of my drones scouting in the main section near ART’s control area had disappeared in the last ninety-seven seconds, which meant they had encountered stealth targetDrones. I was losing my eyes in the rest of the ship and that was really not an ideal situation. It sucked, basically. Even my risk assessment module thought so, and I knew what its opinion was worth.

  We reached the hatch into the quarters section and I stepped to the side to let the humans through, then hit the manual release. The hatch slid shut and I pulled the panel, then used the energy weapon in my right arm to melt a couple of key components.

  Behind me, this was going on:

  “Why is it doing that?” Ras asked Amena.

  She stared blankly at him, then said, “SecUnit, why are you doing that?”

  Checking ART’s schematic had let me pick a couple of access points. I could close off the living section—containing the quarters, medical, galley, classrooms, and crew lounges—from the rest of the ship by sealing two more hatches. It wasn’t the best choice, but trying to cross over to engineering or the lab module wasn’t feasible at the moment, and the humans would need th
e supplies here. I was betting the targetDrones had no arm extensions to repair the hatches. The Targets themselves could, but I’d have warning and time to get there first. (And the Targets could get to us via an outer hatch, but they’d have to take the EVAC suits out across the hull while we were in the wormhole and from what I’d seen in the entertainment media, that was a bad idea.) “I’m trying to create a safe zone.”

  Amena turned to Ras and said, “It’s trying to create a safe zone.”

  As he looked from her to me and back again, I stepped past and started down the passage. Then three drones in my scout formation winked out of existence at the corridor junction ahead. I threw myself forward, rolled into the junction, and shot the two targetDrones waiting there with my left arm energy weapon. One dropped to the deck, the second wobbled in the air. I came to my feet and smashed it against the bulkhead.

  My drone Scout Two in the control area foyer recorded the Targets pounding on the sealed hatch again. Did they think we—or someone—was inside? They weren’t using translators with each other and I couldn’t understand what they were saying.

  I told my drone cloud to continue down the corridor toward the medical suite to make sure it was clear. I told the humans, “Hurry.” None of them argued, and they limped after me rapidly.

  Down two corridors, then a turn and we were there. The MedSystem’s platform was quiet and powered down, the surgical system folded up into the ceiling, no sign of the medical drones. It was weird (not bad weird, just weird) seeing this place again. This was where ART had made the changes to my configuration, to help me pass as a human, where it had saved my client Tapan.

  Ugh, emotions.

  I checked the space, scanning the restroom and shower compartment, the morgue, and the other enclosed areas to make sure there weren’t targetDrones, Targets, or any other as yet unknown hostile lurking. The humans stood in the middle of the room, watching me anxiously.

  I finished my sweep, told them, “Stay here.” I left one drone to keep my feed relay with Amena active and walked out, shutting the hatch behind me.