by Martha Wells
Leonide almost winced, and I could tell she didn’t like what she was about to say. “Our contact party had been compromised, but we weren’t aware at first. We’d just sent over a shuttle to the explorer with two environmental techs for a standard maintenance check. I had assumed that shuttle was destroyed in the subsequent … events, until you told me otherwise.”
Leonide stopped and waited, and Arada traded her a little more information. “Your techs, Eletra and Ras, had been implanted with these small devices.” On our private feed channel, Arada asked me, Now?
Yeah, now was good. I stepped forward, causing a chorus of nervous twitches from Leonide’s escort, and set a small sterile container with Eletra’s implant next to Arada’s hand on the couch. As I stepped back, she picked it up and passed it over to Leonide. We’d kept Ras’s implant and the Targets’ implants, though Overse hadn’t had any luck yet getting information from them. We’d figured since they were the more murdery implants, they might tell us more.
Leonide frowned, but thoughtfully, and consulted with an engineering supervisor in her feed. A tech came in to collect the container and carry it away.
Leonide said, “That might explain how they were controlling our contact group. As far as we can tell, when the group returned to the explorer via the space dock, they were somehow forced to take the rest of the crew prisoner. Our security system received a truncated warning of a viral threat, so we were able to cut off feed access before our systems were contaminated. It gave us some moments to prepare, before the explorer fired on us.”
According to SecSystem, the warning had come from one of the SecUnits. It had sent a code burst that had told the supply transport’s SecSystem to cut comm and feed and order the bot pilot into a defensive stance, just in time not to get blown up. The supply transport had then fled, as the explorer uncoupled from the dock. The explorer had fired again at the supply transport, damaged its engines and other systems, then headed away.
It was disturbing data. Raiders would have been intending to lure the supply transport in and take it, too. This looked an awful lot like the whole goal of the Targets was to get off the planet. Once they had secured an armed ship, they hadn’t bothered with the unarmed supply transport, even though it was, you know, full of supplies.
If they had control of the explorer’s crew and bot pilot, they would have been aware that they had just damaged the supply transport’s wormhole capability, ART said.
I don’t know how long ART had been riding my feed, probably the whole time. The SecSystem tried to block ART and I quickly put up a wall and deleted its memory of the contact. (ART really did not care to be challenged by other resident systems and I didn’t want the friendly SecSystem deleted.) I said, You were supposed to keep out of this in case this ship was compromised.
ART ignored that. Possibly the explorer attacked me because the Targets wanted a second wormhole-capable ship. Or a better armed one.
Maybe, though that wasn’t a conclusion that told us much of anything. It was like saying that they had wanted ART because it was pretty.
Arada was asking, “Did you get any visual images of the raiders?”
I had already seen the images, sent in the SecUnit’s codeburst. A six-second video clip of two Targets, bursting through a hatchway. Leonide admitted, “Very briefly in a security vid. They were, as you said, unusually divergent.”
Arada’s expression was grave. “We suspect they’ve been affected by alien remnant contamination.”
“Yes.” Leonide’s expression and tone said she did, too, and it was a source of extreme exasperation. If Barish-Estranza was going to get any return on their investment, they would have to do something about the contamination first, which at best would mean quarantining a large section of the planet and calling in a licensed decontam operation. (If they meant to do this legally and not pull a GrayCris and deal with it by murdering all the witnesses.) “How were you attacked?”
“We had just arrived in the system and started our initial longrange mapping scans.” Arada spread her hands. This was the hard lying part and I put SecSystem’s download on hold so I could concentrate and because it was just too nerve-racking. “We received a distress call from a ship we now know was your explorer. When we came within range, it launched a shuttle. We allowed it to dock and ended up in a battle for our lives and our ship. They were able to take eight members of our crew. If we hadn’t had a SecUnit, we would have lost the ship.”
Leonide’s gaze lifted briefly to me. I was doing the blank SecUnit stare at the wall past her head, which is less effective than the opaque helmet stare, but still gets the job done. She said, “Our Units weren’t so effective.”
Oh, I don’t know about that. If not for that codeburst warning, you and your supply transport would be in tiny pieces.
“Did you see anyone who might have been from the explorer’s crew?” Leonide asked. She managed to make it sound just the right amount of casual.
“Just Eletra and poor Ras,” Arada answered seriously. I thought that was showing too much sympathy, but Leonide was preoccupied and didn’t seem to notice. Then Arada said, “Did you have any idea there were alien remnants on this planet, perhaps at the old colony site?”
Careful, I said on our feed connection. That was getting uncomfortably close to discussing Barish-Estranza’s steadily falling profit margin for this reclamation and its potential liability for exposing employees and assets to active alien remnants.
(Overse was right, alien remnants were the one thing the whole Corporation Rim agreed was bad. Not that there weren’t corporates like GrayCris who would sell them if they thought they could get away with it, but the liability bonds and the chances of wiping out your entire population made it rare.)
Leonide had relaxed a little, maybe lulled into a sense of security by Arada’s general air of earnestness, but now her expression went back to a smooth professional mask. “I’m afraid my contract won’t permit discussing that. Our cargo factor has finished unloading your supplies.” Leonide eyed Arada again, and obviously came to a conclusion. “Before we transmit a certificate of note for your invoice, perhaps you’d like to negotiate.”
Oh, here we go.
Arada frowned, not understanding. “Negotiate what?”
Leonide said, “Your return to your ship.”
Ugh, I hate hostage situations. I vaulted over the couch, grabbed the guard nearest Leonide, yanked him up against my chest and twisted his arm so his weapon was pointed at Leonide. I did it really fast.
The other guards made various alarmed/aggressive noises and pointed their weapons at me but it was a little too late. Leonide, staring at the weapon me and my human shield were pointing at her, sent a code telling them to stand down. They hesitated. My human shield, whose feedname was Jete, tried to send a code through the feed but I’d already cut off access to the rest of the transport for everybody in the room. I increased my forearm pressure on his throat and he stopped thinking about struggling.
Arada had her hands up. It was a reflex but a little embarrassing, frankly. I told her on the feed, Arada, put your hands down. You’re supposed to be the one giving me orders.
Oh, sorry, you’re right. She put her hands down. She had light gold-brown skin and you could really tell all the blood had drained out of her face. Her voice a little shaky, she told Leonide, “I don’t want to negotiate.”
Leonide wet her lips, pulling her composure back together. “Our onboard security—”
“Is useless, right now.” Arada flicked a look at me. I had ordered my new SecSystem friend to seal certain hatches, cutting off this section from the rest of the transport but allowing us a path straight to the airlock. She added, “As you said, our SecUnit is very effective.”
Okay, I forgive her for putting her hands up.
Leonide, playing for time, said, “Where did you get it?”
Arada was too nervous to remember what I had told her to say if someone asked that. She said, “The company.”
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(Well, that was a waste of a good cover story about SecUnits produced for academic expeditions. I filed it in case I ever needed it again.)
Leonide’s expression tightened. “Company units have a reputation for being dangerous.”
Arada was beginning to get angry. “I know.”
I had also cut off Arada’s feed from ART so the four humans over there who were currently losing their minds and/or frantically shushing each other wouldn’t distract her. ART, who I couldn’t block because it’s a monster, said, I have a targeting lock on their bridge. The section you’re in will break off and I can tractor you over before you lose too much atmosphere.
The problem with gunships is they want to shoot at stuff. That’s why they’re so expensive to write bond contracts for. I said, No, don’t shoot at us. For fuck’s sake, ART. If everybody would just let me do my stupid job for one minute.
Leonide’s hard expression was tinged with outrage. She had realized she was cut off from the feed and there was no point in stalling for time. “It’s against Corporation Rim standards to allow a SecUnit control over proprietary systems.”
Arada’s gaze narrowed. “Then you should call someone and complain about that.”
Yeah, Arada was definitely mad now. ART slid into her feed to show her its targeting lock. The transport’s bot pilot had noticed the targeting lock, too, and was not happy. I let the bridge supervisor’s pretend-calm-but-really-slightly-panicked feed message to Leonide get through.
Leonide pressed her lips together. I could see it was a concession and I thought Arada did, too. Composed and calm, Leonide said, “There’s no need for all this. I was simply looking for a better deal. Perhaps coming from an academic background, you find that unusual.”
Arada swallowed, and also made herself sound calm. “Well, it was a little rude. I’d like to go back to my ship now.”
And for you to transmit the invoice, I told her in the feed.
“And for you to transmit the invoice,” she repeated.
Leonide tilted her head. “Of course.”
The rest was pretty normal. We backed out toward the lock and dropped Jete in the corridor before I sealed the foyer off from the rest of the ship. I let Arada have her feed back, and Overse said immediately, Are you all right?
I’m fine, babe, Arada told her. Just some corporate power peeing.
Ick.
We got our EVAC suits on. (I had control of the lock so no chance of them spacing us. And with ART’s guns still pointed at them, it would have been a suicidally stupid thing to do.) Then we cycled out of the lock with no trouble.
Once we were in the safety of ART’s tractors, and Arada had responded to all the exclamations from Ratthi, Amena, and Thiago, Arada tapped my private connection and asked, Why did she do that? Did I sound weak? I’m sorry I messed up.
No, it wasn’t you. I think she told us too much, in front of her crew, and she realized it. She wanted to make sure they knew she was in charge. I didn’t say it but I also thought Arada had been too sympathetic, and it had made Leonide feel like she had given too much away.
Arada sighed. But it was worth it. At least we know what to do next, now.
Yeah. We were going to the colony’s space dock.
* * *
It was four hours by ART’s clock to the colony planet and its space dock, which would have given us time to get ready, if we had any idea what to get ready for.
“We don’t know Perihelion’s crew is there,” Arada reported to the others as we took off our EVAC suits in ART’s airlock foyer. “But there is a chance the explorer is using it as a base of operations.”
“At worst, it may provide some information about just what is going on here,” Ratthi agreed over the comm. “If the dock’s systems are still active, then they might have information that SecUnit can pry out for us.”
Arada and I tried to stow our suits but one of ART’s drones showed up to elbow us out of the way and take over. ART agreed with Arada’s assessment, because the nav/route info scroll in ART’s feed showed we were already pulling away from the supply transport.
I’d had an idea earlier, now where was it? I checked my save-for-later. Oh right, that idea.
I needed to talk to ART about it.
It was a bad idea. But I had a bad feeling we were going to need it.
* * *
I didn’t know how long it would take to do this, so I had to ditch the humans quickly. Fortunately Thiago went to take another rest period (since he’d wasted part of the first one having a stupid argument with me), Overse and Arada went up to the control deck together, and Ratthi was sitting in the galley going over all the collected data from the Targets’ pathology scans and the material analysis of their gear again. Overse thought she had found evidence of alien remnant tech influence and he was trying to verify her results. Amena tried to follow me into the bunkroom and I told her, “Stay with Ratthi.”
Amena stopped and frowned. “Why? What are you going to do?”
I wanted to be in a physically private space instead of just a closed channel on the feed. It was a weird thing I was going to ask ART to do, and I didn’t want humans staring at my face while I did it, even if they couldn’t hear what I was saying. I was going to have to answer Amena and I was in a hurry so I just tried the truth. “I need to talk to ART in private.”
Amena’s expression did something funny and she lifted her brows. “About your relationship?”
I felt ART’s sharpened attention in the feed. I said, “Very funny.” I walked into the bunkroom, told the door to slide shut and set it on lock. I’d already cut the others out of the feed.
ART said, Do you want to watch Timestream Defenders Orion?
Of course I did, but first I had to do this. I said, “I have an idea about how to create a variable killware assault to deploy against the Targets’ systems. You can copy me and use me as the sentient component.” I’d put together a report on the sentient killware Palisade Security had deployed against the company gunship that had taken us off TranRollinHyfa, and now I sent it to ART. The analysis the company bot pilot and I had done during the incident suggested the sentient virus had been built using a construct consciousness, probably from a combat unit. Substituting a copy of my consciousness could produce the same results.
I knew ART wasn’t going to like this, though I didn’t know how I knew that. ART wasn’t a human, or a construct. Humans and constructs were full of overwrought emotions like depression, anxiety, and anger (was anxiety an emotion? It sure felt like one) and I had no idea what ART was full of, except how much it cared about its crew.
6.4 seconds dragged by (seriously, even a human would notice a pause that long) and ART hadn’t said anything. Then it said, That is a terrible idea.
Which just pissed me off. “It’s a great idea.” It was a great idea. ART had been working on a virus code tailored for targetControlSystem and the structure it had built so far was stored in our shared workspace. ART had halted development when it became clear there was no point in continuing without a way to make it variable, because of the combination of targetControlSystem’s archaic architecture and the possibility of a connection to alien remnant tech.
I couldn’t do this without ART’s help. On the company gunship, I’d moved my consciousness into the bot pilot’s processing space to help it fight the sentient killware, but this was different; I’d never copied myself and I wasn’t sure how to start, unless I had a place to put me. I couldn’t just stick Me.copy into ART’s semi-completed code, not without ART’s help. “And you thought of it first, you said we needed killware with a variable component.”
ART said, I didn’t mean you.
That sounds mild, putting it like that, like something ART would say in a normal tone. But it said it with so much force in the feed I sat down hard on the bunk. I said, “Stop yelling at me.”
ART didn’t respond. It just existed there, glaring at me invisibly in the feed.
Okay, I had known th
at ART wouldn’t like this, even though my threat assessment on the idea looked great. But I hadn’t known it would react like this. “You wouldn’t have to rip me out of my body, just copy me. It wouldn’t even be me. Me is a combination of my archives and my organic neural tissue and this would just be a copy of my kernel.”
ART was quiet for another 3.4 seconds. Then it said, For a being as sophisticated as you are, it is baffling how little understanding you have of the composition of your own mind.
Now I was getting more pissed off. “I know my composition, that’s why I’m sitting here arguing with a giant asshole and not stuck in a cubicle somewhere or guarding idiot humans on a mining contract.” Which, in retrospect, I should have stuck with that. That was a great comeback, it was to the point, it made sense, it was hard to argue with without sounding like an asshole. But I added, “Do you want to get your crew back or not?”
Which turned it from an argument into a fight, and ART has no concept of how to fight fair.
Which, granted, I didn’t really, either. I knew it as an abstract set of rules and guidelines from my shows and other media, and so should ART, but it seemed to have missed that part.
(What I use when I fight/do security is a minimum level of response, which is meant to minimize damage to humans and augmented humans and the company’s property, which means taking into account a lot of factors. For example: what is an intentional attempt by a client to injure another client versus what is just humans being stupid and needing to be made to stop. Which is why you need SecUnits and not combat bots. And why humans doing their own security is a terrible idea, since they’re actually way more likely to flip out and shoot everybody for no reason than combat bots are. Anyway, what I’m getting at here is it’s not fair, because you don’t want to give a hostile a chance to stop you, right? That’s stupid. But you don’t want to kill/injure a client for walking in the wrong door.)
I forgot where I was going with this, except that ART apparently has no concept of fairness, or minimum level of response, because the sense of ART’s almost full attention was overwhelming. Then the door slid open and Ratthi walked in with Amena right behind him. “What is going on?” he demanded. “Perihelion said you’re trying to copy yourself for a variable viral what?”