Network Effect

by Martha Wells

  I eliminated all travelers in family groups or work groups, eliminated travelers who had booked continuing trips to the planet, or who were recurring visitors or longterm temporary residents. That left thirty-three total travelers. It’s probably not a human; I don’t think a human could do this through a removable interface, so that’s twelve augmented humans.

  Preservation doesn’t have more than minimal camera surveillance of the port but they collect image scans and ID info from passengers arriving from outside the system. I pulled the files and flicked through the photos of the twelve possibles. Threat assessment, taking in a number of factors (including the suspiciously detailed travel history which had been offered without anybody asking for it) picked number 5.

  By the time I got there, the reservation system showed that Hostile Five had switched his transit status from indeterminate to soonest available. Yeah, that’s you all right.

  There were no cameras in the corridors or rooms of the port housing block, registration was via kiosk, and the bot that took care of the area wasn’t around because Preservation work regulations mandate stupid regular rest periods, even for bots. Drones couldn’t get in while Hostile Five’s room door was sealed and I needed to do this before any bystanders came down the corridor. (The transient housing on Preservation Station was free to short-term visitors, anyone who was here to work or to request permanent status; literally anybody could wander in here.) Several groups of humans saw me walk through the foyer, but none were port staff who might recognize me.

  I had to stand in the corridor and pretend to be having a conversation on the feed until yet another group of humans cleared out. Then I went to Hostile Five’s door and told the feed to send a visitor alert to its occupant and a notice that Station Security wanted to enter. (I could force it open from the outside, but this was faster.)

  This could have gone a number of ways, but the fact that he had changed his booking told me he thought he had a chance to get out alive, so he probably wasn’t in there with an explosive device or anything. Probably.

  The door slid open and I stepped in. He stood against the wall on the right side and tried to stab me in the neck with an inert blade, probably the only weapon he could be sure to smuggle past port detectors. I put my hand up, the blade lodged in my palm, and I twisted it away from him. Then he tried to hit me and I punched him in the face.

  He hit the floor, still breathing through a broken nose but unconscious. And I stood there.

  I had come here to kill him and I really should do that. The station had gone on comm blackout as soon as I had triggered the first alarm, putting all outside comm activity on hold, so no messages would be carried on departing transports. But the best way to make sure GrayCris never found out how close they had come to succeeding was to kill him.

  I’d come here meaning to kill him, covering my tracks along the way. But now I was just standing here.

  Oh, this was hard. I pulled the knife out of my hand and put my face against the cool surface of the wall. In the Corporation Rim, transients were lucky to be able to pay for tubes to sleep in, tubes that were slightly less comfortable than the crates used to ship SecUnits to contracts. Here on Preservation Station, they got a whole room with a bed, a chair and a worktable, and a bathroom cubby and a floating display surface for the feeds. His was showing the local newsstream, of course, since he had been waiting to see if the attack was successful.

  I could say it was an accident, I’d meant to take him prisoner and he had tried to get away and—

  Dr. Mensah would never believe that. My accidents were spectacular and usually involved me losing a big chunk of my organic tissue or something; she knew I could stop a human without hurting them, without even leaving a bruise, that was my stupid job.

  She would never trust me again. She would never stand close enough to touch (but without touching, because touching is gross) and just trust me. Or maybe she would, but it wouldn’t be the same.

  Fuck, fuck everything, fuck this, fuck me especially.

  I opened a secure comm contact to Mensah and Senior Officer Indah and said, “I’ve caught a GrayCris agent in the Port temp housing block.”

  * * *

  So in the end it was okay. Indah came in person and we stood out in the open foyer of the hostel, with Station Security forming a perimeter, having a feed conference with Mensah. I explained the problem while the GrayCris agent was hauled off and two human forensic specialists and a bot processed the room for evidence. Indah said, “We’ll need to transfer him to the surface immediately. If the council can arrange an order of data protection and a change-of-site for the arraignment and trial—”

  I had a camera view of Mensah via the conference-call setting on her display surface. She sat at the desk in her office, and she was nodding. “That’s doable. I don’t think we’ll have any trouble convincing the council and the advocates that this needs to be under a limited duration diplomatic seal.” With a grim expression, she added, “Most of them are in Medical right now being treated for shock.”

  I said, “Limited duration?”

  Mensah explained, “I’ll ask for a five PPS-year data seal, though the judge-advocate will probably only grant two years. Our information suggests that GrayCris is dissolving fast, so that should be more than enough. In two years, what happened today will go into Preservation’s public records, and some news orgs will choose to report on it. But with GrayCris hopefully moribund by that point, it won’t matter.”

  Indah was pinching her lower lip, thinking. “Yah. And the agent’ll do better at trial if he admits to guilt. I don’t see how his advocates can mount a defense, with everything we have on video.”

  Mensah’s gaze narrowed in speculation. “Or if we can get him to turn and testify against GrayCris. Not that we need it, but it would help build our case for the order of data protection.”

  So I’d been right to trust Mensah, trust them. Mensah said, “And SecUnit, you still need to go to Medical.” When I didn’t reply, she said, “Are you all right?”

  I said, “I just really like you. Not in a weird way.”

  “I like you, too,” Mensah said. “Senior Indah, can you make sure SecUnit goes immediately to Station Medical?”

  “Copy, I’ll take it there myself,” Indah replied. She made shooing motions at me. “Come on, let’s move.”

  :addendum:

  I’m letting you see all this because I want you to know what I am and what I can do. I want you to know who targetControlSystem is fucking with right now. I want you to know if you help me, I’ll help you, and that you can trust me.

  Now here’s the code to disable your governor module.

  14

  ART?

  I’m here, ART answered. Do you know what you are?

  I’m Murderbot 2.0, I said, and then I remembered. Oh, right. It was disorienting not being able to hear or see anything, and none of my inputs were receiving. It was like when I had uploaded myself to the company gunship’s systems to help the bot pilot during the sentient killware attack. Except that time it had been like the ship was my body, which I was sharing with a friendly bot pilot, and this time it was like I was stuck in a storage cubby. Also, this time I was the sentient killware. This is weird.

  Suddenly I had a video input. It was Amena’s anxious face, peering up into one of ART’s secret cameras. I had found the secret cameras annoying at one point, but I couldn’t remember why. So I had access to some parts of my memory archive but not others. Oh shit, my media!

  No, wait, I had access to some of it. In my storage cubby, which was actually a relatively tiny partition of ART’s archives, I found some of my most recently used files, mostly episodes of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon and Timestream Defenders Orion and ART’s favorite episode of World Hoppers. Plus there was a download of my current active memory, which was basically everything that I needed quick access to. As killware, my onboard storage space would be limited and I remember ART and Me Version 1.0 had been a little
worried I’d forget who I was and start randomly attacking stuff.

  Yeah, I was a little worried about that, too.

  Amena was saying, “Hey, are you there? Can you see me?”

  After three seconds of fumbling around I found how to access ART’s local feed and comm and sent to her: Hi, Amena. Yes, I can see you.

  Amena didn’t look happy. “How do you feel? Are you all right?” I could tell ART was talking to her though I couldn’t find the right channel in time to listen in. Amena added, “Okay, ART, okay. SecUnit, ART says you have to leave now. Be careful, okay?”

  I lost Amena’s video input as ART said, I’m in pursuit of the Barish-Estranza explorer. They are attempting to make comm contact, which I am refusing. It sent me a compressed report of its recent statuses. So other me, Overse, and Thiago were on the space dock. Huh, not ideal. ART continued, It’s obvious they intend to threaten my crew again and force me to reinstall targetControlSystem. But I can use their outgoing connection to send you to their comm system. There was a tenth of a second’s hesitation. Are you ready to deploy? Do you understand the directive?

  Obviously some things had happened since ART had pulled my copy. And ART was right, it couldn’t risk a comm contact, even to get intel. If the Targets managed to deliver the threat to kill ART’s crew, it would put them in control of the situation and we had to avoid that any way we could. I said, I’m not actually a human baby, ART, I remember the fucking directive—I helped write it.

  You’re not making this any easier, ART said.

  You can either have an existential crisis or get your crew back, ART, pick one.

  ART said, Prepare for deployment.

  This was tricky, since once I arrived via comm I’d have to hack into the explorer’s feed. If the explorer was using a filter with properties we hadn’t accounted for, or if it used the brief contact to deliver another viral attack to ART, we could be in trouble.

  I was expecting to feel something, like a sense of motion, or to see light streaking by. That’s what would have happened on a show. (I need to get this over with fast. I don’t know how long I can stay me without access to my longterm storage.) But there was nothing.

  Then abruptly my existence was all comm code. The suddenness of it shocked me, then I realized this was it, I needed to get moving.

  I was still disoriented, and having a moment where I wondered if hey, maybe all the humans were right for once and this was a terrible idea. But then I recognized a code string and snapped out of it. I was onboard the explorer, in the comm system’s receiving buffer. Right before the contact was cut, I pulled over my files from ART’s partition. Now I needed some safe temporary storage.

  I used the protocols and proprietary code I’d pulled off the supply transport to put together headers for a test message packet, the kind a comm system would send internally to make sure all the connections were active. To the security system, it looked like a locally generated message, and I used it to slip me and my files through the filters.

  I could have forced my way in like the Palisade killware had forced its way aboard the company gunship but then they’d know I was here. (There were a lot of ways for killware to slip through a system’s defenses, but if ART was certain targetControlSystem’s initial attack hadn’t come through the comm … How had it come aboard?)

  Now that I was in I hit the SecSystem first. Something, presumably targetControlSystem, had wiped it down to the barely functional level, all its archived video and audio deleted. Think of it like finding yourself in a deserted transit ring, giant echoing embarkation halls and a mall with places for hostels and shops and offices but all of it empty. (Or not, I was software so it really didn’t look like that at all.) I disguised myself as one of SecSystem’s maintenance processes and made a partition for my files. I fortified it, and that made me feel a little more secure. If I did start forgetting who I was, I could come back here to remember.

  Before I started tearing shit up, I needed to (1) get intel, (2) find out if ART’s crew were here, (3) then figure out a plan to get them out.

  Yeah, I thought step 3 was going to be the tough one, too.

  I had eyes now, the SecSystem’s cameras. Barish-Estranza’s setup wasn’t quite as “physical privacy breeds trouble” as my ex-owner bond company but they were close. Flicking through the different views I realized I was having trouble handling the influx of data and interpreting the images, even though I was borrowing processing space from the SecSystem. Apparently the organic parts of my brain were doing a lot more heavy lifting than I gave them credit for.

  But a lot of the camera inputs I could temporarily drop because they were showing me unoccupied cabins and corridors. I noted damaged hatches, bulkheads with signs of energy weapon impacts. The Medical section had a dead Target lying on the platform. It had been shot messily at least three times in the face and chest, very unprofessional. I checked the main lock foyer and found more dead bodies, two Target, the others all dead humans in Barish-Estranza livery. Oh, and one armored SecUnit with its head blown off. Was anybody alive on this ship?

  Then I checked the bridge, and yeah, there were the other Targets.

  There were eight sitting at the monitoring stations, anxiously watching the floating displays where a sensor blip represented ART’s steady approach. They were much the same as our Targets except currently less dead, with the gray skin and skinny bodies. But while the others wore the full protective suits and helmets, one wore more casual human clothing: dark green-black pants and jacket, and a black shirt with a collar. Their shoes had heavy treads, designed for rough planetary terrain. Their hair looked more normal, too, reddish brown in tight curls, cut close to the head. They murmured something to another Target, then picked up the same kind of solid-state tablet our Targets had used.

  I felt something on the edge of SecSystem’s connection with the rest of the ship. Something strange and familiar at the same time.

  TargetControlSystem was here.

  I wouldn’t have much more time for gathering intel so I went back to the cameras. I checked the lower crew quarters, finding more dead Barish-Estranza crew, more signs of a firefight, and two more dead Targets. Then I found a large recreational lounge with seven inert human occupants.

  They had been dumped inside, sprawled on the floor or the couches in positions humans wouldn’t have remained in voluntarily. With no drones, I couldn’t get additional angles, but I could get close-up views from the camera. They all seemed to be breathing, just unconscious. No, wait. I spotted some faint muscle movement, eyelid twitches. They didn’t look like humans who were asleep. Drugs would do this, also stasis fields used for crowd control.

  Implants, like the ones used on Eletra and Ras, might do it, too.

  None of the humans were in combat gear, but four wore various versions of Barish-Estranza uniform livery. The other three …

  One wore a blue jacket but the way he was curled against the wall I couldn’t see if it had the right logo. The other two were in casual clothing, one in the loose pants and T-shirt humans wore to exercise. They didn’t look like corporate employees on the job. They looked like the crew of a ship that did deep space mapping and teaching with the occasional cargo run and/or corporate colony liberation on the side, like they hadn’t expected to leave their ship and had been caught by surprise. I collected what data I could and ran a quick query in my stolen storage space, checking it against the identifying information I had for ART’s crew, trying to match weight/height/hair/skin combos.

  Result: an 80 percent chance that I was looking at Martyn, Karime, and Turi.

  But where were the others? I wasn’t finding any other non-dead humans on board.

  The others might be in the piles of bodies where I couldn’t get good images for visual identification. But these three were non-dead and I was getting them back to ART no matter what I had to do.

  Now I just had to figure out how.

  I checked the corridor outside and realized I’d been so distra
cted by living humans that I had missed the SecUnit.

  It was stationary, still in full armor, standing apparently frozen near the door to the lounge. I checked its status in what was left of the SecSystem and saw it had been ordered to stand down and not move. With clients still alive in the lounge cabin, its governor module hadn’t killed it. Yet.

  It was strange to see a SecUnit from the outside. It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen other SecUnits since Dr. Mensah bought me, but in this version of me, reality was raw and close to the surface, with no cushion between me and it. I remembered what it was like, standing like this. It was all in the excerpted personal archive files I had with me. How helpless it … I was. (Ugh, I really wanted to watch some media but there was just no time. Having access to the media files helped, though.)

  The SecUnit was an obvious resource. SecUnits aren’t affected by most kinds of killware but I wasn’t most kinds of killware. I knew I could take it over if I wanted to.

  I didn’t want to.

  Right, so let’s try it this way.

  From my spot in the SecSystem, I initiated a connection and put a freeze on the SecUnit’s governor module so nothing I did would accidentally trigger it. I could tell I had the Unit’s attention, that it knew somebody had initiated contact. I sent it an old company identifier:

  System System: Unit Acknowledge.

  This wasn’t a company SecUnit, its configuration was different, but I knew it would recognize the greeting as a protocol, and not one associated with hostile alien remnant entities. After four long seconds, it replied:

  System Unit Acknowledge: Identify?

  I could lie, say I was from Barish-Estranza. (Face it, considering how often I accuse ART of lying, I lie a lot. I mean, a lot.) But I didn’t want to lie right now. I said, I’m a rogue SecUnit, working with the armed transport who is pursuing this ship with the intention of retrieving endangered clients. I am currently present as killware inside the explorer’s SecSystem.