Rogue Protocol

by Martha Wells

  The team was proceeding down an outer corridor. On their left side, big bubble ports looked into a purple-gray cloud swirl in the storm, on the right were open passage locks leading down into the various engineering stacks. On a private channel to Miki, Abene said, This place makes my skin shiver, Miki.

  I think so, too, Miki said. Even though it’s empty, it’s like someone might step out in front of us at any moment.

  Well, Miki wasn’t wrong. Something glittered in the air ahead, but when I reached the lift junction it was just an emergency marker display, floating below the ceiling and listing emergency exit procedures in thirty different languages. HubSystems offer continuous translation, and I’m guessing non-corporate political entities had something similar for their feeds, but in an emergency you’d want to make sure the instructions were clear even if the feed was down. There it was, cheerily doing its job in this empty hulk.

  I tapped my private connection to Miki. I’m about to use a lift, Miki. If your scan picks up the power fluctuation, please don’t tell anyone.

  Okay, Rin. Where are you going?

  I have to look at the geo pod. It’s part of my orders. The lift responded to a ping and arrived 1.5 seconds later, by which time I remembered that I’d told Miki my job was to provide extra security for the assessment team. Oops.

  Fortunately, Miki understood about orders and it didn’t occur to it to question me. Be careful, Rin, Miki said. This place makes our skin shiver.

  I stepped into the lift and told it to go to the central geo pod. The door slid shut and it whooshed away. I tracked it on the schematic, as it curved past the giant bulbs used for atmosphere dispersal. I considered telling Miki that I was here to collect data on possible alien remnant violations by GrayCris. Nothing I was doing would hurt Abene or the team or GoodNightLander Independent, and I was already lying about so much. But Miki would tell Abene immediately, I knew it would. Not that her team wouldn’t figure out on their own soon that something was sketchy about the terraforming facility. (Like the decontam room near the passenger lock; you don’t need a clean facility for terraforming but you might if you were scavenging alien bio remnants.) But if Miki told Abene, she would ask how it knew, and I knew Miki would tell her about me. It wouldn’t lie to a direct question.

  Who knew being a heartless killing machine would present so many moral dilemmas.

  (Yes, that was sarcasm.)

  The lift stopped and the doors opened into another empty, quiet corridor. I followed it around and found the big hatchway into the main geological hub. It was a large semicircular space, with a section of ceiling that had been left clear. I’d seen the storm through Miki and the humans’ cameras in the corridor on the way to the bio pod, but seeing it with my own eyes, no interface to interpret it, was different. The clouds were like a constantly moving structure, colors not so much swirling as in slow, ponderous motion. It was immense, and wrong, and terrible and beautiful all at the same time. I stood there for what I later clocked as twenty-two seconds, just staring.

  Something must have bled over into the feed, because Miki said, What are you looking at, Rin?

  That jolted me out of the spell. Just the storm. The geo pod has a clear dome.

  Can I see?

  I didn’t know why not, so I made a copy of the visual, scrubbed any code that might identify me as a SecUnit from it, and passed it to Miki over the feed. Pretty! Miki said.

  Miki ran the video a few times as it followed Abene down a ramp. They had passed a lift junction, but it wasn’t big enough for all of them at once and Wilken sensibly refused to split the group. On the feed from Wilken’s cam, I spotted hovering marker displays with the descriptor symbols for biological hazard potential; they were nearly there and I needed to get a move on. I wanted to be tucked up back in the shuttle and watching Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon by the time they finished their check of the bio pod.

  The access consoles had been shut down and the data storage would have been removed entirely, which was way more secure than just a system delete. But that wasn’t where I intended to look.

  The schematic showed that the facility used diggers. (Actually geological manipulation semiautonomous … something something, apparently I deleted that out of permanent storage. Anyway, they aren’t bots, they’re just extensions of the geo systems.) The diggers have their own onboard storage for their procedures and tasks, but they also have scanning capability and they log what they find. I found and booted their interface console and yes, the diggers were still here, tucked under the geo pod, curled up in containers three times the size of our shuttle, inert without their parent system.

  With the interface I was able to make copies of their storage without waking them. Somebody had thought to order them to dump their logs (which would void their warranties, but I guess since the facility was supposed to fall into the planet, nobody had cared). Unfortunately for that somebody, the diggers had dumped their logs into their buffers and then been shut down before the buffers timed out and deleted.

  It was a lot of data, but I was able to construct a query to exclude the operation commands and other extraneous stuff. I had to make a direct connection to copy the data to the extra memory clips I’d implanted, which meant peeling back the skin around my right forearm weapon port again. Once I had that done, it went pretty quickly. I sat on the edge of the console, facing the door, and started up a favorite episode of Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon in background to help pass the time, though I kept one channel on Miki and the team feed.

  I had just finished when Miki said, Rin, is that you?

  I was distracted, stopping the episode, untangling myself from the console and from the sleeping, mostly empty brains of the diggers. I knew the team was still over in the hub for the bio pod (they were doing a physical assessment of the equipment for the bio matrices, and trying to get the consoles rebooted), so the question didn’t make sense. Is that me what?

  This. Miki sounded confused, worried. It sent me an audio clip. I heard the humans talking on the comms, Hirune and Ejiro, then Gerth made a comment.

  The conversation? It was something about containment units not being where they were supposed to be, and I didn’t understand why Miki was confused. I’m still in the geo pod.

  No, Rin, this. Miki replayed the clip and stripped out the comms audio, so the human voices were much fainter. It was ambient audio, I could hear the air system. I could also hear light thumps, fast like a heartbeat … Oh, oh shit.

  I wasted .002 seconds throwing a code into Miki’s feed like I was responding to another SecUnit. I was at the hatch to the geo hub before I realized I needed to say it, or Miki wouldn’t understand what to do. I slammed around the corner and up the corridor toward the lift junction. Miki, you have an incoming unknown/potential hostile moving toward your position. Determine direction, then alert your clients, in that order.

  Miki widened its scan, and the rest of its senses went dark as it shifted all its attention to audio. It was rotating, trying to get a wider field. I was still getting the comms on the humans’ feed, and Gerth said, “What’s the little bot doing?”

  “What’s wrong, Miki?” Abene asked.

  Rin— Miki stopped trying to sound like a human and sent me an urgent assistance request tied to the raw audio data. I should have realized, Miki wasn’t a security bot, it had no code to deal with this and no one had ever shown it what to do in an emergency involving active and probably sentient hostiles. I reached the lift junction but the stupid lift had returned to a neutral station somewhere.

  While I stood there like an idiot during the wasted seconds while the stupid lift returned to this position, I ran a quick analysis and compared it to the facility’s schematic. I put markers up for Miki, the humans, and the incoming hostile, and shoved it back into Miki’s feed. Miki was already saying, “Don Abene, something is coming toward us. We need to take the outer corridor back to the shuttle.” It forwarded my active schematic to the humans.

  I stepped in
to the lift as the doors opened. As I hit the destination sequence, I compared the ambient audio Miki was still processing with the projection on my schematic. This thing, whatever it was, was moving much faster than my first projection had indicated. I sent to Miki, No time to withdraw, tell client to shelter in place and try to lock down area.

  Miki was saying to Abene, “Don Abene, it’s too close, we have to stay here and seal the door.”

  But Wilken and Gerth had finally understood what was happening and I heard them shout at the assessment team to fall back down the corridor to the shuttle.

  I didn’t need to look at my projections again. They weren’t going to make it to the end of the corridor. This is why humans shouldn’t work security; the situation changes too fast and they can’t keep up.

  I had sent the lift to the bio pod, the nearest junction to the team’s position. The door slid open and I stepped into a wall of sound: screaming, energy weapon fire. I ran down the corridor and rounded the corner.

  I’m going to describe this as I reconstructed it from my and Miki’s camera feeds later, since at the time even I was mostly thinking, Oh shit oh shit.

  Wilken and Gerth had managed to get the group out of the bio hub, up the ramp, and into a junction with three other corridors, which was pretty much the most optimal point for being attacked in this area. I mean, if I was going to attack someone, I couldn’t have picked a better spot.

  I didn’t have time to be too sarcastic about it because Wilken and Gerth were discharging their weapons down the corridor curving off to the left. Even the emergency power lights down there were off and I couldn’t immediately see what they were shooting at. Ejiro was against the far wall, just sliding to the floor like something had slammed him aside. The rightward corridor led to the next segment of the bio pod and there was a lock and heavy hatch that was in the process of sliding closed. Miki, trying to follow my instructions, had triggered it via the emergency access on the wall. Brais staggered as if she’d been hit by something, and Abene grabbed her by the arm and steadied her.

  It looked like all the humans were intact and Wilken and Gerth were driving off whatever it was they had blundered out here to meet and try to feed their clients to, and I was about to fall back. Then in the closing gap between the hatch and the wall, something moved. It was too fast for me to make it out without rerunning my video and reviewing it. Almost before I could move, it reached past Miki, grabbed Don Abene by the helmet, and yanked her into the gap.

  Almost before I could move.

  I crossed the junction toward them, ducked past Miki and Brais, hit the wall, used my momentum to go up two meters so I was level with Don Abene’s body. I braced myself in the corner, planted one foot against the closing hatch and pushed. I felt the strain even in my inorganic parts; I couldn’t keep it open for long.

  One of Abene’s flailing legs hit Brais and knocked her to the floor. Miki was the only one fast enough to act. It grabbed Don Abene’s torso, and its whole feed was one scream of an urgent assistance code. I got an arm around Abene’s waist, pinning one of her arms. The other was desperately scrabbling to hold onto Miki.

  If she hadn’t been wearing the suit, she would have been torn in half. If the hatch hadn’t had a safety sensor that was giving us time to clear the obstruction, she would have been crushed. I wasted three seconds trying to pry at the spidery thing gripping her helmet. It was red and had eight multi-jointed fingers, that was all I could tell at the moment. Then I thought of the obvious solution. The air was breathable, and she could be treated for possible contamination as long as she still had her head.

  I felt around her neck, slowed down by the unfamiliar suit design, then my fingers hit the little tab. (I would never have found it in time in my armor; the human skin overlay on my hands is much more sensitive.) I pressed the tab and twisted, and the emergency release unlocked her helmet. It was stuck in the door for almost a full second, enough time for me to push off and twist away. Then the thing on the other side snatched it out of the gap and the hatch snapped closed. I landed on my feet holding Don Abene, head still attached.

  She slumped against me, gasping, her hands knotted in my jacket. Miki was at my shoulder, worriedly poking at her feed, its long fingers gently lifting her hair to check her neck. It said, “Don Abene, do you need medical assistance? Don Abene, please answer.”

  Gerth and Wilken stopped firing down the corridor, and my scan showed whatever was down there was long gone. From the floor, Brais gasped, “What was— Are you—” Ejiro, curled up at the base of the wall, shouted, “Abene!”

  I was congratulating myself (because nobody else ever does it) on an excellent save. Human security had literally just noticed that something had tried to steal their client’s head. Then Gerth said, “That’s a SecUnit!”

  All the humans stared at me and Abene. More importantly, Wilken and Gerth had pointed their weapons at me. Oh, Murderbot, what did you do?

  (I don’t even know. I suspect it has to do with the fact that I went from being told what to do and having every action monitored to being able to do whatever I wanted, and somewhere along the way my impulse control went to hell.)

  The only way out of this was to kill them.

  If I did that, I’d have to kill all of them. Including Miki. Including Abene. Her still-attached head was resting against my collarbone and her hair was all warm and soft where it was in contact with my human skin.

  Right, so the only smart way out of this was to kill all of them. I was going to have to take the dumb way out of this.

  I made sure my face and voice were SecUnit neutral. I said, “I’m a SecUnit under contract to Security Consultant Rin, who was sent by GoodNightLander Independent as an extra security measure for the assessment team.” I had to admit I was a SecUnit; there was no augmented human who could do what I just did. Also, my right sleeve was still rolled up, exposing the weapon port in my forearm. (The inorganic parts around the port might look like an augment designed to correct an injury, but the weapon port doesn’t look like anything else but what it is.)

  It was at this point I remembered Miki, and how I had told it I was an augmented human security consultant. I had been in Miki’s feed, the connection so intimate even though I’d had my walls up. Miki would know that the Rin it had been talking to this whole time was the SecUnit standing here. Yeah, I should have taken Miki over earlier when I had the chance; there was no time to do it now.

  In my private connection to Miki, I said, Please, Miki, I just want to help.

  Miki cocked its head at me, then at Abene. Still dazed, and possibly concussed, she hadn’t let go of me yet. She stared up at me, her brow wrinkled in confusion. Following my wounded human protocol, I had upped my body temperature to try to prevent her from going into shock. She said, “Miki…? Who is this?”

  Miki said, “Security Consultant Rin is my friend, Don Abene. I was asked not to tell you, to keep you safe.”

  Huh. That wasn’t a lie, but it sure wasn’t the truth, either. Maybe Miki had hidden depths.

  I saw Gerth throw a startled glance at Wilken. Wilken reacted but controlled it. They didn’t speak on their feed connection. From the shuttle, Kader demanded an update, asking if the team needed assistance. Brais said, “Ejiro is injured.” She pushed herself up the wall, shaking. “Is Abene all right? What happened?”

  Abene started to nod, then winced. She patted my arm and pushed away a little, and I let her stand on her own. “I’m fine…” On the feed, she told Kader to hold his position. Aloud, she said, “Ejiro, how are you hurt?”

  “It’s my shoulder,” Ejiro said. His voice indicated stress, his expression tense with pain. I started to tap MedSystem and remembered I didn’t have one. (I know, I was all over the place.) Ejiro added, “What were those things? I couldn’t see, just shapes.”

  Wilken and Gerth still aimed their weapons at me. Don Abene and Miki were blocking clear shots from this angle and if either Wilken or Gerth moved, I was going to have to do some
thing about it.

  Then Miki said, “Don Abene, Hirune is missing and is not answering her feed or comm.”

  Well, crap. They weren’t my humans, I hadn’t done a head count. I checked Hirune’s feed, feeling Abene, Wilken, Gerth, Brais, and Ejiro all in there, too, calling for her. Her feed was still online, but it was inactive. That meant she was alive, but unconscious. I wasn’t getting anything on my limited range scan, and neither was Miki.

  On the comm from the shuttle, I heard Vibol cursing and Kader telling her to shut up and listen.

  Abene’s expression turned horrified. In the general feed, Miki replayed the last seconds before I got here. Breaking the images down, I saw a fast-moving shadowy shape approach from the main bio pod access corridor, just a sensor ghost in Miki’s vision when Miki had hit the release to close the hatch. Then Miki had turned to go to the corridor that led toward the central facility, but was too late. All it had was a glimpse of the pinlights on Hirune’s suit disappearing into the dark as she was dragged away, then Wilken and Gerth firing down the corridor after her. It had happened so fast, I don’t think Wilken and Gerth had realized the hostile had taken Hirune.

  As the humans reviewed the video in the team feed, Ejiro looked like he might be sick, and Brais swore softly. Abene turned to Gerth and Wilken. “We have to go after her. What were those things that— Why are you pointing that at me?”

  They weren’t pointing their weapons at her, but at me, just behind her. Wilken said, “That’s a SecUnit, Don Abene, you need to step away from it until we sort this out. Where’s this Rin? On the facility somewhere? It doesn’t mesh with our brief from GI.”

  Abene had been in shock but I could practically see her brain slam back online. Her jaw set and her expression turned hard. She countered, “Where’s Hirune? What took her? You’re supposed to be our security.”

  Wilken held her ground. “Before we can look for her, I need to know why there’s a SecUnit here. It’s a fair question.”