Network Effect

by Martha Wells

  On my feed relay, Arada said, We can remote-jettison from here—the facility command center—if you transfer control. But we need to get the rest of the team up to the baseship.

  Ratthi added, I’m doing a headcount now, but with the feed and comm not responding—

  Roa broke in: Our clamps are clear, we can jettison.

  Arada said, Roa, will they be able to scan us? If they can tell we’ve abandoned the facility—

  Roa replied, They may be able to.

  They would definitely be able to. Before anybody else could butt in, I said, They may fire on the baseship once the facility is jettisoned.

  That was the downside I mentioned. It just depended on how anxious the hostile was to get to the wormhole with the facility before the responder and merchants arrived, whether they were ordinary assholes or huge assholes, if they wanted the facility or the humans in the facility, if they were afraid of retaliation by Preservation or just didn’t care.

  The survey team members still trying to talk on the relay feed all shut up.

  Roa said, Yes, that’s … Yes. Dr. Arada, we don’t have a lot of time, do we evacuate and jettison or—?

  Still sounding calm, Arada said, SecUnit, do you agree we should jettison?

  Oh right, I was the security team head.

  If I/we were wrong about this, the hostile would fire on the helpless baseship and we would all die. If we stayed with the facility, there might be a chance for rescue. If the hostiles didn’t drag us into the wormhole, overwhelm me, and kill all the humans or do other terrible things to them.

  The cheap education modules the company gives SecUnits had never mentioned this kind of dilemma, so I didn’t have anything strategic to go on.

  Ugh, self-determination sucks sometimes.

  I reminded myself I had always wanted humans to listen to my advice. I said, Jettison.

  Arada said, We jettison. Ratthi, confirm head count and send everyone up to the baseship. She sounded calm and certain. Much more so than Roa.

  “Attacker is still pulling us toward the wormhole,” Mihail announced on comm, not sounding too much like someone who was restraining the urge to scream a little.

  On the relay, I heard Ratthi yelling at people to get moving and I got sporadic drone views of survey team members hurrying into the gravity well.

  Roa took a breath. “Facility control, prepare for separation.”

  Overse announced, “Facility module will seal in two minutes and counting.”

  Drone audio picked up someone arguing but I had to prioritize Roa and Mihail and Arada, who were all telling different humans to do different things. My bridge drone’s view of the sensor display started to show more interpretable detail. That big wobbly thing was the wormhole. The two blips way off (way way off) in the distance were our potential rescue ships. There was no blip for the hostile because it was too close.

  Another vibration traveled through the deck but this one was more familiar. Rajpreet’s gaze was on the hatch display, her eyes wide. She whispered, “They attached to our lock.”

  Whispering may have been an irrational impulse, but I could definitely sympathize. I said on the feed relay, Hostile has matched locks.

  Overse said, Ratthi, I need a confirmed head count, now. My gravity well drone picked up two stragglers, Remy and Hanifa, scrambling up the ladders to the baseship and Ratthi, for fuck’s sake, coming back down.

  I started to tap his feed but I picked up something on audio. It was scraping, vibrating through the outer hatch. Okay, that’s definitely happening. I sent on the feed, Hostile is attempting to breach the hatch, boarding may be imminent.

  Roa said, Rajpreet, SecUnit, get out of there.

  I told Rajpreet, “Go, I’ll be behind you.”

  Rajpreet backed toward the corridor access. If the hostiles chose this moment to board, before we could seal off and separate, we were screwed.

  I heard Ratthi yell, “No, No!” through my drone audio. His voice was harsh with fury, fear. The impulse to run to him made me flinch, but I needed to hold my position. Something had gone wrong up there. On the feed, I said, Dr. Ratthi, report.

  Ratthi, of all my humans except Dr. Mensah, listens to me the most carefully. Probably it has something to do with the time he was about to step out of the hopper to retrieve some equipment and if he had, he would have been eaten by giant predatory fauna. Sounding simultaneously frustrated, angry, and terrified, Ratthi said, Amena and Kanti aren’t here. Thiago is looking for them. They aren’t in the quarters or the upper labs, they must be down in the lower level somewhere.

  Well, shit.

  I had audio and visual of the baseship access through my drones, so I was able to see when it exploded. (No, not physically exploded. Emotionally exploded.) Humans yelling and waving their arms and other unhelpful things.

  You know, it’s not like I’m having a good time either right now.

  I told Rajpreet, “Get to the gravity well access,” and started down the corridor toward the labs and sample storage, where Adjat had tried to tell Rajpreet about jammed doors. I ordered a drone to stay near the hatch so I would have some warning if anything came through it. I split the rest of the formation, sending two-thirds up the access to take a guard position with Rajpreet and telling the rest to follow me. On the feed, I said, calmly, Acknowledged, I’ll find them. SHIT.

  I’d made a stupid mistake. Feed access in the facility was down unless your interface was in range of one of my drones, so the connection could be relayed to the baseship, and the comm was patchy and unreliable. We, me and the humans, were too used to the feed, which made it impossible to lose track of someone, to leave them behind. With an active feed, even if you were unconscious, your interface could be used to track your location.

  Arada said over the feed, We’re holding for you, SecUnit.

  Get to the baseship, Arada, I sent back.

  It was amazing how fast our mostly orderly retreat had turned into a disaster. My drone formation formed around Rajpreet, who was waiting anxiously at the bottom of the gravity well. At the top, baseship crew and survey team members gathered, clutching handweapons they barely knew how to use. I just hoped nobody accidentally shot themselves or anyone else. I tapped my drone relay and saw Arada, Overse, Ratthi, and damn it Thiago waiting at the facility access junction. Arada was talking on the feed to Roa and trying to shove a resisting Overse into the gravity well. I started to tell them—I don’t know what I was going to tell them, but it was going to involve the words “I can’t do my job if none of you fucking listen to me” but then interference blotted out the connection and I lost all my drones in the baseship.

  I reached a hatch to lab 3 that was stuck partly open, just a few centimeters from the deck. I hit the floor and directed my scan under the hatch, but I couldn’t pick up any indication of a human body, living or otherwise. But drone audio detected a muffled human voice, coming from farther up the corridor.

  I shoved upright and slammed around the curve and oh right, that must be the hatch Adjat had seen. The bulkhead was crumpled along the top of the seal, and the panel with the manual release had been blown in a power surge. The plastic parts were melted and the whole hatch assembly was dripping with fire suppressant foam where the automated emergency system had engaged. The facility’s systems in this area must be down or cut off, and the emergency report had never reached the control deck. My audio picked up a muffled voice from the blocked compartment, but it was too faint for human hearing.

  My first impulse was to blow the hatch. Fortunately my second impulse was to grab the manual release and pull. It didn’t give, but I could feel the seal was broken. At least some of the locks that held it shut had been disengaged. Which meant someone had already triggered the manual release inside but something was jammed. I ripped the panel open and found crumpled metal pinning the release mechanism. I shoved my sleeve back, tuned the energy weapon in my right arm down to the lowest setting, and burned through it. The hatch clunked as it releas
ed and I dragged it open.

  Kanti jolted forward and I caught her. “It wouldn’t open,” she gasped. She clutched the kind of tool used on surveys for chipping rock samples and her hands were bloody. The power inside was out, the only light from the emergency glows along the walls, and equipment and sample cases were jumbled everywhere. Amena was across the compartment, her leg pinned under a lab bench that had collapsed when the bulkhead crumpled. She was conscious and struggling to free herself.

  My hatchway drone showed the warning lights blinking around the lock. Yikes. I pulled Kanti out into the corridor and took the tool away from her. “Get to the gravity well, now.” On what was left of the feed I told Rajpreet, I’m sending Kanti to you.

  Kanti hesitated, eyes wide and glazed over. Blood trickled down from a cut above her hairline. Behind me, Amena yelled, “Kanti, go!”

  Kanti pulled away and ran erratically down the corridor, bouncing off the bulkhead. I ducked into the compartment and went to Amena. Tears streamed down her face, her nose running in that gross “badly upset human” way. She banged on the lab bench. “Here, here, we couldn’t pry it up!”

  I felt under it carefully, where the support strut had pinned her leg. There wasn’t blood, though it had to hurt. I felt marks on the metal from the tool Kanti had been clutching. She had had it in the right spot, but didn’t have the leverage needed to pry up the strut. I wedged the tool back in place and leaned on it. My drones met Kanti at the end of the corridor and formed a protective cloud around her as she stagger-ran through the foyer toward the gravity well.

  The strut bent back and Amena tried to wriggle out and yelped in pain. I said, “Just take it slow,” and managed to sound like we had all the time we needed. (We did not.) My hatchway drone relayed the rising energy readings from the airlock where something was trying to override the security seal.

  In the access tube, Rajpreet had grabbed Kanti and was climbing with her up the gravity well, both surrounded by my cloud of drones. Amena wriggled some more, wincing, then reached for my arm and said, “Just pull really hard!”

  I took her arm and tugged and she slid out from under the bench. I stood, pulled her with me, and picked her up in one arm. I’d lost contact with Rajpreet but my drones confirmed she wasn’t in the gravity well anymore. I told Amena, “Hold on,” and ran down the corridor.

  I couldn’t make anywhere near my top speed; there was too much debris, the corridor too narrow and curving.

  I made it almost to the end of the corridor just as the hatch blew with a loud pop. The smell of melted metal and ozone filled the corridor. My hatch drone sent me a view of hazy smoke and movement inside the lock. Time for a split millisecond decision—could I sprint through the foyer, past the breached hatch, up the ramp to the gravity well, and climb up into the baseship so we could close the hatches and separate before the hostiles stormed inside?

  Uh, maybe?

  Then my input from the hatch drone dissolved in an abrupt burst of energy. I took a silent step backward, then another, keeping the motion smooth and slow. I started a quick analysis of the drone’s last transmitted intel. On the feed, I sent, Hatch is breached, hostiles onboard, seal and jettison now.

  I didn’t pick up any acknowledgment and couldn’t tell if it went through or not.

  Amena was silent, holding herself stiffly immobile against my side, her heart pounding. I eased back around the curve in the corridor, and stepped into the first open hatch. I set her down and mouthed the words “No noise.” She nodded, gripped the hatch’s safety rail to stay upright, and looked up at me with wide eyes. I wanted to use my drones to look at her, but while that was calming for me, it wouldn’t be for her. If I was going to get her out of this alive, keeping her calm and communicating accurately was going to be important. I put my face in an expression that I hoped would convey reassurance, then changed it to intense concentration and stared at the bulkhead. The image analysis finished and I reviewed it. The drone had caught a sensor ghost of something that was emitting energy and floating about two meters above the deck. I included Amena’s interface in my relay and said, Close the hatches, Arada, do it now. They have drones.

  Amena caught her breath and bit her lip, but didn’t say anything.

  Still no acknowledgment. I didn’t know if they could hear me, if they had already jettisoned, what the hell was going on up there. We had to be close to the wormhole by now.

  (It sounds like I was calm, but I had no idea what the hell I was going to do.)

  I felt feed static like a drill through the back part of my head, and then Overse saying, SecUnit, SecUnit, can you hear me? We’ve jettisoned the facility from baseship and are in the safepod, about to launch. Can you get to the EVAC suits in the lower secondary lock? The baseship can catch you in their tractor.

  I almost said aloud, “Why are they in the fucking safepod and not in the baseship?” but managed not to. Amena watched me with a not reassuring combination of fear and exasperation. The EVAC suit thing … was not a bad idea at all.

  Copy, we’ll go for the EVAC suits, I told Overse. If there was an acknowledgment, I didn’t hear it.

  I held out an arm and Amena grabbed my jacket. I picked her up and sent half the drones ahead to scout our path. There was no sign of any hostile movement yet.

  I stepped out into the corridor and headed away from the main hatch foyer to the junction to the engineering pod. It looked worse than the lab corridor. Lights were down to emergency levels and the deck had buckled.

  Fortunately we didn’t have far to go, just straight through the pod. My audio picked up a banging and grinding noise—maybe the intruder’s drones trying to get through a hatch somewhere.

  We reached the engineering outer hatch foyer, light from the emergency markers pointing to the EVAC suit locker.

  These were a different model than I’d used before, more expensive, where you could step into them and pull them up with an assist from the suit’s own power supply. I set Amena down and she rapidly tied her hair up, then did a one-legged hop into the suit. I ordered my drones to land on me and go dormant, and had my suit on by the time she was fastening her helmet. Something vibrated deep in the deck; was it the safepod launching? My organic parts didn’t feel good about this. If that was the safepod, I think they’d waited too long. Human actions often seem way too slow to me because of my processing speed, but I didn’t think this was one of those times.

  The suits also had secure feed connections, so I could check to make sure Amena’s was working and sealed properly, and access its controls. Don’t use your comm, I told her over the secured feed. They could be scanning for any kind of activity and it was easier for me to mask our feed than the comm.

  Got it, she replied. Her feed voice was nervous but not panicky. The suit was supporting her injured leg, letting her stand upright. I’m ready.

  I told her suit to follow me and opened the airlock.

  4

  Going out in space in an EVAC suit was not something I did before I hacked my governor module.

  (One reason was because there’s always a distance limit on a contract. So if you, being a SecUnit, go more than, say, a hundred meters from your clients, your HubSystem uses the governor module to flashfry your brain and neural system. That doesn’t mean a client won’t order you to do something that would cause you to violate your distance limit, it just means they’ll have to pay the company a penalty for destroying their property.)

  But the EVAC suits I’d used since then had such good instruction modules that it was almost like having an onboard bot pilot. This one was no exception, plus being new enough to not smell like dirty socks.

  (Right, I should probably mention that I find 99.9 percent of human parts physically disgusting. I’m also less than thrilled with my own human parts.)

  I came out of the airlock first, towing Amena behind me, and pulled us along the facility’s hull. One of the first things I’d discovered about space was that it was boring when there were no pretty plan
ets or stations or anything to look at. This space was empty of planets but not boring.

  The EVAC suit had scan and imaging capabilities but I didn’t need it as something huge moved out from below us. (I designated that direction as “down” because it was toward where my feet were currently pointed.) It was the baseship, falling slowly away. The hostile was above us, clamped to the facility, a big scary blot on the suit’s scan.

  I tapped the baseship’s feed and without the interference from the dying facility, they heard me. Roa said hurriedly, We’ve got you on visual. I’m sending coordinates and Mihail will pull you in with the tractor.

  I downloaded the projected path, then said, Where is Overse? She reported that she was in the facility safepod with other survey team members.

  Roa said, Copy that, we’re contacting them now.

  Contacting them now? If the safepod had launched it should be on the baseship by now. But I couldn’t do anything about it, I had to get Amena to the baseship first.

  Amena said, What does that mean? Is Overse and everyone okay?

  I was about to trigger the suits’ maneuvering system when scan picked up an energy surge. My suit’s imaging went down and the helmet plate went dark, protecting my eyes against a flash. (I didn’t need the protection, but the EVAC suit didn’t know that.)

  Amena made a startled noise. Static blotted out the feed connection, then Mihail said, That was a miss, repeat, attacker fired and missed—

  Rajpreet’s fainter voice said, Are they aiming at the safepod?

  The rest was lost in static. I ordered my suit to clear the visor and swung around so I could see the hostile. I don’t know why—my suit wasn’t armed. I just wanted to see what was after us as something other than a sensor blot. It was almost as dumb an impulse as some things I’ve seen humans do.

  I saw a big dark hull, reflecting light from Preservation’s distant primary. There was still nothing coming from it, no feed, no comm, no beacons, so it was like a giant inert object. (A giant inert object dragging us toward the wormhole.) The EVAC imaging system came back online to add in sensor data and give me a more accurate outline, making the hostile show up as part dark shape, part schematic. It was odd, since the configuration looked just like—