Network Effect

by Martha Wells

  Thiago pointed over Overse’s shoulder. “It did make a trip to the planet, then returned.”

  “Right, but that was…” Overse huffed in exasperation. “Hold on, I need to convert these time stamps.”

  Then ART said, Hostile contact, ETA six minutes out.

  What the hell? How could it get that close? “Six minutes? What were you doing?”

  Contact did not appear on scan until now, that’s what the fuck I was doing, ART replied.

  I put my video review on hold. “Do they see you?” Okay, it was a stupid question.

  ART said, Of course they see me.

  I pulled a view of ART’s control area. Arada was in a station chair, Ratthi and Amena standing on either side, all watching ART’s big display. ART was annotating the displays in the feed so it wasn’t just a mash of numbers and lines and colors.

  Frustrated, Arada said, “Something blocked Perihelion’s ability to scan the explorer. I bet we’re dealing with more alien remnant technology.”

  It’s probable, ART said. I don’t know what the humans heard, but I read deadly, furious calm. A variation on their ability to interfere with short-range drone scans.

  I saw from ART’s feed that the explorer was acquiring target lock. The DockSecSystem, trying to come fully online, sent a belated warning through the feed. We didn’t have time to get back to the lock, put on the EVAC suits, and return to ART. The explorer was in range and could fire on us at any moment. The dock wasn’t designed to be shot at but it was more protection than an EVAC suit. Besides, I hadn’t finished my review of the security video and we hadn’t checked the drop box and its maintenance capsule for physical evidence yet. On the feed, I said, ART, you know what you have to do.

  ART didn’t hesitate, or argue. It had gone through the same threat assessment I just had, except faster and a million percent more homicidal. It said, Try not to do anything stupid before I return.

  Just keep your stupid comm off, I told it. And I don’t want to hear about your superior filters.

  It was already gone.

  Overse was trying to call Arada but ART had cut off contact. Thiago turned to me urgently. “What’s happened?”

  “ART’s gone after the explorer. It’ll come back here for us when it’s … done.” I realized I had no real idea what ART actually planned to do. And with ART gone, I had no eyes on what was happening outside. Like if, for example, the explorer decided to blow up the dock.

  But I did have at least one human who knew what she was doing. “Overse, can you find a station with an exterior scan?” And okay, I only knew what it was called from shows about ships, like World Hoppers.

  Overse hesitated, her hand on her helmet where her comm access was. She was worried about Arada. Then she swallowed hard and forced herself past it. “Right. Thiago, did you see—”

  Thiago half-walked half-jumped down the wall toward another station. “Yes, it’s here.”

  While they were booting the station, I started my review of the security video again. It was patchy, with long sections dissolving into static. I’d reached the part where the DockSecSystem had recorded an ETA from the drop box. I forced myself to slow my review down by 40 percent so I wouldn’t miss any detail. Two humans wearing environmental gear in Barish-Estranza colors came out of the drop box foyer. [blank section] [patchy images of humans walking in the forward corridor] The SecUnit in position near the control area junction stepped forward. I couldn’t read any of its comm or feed traffic; DockSecSystem either hadn’t recorded it or had managed to lose it during one of its reload attempts. [patchy images of three more humans in the foyer] I slowed the video down further as one of the humans stepped up to the SecUnit. [patchy section] DockSecSystem caught a code, a stand down order. Then two Targets came out of the drop box foyer. [video cuts off, system reinitialize]

  That was an exhausting exercise in jaw-grinding frustration and I don’t even know if it had helped. All I’d done was confirm Supervisor Leonide’s story and we had been pretty sure she was telling the truth already.

  Overse had the exterior scan display up and she and Thiago stared at it unhappily. There was a lot of detail but basically the explorer had broken off when ART had fired on it. ART had missed, and I knew what that meant: it had decided to use our killware. There was still a non-negative chance that one or more members of its crew were aboard the explorer. If ART disabled the explorer, the Targets could hold them hostage. Taking the explorer from the inside out before it knew it was under attack was the best plan. It was sort of the only plan.

  I backburnered everything else and focused on the security video again. I skimmed past an infuriating nine minutes and twenty-seven seconds of nothing, then eight Targets ran past, heading down the forward corridor, interspersed with more blank video and patchy static. DockSecSystem caught another emergency code, probably from the SecUnit who had been ordered to stand down. DockSecSystem tried to alert the explorer’s Sec and HubSystem but recorded no response. From comparing timelines I knew this was when the SecUnit still aboard the explorer had sent its emergency message to the supply transport’s SecSystem, so somebody had received the warning.

  Thiago and Overse were still talking, worried, as I skipped past restarts and hours of empty corridors and what was at least a several-cycle gap in the timeline. There probably wasn’t anything else useful on here but I had to review it till the end to be certain.

  Then the static cleared and I saw a glimpse of a blue uniform passing out of frame.

  Overse said, “What is it, SecUnit?”

  I realized I had abruptly stepped back from the station. Overse sounded worried and I knew how she felt about being out of contact with Arada. But I was almost completely focused on the video now and my buffer said, “Please stand by, I need to verify an alert.”

  I slowed the video down, running it forward on one input while trying to pull coherent images from the static burst on the other. I cleaned up two images enough to get a recognizable view of four humans in blue clothing resembling ART’s crew uniform. They were blurry and I couldn’t increase the resolution, but one faced away from the drop box corridor. He had skin color in the dark brown range and a mostly hairless head, matching the images I had of one of ART’s crew members. It wasn’t an uncommon configuration for humans (some of the Barish-Estranza crew had it, too) but the chance that it was him was in the 80 percent range.

  Then on my other input, the video’s static fuzzed into clarity just as a smaller human sprinted past the foyer. The face was obscured but the color and the logo on the uniform jacket were clear.

  They were alive. All this time, I hadn’t believed it.

  I’d been humoring ART, not really admitting it to myself. Not wanting to think about how I was going to handle it when we found evidence its crew was dead, or if we found nothing at all and it faced the choice of staying in this system forever looking for them, or returning to its base alone. But they were alive. Or at least five of them were and five were better than none. And from the desperate running, they were escaping.

  I just hoped they’d made it out.

  (Overse had folded her arms, which was awkward in the enviro suit, so she unfolded them. Thiago asked her, “Why did it sound like that?”

  “That how it sounds when it uses a canned response, from the time it was working for—enslaved by—the company. It means it’s too busy to talk.” She added, “It never means anything good.”)

  I said, “It might be good,” and sent them both the images. “We need to check the drop box.”

  * * *

  The drop box log file Overse had found confirmed that the main box had made two recent trips to the surface and back: one when the explorer had first arrived and the contact party had been taken over by the Targets, and then a second trip later, and if we were converting the time stamps right, that second trip had taken place around one hundred and thirty-five hours after ART had been attacked. We weren’t far behind them.

  “The second time it r
eturned automatically—it was only on the surface for about fifteen minutes,” Overse said. “I think whoever took it down didn’t have the right command code to keep it on the surface.”

  “The maintenance capsule would have been easier to operate, surely,” Thiago said, looking up at the drop box’s hatch.

  The foyer was huge, easily large enough for cargo modules, one wall the enormous sealed hatch over the box’s loading deck. The whole space was an airlock; when the box was ready to start its trip down the shaft, the hatch on the corridor behind us would close to protect the interior from a blow-out if anything went wrong with the undocking.

  The schematic I’d pulled from the SecSystem showed the box had passenger space for eighty-two humans on top of racks for cargo, and it looked like the passenger loading area was inside the box itself. I had one camera view from DockSecSystem at the front of the box, above the main lock, looking into the passenger space where there were rows of acceleration chairs.

  Overse told Thiago, “They didn’t know the maintenance capsule was here. I can’t even see the entrance and I know where it is.”

  I could see it, a narrow gantry along the wall, leading to a small human-sized hatch, but I had dark vision filters in my eyes.

  “You’re right,” Thiago said. “And you know, if it’s been up in the dock the whole time, the Targets might not realize it’s here, either.”

  Hah, Thiago called them Targets.

  The rudimentary launch system chimed and sent a graphic into the feed showing the pressure and life support level inside the drop box was now normal and the hatch was ready to open. “Get clear,” I told the humans and they headed for the doorway at the back of the chamber. Once they were there I told the launch system to open the box. The giant hatch started to slide up, the burp of released air not making it past the extra safety of the air barrier, another precaution against potential blowout. Wow, this thing was slow. And it had taken seven minutes to get the box ready to open. ART’s crew had either been able to hold the Targets off while they waited for the box to get ready for launch, or the box had already been pressurized and waiting to go. Which implied they had help from someone.

  Or the Targets had caught them and killed them and they were all lying dead just inside the box where the camera view didn’t reach, but I really hoped not.

  The hatch slowly revealed a dark space of empty cargo racks, then a set of stairs climbing to the passenger platform. Lights blinked on up in the passenger area where the seats were. I sent my drones in to check for anything lurking, though threat assessment was low. (Look, if there were space monsters, they probably wouldn’t need a pressurized environment, right? They didn’t in Timestream Defenders Orion.)

  My drones didn’t turn up anything in the initial pass so I sent them on a second, slower run, tapped the humans on the feed, and walked in.

  There was a slight sense of pressure when I passed through the air barrier. Its presence sort of did fit in with Overse’s theory that Adamantine had planned on the colony actually succeeding. Air barriers were an expensive safety feature for stations, only used when you expected a lot of passenger traffic.

  Overse and Thiago caught up with me as I scanned the area around the stairs, and then started up. The box had artificial gravity just like a transport, so I guess humans could have ridden down in the cargo area. But if I was trying to escape in a drop box I would have headed for the acceleration chairs just on the general principal that they had to be there for a good reason. I thought ART’s humans would have, too.

  On the third step down from the top I found blood drops. They could have been from the Barish-Estranza contact party, but I had a feeling. I sent the camera image to the humans and continued up to the platform. Thiago paused to pull out a little sample collector and scrape the blood off the step. He told Overse, “Perihelion should have samples of their DNA to match, but…” He made a gesture.

  Overse’s mouth was a thin line. “Hopefully we won’t have to.”

  She meant hopefully we’d be able to find them alive. Ugh, my humans are optimists. But this was the first time we’d had a real trail of evidence to follow, and right now it was hard to cling to the comfort of bitterness and pessimism.

  As I reached the passenger platform I saw it curved around on top of the cargo racks. In the first row of seats I found more blood spotted on the upholstery and the safety straps. Like humans had rushed in here and flung themselves into the seats. No sign of bodies or pools of blood, no sign of energy weapon damage. Reports from the drones’ slow scouting pass were coming back negative.

  Thiago put his sampling gear away. He looked from the unresponsive side of my enviro suit helmet to Overse and said, “They must have gone down to the planet. I think our next step is obvious.”

  “Obvious,” Overse admitted, “but maybe not very smart.”

  It was kind of obvious. The dock had a comm system linked to the planet but the only people likely to be on the other end were the Targets. There was no way to contact ART’s crew except by going down there.

  I had two choices. (1) Go down to the surface alone, leaving the humans here, where the Targets could return or some unknown factor could randomly appear and kill them and then Mensah and Arada would never speak to me again, which might not be a factor if I never got off the planet. (2) Take the humans with me, where I could get them killed and/or die with them. (3) Sit here until the explorer destroyed/captured ART and returned, or ART destroyed/captured the explorer and returned, in which case I would still need to go to the surface anyway, possibly with even more humans trying to butt in and come with me so they could get killed, too. Three, that was three choices.

  When you put it like that, option 2 was looking pretty good.

  Overse and Thiago watched me. I said, “Threat assessment is…” I checked it. “Never mind.”

  Overse did her version of one of Arada’s rueful eye-squinting expressions. “Arada will think I’m trying to get back at her for going to talk to those corporate predators on the supply transport.”

  Thiago patted her shoulder. “Tell her you were the voice of reason but you were outvoted.”

  “Are we doing this?” Overse asked me. “Because I think we need to.”

  Yeah, I thought we needed to, too. But not via the giant drop box. I said, “Yes, but we’re going to be sneaky about it.”

  * * *

  While I went to get our EVAC suits, Overse checked over the maintenance capsule, running its diagnostics and making sure it was still in operational condition. It hadn’t been used in thirty-seven corporation standard years, but everything showed it was still functional. It was tiny next to the drop box, about the size of one of ART’s shuttles, with ten padded chairs lining the bulkheads on the top platform and then three levels of small securable storage racks below, and a selection of unused tools for shaft and drop box maintenance.

  Since the Targets hadn’t been using it, I was hoping they had forgotten it existed, if they had ever known about it. The Barish-Estranza crew might not have known it existed, either, depending on how much time they had had to review the dock’s schematics before being attacked.

  Whatever, it was better than trying to make a sneak approach in a gigantic drop box that probably arrived on the surface with automated warning sirens and, considering the effort Adamantine had put into branding this place, possibly its own theme music.

  I also recorded a full report with all my video and the excerpts of the DockSecSystem video, compressed it, and stored it in a drone which I was leaving hidden aboard the dock. When ART came back (hopefully ART was still alive to come back) the drone would deliver the report.

  I stowed the EVAC suits in the capsule’s cargo rack. I didn’t think we’d need them, but there was nowhere we could hide them on the dock where they wouldn’t be found if anybody besides ART showed up, so it was better to just take them with us. Then we were ready to go.

  I took the seat on the other side of Overse from Thiago. He hadn’t made
any attempt to have awkward conversations with me after our last one, but I didn’t want to be stuck in a chair within easy unwanted talking range.

  Overse was operating the simple control system through the capsule’s local feed connection. She’d initiated the pulse to check the shaft and it had come back clear. “Seals are good, we’re ready for drop.” She took a deep breath and added, “Technically, this is safer than landing a shuttle.”

  “Technically,” Thiago agreed evenly, holding on to the arms of his chair.

  Whatever. I started episode 241 of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon as Overse said, “Drop initiated.”

  HelpMe.file Excerpt 4

  There had to be a handler on station. The two augmented humans GrayCris had sent to kill Dr. Mensah had been less sentient than hauler bots; somebody had kept them drugged and docile, waiting for the right moment for deployment.

  Station Security had called in all off-duty personnel and most hadn’t stopped to put on uniforms. I found one big enough guarding the concourse entrance to the council offices and borrowed a jacket so I could hide my giant stab wound. I let the officer think I needed the jacket to get to Medical without drawing attention, but I was actually taking the quick route along the main concourse and the mall back to the port.

  Activity hadn’t returned to normal, there were lots of humans and augmented humans and bots clustering together in public areas waiting for announcements. They knew something had happened—Station Security doesn’t sprint through the concourse screaming at everyone to get out of the way unless something happens—but no one including the newsfeeds had any idea how serious it was.

  I had permission to be in Preservation Station’s security monitoring system but I did something I had promised I wouldn’t do and used it to crack other systems. I jumped to the port’s entry and housing data records and started a query for recently arrived visitors who had requested station accommodation. The handler and the two attackers would have come in together, on the same transport, as individuals traveling separately.