by Martha Wells
* * *
So midafternoon the next day I got ready to take the little hopper back within range of the habitat so I could hopefully pick up intel from the drones. I wanted to go alone, but since nobody ever listens to me, Mensah, Pin-Lee, and Ratthi were going, too.
I was depressed this morning. I’d tried watching some new serials last night and even they couldn’t distract me; reality was too intrusive. It was hard not to think about how everything was going to go wrong and they were all going to die and I was going to get blasted to pieces or get another governor module stuck in me.
Gurathin walked up to me while I was doing the pre-flight, and said, “I’m coming with you.”
That was about all I needed right now. I finished the diagnostic on the power cells. “I thought you were satisfied.”
It took him a minute. “What I said last night, yes.”
“I remember every word ever said to me.” That was a lie. Who would want that? Most of it I delete from permanent memory.
He didn’t say anything. On the feed, Mensah told me that I didn’t have to take him if I didn’t want to, or if I thought it would compromise team security. I knew Gurathin was testing me again, but if something went wrong and he got killed, I wouldn’t mind as much as I would if it was one of the others. I wished Mensah, Ratthi, and Pin-Lee weren’t coming; I didn’t want to risk them. And on the long trip, Ratthi might be tempted to try to make me talk about my feelings.
I told Mensah it was fine, and we got ready to lift off.
* * *
I wanted a long time to circle west, so if EvilSurvey picked us up they wouldn’t be able to extrapolate the humans’ location from my course. By the time I was in position for the approach to the habitat, the light was failing. When we got to the target zone, it would be full dark.
The humans hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep last night, from the crowding and the strong possibility of dying. Mensah, Ratthi, and Pin-Lee had been too tired to talk much, and had fallen asleep. Gurathin was sitting in the copilot’s seat and hadn’t said a word the whole time.
We were flying in dark mode, with no lights, no transmissions. I was plugged in to the little hopper’s internal limited feed so I could watch the scans carefully. Gurathin was aware of the feed through his implant—I could feel him in there—but wasn’t using it except to keep track of where we were.
When he said, “I have a question,” I flinched. The silence up to this point had lulled me into a false sense of security.
I didn’t look at him though I knew through the feed that he was looking at me. I hadn’t closed my helmet; I didn’t feel like hiding from him. After a moment I realized he was waiting for my permission. That was weirdly new. It was tempting to ignore him, but I was wondering what the test would be this time. Something he didn’t want the others to hear? I said, “Go ahead.”
He said, “Did they punish you, for the deaths of the mining team?”
It wasn’t completely a surprise. I think they all wanted to ask about it, but maybe he was the only one abrasive enough. Or brave enough. It’s one thing to poke a murderbot with a governor module; poking a rogue murderbot is a whole different proposition.
I said, “No, not like you’re thinking. Not the way a human would be punished. They shut me down for a while, and then brought me back online at intervals.”
He hesitated. “You weren’t aware of it?”
Yeah, that would be the easy way out, wouldn’t it? “The organic parts mostly sleep, but not always. You know something’s happening. They were trying to purge my memory. We’re too expensive to destroy.”
He looked out the port again. We were flying low over trees, and I had a lot of my attention on the terrain sensors. I felt the brush of Mensah’s awareness in the feed. She must have woken when Gurathin spoke. He finally said, “You don’t blame humans for what you were forced to do? For what happened to you?”
This is why I’m glad I’m not human. They come up with stuff like this. I said, “No. That’s a human thing to do. Constructs aren’t that stupid.”
What was I supposed to do, kill all humans because the ones in charge of constructs in the company were callous? Granted, I liked the imaginary people on the entertainment feed way more than I liked real ones, but you can’t have one without the other.
The others started to stir, waking and sitting up, and he didn’t ask me anything else.
* * *
By the time we got within range, it was a cloudless night with the ring glowing in the sky like a ribbon. I had already dropped speed, and we were moving slowly over the sparse trees decorating the hills at the edge of the habitat’s plain. I had been waiting for the drones to ping me, which they would if this had worked and EvilSurvey hadn’t found them.
When I felt that first cautious touch on my feed, I stopped the hopper and dropped it down below the tree line. I landed on a hillside, the hopper’s pads extending to compensate. The humans were waiting, nervy and impatient, but no one spoke. You couldn’t see anything from here except the next hill and a lot of tree trunks.
All three drones were still active. I answered the pings, trying to keep my transmission as quick as possible. After a tense moment, the downloads started. I could tell from the timestamps that, with nobody there to instruct them not to, the drones had recorded everything from the moment I’d deployed them to now. Even though the part we were most interested in would be near the beginning, that was a lot of data. I didn’t want to stay here long enough to parse it myself, so I pushed half of it into the feed for Gurathin. Again, he didn’t say anything, just turned in his chair to lie back, close his eyes, and start reviewing it.
I checked the drone stationed outside in the tree first, running its video at high speed until I found the moment where it had caught a good image of the EvilSurvey craft.
It was a big hopper, a newer model than ours, nothing about it to cause anybody any pause. It circled the habitat a few times, probably scanning, and then landed on our empty pad.
They must know we were gone, with no air craft on the pad and no answer on their comm, so they didn’t bother to pretend to be here to borrow some tools or exchange site data. Five SecUnits piled out of the cargo pods, all armed with the big projectile weapons assigned to protect survey teams on planets with hazardous fauna, like this one. From the pattern on the armor chestplates, two were the surviving DeltFall units. They must have been put into their cubicles after we escaped the DeltFall habitat.
Three were EvilSurvey, which had a square gray logo. I focused in on it and sent it to the others. “GrayCris,” Pin-Lee read aloud.
“Ever heard of it?” Ratthi said, and the others said no.
All five SecUnits would have the combat override modules installed. They started toward the habitat, and five humans, anonymous in their color-coded field suits, climbed out of the hopper and followed. They were all armed, too, with the handweapons the company provided, that were only supposed to be used for fauna-related emergencies.
I focused as far in on the humans as the image quality would allow. They spent a lot of time scanning and checking for traps, which made me even more glad I hadn’t wasted time setting any. But there was something about them that made me think I wasn’t looking at professionals. They weren’t soldiers, any more than I was. Their SecUnits weren’t combat units, just regular security rented from the company. That was a relief. At least I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know what I was doing.
Finally I watched them enter the habitat, leaving two SecUnits outside to guard their hopper. I tagged the section, passed it to Mensah and the others for review, and then kept watching.
Gurathin sat up suddenly and muttered a curse in a language I didn’t know. I noted it to look up later on the big hopper’s language center. Then forgot about it when he said, “We have a problem.”
I put my part of the drones’ download on pause and looked at the section he had just tagged. It was from the drone hidden in the hub.
The vis
ual was a blurred image of a curved support strut but the audio was a human voice saying, “You knew we were coming, so I assume you have some way to watch us while we’re here.” The voice spoke standard lexicon with a flat accent. “We’ve destroyed your beacon. Come to these coordinates—” She spoke a set of longitude and latitude numbers that the little hopper helpfully mapped for me, and a time stamp. “—at this time, and we can come to some arrangement. This doesn’t have to end in violence. We’re happy to pay you off, or whatever you want.”
There was nothing else, steps fading until the door slid shut.
Gurathin, Pin-Lee, and Ratthi all started to speak at once. Mensah said, “Quiet.” They shut up. “SecUnit, your opinion.”
Fortunately, I had one now. Up to the point where we’d gotten the drone download, my opinion had been mostly oh, shit. I said, “They have nothing to lose. If we come to this rendezvous, they can kill us and stop worrying about us. If we don’t, they have until the end of project date to search for us.”
Gurathin was reviewing the landing video now. He said, “Another indication it isn’t the company. They obviously don’t want to chase us until the end of project date.”
I said, “I told you it wasn’t the company.”
Mensah interrupted Gurathin before he could respond. “They think we know why they’re here, why they’re doing this.”
“They’re wrong,” Ratthi said, frustrated.
Mensah’s brow furrowed as she picked apart the problem for the other humans. “But why do they think that? It must be because they know we went to one of the unmapped regions. That means the data we collected must have the answer.”
Pin-Lee nodded. “So the others may know by now.”
“It gives us leverage,” Mensah said thoughtfully. “But what can we do with it?”
And then I had a great idea.
Chapter Seven
SO AT THE APPOINTED time the next day, Mensah and I were flying toward the rendezvous point.
Gurathin and Pin-Lee had taken one of my drones and rebuilt it with a limited scanning attachment. (Limited because the drone was too small for most of the components a longer and wider range scanner would need.) Last night I had sent it into upper atmosphere to give us a view of the site.
The location was near their survey base, which was only about two kilos away, a habitat similar to DeltFall’s. By the size of their habitat and the number of SecUnits, including the one Mensah had taken out with a mining drill, they had between thirty and forty team members. They were obviously very confident, but then, they’d had access to our hub and they knew they were dealing with a small group of scientists and researchers, and one messed-up secondhand SecUnit.
I just hoped they didn’t realize how messed up I actually was.
When the hopper picked up the first blip of scanner contact, Mensah hit the comm immediately. “GrayCris, be advised that my party has secured evidence of your activities on this planet, and hidden it in various places where it will transmit to the pickup ship whenever it arrives.” She let that sink in for three seconds, then added, “You know we found the missing map sections.”
There was a long pause. I was slowing us down, scanning for incoming weapons, even though the chances were good they didn’t have any.
The comm channel came alive, and a voice said, “We can discuss our situation. An arrangement can be made.” There was so much scanning and anti-scanning going on the voice was made of static. It was creepy. “Land your vehicle and we can discuss it.”
Mensah gave it a minute, as if she was thinking it over, then answered, “I’ll send our SecUnit to speak to you.” She cut the comm off.
As we got closer we had a visual on the site. It was a low plateau, surrounded by trees. Their habitat was visible to the west. Because the trees encroached on their camp site, their domes and vehicle landing pad were elevated on wide platforms. The company required this as a security feature if you wanted your base to be anywhere without open terrain around it. It cost extra, and if you didn’t want it, it cost even more to guarantee your bond. It was one of the reasons I thought my great idea would work.
In the open area on the plateau were seven figures, four SecUnits and three humans in the color-coded enviro suits, blue, green, and yellow. It meant they had one SecUnit and probably twenty seven–plus humans back at their habitat, if they had followed the rule of one rental SecUnit per ten humans. I sat us down below the plateau, on a relatively flat rock, the view blocked by brush and trees.
I put the pilot’s console on standby, and looked at Mensah. She pressed her lips together, like she wanted to say something and was repressing the urge. Then she nodded firmly and said, “Good luck.”
I felt like I should say something to her, and didn’t know what, and just stared at her awkwardly for a few seconds. Then I sealed up my helmet and got out of the hopper as fast as I could.
I went through the trees, listening for that fifth SecUnit just in case it was hiding somewhere waiting for me, but there was no sound of movement in the undergrowth. I came out of cover and climbed the rocky slope to the plateau, then walked toward the other group, listening to the crackle on my comm. They were going to let me get close, which was a relief. I’d hate to be wrong about this. It would make me feel pretty stupid.
I stopped several meters away, opened the channel and said, “This is the SecUnit assigned to the PreservationAux Survey Team. I was sent to speak to you about an arrangement.”
I felt the pulse then, a signal bundle, designed to take over my governor module and freeze it, and freeze me. The idea was obviously to immobilize me, then insert the combat override module into my dataport again.
That was why they had had to arrange the meeting so close to their hub. They had needed the equipment there to be able to do this, it wasn’t something they could send through the feed.
So it’s a good thing my governor module wasn’t working and all I felt was a mild tickle.
One of them started toward me. I said, “I assume you’re about to try to install another combat override module and send me back to kill them.” I opened my gun ports and expanded the weapons in my arms, then folded them back in. “I don’t recommend that course of action.”
The SecUnits went into alert mode. The human who had started forward froze, then backed away. The body language of the others was flustered, startled. I could tell from the faint comm static that they were talking to each other on their own system. I said, “Anyone want to comment on that?”
That got their attention. There was no reply. Not a surprise. The only people I’ve run into who actually want to get into conversations with SecUnits are my weird humans. I said, “I have an alternate solution to both our problems.”
The one in the blue enviro suit said, “You have a solution?” The voice was the same one who had made the offer in our hub. It was also very skeptical, which you can imagine. To them, talking to me was like talking to a hopper or a piece of mining equipment.
I said, “You weren’t the first to hack PreservationAux’s HubSystem.”
She had opened their comm channel to talk to me, and I heard one of the others whisper, “It’s a trick. One of the surveyors is telling it what to say.”
I said, “Your scans should show I’ve cut my comm.” This was the point where I had to say it. It was still hard, even though I knew I didn’t have a choice, even though it was part of my own stupid plan. “I don’t have a working governor module.” That over, I was glad to get back to the lying part. “They don’t know that. I’m amenable to a compromise that benefits you as well as me.”
The blue leader said, “Are they telling the truth about knowing why we’re here?”
That was still annoying, even though I knew we had allowed plenty of time for this part. “You used combat override modules to make the DeltFall SecUnits behave like rogues. If you think a real rogue SecUnit still has to answer your questions, the next few minutes are going to be an education for you.”
The blue leader shut me out of their comm channel. There was a long silence while they talked it over. Then she came back on, and said, “What compromise?”
“I can give you information you desperately need. In exchange, you take me onto the pick-up ship with you but list me as destroyed inventory.” That would mean nobody from the company would be expecting me back, and I could slip off in the confusion when the transport docked at the transit station. Theoretically.
There was another hesitation. Because they had to pretend to think it over, I guess. Then the blue leader said, “We agree. If you’re lying, then we’ll destroy you.”
It was perfunctory. They intended to insert a combat override module into me before they left the planet.
She continued, “What is the information?”
I said, “First remove me from the inventory. I know you still have a connection to our Hub.”
Blue Leader made an impatient gesture at Yellow. He said, “We’ll have to restart their HubSystem. That will take some time.”
I said, “Initiate the restart, queue the command, and then show me on your feed. Then I’ll give you the information.”
Blue Leader closed me out of the comm channel and spoke to Yellow again. There was a three-minute wait, then the channel opened again and I got a limited access to their feed. The command was in a queue, though of course they would have time to delete it later. The important points were that our HubSystem had been reactivated, and that I could convincingly pretend to believe them. I had been watching the time, and we were now in the target window, so there was no more reason to stall. I said, “Since you destroyed my clients’ beacon, they’ve sent a group to your beacon to manually trigger it.”
Even with limited access to their feed, I could see that got them. Body language all over the place from confusion to fear. The yellow one moved uncertainly, the green one looked at Blue Leader. In that flat accent, she said, “That’s impossible.”
I said, “One of them is an augmented human, a systems engineer. He can make it launch. Check the data you got from our HubSystem. It’s Surveyor Dr. Gurathin.”
