Rogue Protocol

by Martha Wells

  (That’s not in the stealth module, and it’s not a function of company-supplied SecSystems. I got it from the proprietary data of a company client who worked on countermeasures for combat drones. I had managed to resist deleting it to fill that space up with new serials. I knew someday it would come in handy.)

  One of the keys worked and the drone switched into neutral standby. I wandered around in its control code for a minute or two, making sure I knew how it worked. It, all the other drones (it was reading thirty active), and three combat bots were all operating on a secured feed. All the drones were in the engineering pod foyer with two of the combat bots. The third bot was reading as active in the facility, but there was no location for it. (I had a bad feeling it was heading toward the shuttle to cut us off.) The bots had more layers of security and even now, from within their own network, if I started trying to hack them they’d have time to run up here and kill me. But I could take control of all the drones.

  In another twenty seconds, they were all my new drone friends.

  Oh, I see, Miki said. Never mind.

  But I was going to have to move fast. I told Drone One to remain in standby, and ordered the twenty-nine others to turn on the two combat bots in the engineering pod. Then I started to run.

  I rounded a curve, went through two open hatch junctions. I was already hearing energy and projectile weapon fire, metal smashing against walls, and that funny high-pitched whine combat drones make when attacked. I wasn’t controlling them individually; once given the order, the drones knew what to do, and me trying to jumpseat pilot them would just slow them down.

  I accelerated as the hatch entrance to the engineering pod came into sight. I reached the end of the corridor at top speed and threw myself forward into a dive.

  The hub foyer was now a warzone. I hit the floor and slid out across it. The combat bot nearest the door flailed wildly at the cloud of drones firing and diving at it. It thrashed around like an irritated metal whirlwind, stray blasts from its weapons hitting the walls, the floor, the columns. It smacked a drone with its cutting hand and shrapnel sprayed the room. I’d tuned down my pain sensors in anticipation, but I still felt impacts all over my back and shoulders, little thumps that I knew meant something had cut through my clothes and pierced my skin. (Does that sound terrifying? Because it was terrifying.) The second bot tried to run forward but the drones made a wall and slammed into it, forcing it back with a haze of weapon fire and their own armored bodies.

  I rolled to my feet, dove again, and landed next to Hirune. Her body looked intact and I didn’t see any blood pools, but I didn’t have time to check if she was alive. (It didn’t matter. In a retrieval like this, humans wouldn’t believe the hostage was dead unless I brought the body back.) I scooped her up and here came the hard part, I had to run out of the foyer.

  The bots had had time to figure out (a) the SecUnit was here (b) what the SecUnit had done to take over their drones and consequently (c) they were really pissed off at that SecUnit. I bolted across the room toward the door.

  The two bots had taken out twenty-three of the drones, each one a light, a connection, blinking out of my awareness. But the drones had done a lot of damage, targeting joints, weapons ports, and hands. A camera view from a surviving drone told me the bot behind me had lunged for my retreating back but crashed to its knees; drones had been concentrating fire on its ankle joints while others distracted it.

  The bot in front of me threw itself forward to block the door. And I turned right and ran straight for the lift junction.

  The combat bots had taken over the lift system like I’d warned Brais, but combat bots can’t hack like a SecUnit. I hadn’t tried for control of the whole system, just this one lift, telling it to wait here for me. The door slid obediently open as I reached it. I ordered it to take me to the production pod. The door slammed on a set of sharp metal fingers and the pod whisked me away.

  Drone One was still waiting in the corridor, and I ordered it to close the junction hatches between the engineering pod and the production pod, drill through the walls, and fuse the controls. It whizzed into action as the lift stopped and opened its doors.

  I stepped out into an empty junction in the production pod, and sent the code I’d prepared into the lift system. It shut the system down and set a password lock. The combat bots could get past it if they had the right code modules, and if they devoted resources to it that they could be using for other things. It would still buy me the time I needed. I hoped.

  Now that I had time to evaluate my own condition, I eased up my pain sensors a little. The impacts I’d felt turned from dull aches to sharp burning, like little explosions under my skin. Ow, ow, okay, ow. I locked my knee joints to stay upright and upped my air intake.

  I had taken multiple shrapnel hits from the drones being shredded all around me. I had two hits from projectile weapons, one in my lower left side and one in my left shoulder. I was pretty certain I had been hit by stray shots meant for drones. If the bots had been able to target me, I would be in pieces. I tuned down my pain sensors and the impact sites faded from explosions down to embers. (I know that’s actually not a permanent solution and pretending bad things aren’t happening is not a great survival strategy in the long run, but there was nothing I could do about it now.) The arm where I was storing my memory clips was undamaged, which was a relief.

  I started down the corridor toward the production pod foyer, where the others should be.

  I tapped Miki’s feed for a report because neither it nor Abene were saying anything and I wasn’t sure what they had been able to see through my visual feed. At that point, Hirune’s gloved hand squeezed my shoulder.

  Fortunately I remembered I was carrying a possibly living human and didn’t scream or drop her or anything. Her helmet with its comm mic had been ripped off, and her head rested on my shoulder. She slurred the words, “Who are you?”

  I was distracted, and what came out of my buffer was the standard, “I’m your contracted SecUnit.” I was distracted because confused noise was coming from the connection with Miki and Abene. It wasn’t communication from a feed interface, it was audio; Miki was sending me open comm audio over the feed.

  Her voice rough and deep with fury, Abene shouted, “Who sent you? GrayCris?”

  On my shoulder, Hirune made a confused “huh?” sound.

  The other comm audio I could hear was too faint even for me to tell what it was. I had to waste four seconds converting it to a spectrogram before I recognized it. It was two noises, the low pitch of Miki’s joints and the higher pitch of powered armor, bracing against each other.

  Well, shit.

  I do make mistakes (I keep a running tally in a special file) and it looked like I had made a big one. I had interpreted all of Wilken’s behavior as being about me, about the discomfort and paranoia associated with a SecUnit suddenly appearing out of nowhere, supposedly sent by another security consultant whose existence implied that the clients didn’t trust her and Gerth. (I know, the “it’s all about me” bit is usually a human thing.) But now it seemed she had been uneasy for a whole other reason.

  The good thing about getting your security through a bond company like the one that had owned me is that for small contracts you take delivery at a company office, and for big ones it arrives in a company transport. This greatly reduces opportunities for somebody to show up pretending to be your security team when they’ve really been contracted to kill you.

  Wilken and Gerth were good. I had listened in on and analyzed their conversations aboard Ship and not picked up any hint of it. But then, if they worked for GrayCris, they would be alert for the kind of bond company security surveillance in use throughout the Corporation Rim.

  By this point my drone had reached the hatch junction where Wilken was supposed to be waiting. She wasn’t there, obviously, being busy betraying her clients. (When I said I didn’t like humans working security you thought I was just being an asshole, right?)

  I used my con
nection to Miki’s feed and accessed its camera view. Oh yeah, not good. The image was shaky but I could see Miki had Wilken backed up against a pillar. Miki had one arm pinning Wilken’s right wrist against the pillar, as Wilken tried to bring her projectile weapon down to bear on Abene. Something was wrong with Miki’s hand but I didn’t have a clear view, and I didn’t want to distract Miki at the moment by pulling a damage report. Wilken had her other forearm braced against Miki’s face, like she was trying to shove it away, but that wasn’t what she was doing. She had energy weapons built into the forearms of her armor and she was trying to slide one into position to blow Miki’s head off.

  (Miki could operate without its head, but its sensory inputs and cameras were there, and it would be really awkward.)

  Wilken had cut me out of her feed connection, but I used Abene’s to bypass the block: This is SecUnit. We can talk about this. Consultant Rin can offer you immunity from prosecution if you testify. I hoped that made sense (it was a line from Sanctuary Moon) and I’m sure it sounded like I was stalling. I wasn’t stalling and I didn’t need her to answer me, I just needed her distracted enough to not think about what I was doing in her feed. Your bosses are going down. Whatever they paid you, it won’t make up for a stint in prison. (Yeah, that was from Sanctuary Moon, too.) In the meantime, I was frantically looking for the right code. The companies that make powered armor are different from the ones that make SecSystems, intel drones, cameras, and so on, and their system architectures were different and it made everything harder.

  Abene had a grip on Wilken’s projectile weapon, trying to help Miki wrench it away, but couldn’t do much against the powered armor. I could tell she had no idea about the forearm energy weapon, which was in a much more dangerous position. In the feed, I could hear Abene telling Miki to let go and run, and Miki refusing on the basis that Wilken would then shoot Abene. Who should be running, frankly, but wasn’t going without Miki, obviously.

  I reached the turn into the production pod’s foyer where Abene and Miki struggled with Wilken. Her energy weapon slid slowly but inexorably into position next to Miki’s head, despite its attempts to hold her and Abene hanging off her other arm and kicking her. In about thirty seconds I was going to have to put Hirune down on the floor and do this the hard way, if I couldn’t find this code.

  On yet another channel, Drone One reported that it couldn’t detect any activity suggesting that the combat bots were trying to blast their way through the hatches it had sealed and jammed. The drone had been cut off from the network and couldn’t report further on the movements of any active units. Which meant that the combat bots had stopped to repair each other (Yes, they’re self-repairing unless their main processing center is destroyed. Yes, that is a pain in the ass and also terrifying.) and would soon be taking another route out of the engineering pod to come after us. Like I didn’t have enough to do right now.

  Frantically scanning Wilken’s armor, I finally found the right code. That was a relief. I opened a channel and sent the “freeze” command via the feed.

  The reason the company doesn’t use powered armor like Wilken’s is not only because the company is cheap. Powered armor like Wilken’s is hackable.

  Miki twisted free and stepped backward, still keeping its body between Wilken and Abene. Wilken froze in place (literally) her face grimacing as she shouted into a comm that wasn’t working anymore. (I had cut off her comm and feed; I wanted current developments to be a surprise to Gerth.) The projectile weapon started to fall from Wilken’s frozen fingers and Abene lunged forward and grabbed it.

  Now I could see Miki’s damage; it had two energy impacts on its chestplate and its right hand was a stump.

  I said, “It’s all right, I’ve locked her armor.” I ran Miki’s feed back, skimming it to see what had happened. Wilken had waited until I was busy with the combat bots, then had returned to Abene and Miki. She had moved toward them fast, saying she had something important to tell them off the comm and feed. Then she had grabbed Abene by her hair. It was still hanging loose, her helmet left behind after I’d broken the release tab to get her away from the bio sampler.

  Wilken had pointed the weapon at Abene’s head and said, “Sorry, it’s not personal.” That comment had cost her the kill, it had given Miki time to slam in between them and force the weapon up and away. (Just because Miki was a pet bot that carried things for humans didn’t mean it wasn’t strong enough to take on powered armor.) Wilken had fired the weapon, destroying Miki’s hand, which hadn’t slowed Miki down, either.

  Abene saw me and gasped, “Hirune—”

  “She’s alive,” I said, because Abene was armed now and traumatized humans with unsecured weapons make me nervous.

  Miki said plaintively, “SecUnit, Consultant Wilken tried to shoot Don Abene.”

  Abene slung the weapon over her shoulder and hurried to me. She touched Hirune’s face, then looked up at me. “Oh thank you, thank you.”

  It’s nice to be thanked. “Miki, damage report.”

  “I am at eighty-six percent functional capacity.” It held up its arm stump. “It’s only a flesh wound.”

  For fuck’s sake. Abene turned toward it, shocked. “Miki, your poor hand!”

  Oh good, another Abene/Miki lovefest. I said, “Miki, take Hirune.”

  Miki stepped forward and held out its arms. Hirune was only semiconscious but had a convulsive grip on my jacket. Abene gently pried her hand away and I deposited her into Miki’s arms.

  I turned to Wilken. It was the hair-grabbing thing that bothered me. Along with the snide “it’s not personal.” If Wilken had shot with no warning, Abene would be dead and Miki would be in pieces now. But Wilken had wanted Abene to know that she was betrayed. That was personal.

  I don’t like personal.

  This was another reason I didn’t like human security consultants. Some of them enjoyed their job too much.

  I stepped up to Wilken and pulled off the utility harness that held the explosive packs and other gear. She glared at me through the faceplate. I slung the harness over my shoulder and said, “Don Abene, you might not want to watch this.”

  Abene turned away from Miki and Hirune. “No!” Then she added more calmly, “I know you’re angry that she sent you to the combat bots, but don’t kill her.”

  I wasn’t angry on my account. Being sent into situations to get shot at was literally my job, or had been my job. I thought everything had happened so fast Abene hadn’t had time to process what Wilken had nearly done to her.

  It must have been obvious that her first argument was not compelling, because Abene continued, “If she’s working for GrayCris, we need her as a witness.”

  Okay, that did make sense. The whole reason I was here was to find more evidence against GrayCris. I looked into Wilken’s faceplate. Her expression had gone blank, trying to conceal fear. With her comm and feed down, she could still hear us, though our voices would sound like we were at the bottom of a mining tunnel. When it powered down, the armor had automatically opened some vents to allow air circulation, so she wouldn’t suffocate or cook in her own heat. I could give it a delayed command to close the vents once we’d left, and Abene would think it was an accident.

  There’s that caring thing again. Did I care if Wilken survived or not? Not really.

  I said, “We need to go,” and held out my hand for Wilken’s projectile weapon. Abene handed it to me, and I walked away. I left the vents open.

  As Miki and Abene followed me, I said, “The bots in the engineering pod will be trying to reach us once they self-repair, and the drone I captured says that there’s one more active combat bot. It’s probably somewhere between us and the shuttle.” We also knew they would use whatever mobile equipment was left behind in the facility against us. I didn’t want to have to fight another bio sampler.

  Abene lengthened her stride to keep up with me. “I can’t reach the shuttle on my feed or comm,” she said. “Neither can Miki.”

  “That’s b
ecause I’m blocking you,” I told her. “I didn’t want you to say anything that might alert Gerth.” At least not until I figured out what to do about Gerth. I couldn’t get to her armor from here, even if I unblocked the feed. The codes for the armor were unique to each unit (the manufacturers weren’t completely stupid) so I had to be close enough to be able to scan for them.

  “I see.” Abene, amazingly, didn’t argue. Or maybe it wasn’t amazingly; she was pretty smart. “I suppose it’s too much to hope that Gerth is not also a hired killer.”

  “Analysis from the cargo ship suggested they had worked together for some time,” I said. “We have to assume they were suborned together, or at some point deflected and replaced the security team your company sent.”

  “Deflected,” Abene repeated. “That means killed?”

  “Probably.” When I picked up the Milu cargo ship on HaveRatton, I hadn’t downloaded any local news, just the bursts about Port FreeCommerce and GrayCris. If there had been reports of two bodies discovered with all identification burned out, I had missed them. (You can’t space people off a transit ring; security looks for that kind of thing and gets very agitated about it.) “With Gerth at the ship, we have a hostage situation.”

  I hate hostage situations. Even when I’m the one with the hostages.

  Miki said, “That’s not good.”

  See, that? That is just annoying. That contributed nothing to the conversation and was just a pointless vocalization to make the humans comfortable.

  In her feed, Abene was doing a quick review of my video from the engineering pod. It was less than a minute, so it didn’t take her long. She said, “Was Wilken giving the bots orders? Perhaps they will go dormant without her. But if they report to Gerth, we’re back in the same situation.”

  “I don’t think she or Gerth gave them orders,” I said. “I was listening in on their feeds, and I would have heard that, even if it was encrypted.” They hadn’t spoken to each other much at all, which was maybe suspicious in itself. (I know, hindsight is awesome.)