All Systems Red

by Martha Wells

  They split up, Pin-Lee, Volescu, and Bharadwaj headed for the little hopper and the rest to the big one. I made sure Bharadwaj didn’t have trouble with the ramp. We had a problem at the hatch of the big hopper where Mensah wanted to get in last and I wanted to get in last. As a compromise, I grabbed her around the waist and swung us both up into the hatch as the ramp pulled in after us. I set her on her feet and she said, “Thank you, SecUnit,” while the others stared.

  The helmet made it a little easier, but I was going to miss the comfortable buffer of the security cameras.

  I stayed on my feet, holding on to the overhead rail, as the others got strapped in and Mensah went up to the pilot’s seat. The little hopper took off first, and she gave it time to get clear before we lifted off.

  We were operating on an assumption: that since They, whoever They were, didn’t know that we knew They were here, They would only send one ship. They would be expecting to catch us in the habitat, and would probably come in prepared to destroy the hoppers to keep us there, and then start on the people. So now that we knew They were coming from the south, we were free to pick a direction. The little hopper curved away to the west, and we followed.

  I just hoped their hopper didn’t have a longer range on its scanners than ours did.

  I could see most of my drones on the hopper’s feed, a bright dot forming on the three dimensions of the map. Group One was doing what I’d told them, gathering at a rendezvous point near the habitat. I had a calculation going, estimating the bogie’s time of arrival. Right before we passed out of range I told the drones to head northeast. Within moments, they dropped out of my range. They would follow their last instruction until they used up their power cells.

  I was hoping the other survey team would pick them up and follow. As soon as they had a visual on our habitat they’d see the hoppers were gone and know we’d run away. They might stop to search the habitat, but they also might start looking for our escape route. It was impossible to guess which.

  But as we flew, curving away to the distant mountains, nothing followed us.

  Chapter Six

  THE HUMANS HAD DEBATED where to go. Or debated it as much as possible, while frantically calculating how much of what they might need to survive they could stuff into the hoppers. We knew the group who Ratthi was now calling EvilSurvey had had access to HubSystem and knew all the places we’d been to on assessments. So we had to go somewhere new.

  We went to a spot Overse and Ratthi had proposed after a quick look at the map. It was a series of rocky hills in a thick tropical jungle, heavily occupied by a large range of fauna, enough to confuse life-sign scans. Mensah and Pin-Lee lowered the hoppers down and eased them in among rocky cliffs. I sent up some drones so we could check the view from several angles and we adjusted the hoppers’ positions a few times. Then I set a perimeter.

  It didn’t feel safe, and while there were a couple of survival hut kits in the hoppers, no one suggested putting them up. The humans would stay in the hoppers for now, communicating over the comm and the hoppers’ limited feed. It wasn’t going to be comfortable for the humans (sanitary and hygiene facilities were small and limited, for one thing) but it would be more secure. Large and small fauna moved within range of our scanners, curious and potentially as dangerous as the people who wanted to kill my clients.

  I went out with some drones to do a little scouting and make sure there was no sign of anything big enough to, say, drag the little hopper off in the middle of the night. It gave me a chance to think, too.

  They knew about the governor module, or the lack of it, and even though Mensah had sworn she wouldn’t report me, I had to think about what I wanted to do.

  It’s wrong to think of a construct as half bot, half human. It makes it sound like the halves are discrete, like the bot half should want to obey orders and do its job and the human half should want to protect itself and get the hell out of here. As opposed to the reality, which was that I was one whole confused entity, with no idea what I wanted to do. What I should do. What I needed to do.

  I could leave them to cope on their own, I guess. I pictured doing that, pictured Arada or Ratthi trapped by rogue SecUnits, and felt my insides twist. I hate having emotions about reality; I’d much rather have them about Sanctuary Moon.

  And what was I supposed to do? Go off on this empty planet and just live until my power cells died? If I was going to do that I should have planned better and downloaded more entertainment media. I don’t think I could store enough to last until my power cells wore out. My specs told me that would be hundreds of thousands of hours from now.

  And even to me, that sounded like a stupid thing to do.

  * * *

  Overse had set up some remote sensing equipment that would help warn us if anything tried to scan the area. As the humans climbed back into the two hoppers, I did a quick headcount on the feed, making sure they were all still there. Mensah waited on the ramp, indicating she wanted to talk to me in private.

  I muted my feed and the comm, and she said, “I know you’re more comfortable with keeping your helmet opaque, but the situation has changed. We need to see you.”

  I didn’t want to do it. Now more than ever. They knew too much about me. But I needed them to trust me so I could keep them alive and keep doing my job. The good version of my job, not the half-assed version of my job that I’d been doing before things started trying to kill my clients. I still didn’t want to do it. “It’s usually better if humans think of me as a robot,” I said.

  “Maybe, under normal circumstances.” She was looking a little off to one side, not trying to make eye contact, which I appreciated. “But this situation is different. It would be better if they could think of you as a person who is trying to help. Because that’s how I think of you.”

  My insides melted. That’s the only way I could describe it. After a minute, when I had my expression under control, I cleared the face plate and had it and the helmet fold back into my armor.

  She said, “Thank you,” and I followed her up into the hopper.

  The others were stowing the equipment and supplies that had gotten tossed in right before takeoff. “—If they restore the satellite function,” Ratthi was saying.

  “They won’t chance that until—unless they get us,” Arada said.

  Over the comm, Pin-Lee sighed, angry and frustrated. “If only we knew who these assholes were.”

  “We need to talk about our next move.” Mensah cut through all the chatter and took a seat in the back where she could see the whole compartment. The others sat down to face her, Ratthi turning one of the mobile seats around. I sat down on the bench against the starboard wall. The feed gave us a view of the little hopper’s compartment, with the rest of the team sitting there, checking in to show they were listening. Mensah continued, “There’s another question I’d like the answer to.”

  Gurathin looked at me expectantly. She isn’t talking about me, idiot.

  Ratthi nodded glumly. “Why? Why are these people doing this? What is worth this to them?”

  “It has to have something to do with those blanked-out sections on the map,” Overse said. She was calling up the stored images on her feed. “There’s obviously something there they want, that they didn’t want us or DeltFall to find.”

  Mensah got up to pace. “Did you turn up anything in the analysis?”

  In the feed, Arada did a quick consult with Bharadwaj and Volescu. “Not yet, but we hadn’t finished running all the tests. We hadn’t turned up anything interesting so far.”

  “Do they really expect to get away with this?” Ratthi turned to me, like he was expecting an answer. “Obviously, they can hack the company systems and the satellite, and they intend to put the blame on the SecUnits, but . . . The investigation will surely be thorough. They must know this.”

  There were too many factors in play, and too many things we didn’t know, but I’m supposed to answer direct questions and even without the governor module, old habi
ts die hard. “They may believe the company and whoever your beneficiaries are won’t look any further than the rogue SecUnits. But they can’t make two whole survey teams disappear unless their corporate or political entity doesn’t care about them. Does DeltFall’s care? Does yours?”

  That made them all stare at me, for some reason. I had to turn and look out the port. I wanted to seal my helmet so badly my organic parts started to sweat, but I replayed the conversation with Mensah and managed not to.

  Volescu said, “You don’t know who we are? They didn’t tell you?”

  “There was an info packet in my initial download.” I was still staring out at the heavy green tangle just past the rocks. I really didn’t want to get into how little I paid attention to my job. “I didn’t read it.”

  Arada said, gently, “Why not?”

  With all of them staring at me, I couldn’t come up with a good lie. “I didn’t care.”

  Gurathin said, “You expect us to believe that.”

  I felt my face move, my jaw harden. Physical reactions I couldn’t suppress. “I’ll try to be more accurate. I was indifferent, and vaguely annoyed. Do you believe that?”

  He said, “Why don’t you want us to look at you?”

  My jaw was so tight it triggered a performance reliability alert in my feed. I said, “You don’t need to look at me. I’m not a sexbot.”

  Ratthi made a noise, half sigh, half snort of exasperation. It wasn’t directed at me. He said, “Gurathin, I told you. It’s shy.”

  Overse added, “It doesn’t want to interact with humans. And why should it? You know how constructs are treated, especially in corporate-political environments.”

  Gurathin turned to me. “So you don’t have a governor module, but we could punish you by looking at you.”

  I looked at him. “Probably, right up until I remember I have guns built into my arms.”

  With an ironic edge to her voice, Mensah said, “There, Gurathin. It’s threatened you, but it didn’t resort to violence. Are you satisfied now?”

  He sat back. “For now.” So he had been testing me. Wow, that was brave. And very, very stupid. To me, he said, “I want to make certain you’re not under any outside compulsion.”

  “That’s enough.” Arada got up and sat down next to me. I didn’t want to push past her so this pinned me in the corner. She said, “You need to give it time. It’s never interacted with humans as an openly free agent before now. This is a learning experience for all of us.”

  The others nodded, like this made sense.

  Mensah sent me a private message through the feed: I hope you’re all right.

  Because you need me. I don’t know where that came from. All right, it came from me, but she was my client, I was a SecUnit. There was no emotional contract between us. There was no rational reason for me to sound like a whiny human baby.

  Of course I need you. I have no experience in anything like this. None of us do. Sometimes humans can’t help but let emotion bleed through into the feed. She was furious and frightened, not at me, at the people who would do this, kill like this, slaughter a whole survey team and leave the SecUnits to take the blame. She was struggling with her anger, though nothing showed on her face except calm concern. Through the feed I felt her steel herself. You’re the only one here who won’t panic. The longer this situation goes on, the others . . . We have to stay together, use our heads.

  That was absolutely true. And I could help, just by being the SecUnit. I was the one who was supposed to keep everybody safe. I panic all the time, you just can’t see it, I told her. I added the text signifier for “joke.”

  She didn’t answer, but she looked down, smiling to herself.

  Ratthi was saying, “There’s another question. Where are they? They came toward our habitat out of the south, but that doesn’t tell us anything.”

  I said, “I left three drones at our habitat. They don’t have scanning function with HubSystem down, but the visual and audio recording will still work. They may pick up something that will answer your questions.”

  I’d left one drone in a tree with a long-range view of the habitat, one tucked under the extendable roof over the entrance, and one inside the hub, hidden under a console. They were on the next setting to inert, recording only, so when EvilSurvey scanned, the drones would be buried in the ambient energy readings from the habitat’s environmental system. I hadn’t been able to connect the drones to SecSystem like I normally did so it could store the data and filter out the boring parts. I knew EvilSurvey would check for that, which was why I had dumped SecSystem’s storage into the big hopper’s system and then purged it.

  I also didn’t want them knowing any more about me than they already did.

  Everyone was looking at me again, surprised that Murderbot had had a plan. Frankly, I didn’t blame them. Our education modules didn’t have anything like that in it, but this was another way all the thrillers and adventures I’d watched or read were finally starting to come in handy. Mensah lifted her brows in appreciation. She said, “But you can’t pick up their signal from here.”

  “No, I’ll have to go back to get the data,” I told her.

  Pin-Lee leaned farther into the little hopper’s camera range. “I should be able to attach one of the small scanners to a drone. It’ll be bulky and slow, but that would give us something other than just audio and visual.”

  Mensah nodded. “Do it, but remember our resources are limited.” She tapped me in the feed so I’d know she was talking to me without her looking at me. “How long do you think the other group will stay at our habitat?”

  There was a groan from Volescu in the other hopper. “All our samples. We have our data, but if they destroy our work—”

  The others were agreeing with him, expressing frustration and worry. I tuned them out, and answered Mensah, “I don’t think they’ll stay long. There’s nothing there they want.”

  For just an instant, Mensah let her expression show how worried she was. “Because they want us,” she said softly.

  She was absolutely right about that, too.

  * * *

  Mensah set up a watch schedule, including in time for me to go into standby and do a diagnostic and recharge cycle. I was also planning to use the time to watch some Sanctuary Moon and recharge my ability to cope with humans at close quarters without losing my mind.

  After the humans had settled down, either sleeping or deep in their own feeds, I walked the perimeter and checked the drones. The night was noisier than the day, but so far nothing bigger than insects and a few reptiles had come near the hoppers. When I cycled through the big hopper’s hatch, Ratthi was the human on watch, sitting up in the cockpit and keeping an eye on its scanners. I moved up past the crew section and sat next to him. He nodded to me and said, “All’s well?”

  “Yes.” I didn’t want to, but I had to ask. When I was looking for permanent storage for all my entertainment downloads, the info packet was one of the files I’d purged. (I know, but I’m used to having all the extra storage on SecSystem.) Remembering what Mensah had said, I unsealed my helmet. It was easier with just Ratthi, both of us facing toward the console. “Why did everyone think it was so strange that I asked if your political entity would miss you?”

  Ratthi smiled at the console. “Because Dr. Mensah is our political entity.” He made a little gesture, turning his hand palm up. “We’re from Preservation Alliance, one of the non-corporate system entities. Dr. Mensah is the current admin director on the steering committee. It’s an elected position, with a limited term. But one of the principles of our home is that our admins must also continue their regular work, whatever it is. Her regular work required this survey, so here she is, and here we are.”

  Yeah, I felt a little stupid. I was still processing it when he said, “You know, in Preservation-controlled territory, bots are considered full citizens. A construct would fall under the same category.” He said this in the tone of giving me a hint.

  Whatever.
Bots who are “full citizens” still have to have a human or augmented human guardian appointed, usually their employer; I’d seen it on the news feeds. And the entertainment feed, where the bots were all happy servants or were secretly in love with their guardians. If it showed the bots hanging out watching the entertainment feed all through the day cycle with no one trying to make them talk about their feelings, I would have been a lot more interested. “But the company knows who she is.”

  Ratthi sighed. “Oh, yes, they know. You would not believe what we had to pay to guarantee the bond on the survey. These corporate arseholes are robbers.”

  It meant if we ever managed to launch the beacon, the company wouldn’t screw around, the transport would get here fast. No bribe from EvilSurvey could stop it. They might even send a faster security ship to check out the problem before the transport could arrive. The bond on a political leader was high, but the payout the company would have to make if something happened to her was off the chart. The huge payout, being humiliated in front of the other bond companies and in the news feeds . . . I leaned back in my seat and sealed my helmet to think about it.

  We didn’t know who EvilSurvey was, who we were dealing with. But I bet that they didn’t either. Mensah’s status was only in the Security info packet, stored on SecSystem, which they had never gotten access to. The dueling investigations if something happened to us were bound to be thorough, as the company would be desperate for something to blame it on and the beneficiaries would be desperate to blame it on the company. Neither would be fooled long by the rogue SecUnit setup.

  I didn’t see how we could use it, not right now, anyway. It didn’t comfort me and I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t comfort the humans to know the stupid company would avenge them if/when they all got murdered.

  * * *

  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.