Network Effect

“SecUnit, SecUnit, are you there—” Overse, in the facility’s command center, had shouted at me over the comm interface.

Yes, I’m fine, I’d sent her over the feed. It’s a good thing I don’t bleed like a human because hostile marine fauna was about all this situation needed. I’ve got everything under fucking control, okay.

“No, it says it’s fine,” I heard her relaying to the others on our comm. “Well, yes, it’s furious.”)

I swung over the railing and dropped to the deck. I’d tuned my pain sensors down but I could feel the projectile wedged in next to my support framework and it was annoying. Staying low, I crawled down the steps into the first cabin structure. The human inside was monitoring a primitive scanner system. (I’d jammed it even before I got shot, feeding it artistic static and random reports of anomalous energy signatures to keep it busy.) I choked her until she was unconscious and then broke her arm to give her something else to worry about if she revived too soon. I didn’t take her projectile weapon but I did pause to break a couple of its key components.

The room was stuffed with bags and containers and other human crap. There were neat storage racks but everything was jumbled on the deck. We had seen eleven groups of strange humans in water boats from a distance, and had been contacted by two of them. Both had been what Thiago called “unusually divergent” and some of the others had called deeply weird. Both groups had taken the same elaborate precautions to show they were approaching in a non-hostile manner and had not displayed any weapons. Both groups had wanted to trade supplies with us. (Arada and the others had wanted to just give them what they needed, but Thiago had asked them to trade their stories of why they were here on this planet.)

So okay, maybe Thiago had reason to suppose this group would also be non-hostile. But the earlier groups had given me a chance to develop a profile of local non-hostile approaches/interactions and this group hadn’t fit.

Nobody fucking listens to me.

Potential Target Leader and their friends aboard Stupid Boat were also dressed better than the other humans we’d encountered, in clothing that looked newer if not cleaner. There was no planetary feed (stupid planet) but Stupid Boat had its own rudimentary feed that was heavy with games and pornography but light on anything that might be helpful for a security assessment, like who these people were and what they wanted. Even the individual humans’ feed signatures only contained info about sexual availability and gender presentation, which I didn’t give a damn about.

I slipped through into a grimy metal corridor, then a human stepped out of the next doorway. I disarmed them and slammed their head into the floor.

The door to the next compartment was closed, but one of my drones had landed on the roof earlier, flattened itself to a window, and got me some good scan and vid intel. That was kind of important, because this was the compartment with the control station for the large boat-busting projectile weapon that was currently pointed at our facility.

According to the drone’s video, one small human sat in the weapon station, their attention on a primitive camera-based targeting screen. Three large humans, all armed, sat around casually on battered station chairs, though the other stations had missing or badly jury-rigged or outdated equipment. They were chatting, watching Thiago and Potential Target Leader on the screen, la la la, just another day at work.

The compartment was a bulbous structure set to the right of the bow, and reinforced with metal to protect and support the large weapon. The six hostiles near the bow casually pointing projectile weapons at the facility’s observation deck were too far away to hear as long as I didn’t overdo it. So I snapped the lock and didn’t slam the door as I went through.

I hit Target One at the weapon station with an energy pulse from my left arm, throat punch to Target Two as the others came to their feet, pivot and smash kneecap of Target Three, slap Target Four’s weapon aside and break collarbone. I’d already had FacilitySys prepare a translation for me, the only sentence I figured I’d need. I said, “Make a noise, and everybody dies.”

Target One slumped unconscious over the weapon control station, wound steaming in the damp air. The other three stayed on the deck, whimpering and gurgling.

One of the hostiles outside had glanced around, but didn’t change position. Thiago, who was unexpectedly good at stalling, had avoided the question of whether the other researchers were going to come out on the observation deck so Potential Target Leader could decide if he wanted to abduct them or not. Thiago was now listing all our supplies and pretending to stumble over FacilitySys’s translation advice. (I knew he was pretending; he was a language expert among other things.) My drone view showed me that Potential Target Leader enjoyed watching Thiago sweat, and that maybe Thiago had noticed and was playing it up a little. He was pretty smart.

Okay, okay, I admit that it was a little upsetting that Thiago didn’t trust me.

(He and Mensah had had a conversation about me, back on Preservation Station when Arada was planning this survey. Transcript:

Thiago: “I know I’m in the minority here, but I have serious reservations.”

Mensah: “Arada is in charge of this survey, and she wants SecUnit. And frankly, if it isn’t the one providing security, I’ll withdraw my permission for Amena to go.”

(Amena is one of Mensah’s children and yes, she is on our facility right now. No pressure!)

Thiago: “You trust it that much?”

Mensah: “With my life, literally. I know what it will do to protect her, and you, and the rest of the team. Of course, it has its faults. In fact, it’s probably listening to us right now. Are you listening, SecUnit?”

Me, on the feed: What? No.

I’d missed the rest. I’d thought it was better to shut down my tap on the room’s comm access and get out of there.)

Target Two whispered something, which FacilitySys rendered as “What are you?”

I said, “I’m a Shut Up or Get Your Head Smashed.”

So that was two sentences I’d needed.

I had to get out there because Target Leader had started to walk toward Thiago and avoiding a hostage situation was important to my risk assessment module’s Projected Schedule of Events Leading to a Successful Resolution. (In company terms that’s a PSELSR, which is a terrible anagram.) (I don’t mean anagram, I mean the other thing.)

Thiago backed away, saying, “You don’t want to do this. You really don’t want to do this.”

Yeah, well, it was a little too late for them to run away.

I stepped to the outside hatch and told my drones to get into position. Two of the hostiles had helmets and body armor, and one had a helmet but the face shield had been removed. I hit the hatch release and gave the order.

(At the last second, I changed the drones’ instructions from head or face kill-hits to disabling wound-hits in exposed patches on arms and hands, even though it was the hostiles’ own stupid, stupid fault for attacking us. Thinking of Arada’s sad face made me too uncomfortable.)

The stupid hatch (I hate this boat) was slow and all six targets had turned toward me by the time it opened. My drones struck just as I dove out onto the deck. I hit one target with an energy burst from my right arm, kneecapped the second, two dropped from drone strikes and the last one went down flailing, hand closing convulsively on his weapon’s trigger and shooting me right in the chest. For fuck’s sake.

By that time, Target Leader had Thiago’s arm, weapon pointed at Thiago’s head.

I sacrificed six more drones to turn the weapons scattered around me into useless heaps of metal, then shoved to my feet. I walked up the boarding ramp onto our observation deck. I said, “Let him go.” I didn’t really feel like negotiating. I have a module on it, somewhere in my archive. It was never much help.

Target Leader’s eyes had a lot of white showing, and he was exhibiting multiple signs of stress. So was Thiago. A drone view showed me what I looked like, water dripping from my clothes, my jacket with the Preservation survey logo and shirt showing projectile weapon holes, stained with fluid and a little blood.

I circled them as if heading for the hatch. Target Leader dragged Thiago around to stay facing me, then yelled, “Stop! Or I’ll kill him!”

He was right, I’d been trying to make him move, setting up a shot. He had stopped with the observatory bubble behind him, not a good angle for me.

“You can still get out of this,” Thiago gasped. “Just let us go. You can take me as a hostage—”

Oh, right, that’ll help. I said, “No hostages.”

“What is that thing?” Target Leader demanded. “What are you? You’re a bot?”

Thiago said, “It’s a security unit. A bot/human construct.”

Target Leader didn’t seem to believe him. “Why does it look like a person?”

I said, “I ask myself that sometimes.”

Over the comm loudspeaker, Dr. Ratthi said, “It is a person!” In the background, I heard Overse whisper, “Ratthi, get off the comm!”

While that was going on, I did a quick search of my archived video and pulled an episode of Valorous Defenders. It’s not a bad show but this is a terrible episode where the characters are attacked by evil SecUnits. (That’s like the opposite of an oxymoron, since in the media, there’s no such thing as a non-evil SecUnit.) (Is there a word for the opposite of an oxymoron?) I grabbed the three-minute sequence where the SecUnits swarm the base and slaughter the helpless refugees. I uploaded it to stupid boat’s porn feed and set it to play on an endless loop.

I’m fast, so I’d finished by the time Target Leader shook Thiago and said, “Order it to back off.”

Thiago made a noise suspiciously like a derisive snort. “I wish I could! It doesn’t listen to me.”

I listen to you plenty, Thiago.

“Who does it—” Target Leader wisely gave up on that tack. “Listen, whoever controls this thing, I’m taking this one on my ship—”

“I’ve destroyed your engine,” I said. I really should have done that. Well, too late now.

Glaring with fury, Target Leader jerked Thiago and Thiago stumbled and leaned away from him. And I saw the hole blossom in Target Leader’s upper arm, in the scant few centimeters of clothing and skin exposed between the joints of the badly fitting armor.

I lunged forward and grabbed Thiago, slung him aside, then ripped the projectile weapon away from Target Leader. I knocked him lightly in the stomach and chest with the stock and he dropped to the deck.

Arada stepped out of the hatch, the projectile weapon sensibly pointed down even though my scan showed she had already engaged the safety. She said, “Are you all right? Thiago? SecUnit?”

I said earlier that I was trying to set up a shot; I didn’t say whose.

Arada had taken a course in weapons use after the whole thing with GrayCris. I guess having a bunch of murderers chasing you around a planet so they can suppress your research by murdering you would tend to make you more cautious, even if you are a terminal optimist.

On the feed, I said, Dr. Thiago, Dr. Arada, get inside. I grabbed Target Leader and tossed him onto the deck of his boat, where the other targets were crawling around trying to get to their hatch. My scan picked up a power surge in the boat’s weapon system. That’s what happens when you don’t have time to clear your hostile vehicle. I said over the comm, “Overse, now would be good.”

The thing Overse and the others had been doing while all this was going on was preparing our facility for launch. Under my boots, the deck rumbled and vibrated and our outer supports heaved out of the water, sending waves crashing into the boat as we lifted up.

I don’t think the raiders had realized the facility was mobile. The force of displaced water as our drive kicked in shoved the boat sideways, and the raiders lost their targeting lock.

Our outer supports folded in and we lifted further above the surface. The comm loudspeaker broadcast a siren and a translated warning about minimum safe distance and I guess the raiders believed it because their engines revved frantically. I recalled my drones and they shot down toward us to stream in through the hatch. I walked in after them and let the hatch close behind me as the launch protocols started.

2

I told myself it wasn’t as much of a shit ending to my first time as Survey Security Consultant While Not Pretending to be a Human and/or Faking the Existence of a Human Supervisor as it could have been. Everybody was alive, they had all their sampling and scans done. Our original schedule actually had us leaving in six planetary days, but since we had finished early Arada had moved that up to three planetary days, that’s why most of the facility had already been prepped for launch.

But we’d been lucky, and I hate luck.

Standing in the access corridor I settled my drones, tasking four to stay with me and sending the others to take up various positions around the facility and go dormant. Then I checked the feed for alerts. The team members who weren’t busy piloting the facility up through the atmosphere were yelling at each other on the comm. Arada came down the corridor. She didn’t have her weapon anymore and my safety protocol check showed she’d unloaded and secured it back in the locker. “SecUnit, you need to get to Medical!”

I checked the feed again; still no alerts. “What happened in Medical?”

“You happened, you got shot.”

Oh, right, that. Arada was gesturing at me so I followed her down the corridor to the main ramp. I poked through the hole in my jacket and shirt and upped my pain sensors a little. The projectiles were still in there. (Sometimes they pop out on their own.)

Medical was at the top of the ramp, a small compartment on the same level as the crew lounge area and galley. The quarters, labs, and storage were on the two levels below and the control deck was above. Ratthi was there waiting for us, standing beside the MedSystem. “Are you all right?” he demanded. “You better lie down!”

I didn’t want to bother with it. “No, I’m fine. Just give me the extractor.”

“No, no, you were in the water, you need decontam and an antibiotic screen. When the system is prepped, you lie down.” He pointed emphatically at the narrow platform and pulled one of the emergency kits down from the rack. “Thiago has some scrapes on his neck,” he told us, “but otherwise he’s fine.”

Ratthi went out with the kit. The yelling on the comm had calmed down but I could hear tense voices from the rec room. Preservation-controlled facilities like this don’t have SecSystems recording everything and cameras everywhere because privacy blah blah blah but I could eavesdrop through the comm and my drones. If I wanted to, which I didn’t, not right now.

Arada said, “Ratthi’s right, SecUnit, you should let the system make sure the wounds aren’t contaminated.” She hesitated. “Did I…” She took a sharp breath. I just stood there because I didn’t understand the question yet. She added, “Was there any other way…”

She didn’t finish again but this time I knew what she was asking. “No. If you’d waited any longer, I would have had to try to use a drone. He’ll probably survive, if the others give him medical attention.”

She really hadn’t wanted to shoot anybody, and had told me she had to force herself to learn how to use the weapon. I hadn’t particularly wanted her to learn, either. (Humans have a bad tendency to use weapons unnecessarily and indiscriminately. Of the many times I had been shot, a depressingly large percentage of hits had come from clients who were trying to “help” me.) (Another significant percentage came from clients who had just wanted to shoot something when I happened to be standing there.)

Arada rubbed her eyes and her mouth pulled in at one side. “Are you trying to make me feel better?”

“No.” I actually wasn’t. I lie to humans a lot, but not to Arada, not about this. “I wouldn’t try to make you feel better. You know what I’m like.”

She made a snorting noise, an involuntary expression of amusement. “I do know what you’re like.”

Her expression had turned all melty and sentimental. “No hugging,” I warned her. It was in our contract. “Do you need emotional support? Do you want me to call someone?”

“I’m fine.” She smiled. On the feed, the MedSystem signaled it was ready. “Now you make sure you’re fine, too.”

She stepped out of the compartment and set the privacy filter on the doorway. I stripped off my clothes and dropped them in the decontam bin and got onto the platform. It would run a check for contaminants and pop the projectiles out of my shoulder and chest.

The process only took three minutes, just long enough to finish the scene of Lineages of the Sun I’d had to pause when Thiago had decided to get me shot. The MedSystem tried to cycle into the therapy and post-treatment options and I stopped it and climbed off the platform. The feed told me we had made orbit and were in the process of rendezvous with our baseship.

My clothes now smelled like decontam fluid but they were dry and clean. I got dressed and opened the privacy shield.

Thiago stood in the corridor. Oh, joy.

He looked angry and upset, which I could tell, even though I was looking just to the right of his head. He said, “Did you kill those people?”

I’d been angry enough to tear them all into tiny little pieces. The company who had owned me had protocols for these situations that would have required kill-shots, at least for the armed hostiles out on the deck. Plus I’d already been shot once, and the hostiles had been clear about their intent to kill and/or abduct my clients. But the company didn’t own me anymore and the only human here I was answerable to was Arada, and only in limited ways determined by a contract that Pin-Lee had negotiated for me.

But the whole point of hacking my governor module was that no one got to tell me to kill a bunch of humans if I didn’t feel like it. (Or even if I did feel like it.)

I said, “I’ve reported to my contracted supervisor.”

(I know, I know, I could have said no, I didn’t kill anybody. I could have said that even SecUnits under company protocol use minimum force necessary because the company hates paying survivor damage bonds, and also because SecUnits are not rabid murderers unless humans specifically order them to be. I could have said that I had risked his life not using kill-shots on the armed targets because I knew Arada didn’t want me to.)

He pressed his lips together. “I could ask her.”

I said, “You should definitely do that.”

He glared at me and the brown skin on his cheeks showed pronounced signs of a rise in temperature indicating anger, embarrassment, and possibly other emotions. I was pretty sure he was just pissed off, though. Then he hesitated and said, “Look, I—I didn’t mean to get you shot. I’m sorry.”

If you had meant to get me shot, Thiago, we would be having a different conversation. Because I was still mad, I said, “The security protocol all survey members agreed to is available on the facility feed.”

His face did the thing humans do when they’re trying not to show how annoyed they are. (Mission accomplished.) He said, “I made a mistake. But I had no reason to assume those people were hostile.”

I had reason. I could have thrown together a quick excerpt of my Threat Assessment Report of the approaching boat and why it had been 72 percent likely to attack. I could have pointed out that THEY HAD SHOT ME FIRST when for all they knew I was just another unarmed human. But I didn’t have to answer to him. He didn’t like me, I didn’t like him, and that was fine.

It was absolutely fine.

I walked away down the corridor.

HelpMe.file Excerpt 1

(File detached from main narrative.)

Since I’d decided to stay (temporarily) on Preservation Station, Dr. Mensah had asked me to go places with her seven times. Six of those times were just relatively short boring meetings on ships in orbit or in dock. The seventh was when she had asked me to go down to the local planet’s surface with her. I don’t like planets but she lured me there by explaining that it was for an Art Festival/Conference/Religious Observation that would include “a lot of” live performances. After checking to find out the definition of “a lot of” was eighty-seven plus, I agreed to go.

Some of the live performances were demonstrations or seminars I wasn’t interested in, but I managed to fit in thirty-two plays and musicals while Mensah was at meetings or doing things with her family members. (I used drones to record the performances that were overlapping or scheduled against each other. They were all being recorded for the local planetary entertainment feed, and the popular ones would be reconfigured as video productions, but I wanted to see all the versions.) One evening a play was interrupted when Mensah tapped my feed and asked me to please come get her.

The request was so abrupt and out of character I replied with the code phrase we had come up with in case she was being held against her will. She said she was just tired. That was even more out of character. I mean, I could see she got tired, she just hated to admit it.

I left a drone to record the rest of the play and slipped out of the theater. It was night and the crowd in the street was beginning to thin out, but the big open pavilion across the plaza where the party was being held was still bright and noisy.

If you had to be in a crowd of humans, the crowds at this festival weren’t bad, since they were the distracted kind where all the humans and augmented humans are talking to each other or on comm or feed or hurrying to get places. The downside was a lot of humans were waving sticks with lighted objects or spark-emitting toys, or tossing colored powders that popped and emitted light. (I have no idea.) But whatever, with all that going on, nobody noticed me.

Plus, it was Preservation and there were no scanning drones, no armed human security, just some on-call human medics with bot assistants and “rangers” who mainly enforced environmental regulations and yelled at humans and augmented humans to get out of the way of the ground vehicles.

In the pavilion, I located Mensah near the edge of the crowd talking to Thiago and Farai, who was one of her marital partners. I stopped next to Mensah and she grabbed my hand.

Right, it’s usually a good idea to warn bot/human constructs who call themselves Murderbot before making grabby hands, except during a security incident when you would expect/need the human you’re trying to extract from lethal circumstances to grab you and hold on. And this read as the latter; like Mensah needed me to save her. So I didn’t react except to shift closer to her.