Rogue Protocol

Today, I said, “I don’t care.”

Everybody shut up again.

I continued, “We have, at most, six hours left before this transport will dock. After that, you can do whatever you want to each other.”

That didn’t work, they still had to tell me about what had caused the latest fight. (I don’t remember what it was, I deleted it from memory as soon as I could get out of the room.)

They were all annoying and deeply inadequate humans, but I didn’t want to kill them. Okay, maybe a little.

A SecUnit’s job is to protect its clients from anything that wants to kill or hurt them, and to gently discourage them from killing, maiming, etc., each other. The reason why they were trying to kill, maim, etc., each other wasn’t the SecUnit’s problem, it was for the humans’ supervisor to deal with. (Or to willfully ignore until the whole project devolved into a giant clusterfuck and your SecUnit prayed for the sweet relief of a massive accidental explosive decompression, not that I’m speaking from experience or anything.)

But here on this transport, there was no supervisor, just me. And I knew where they were going, and they knew where they were going, even if they were pretending all their anger and frustration was caused by Vinigo or Eva taking an extra simulated fruit pac. So I listened to them a lot and pretended to be launching major investigations into incidents like who left a cracker wrapper in the galley restroom sink.

They were heading to a labor installation on some shitshow world. Ayres told me they had all sold their personal labor for a twenty-year hitch, with a big payout at the end. He was aware it was a terrible deal, but it was better than their other options. The labor contract included shelter, but charged a percentage for everything else, like food consumed, energy use, and any medical care, including preventative.

(I know. Ratthi had said using constructs was slavery but at least I hadn’t had to pay the company for my repair, maintenance, ammo, and armor. Of course, nobody had asked me if I wanted to be a SecUnit, but that’s a whole different metaphor.)

(Note to self: look up definition of metaphor.)

I had asked Ayres if the twenty years was measured by the planetary calendar or the proprietary calendar of the corporation who maintained the planet, or the Corporation Rim Recommended Standard, or what? He didn’t know, and hadn’t understood why it mattered.

Yeah, that was why I was trying not to get attached to any of them.

I would never have picked this transport if I had a choice, but it had been the only one going to the transit station that was the connection to my next destination. I was trying to get to a place called Milu, outside the Corporation Rim.

I had made the decision after I left RaviHyral. At first, I had needed to move fast and put as much distance between myself and its transit station as possible. (See above, murdered humans.) I’d grabbed the first friendly cargo transport and after a seven-cycle trip I disembarked on a crowded transit hub, which was good, because crowds were easy to get lost in, and bad, because there were humans and augmented humans everywhere, all around me, looking at me, which was hell. (After meeting Ayres and the others, obviously my definition of hell changed.)

Also, I missed ART, and I even missed Tapan, and Maro and Rami. If you had to take care of humans, it was better to take care of small soft ones who were nice to you and thought you were great because you kept preventing them from being murdered. (They had only liked me because they thought I was an augmented human, but you can’t have everything.)

After RaviHyral, I’d decided to stop screwing around and get out of the Corporation Rim, but I still had to plan my route. The schedules and feeds I needed hadn’t been accessible on the transport, but now that we’d docked I was inundated with info, so I had to take some time to go through it all. Plus I had been at this hub for twenty-two minutes and I already desperately needed some quiet time. So I ducked into an automated transient service center and used some of the funds on my new hard currency card to pay for a private rest cubicle. It was just big enough to lay down in with my knapsack, but it was enough like a transport box to be vaguely comforting. I had spent a lot of great alone time in transport boxes, being shipped as freight to contracts. I thought a human had to be pretty tired to rest in here without screaming.

Once I was settled, I checked the station feeds for recently arrived newsbursts about DeltFall and GrayCris. I hit a story thread almost immediately. Lawsuits were underway, depositions in progress, and so on. It didn’t look like there had been much change since I left RaviHyral, which was frustrating. That pesky SecUnit nobody wanted to talk about was still unaccounted for, so yay for that. It was hard to tell if the journalists thought somebody was hiding me or not. They didn’t seem to want to speculate that I’d wandered off on my own. Then I hit an interview with Dr. Mensah, posted six cycles ago.

It was unexpectedly good to see her again. I increased magnification for a better look and decided she seemed tired. I couldn’t tell where she was from the video background and a quick scan of the interview content didn’t mention it. I hoped she was back on Preservation; if she was still on Port FreeCommerce I hoped they had contracted decent security. But knowing how she felt about SecUnits (the whole “it’s slavery” thing) I doubted she had. Even without a MedSystem on my feed, I could tell there were changes in the skin around her eyes that indicated a lack of sleep verging on chronic.

I felt a little guilty, sort of, almost. Something was wrong, and I hoped it wasn’t about me. It wasn’t her fault I’d escaped, and I hoped they weren’t trying to hold her responsible for, you know, releasing a rogue SecUnit with a record of past mass murder onto an unsuspecting population. Granted, that hadn’t been her intention. She had meant to ship me home to Preservation, where she would have, I don’t know, civilized me, or educated me, or something. I was vague on the details. The only thing I knew for certain was that Preservation didn’t need SecUnits, and their idea of a SecUnit being considered a free agent meant I’d have a human “guardian.” (In other places they just call that your owner.)

I reviewed the content again. The investigation of GrayCris being conducted by the news agencies was turning up other incidents that suggested the attack on DeltFall was more business as usual for them than an aberration. (This is my surprised face.) GrayCris had been collecting complaints for a long time about sketchy contracts and exclusive-use deals on various sites, including a potential terraforming project outside the Corporation Rim that had been abandoned, though nobody knew why. Fucking up a planet, even part of a planet, for no reason was kind of a big deal, and I was surprised they had gotten away with it. Okay, no, I wasn’t surprised.

The journalist asked Dr. Mensah about that last one, and she said, “After what I saw of GrayCris, I intend to urge the Preservation Council to join the formal call to investigate the situation at Milu. A failed terraforming attempt is a tragic waste of both resources and the natural surface of a planet, but GrayCris has refused to explain their actions.”

The journalist had tagged an infobar to Mensah’s statement, with some commentary about a small company from outside the Corporation Rim which had recently filed to take possession of GrayCris’ abandoned terraform project. They had just set up an automated tractor array to prevent the derelict terraform facility from breaking up in the atmosphere, and were supposed to start assessments soon. The commentary got all dramatic then, wondering what the assessment team would find.

I laid there, flicking through feeds and schedules, and decided I thought I knew what the assessment team would find.

The reason I was wandering free and Dr. Mensah was on the news was because GrayCris had been willing to kill a whole bunch of helpless human researchers for exclusive access to alien remnants, the mineral and possibly biological remains of a sentient alien civilization left in the soil of our survey area. I knew a lot more about it now, after listening to Tapan and the others talk about their code for identifying strange synthetics, and because I’d downloaded a book on it and read it between episodes of my shows. There were tons of agreements between political and corporate entities, inside and outside the Corporation Rim, dealing with alien remnants. Basically you weren’t supposed to touch them without a lot of special certifications and maybe not even then.

When I had left Port FreeCommerce, the assumption was that GrayCris had wanted unimpeded access to those remnants. Presumably, GrayCris would have set up a mining operation or colony build or some other kind of massive project as cover while they recovered and studied the remnants.

So what if the terraform facility at Milu was just a successful cover for a mining or recovery operation for alien remnants or strange synthetics or both? GrayCris had finished the recovery and pretended to abandon the terraform that had never actually been in progress. With the facility derelict, it would eventually break up in the atmosphere, taking all the evidence with it.

If Dr. Mensah had proof of that, the investigation against GrayCris would get a lot more interesting. Maybe so interesting that the journalists would forget all about that stray SecUnit. And then Dr. Mensah wouldn’t be needed on Port FreeCommerce and she could go back to Preservation where it was safe and I could stop worrying about her.

Getting proof wouldn’t be hard, I thought. Humans always think they’ve covered their tracks and deleted their data, but they’re wrong a lot. So … maybe I should do that. I could go to Milu and take whatever data I collected and send it to Dr. Mensah, either to wherever she was staying at Port FreeCommerce or to her home on Preservation.

I picked up the hub feed again and changed my queries to search for transports to Milu, but there was nothing on the public schedule for this transit station. I widened my search, checking other connected transit stations. All I could find was an old transportation advisory, tagged forty cycles ago, when the news said the terraform facility had been declared abandoned after the local transit station had registered a lengthy period of inactivity. It said the cargo routes to Milu were discontinued, all except for the route originating at HaveRatton Station, which was on the edge of the Corporation Rim. I couldn’t get any updated information about transports going to Milu from HaveRatton, except some vague reports that some had still been in operation at some point.

I might not be able to get to Milu without my own ship, and that wasn’t going to happen. I have a training module for hoppers and other planetary aircraft, but not shuttles or transports or anything. I’d have to steal a ship and a bot pilot, and that would just be getting too complicated, even for me.

But HaveRatton was a main hub for transports heading outside the Corporation Rim and I could choose hundreds of destinations from there. So even if the Milu plan turned out to be a bust, it wouldn’t be a wasted trip.

The next transport leaving directly for HaveRatton was listed as cargo and passenger, and that’s how I ended up with Ayres and his bunch of contract-labor-bound idiots.

* * *

After breaking up the latest fight in the mess, and trying to end my short-lived career as a relationship counselor for desperate humans, I went to hide in my bunkspace. When we came through the wormhole and started to approach HaveRatton, I picked up the station feed.

I needed to get the schedules as soon as possible, and I was also looking forward to a chance to download new media. The latest new show I was watching had started out good but turned annoying. It was about a pre-terraform survey (on a planet with completely the wrong profile for terraforming anyway, but I didn’t care about that part) that turned into a battle for survival against hostile fauna and mutant raiders. But the humans were too helpless to make it interesting and they were all getting killed. I could tell it was headed toward a depressing ending, and I just wasn’t in the mood. It was especially annoying because I could see how the addition of a heroic SecUnit and maybe some interesting alien remnants could have turned it into a great adventure story.

And there was no way their bond company would have guaranteed the survey without some kind of professional security. That was unrealistic. Heroic SecUnits were unrealistic, too, but like I had told ART, there’s the right kind of unrealistic and the wrong kind of unrealistic.

I had stopped watching it when the mutants dragged off the group’s biologist to eat him. Seriously, this was exactly the kind of situation I was designed to prevent.

Thinking about the probable fate of Transport’s passengers put me out of the mood, too. I didn’t want to see helpless humans. I’d rather see smart ones rescuing each other.

I sorted through indices of available info, then started new downloads and queried the schedules and transport guide for ways to get to Milu.

Nothing this cycle, nothing the next. Even when I widened the search to thirty cycles from now. Well, that was possibly a problem.

I had been thinking about my plan a lot in between bouts of passenger-wrangling, and now I hated to give it up; I really wanted to hurt GrayCris, and if I couldn’t do it with explosive projectiles, this was the next best way. Maybe the schedules hadn’t been updated; humans are so fucking unreliable when it comes to maintaining data. As we slowed for final approach and docking, I searched the station’s public destination catalog, and yeah, Milu was listed. As usual, an independent company operated the transit station, so it was listed as still active even after the facility had been abandoned. The population of the station was floating and under one hundred at most.

Floating was good as it meant there were few permanent residents; people came and went constantly. But under a hundred was bad. Even if I could get there, with no legitimate reason to be there, I’d have to make sure no one saw me.

ART had altered my configuration so scans wouldn’t read me as a SecUnit, and I had written myself some code to make sure I behaved more like a human or augmented human. (Mostly randomizing my movements and breathing.) But I had to avoid other SecUnits, and it was best to avoid humans (like deployment center personnel) who had seen SecUnits without armor. GrayCris contracted for SecUnits in the Corporation Rim, and they might have used them on the Milu station, too. GrayCris was supposed to have removed any offices from the transit station when they abandoned the facility, but the humans who were still there might have seen their SecUnits. It was a calculated risk, which meant I was doing it even though I knew it could be like shooting myself in the knee joint.

I could have given up on the whole idea. There were transports leaving for destinations far away from Corporate territory, destinations I didn’t know anything about. But I was tired of pretending to be human. I needed a break.

I tried the schedule for privately owned ships and didn’t see any marked for Milu. But there were several ships scheduled to leave in the next cycle or so with no listed destination. One was a small bot-piloted cargo ship that was just large enough to carry supplies for about one hundred to one hundred-fifty humans for one hundred-plus cycles. I checked its history in the knowledge base and saw that it left and returned on a regular schedule. It could be a private contractor supplying Milu station, and not listed on the schedule because they didn’t want any random humans trying to go there until the terraforming facility debacle had been sorted out.

The cargo ship had actually been scheduled to leave eighteen cycles ago, but had requested a hold. Six transports of varying sizes and points of origin were arriving on HaveRatton at the same time as my transport. The supply ship might have been waiting for one of those, if it was fulfilling specific cargo orders. It might have been waiting for a repair.

To find out more, I’d have to ask in person.

Chapter Two

ONCE TRANSPORT COMPLETED DOCKING protocols, I climbed out of my bunk, collected my knapsack (I had a few things in it but mostly it was just so I could look more like a human traveler), and took a shortcut down the maintenance shaft to the passenger lock. The others would be going out through the cargo lock, into a transport module that a cargo lifter would tow to the ship taking them to their new home. This was billed as for their convenience, but their contractor wouldn’t want them to walk through the station where they might change their minds and escape.

I didn’t want to say goodbye. I couldn’t save this many humans from where they were going, where they thought they wanted to go, but I didn’t have to watch it, either.

I did say goodbye to Transport, which let me out of the lock and then deleted the record from its log. I could tell it was sad to see me go, but this wasn’t a trip I’d be anxious to repeat.

I had practice at hacking different hub and ring security now, so it was much less nerve-racking to get past the weapon scans. SecUnits are designed to be mobile components of SecSystems, every kind of SecSystem, so the company can rent us to as many different clients as possible, even those with proprietary equipment. The trick to hacking a SecSystem is making it think you’re supposed to be there, and the company had helpfully provided us with all the code necessary for that. Practice and terrifying necessity had made me good at altering it on the fly.

I did stop in the ring mall, at an automated kiosk that sold feed interfaces for non-augmented humans, portable display surfaces, and memory clips. The clips were for extra data storage, and were each about the size of a fingertip. They were used by humans who had to set up new systems or travel to places that didn’t have the feed, or who wanted to store data somewhere that wasn’t feed accessible. (Though company SecSystems had ways of reading them; clients sometimes tried to hide proprietary data on them.) I bought a set of clips with my hard currency card. (I saw it still had plenty of money left on it; Tapan and the others must have paid me a lot.)

The private docks were never as busy as the public ones, with just a few humans heading in or out, and lots of hauler bots moving cargo. I scanned for drones as I crossed the embarkation floor, but there were only two there to monitor hauler bot activity. I found the supply ship’s lock and pinged it to see if anyone was home. The bot pilot pinged back.

It was a lower-level bot, not high functioning enough to be bored while in dock or interested in the prospect of something to do. Like the transport bots I’d run into (ART was the exception) it communicated in images. Yes, it was a supply ship. Yes, it was going to Milu, it went to Milu on a forty-seven-cycle schedule. An update had come from transit control that it was to hold its departure, but it expected clearance sometime in the next two cycles. It was like talking to a recorded travelers’ information ad.

But I figured I’d gotten lucky for once.

I made it think I had Port Authority authorization and asked it to let me board, and it did. Then I gently excised my entrance from its memory. As far as it was concerned, I had always been onboard. I didn’t like to do it; I like to negotiate with bot pilots. But this one was so limited, I was afraid it was incapable of making a deal and sticking to it. I didn’t want to risk it telling the Port Authority about me because it didn’t understand why that was a bad idea.

I went down a short corridor into the main compartment and found the passage into the cargo and supply storage. It was small, just big enough for a console used to attach and remove the two cargo modules, and the lockers for onboard supplies. Both modules were already attached, so if the ship were waiting for cargo, one would have to be detached and reloaded. With the configuration of the crew area, that shouldn’t affect me, though.

I used the time to search around, mostly because I was a little edgy and it’s still programmed habit to patrol. Ship’s repair drones followed me, attracted by a moving body where there wasn’t supposed to be one, but without direction from Ship they didn’t bother me. There were no private cabins, just a couple of bunks built against the bulkheads up on the control deck next to the pilot suite, and two more in cubbies behind the cargo station, next to the emergency MedSystem and a tiny restroom cubby. I didn’t need it, and it would be a relief not to have to pretend to use it often enough to look human. Though I was getting used to having access to a human shower. Compared to a company security ready room, the accommodations were lavish. I settled on one of the bunks on the control deck and started sorting my new media.

(Okay, I should have realized that the pacs of bedding and other supplies in one of the lockers were probably there for a reason.)

After trying and rejecting a few newly downloaded shows, I started on a first episode that looked promising. It took place in an alt-world with magic and improbable talking weapons. (Improbable because I was a talking weapon and I knew how people felt about me.)

Some twenty or so hours later, I was still deep in the show, and enjoying my human-free vacation. Fortunately, when the life support cycled on, I felt the air pressure increase. (I don’t need much air, and can always go into hibernation mode if I run out, so the minimal atmosphere on automated transports is fine for me.)

I paused the show and sat up. I queried the bot pilot and asked if anyone was coming aboard. Yes, the two passengers were coming aboard, and it had received an update from transit authority that it was now cleared to file for a departure time.

Another one of those “oh shit” moments.

I’d searched the ship already, at least, so I had a couple of likely spots in mind. I rolled off the bunk, remembered to grab my bag, dropped down the vertical passage to the main compartment. I crossed the compartment and went down the passage to the cargo area. I picked the locker that was the least accessible, and shifted the contents around until I could squeeze myself into the back, the supply pacs screening me from view. I cozied up to the bot pilot and reminded it I was supposed to be here and there was no need to mention me to anybody else, including its passengers and the Port Authority. It didn’t have any security cameras (transports not controlled by corporate political entities rarely do) but it did have the drones. With their scanners, I had a good view of all the interior compartments, once I filtered out the maintenance data I didn’t need.