All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1)

by Martha Wells

This assessment zone was a barren stretch of coastal island, with low, flat hills rising and falling and thick greenish-black grass up to my ankles, not much in the way of flora or fauna, except a bunch of different-sized birdlike things and some puffy floaty things that were harmless as far as we knew. The coast was dotted with big bare craters, one of which Bharadwaj and Volescu were taking samples in.

The planet had a ring, which from our current position dominated the horizon when you looked out to sea.

I have small energy weapons built into both arms, but the one I went for was the big projectile weapon clamped to my back. The hostile that had just exploded up out of the ground had a really big mouth, so I felt I needed a really big gun.

During all this, Volescu was huddled on the churned up rock, losing his shit, not that I was unsympathetic. I was far less vulnerable in this situation than he was and I wasn’t exactly having a great time either.

He didn’t respond. MedSystem was advising a tranq shot and blah blah blah, but I was clamping one arm on Dr. Bharadwaj’s suit to keep her from bleeding out and supporting her head with the other, and despite everything I only have two hands.

Did I mean a cilia or was that something else? They don’t give murderbots decent education modules on anything except murdering, and even those are the cheap versions.

With my cracked governor there was nothing to stop me, but not letting anybody, especially the people who held my contract, know that I was a free agent was kind of important. Like, not having my organic components destroyed and the rest of me cut up for parts important.

Leaving easily replaceable items behind may seem obvious in an emergency, but I had been on contracts where the clients would have told me to put the bleeding human down to go get the stuff.

So we didn’t lose our ramp when the hostile came up under it, big mouth full of teeth or cilia or whatever chewing right through the ground. There was a great view of it on the hopper’s cameras, which its system helpfully sent straight to everybody’s feed. The humans screamed.

Our habitat is a pretty standard model, seven interconnected domes set down on a relatively flat plain above a narrow river valley, with our power and recycling system connected on one side. We had an environmental system, but no air locks, as the planet’s atmosphere was breathable, just not particularly good for humans for the long term.

I don’t know why, because it’s one of those things I’m not contractually obligated to care about.

I was freezing because my temperature controls had given out at some point on the way here, and the protective skin that went under my armor was in pieces.

So, I’m awkward with actual humans. It’s not paranoia about my hacked governor module, and it’s not them; it’s me. I know I’m a horrifying murderbot, and they know it, and it makes both of us nervous, which makes me even more nervous.

“It’ll grow back,” I said. I know to an actual human I probably looked like I was dying. My injuries were the equivalent of a human losing a limb or two plus most of their blood volume.

On the feed it was clear that the others had reviewed Volescu’s field camera video. They were saying things like I didn’t even know it had a face. I’d been in armor since we arrived, and I hadn’t unsealed the helmet when I was around them.

But she should know that. Before she accepted delivery of me, she had logged about ten protests, trying to get out of having to have me. I didn’t hold it against her. I wouldn’t have wanted me either.

I hadn’t been listening to myself, basically. I had asked him if he had kids. It was boggling. Maybe I had been watching too much media. (He did have kids. He was in a four-way marriage and had seven, all back home with his partners.)

Their group was called PreservationAux and it had bought an option on this planet’s resources, and the survey trip was to see if it was worth bidding on a full share. Knowing about things on the planet that might eat them while they’re trying to do whatever it is they’re doing was kind of important.

Human clients usually like to pretend I’m a robot and that’s much easier in the armor. I let my eyes unfocus and pretended I was running a diagnostic on something.

But the company would access all those recordings and data mine them for anything they could sell. No, they don’t tell people that. Yes, everyone does know it. No, there’s nothing you can do about it.

Dr. Gurathin, the least talkative one, was an augmented human and had his own implanted interface. I could feel him poking around in the data, while the others, using the touch interfaces, were just distant ghosts. I had a lot more processing power than he did, though.

One disadvantage in wearing the armor is that I get used to opaquing the faceplate. I’m out of practice at controlling my expression. Right now I’m pretty sure it was somewhere in the region of stunned horror, or maybe appalled horror.

(That’s another reason why they have to require these research groups and mining and biology and tech companies to rent one of us or they won’t guarantee the bond; we’re cheaply produced and we suck. Nobody would hire one of us for non-murdering purposes unless they had to.)

The sense of urgency just wasn’t there. Also, you may have noticed, I don’t care.

I had talked myself into believing that I hadn’t actually lost it as much as I thought I had when Mensah had offered to let me hang out in the hub with the humans like I was an actual person or something.

Yes, talk to Murderbot about its feelings. The idea was so painful I dropped to 97 percent efficiency. I’d rather climb back into Hostile One’s mouth.

The last few contracts had been like being an involuntary bystander in one of the entertainment feed’s multi-partner relationship serials except I’d hated the whole cast.

Arada looked like it was just occurring to her that everybody over at DeltFall might be dead.

The other good thing about my hacked governor module is that I could ignore the governor’s instructions to defend the stupid company. “They’re supposed to be able to, but equipment failures aren’t unknown.”

And swimming back, since that was an ocean-sized body of water between the two points on the map. Or drown; I guess they could just drown. If you were wondering why I was wincing earlier, this would be the reason.

“I carefully monitor my own systems.” What else did he think I was going to say? It didn’t matter; I’m not refundable.

Yes, instructions. They’re academics, surveyors, researchers, not action-hero explorers from the serials I liked because they were unrealistic and not depressing and sordid like reality.

She took a breath and I knew she was going to tell me to stay here. And I just thought, That’s a bad idea. I couldn’t explain to myself why. It was one of those impulses that comes from my organic parts that the governor is supposed to squash.

I thought it was likely that the only supplies we would need for DeltFall was the postmortem kind, but you may have noticed that when I do manage to care, I’m a pessimist.

“I know Mensah asked us not to, but—” He waved a hand. “You saw it.” Overse pulled her interface off. “You’re upsetting it,” she said, teeth gritted. “That’s my point!” He gestured in frustration. “The practice is disgusting, it’s horrible, it’s slavery. This is no more a machine than Gurathin is—”

I’m supposed to let the clients do and say whatever they want to me and with an intact governor module I wouldn’t have a choice.

This is why I didn’t want to come. I’ve got four perfectly good humans here and I didn’t want them to get killed by whatever took out DeltFall. It’s not like I cared about them personally, but it would look bad on my record, and my record was already pretty terrible.

I did that because it seemed sensible, not because I knew what I was doing. I am not a combat murderbot, I’m Security. I keep things from attacking the clients and try to gently discourage the clients from attacking each other.

SecUnits aren’t sentimental about each other. We aren’t friends, the way the characters on the serials are, or the way my humans were. We can’t trust each other, even if we work together. Even if you don’t have clients who decide to entertain themselves by ordering their SecUnits to fight each other.

I wouldn’t bother searching the small storage spaces until we got down to the looking-for-all-the-body-parts phase.

Mensah underestimated my ability to ignore humans but I appreciated the thought.

The drones were telling me the layout was very similar to our habitat, except for the occasional dead person sprawled in the corridors.

Maybe these clients had been terrible and abusive, maybe they had deserved it. I didn’t care. Nobody was touching my humans.

Because you can’t walk up to another murderbot with an armor-piercing projectile or energy weapon inside the habitat and not be looked at with suspicion. You can walk up to a fellow murderbot with a tool that a human might have asked you to get.

I climbed the ladder up to the roof hatch and popped it. The armor’s boots have magnetized climbing clamps, and I used them to cross over the curving roofs to the third habitat and then around to the second, coming up on them from behind.

Even with the armor, bits of me were going numb, but I had only taken three projectiles to the right shoulder, four to the left hip. This is how we fight: throw ourselves at each other and see whose parts give out first.

I came back online to no vision, no hearing, no ability to move. I couldn’t reach the feed or the comm. Not good, Murderbot, not good.

It was confusing and I wanted to scream. Maybe this was how murderbots died. You lose function, go offline, but parts of you keep working, organic pieces kept alive by the fading energy in your power cells.

A shock went through me and suddenly the rest of me was back online. I popped the joint on my left arm so I could move it in a way not usually compatible with a human, augmented human, or murderbot body.

It was starting to occur to me that Dr. Mensah might actually be an intrepid galactic explorer, even if she didn’t look like the ones on the entertainment feed.