All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1)

by Martha Wells

I COULD HAVE BECOME a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites. It had been well over 35,000 hours or so since then, with still not much murdering, but probably, I don’t know, a little under 35,000 hours of movies, serials, books, plays, and music consumed. As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure.

watch episode 397 of Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. I admit I was distracted. It was a boring contract so far and I was thinking about backburnering the status alert channel and trying to access music on the entertainment feed without HubSystem logging the extra activity. It was trickier to do it in the field than it was in the habitat.

I was looking at the sky and mentally poking at the feed when the bottom of the crater exploded. I didn’t bother to make a verbal emergency call. I sent the visual feed from my field camera to Dr. Mensah’s, and jumped down into the crater.

In the middle of all that, I hit the bottom of the crater. 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. I dragged Bharadwaj out of its mouth and shoved myself in there instead, and discharged my weapon down its throat and then up toward where I hoped the brain would be. I’m not sure if that all happened in that order; I’d have to replay my own field camera feed.

She was unconscious and bleeding through her suit from massive wounds in her right leg and side. I clamped the weapon back into its harness so I could lift her with both arms. I had lost the armor on my left arm and a lot of the flesh underneath, but my nonorganic parts were still working.

I made my voice firm and warm and gentle, and said, “Dr. Volescu, it’s gonna be fine, okay? But you need to get up and come help me get her out of here.” That did it. He shoved to his feet and staggered over to me, still shaking. I turned my good side toward him and said, “Grab my arm, okay? Hold on.”

The footing on the side of the crater was lousy, soft sand and loose pebbles, but my legs weren’t damaged and I got up to the top with both humans still alive. Volescu tried to collapse and I coaxed him away from the edge a few meters, just in case whatever was down there had a longer reach than it looked. I didn’t want to put Bharadwaj down because something in my abdomen was severely damaged and I wasn’t sure I could pick her up again.

They don’t give murderbots decent education modules on anything except murdering, and even those are the cheap versions. I was looking it up in HubSystem’s language center when the little hopper landed nearby.

I switched to voice comm to say, “Dr. Mensah, I can’t let go of her suit.” It took her a second to realize what I meant. She said hurriedly, “That’s all right, bring her up into the crew cabin.” Murderbots aren’t allowed to ride with the humans and I had to have verbal permission to enter. 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.

I got to see their horrified expressions when they took in what was left of my upper body through my torn suit. I was glad I had sealed my helmet.

This is why I actually like riding with the cargo. Humans and augmented humans in close quarters with murderbots is too awkward. At least, it’s awkward for this murderbot.

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.

I tried to be as much like an appliance as possible, clamping the wounds where they told me to, using my failing body temperature to try to keep her warm, and keeping my head down so I couldn’t see them staring at me.

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.

The humans headed for Medical and I stopped to send the little hopper commands to lock and seal itself, then I locked the outer doors. Through the security feed, I told the drones to widen our perimeter so I’d have more warning if something big came at us. I also set some monitors on the seismic sensors to alert me to anomalies just in case the hypothetical something big decided to tunnel in.

I shed what was left of the armor and on MedSystem’s advice sprayed wound sealant all over my bad side. I wasn’t dripping with blood, because my arteries and veins seal automatically, but it wasn’t nice to look at. And it hurt, though the wound seal did numb it a little. I had already set an eight-hour security interdiction through HubSystem, so nobody could go outside without me, and then set myself as off-duty. I checked the main feed but no one was filing any objections to that. I was freezing because my temperature controls had given out at some point

I found the extra human-rated medical kit I’m allowed in case of emergencies, and opened it and got the survival blanket out. I wrapped up in it, then climbed into the plastic bed of my cubicle. I let the door seal as the white light flickered on. It wasn’t much warmer in there, but at least it was cozy. I connected myself to the resupply and repair leads, leaned back against the wall and shivered. MedSystem helpfully informed me that my performance reliability was now at 58 percent and dropping, which was not a surprise.

I set all the security feeds to alert me if anything tried to eat the habitat and started to call up the supply of media I’d downloaded from the entertainment feed.

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. Also, if I’m not in the armor then it’s because I’m wounded and one of my organic parts may fall off and plop on the floor at any moment and no one wants to see that.

“Fine?” She frowned. “The report said you lost 20 percent of your body mass.” “It’ll grow back,” I said.

She continued, “You were very good with Dr. Volescu. I don’t think the others realized . . . They were very impressed.” “It’s part of the emergency med instructions, calming victims.”

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. There was no specific reason. The only part of me they would have seen was my head, and it’s standard, generic human. But they didn’t want to talk to me and I definitely didn’t want to talk to them; on duty it would distract me and off duty . . . I didn’t want to talk to them. Mensah had seen me when she signed the rental contract. But she had barely looked at me and I had barely looked at her because again, murderbot + actual human = awkwardness. Keeping the armor on all the time cuts down on unnecessary interaction.

It left me wondering what they were all marveling at so I called up the recording of the incident. Okay, wow. I had talked to Volescu all the way up the side of the crater. I had been mostly concerned with the hopper’s trajectory and Bharadwaj not bleeding out and what might come out of that crater for a second try; 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.)

Then I found something weird. There was an “abort” order in the HubSystem command feed, the one that controlled, or currently believed it controlled, my governor module. It had to be a glitch. It didn’t matter, because when MedSystem has priority— PERFORMANCE RELIABILITY AT 39% STASIS INITIATED FOR EMERGENCY REPAIR SEQUENCE

Mensah had extended the security interdict on the habitat for another four hours. Which was a relief, since it would give me time to get back up to the 98 percent range. But there was also a notice for me to report to her. That had never happened before. But maybe she wanted to go over the hazard info package and figure out why it hadn’t warned us about the underground hostile. I was wondering a little about that myself. 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.

I knew this group was from a freehold planet but I hadn’t bothered to look up the specifics. Freehold meant it had been terraformed and colonized but wasn’t affiliated with any corporate confederations. Basically freehold generally meant shitshow so I hadn’t been expecting much from them. But they were surprisingly easy to work for.

Then she added, “You know, you can stay here in the crew area if you want. Would you like that?” They all looked at me, most of them smiling. 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. Mensah sat up, startled. She said hurriedly, “Or not, you know, whatever you like.”

Back in the safety of the ready room, I leaned my head against the plastic-coated wall. Now they knew their murderbot didn’t want to be around them any more than they wanted to be around it. I’d given a tiny piece of myself away. That can’t happen. I have too much to hide, and letting one piece go means the rest isn’t as protected.

The missing subreport made me a little cautious. Not that there were any directives about it. My education modules were such cheap crap; most of the useful things I knew about security I learned from the edutainment programming on the entertainment feeds.

Once I got my extra suit skin and spare set of armor on, I walked the perimeter and compared the current readings of the terrain and the seismic scans to the one we took when we first arrived. There were some notes in the feed from Ratthi and Arada, that fauna like the one we were now calling Hostile One might have made all the anomalous craters in the survey area. But nothing had changed around the habitat.

I also checked to make sure both the big hopper and the little hopper had their full complement of emergency supplies. I packed them in there myself days ago, but I was mainly checking to make sure the humans hadn’t done anything stupid with them since the last time I checked.

I’d watched three episodes of Sanctuary Moon and was fast forwarding through a sex scene when Dr. Mensah sent me some images through the feed. (I don’t have any gender or sex-related parts (if a construct has those you’re a sexbot in a brothel, not a murderbot) so maybe that’s why I find sex scenes boring.

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

Mensah opened the feed again to tell me they were going, I told her security protocols suggested that I should go, too.

Yes, talk to Murderbot about its feelings. The idea was so painful I dropped to 97 percent efficiency.

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.

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 sat up and said, “Mensah, you need to shut me down now.”

“The unknown SecUnit inserted a data carrier, a combat-override module. It’s downloading instructions into me and will override my system. This is why the two DeltFall units turned rogue. You have to stop me.”

“You have to kill me.”

I knew she wouldn’t have time to fix me. I knew I could kill everyone on the hopper, even with a blown hip joint and one working arm. So I grabbed the handweapon lying on the seat, turned it toward my chest, and pulled the trigger. PERFORMANCE RELIABILITY AT 10% AND DROPPING SHUTDOWN INITIATED

I CAME BACK ONLINE to find I was inert, but slowly cycling into a wake-up phase. I was agitated, my levels were all off, and I had no idea why. I played back my personal log. Oh, right. I shouldn’t be waking up. I hoped they hadn’t been stupid about it, too soft-hearted to kill me. You notice I didn’t point the weapon at my head. I didn’t want to kill myself, but it was going to have to be done. I could have incapacitated myself some other way, but let’s face it, I didn’t want to sit around and listen to the part where they convinced each other that there was no other choice.

And in their corner all they had was Murderbot, who just wanted everyone to shut up and leave it alone so it could watch the entertainment feed all day.

The problem I was going to have is that the way murderbots fight is we throw ourselves at the target and try to kill the shit out of it, knowing that 90 percent of our bodies can be regrown or replaced in a cubicle. So, finesse is not required.

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 hate having emotions about reality; I’d much rather have them about Sanctuary Moon.

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.

Granted, I liked the imaginary people on the entertainment feed way more than I liked real ones, but you can’t have one without the other.

I don’t want anyone to tell me what I want, or to make decisions for me. That’s why I left you, Dr. Mensah, my favorite human. By the time you get this I’ll be leaving Corporation Rim. Out of inventory and out of sight. Murderbot end message.