Network Effect (The Murderbot Diaries, #5)

by Martha Wells

I’ve had clients who thought they needed an absurd level of security. (And I’m talking absurd even by my standards, and my code was developed by a bond company known for intense xenophobic paranoia, tempered only by desperate greed.) I’ve also had clients who thought they didn’t need any security at all, right up until something ate them. (That’s mostly a metaphor. My uneaten client stat is high.)

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.

Target Two whispered something, which FacilitySys rendered as “What are you?” I said, “I’m a Shut Up or Get Your Head Smashed.”

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.)

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.

Since the festival had started, I had been taking note of a potential hostile that Amena had been associating with. Evidence was mounting up and my threat assessment was nearing critical. Things like: (1) he had informed her that his age was comparable to hers, which was just below the local standard for legal adult, but my physical scan and public record search indicated that he was approximately twelve Preservation standard calendar years older, (2) he never approached her when any family members or verified friends were with her, (3) he stared at her secondary sexual characteristics when her attention was elsewhere, (4) he encouraged her to take intoxicants that he wasn’t ingesting himself, (5) her parental and other related humans all assumed she was with her friends when she was seeing him and her friends all assumed she was with family and she hadn’t told either group about him, (6) I just had a bad feeling about the little shit.

She stamped along in silence for twelve point five seconds. “Look, I’m sorry, but I’m not some kind of idiot, and I don’t fuck around. If he’d done anything I didn’t like, I was going to leave. And if he wouldn’t let me leave, I have the feed, I can call for help whenever I want.” She was scornful, and way overconfident. “I wasn’t going to let him hurt me.” I said, “If I thought he was going to hurt you, I’d be disposing of his body. I don’t fuck around, either.”

I try to avoid asking humans if there’s anything wrong with them. (Mostly because I don’t care.) (On the rare occasions where I did care, it would have meant starting a conversation not directly related to security protocol, and that was just a slippery slope waiting to happen, for a variety of reasons.) But humans asked each other about their current status all the time, so how hard could it be? It was a request for information, that was all. I did a quick search and pulled up a few examples from my media collection. None of the samples seemed like anything I’d ever voluntarily say, so before I could change my mind I went with, “What’s wrong?”

I trusted Arada’s judgment to a certain extent. She and Overse had always been firmly in the “least likely to abandon a SecUnit to a lonely horrible fate” category, which was always the category I was most interested in. They were my clients, that was all. Like Mensah, like Ratthi and Pin-Lee and Bharadwaj and Volescu (who had opted to retire from active survey work, which gave him the award for most sensible human) and yes, even Gurathin. Just clients. And if anyone or anything tried to hurt them, I would rip its intestines out.

I had a camera view of the sensor display surfaces floating above the control boards. Mihail sat in a station chair, sweat plastering their light hair to their forehead. Roa was on his feet pacing, dark brow furrowed in thought, one hand pressed to his feed interface. It looked like a clip from an action series, right before something drastic happened. Then something drastic happened.

Ras shook his head in annoyance. “Look, I can see you’re young. I’m guessing this SecUnit was ordered to protect you but—” Amena made a derisive huff. “It doesn’t even like me.” Admittedly I am tired of the whole concept of humans at the moment, but that was unfair because she didn’t like me first.

I hit our private relay and added, I’ll leave you some drones. I cut a squad of eight out of my cloud and told them to stay with her. Her eyes widened and she hesitated. For three seconds I didn’t understand why. She hadn’t been afraid when I’d grabbed Ras; her expression had been more annoyed than anything else. Then I realized she didn’t want to separate. She took a sharp breath and said, “All right.” On the feed relay, she added, Good, drones. That’s what I’ve always wanted. I could have said “Don’t say I never gave you anything” and we could have had reassuring sarcastic banter, like one of my shows. But I was walking around in ART’s corpse and nothing felt reassuring. I just said, I’ll stay in contact.

Amena grimaced and rubbed her brow. “I see. So how do we get to the bridge?” You know, it’s not like I’m half-assing this, I am actually trying my best despite the fuck-ups. I absolutely did not sound testy as I said, “I don’t know. I have a scout drone in the control area but it can’t access any of the systems.” Amena stopped and looked at me with an incredulous expression. “So we’re locked out of the bridge and the bot pilot is gone and we don’t know what’s flying the ship.” The good thing about being a construct is that you can’t reproduce and create children to argue with you. This time I did sound testy.

Arada added, “Who are you?” ART said, You are aboard the Perihelion, registered teaching and research vessel of the Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland. Then it added, I’m not going to hurt your humans, you little idiot. Arada lifted her brows, startled, and Thiago looked boggled. I said, You’re using the public feed, everyone can hear you. So are you, ART said. And you’re leaking on my deck.

I had cleaned off all the blood and fluid with the hygiene unit but was too angry to take a shower. (Showers are nice and I wanted to stay angry.)

ART said, I want an apology. I made an obscene gesture at the ceiling with both hands. (I know ART isn’t the ceiling but the humans kept looking up there like it was.) ART said, That was unnecessary. In a low voice, Ratthi commented to Overse, “Anyone who thinks machine intelligences don’t have emotions needs to be in this very uncomfortable room right now.”

I suddenly had views all over the ship. ART had given me access to its cameras. I snarled, “Stop being nice to me!” Then Amena said aloud, “I think you need to give SecUnit some time.” Right, that’s all this situation needed. I asked her, “Is it talking to you on a private channel?” Amena winced. “Yes, but—” I yelled, “ART, stop talking to my human behind my back!” You know that thing humans do where they think they’re being completely logical and they absolutely are not being logical at all, and on some level they know that, but can’t stop? Apparently it can happen to SecUnits, too.

It ended with her apologizing to Ratthi for venting at him and being angry at herself for getting angry at Arada during a crisis. I could play it back to listen in on the whole conversation but I could also punch myself in the head with a sampling drill and I was not going to do that, either. (If I got angry at myself for being angry I would be angry constantly and I wouldn’t have time to think about anything else.) (Wait, I think I am angry constantly. That might explain a lot.)

(Normal = neutral expression concealing existential despair and brain-crushing boredom.)

Arada and Overse were back to getting along after spending time together in an unused bunkroom while we were traveling to the dock. I hadn’t bothered to monitor them on ART’s cameras or try to slip a drone in; the chances that they were having sex and/or a relationship discussion (either of which I would prefer to stab myself in the face than see) were far higher than the chance that they were saying anything I needed to know about. (I mean they might have been plotting against me, but you know, probably not.)

(Around the same time, I had also caught part of a conversation between Thiago and Ratthi. Thiago had told Ratthi about our conversation in the bunkroom, and Ratthi had told him what he knew about the whole attempted assassination incident. Thiago had said he felt like he should apologize and talk to me more about it. Ratthi had said, “I think you should let it go for a while, at least until we get ourselves out of this situation. SecUnit is a very private person, it doesn’t like to discuss its feelings.” This is why Ratthi is my friend.)

“Thiago, SecUnit is in charge. You follow its orders immediately and without argument. If you can’t do that, I’ll go in your place.” Thiago lifted his hands, palm out. “I will.” I was desperate. I sent privately, ART, tell them I need to go alone. Back me up. ART said aloud, I concur, it will be safer if SecUnit is accompanied by two certified survey specialists. Why am I even surprised. I sent privately again, ART, you asshole. ART replied, only to me, It is safer. I’ve lost my crew, I won’t lose you.

Overse added, “Just remember you’re not alone here.” I never know what to say to that. I am actually alone in my head, and that’s where 90 plus percent of my problems are.

Then ART said, Hostile contact, ETA six minutes out. What the hell? How could it get that close? “Six minutes? What were you doing?” Contact did not appear on scan until now, that’s what the fuck I was doing, ART replied. I put my video review on hold. “Do they see you?” Okay, it was a stupid question. ART said, Of course they see me.

Thiago paused to pull out a little sample collector and scrape the blood off the step. He told Overse, “Perihelion should have samples of their DNA to match, but…” He made a gesture. Overse’s mouth was a thin line. “Hopefully we won’t have to.” She meant hopefully we’d be able to find them alive. Ugh, my humans are optimists. But this was the first time we’d had a real trail of evidence to follow, and right now it was hard to cling to the comfort of bitterness and pessimism.

Dr. Mensah would never believe that. My accidents were spectacular and usually involved me losing a big chunk of my organic tissue or something; she knew I could stop a human without hurting them, without even leaving a bruise, that was my stupid job. She would never trust me again. She would never stand close enough to touch (but without touching, because touching is gross) and just trust me. Or maybe she would, but it wouldn’t be the same. Fuck, fuck everything, fuck this, fuck me especially.

Yes, those were definitely Targets down there. But many still had characteristics that made it way more obvious that they were humans who had been physically altered, like body types other than the tall skinny alien chic look of the Targets who had taken over ART.

(Confession time: that moment, when the humans or augmented humans realize you’re really here to help them. I don’t hate that moment.)

So now I had Seth, Kaede, Tarik, and Matteo in addition to Iris. (They were smart, and had kept the exclamations and arm waving to a minimum when Iris told them I was here.) I didn’t know yet how we could get the other three off the explorer, or if they were still alive, but at least I could get these humans back to ART. (Five was better than none, but I knew how I’d feel if I had to give up three humans. It would suck.)

1) CodeBundle.LockItDown had closed all the hatches on board except those directly between SecUnit 3’s position and the shuttle access. 2) CodeBundle.FuckThem had fried all targetDrones. 3) CodeBundle.FuckThisToo had cut the connections between the solid-state screen device and the humans’ implants. Oh, and I shut down life support on the bridge so the Targets in there would be thinking about other things besides restarting their screen.