ART had said, That’s nothing new.
I ignored that because it was just trying to reassure me. If it started being sympathetic it would be terrifying. “Your crew isn’t going to want me to do their security anymore.”
Why is that?
That question was obviously a trap and I should ignore it. It wasn’t as if I could put the answer into words. I was different. It wasn’t just the alien contamination. What came out was, “Something in me broke.”
My wormhole drive is broken.
“That can be fixed,” I said, and knew immediately it was a mistake. ART had been hurt by the Targets’ attack in a lot of different ways. It had been invaded by hostiles and taken over by another system, its memory archives altered. It hadn’t been able to protect its crew. I knew what that had done to it. Wait, no, I didn’t really know. I could only extrapolate based on things that had happened to me. Whatever, it was bad, right? Worse than what happened to me. But I kept talking. “This is happening in my organic nerve tissue.”
Yes, which is why the humans diagnosed it so quickly, ART said. When it happens to them, are they considered disposable?
“That’s what the corporations say.” I should just shut myself down right now, I’m losing this conversation so badly.
Of course ART said, I am not a corporation.
“Stop, stop it. This isn’t you talking, this is just your…” Yeah, I’d walked into that one, too.
My certification in advanced trauma protocol? it said. Of course, that can’t possibly be useful in this situation.
I said, “That’s for humans.” Yes, conversational trap, snapping shut.
ART said, This affects the part of you that is human.
I said, “I’m not talking to you anymore.”
My first impulse was that I needed copies of all AdaCol2’s new-to-me shows and its text and audio libraries, and that it would want copies of mine in return.
Then I remembered that its humans weren’t going to be staying here, whatever they thought at the moment, cozy in their underground colony, choosing media off their Pre-CR central system’s catalog.
The only good thing about the extent to which this situation sucks is that it’s at least distracting me from how much I suck at the moment.
Wait, something had happened and I’d missed it.
I pulled our team feed and the camera view from my shuttle drone forward and ran my backburnered channel back to pick up on where Iris’s conversation with Trinh had left off. Iris had been trying to negotiate an in-person meeting with the colonists, and Trinh had consulted some others and had indicated they might be amenable. Okay, that didn’t sound like everything had gone to shit. I went forward, almost to real time. Oh, here it was.
Trinh had invited the humans to come into the installation for the night, because of the weather and so they could arrange the in-person meeting.
Ugh, I know, it did sound a lot like a trap. None of the humans looked happy, either. On mute with Trinh, Iris said reluctantly, “Barish-Estranza did it, and we need to show the same degree of trust. SecUnit, do you think we should?”
Right. Wind conditions were getting worse, it was getting dark, and the dust in the air was getting much heavier, obscuring visibility for the shuttle and making the pathfinders that were still responding useless. And me, with no working scan functions and drones relying on visual navigation and hardly any range. The shuttle could handle the storm as long as it was grounded and had power, but anything could come up on us. Like a Barish-Estranza SecUnit. The only other option was leaving the blackout zone, which meant giving up on the separatists. I caught up with current time and said, “Yes.”
On our private feed connection, ART-drone said, Thank you.
I wasn’t the only one imagining that other SecUnit walking silently up to our shuttle with our humans sleeping inside.
Trinh sent navigation coordinates, which we didn’t need because AdaCol2 had already given me a map. It would put us at the opposite end of the complex from the B-E group, which was a nice gesture but the distance was only about a twenty-minute walk for a strolling human. It was a suite of rooms with two exits and two different approaches which would let me post the drones as sentries.
Bot pilot brought our shuttle around to the other open hangar on the map. It was the one on the east side, not too far from our original position, similar to the one the B-E shuttle was in but about half the size with only two landing platforms. I met the humans and ART-drone at the hatch.
Then AdaCol2 directed me through a sequence of passages and another hatchway into a corridor. All three humans took video as we walked, with ART-drone drifting along as rearguard. The lights and life support were on through this whole section, lighting up the large corridors. The humans had folded their hoods and helmets back, so I did it, too. (The most important part of pretending to be a human is not standing out from other humans.) They all looked sweaty and tired.
There was some decoration here, mainly painting on the corridor walls. There were little signs of habitation, like a box mounted beside a doorway and filled with extra air filters for the old-style enviro suits the colonists used. Weirdly, it felt far less safe than the dark creepy corridors because it was obviously a place that a human could wander into at any moment. I wasn’t sure how much AdaCol2 had told its human operators about me and I was hesitant to ask, in case it took that as a sign that I wanted it to tell them about me. Which I really didn’t. Not that I thought we could keep me a secret, but the less interaction I had with the colonists, the better.
(“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I had told Mensah.
“I think you might know,” she had said. “You just don’t want to talk about it.”)
As we walked, Iris said on the team feed, Trinh and the other leaders have refused requests to let the B-E reps speak to the whole colony, so far. That’s a small mercy.
I had told our humans that once they were inside the installation, not to say anything aloud they didn’t want B-E to know about. If there was a SecUnit here, there could be drones, and with the scanning issues I couldn’t count on detecting them and/or deploying countermeasures.
Ratthi glanced at Iris. You think B-E will make some sort of … employment pitch to this group? Ask them if they want to sign themselves over into slavery?
Tarik answered, They dress it up nicer than that, but yes, they could try. They have an isolated group here that might be vulnerable to manipulation.
Iris said, From talking to Trinh, this group seems independent and not easily convinced about anything. I think the chance they would fall for something like that is low. She rubbed her brow, wincing a little. I don’t even know if it’s in their best interests to try to get them to leave with the others. If we can lock down the colony’s charter to the colonists, then they’ll have the option to stay here. They could change their minds later, or not, but at least that way it would be up to them.
Especially if the University makes the deal to put a research group in the drop box station, Ratthi said thoughtfully. They could come and go as they pleased, as long as everyone avoids the contamination.
That was one option ART’s crew had been discussing: using the drop box station not only as access for the colonists to board orbiting ships and receive cargo, but to get the University to use it as a place for a lab to study the alien contamination site. The colonists would have to agree to it, which, good luck with that, but it would be a source of income for their colony. If the planet didn’t fail its alien contamination assessment, if the University won the legal case on the colonists’ behalf, if B-E didn’t just kidnap them all anyway. It was all up in the air still.