All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries)

“It’s a glitch,” Ratthi said. He grimaced, studying the displays in his feed. “It’s wiped out all the markers on this side.”

So that was how I spent the rest of the morning, shooing humans away from hazard markers they couldn’t see, while Pin-Lee cursed a lot and tried to get the mapping scanner to work. “I’m beginning to think these missing sections are just a mapping error,” Ratthi said at one point, panting. He had walked into what they called a hot mud pit and I’d had to pull him out. We were both covered with acidic mud to the waist.

“You think?” Pin-Lee answered tiredly.

When Mensah told us to head back to the hopper, it was a relief all around.

* * *

We got back to the habitat with no problems, which felt like it was starting to become an unusual occurrence. The humans went to analyze their data, and I went to hide in the ready room, check the security feeds, and then lie in my cubicle and watch media for a while.

I’d just done another perimeter walk and checked the drones, when the feed informed me that HubSystem had updates from the satellite and there was a package for me. I have a trick where I make HubSystem think I received it and then just put it in external storage. I don’t do automated package updates anymore, now that I don’t have to. When I felt like it, presumably sometime before it was time to leave the planet, I’d go through the update and apply the parts I wanted and delete the rest.

It was a typical, boring day, in other words. If Bharadwaj wasn’t still recuperating in Medical, you could almost forget what had happened. But at the end of the day cycle, Dr. Mensah called me again and said, “I think we have a problem. We can’t contact DeltFall Group.”

* * *

I went to the crew hub where Mensah and all the others were. They had pulled up the maps and scans of where we were versus where DeltFall was, and the curve of the planet hung glittering in the air in the big display. When I got there, Mensah was saying, “I’ve checked the big hopper’s specs and we can make it there and back without a recharge.”

I had my helmet plate opaqued, so I could wince a lot without any of them knowing.

“You don’t think they’ll let us recharge at their habitat?” Arada asked, then looked around when the others stared at her. “What?” she demanded.

Overse put an arm around her and squeezed her shoulder. “If they aren’t answering our calls, they might be hurt, or their habitat is damaged,” she said. As a couple, they were always so nice to each other. The whole group had been remarkably drama-free so far, which I appreciated. 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.

Mensah nodded. “That’s my concern, especially if their survey package was missing potential hazard information the way ours is.”

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

Ratthi said, “The thing that worries me is that their emergency beacon didn’t launch. If the habitat was breached, or if there was a medical emergency they couldn’t handle, their HubSystem should have triggered the beacon automatically.”

Each survey team has its own beacon, set up a safe distance from the habitat. It would launch into a low orbit and send a pulse toward the wormhole, which would get zapped or whatever happened in the wormhole and the company network would get it, and the pickup transport would be sent now instead of waiting until the end of project date. That was how it was supposed to work, anyway. Usually.

Mensah’s expression said she was worried. She looked at me. “What do you think?”

It took me two seconds to realize she was talking to me. Fortunately, since it seemed like we were really doing this, I had actually been paying attention and didn’t need to play the conversation back. I said, “They have three contracted SecUnits but if their habitat was hit by a hostile as big or bigger than Hostile One, their comm equipment could have been damaged.”

Pin-Lee was calling up specs for the beacons. “Aren’t the emergency beacons designed to trigger even if the rest of the comm equipment is destroyed?”

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.”

There was a moment where they all thought about potential equipment failures in their habitat, maybe including the big hopper which they were about to fly out of range of the little hopper, so if something happened to it they were walking back. 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.