Network Effect

I almost triggered both my energy weapons but just in time I saw the sticker on its helmet. In compressed machine language, somebody had used marker paint to write “ART sent me.” This was 2.0’s SecUnit 3.

The opaque helmet focused on me. It said, “I’ve never retrieved another SecUnit before. There is no protocol for this.”

Seriously, fuck protocol. I said, “Hostile incoming. It’s contaminated. Do not scan and don’t let it touch you.” If the contamination worked the way I thought it did I shouldn’t be able to pass it to another SecUnit but who the hell knew. “Don’t scan or connect with me, either, I might be a carrier.”

SecUnit 3 started to say, “Transport Perihelion was able to obtain that intel from retrieved—” Then it leapt and landed past me, pulled the weapon off its back just as TargetContact rounded the corridor. It fired a burst of explosive bolts and TargetContact reeled back, but the impacts didn’t dent the protective alien remnant coating.

“It doesn’t work,” I started to yell, but 3 aimed the next burst at the corridor ceiling. The impacts cracked the lighting track and shattered the material holding it in place. As chunks of stone hit the floor, 3 leapt back to me and grabbed me around the waist.

It said, “Please hold on. I will—”

“I know!” I yelled and grabbed it around the shoulders. “Just go!”

It bounded up the stairs, two levels, three levels. (Being carried like this was really uncomfortable, I can see why the humans don’t like it.) 3 called in its drones and the swarm formed a protective cloud around us.

We came out through a hatchway into daylight, running onto an open plaza, the one I had seen from the surface dock. TargetDrones lay scattered on the paving, dead when targetControlSystem went down. I didn’t see any Targets, but that was probably because a pathfinder sat in the center of the plaza shrieking on comm and audible: Warning: detonation imminent.

I said, “ART armed the pathfinders? And didn’t tell me?” That asshole.

“The humans were surprised, too,” 3 said.

ART’s shuttle dove over the structure’s ribs and dropped into the plaza. The hatch slid open and 3 bounded inside.

It dumped me in an acceleration chair and I had a view of TargetContact sprinting toward us. Then the hatch slammed shut and Arada was shouting “I’ve got them, go, go!”

The thrust almost knocked me out of the seat as the shuttle flung itself upward. (ART must be driving.) I was sitting on the safety webbing which was not helpful. 3 did what I would have done with a wounded human, and dropped into the seat next to me and stretched an arm across to hold me in place. From the pilot’s seat, Arada demanded, “SecUnit, are you all right?”

“Not really,” I said, “I’m infected with contaminated code. 2.0 tagged it as anomalous so ART can delete it. Tell it not to use a medical scanner on me.” Through the port I got a view of the causeway and the dots that were the Targets/Colonists who had been in the structure, running away.

“We know,” Arada told me, breathless from the acceleration. “The crew who escaped from the explorer knew about the scanning and Perihelion figured out how it was done.”

Of course it did. This sounded like a good time to let go and have that involuntary shutdown.

I was fading out when below us, the pathfinder exploded. ART said, TargetContact is offline.

So was I.

Chapter 20

So I wish I could have stayed shut down through the whole thing and skipped all the painful parts, but no such luck.

I restarted by the time we reached ART, so I was able to limp out of the shuttle on my own. Which was great, then I collapsed on the deck and had another involuntary shutdown.

When I restarted again (and I don’t know if I’m underselling it but these rapid performance reliability drops and restarts were not pleasant or fun) I was still on the deck but surrounded by a bunch of unknown humans. One reached for my shoulder and I jerked away and almost restarted again.

Amena’s voice said, “No, it doesn’t like to be touched!” And I realized these were not actually unknown humans.

Ratthi and Arada sat on the deck in front of me with Amena hovering in the background. The others gathered around were Kaede, Iris, and Matteo. ART’s humans wore clean clothes and various medical stabilizing packs, and they all smelled a lot better. Two of ART’s big repair drones hovered nearby, and SecUnit 3 stood over to the side. It had taken its armor off, or been told to take its armor off. It wore a set of ART’s crew clothing and looked, if I was reading the body language right and I probably was, like it had absolutely no idea what to do.

Iris told me, “It’s all right, take it easy.”

Matteo was saying to Arada, “Kaede’s right, we’ll put together a run box so we can isolate the code—”

“Then Peri should be able to delete it—” Kaede added.

“Delete what?” I said.