Network Effect

Arada and Overse were still in the engineering pod, Ratthi and Thiago were still in Medical. Amena and I ended up sitting in the hatchway of the galley, so I could be close if Eletra decided to do something other than lying in the bunkroom like a traumatized recovering human. Which she might still be, even though we had evidence indicating against it. Amena was nervously eating processed imitation vegetable fragments out of a container from the galley. (She had asked me to let her listen in on the conference but to mark her feed as on private. She told me, “If you need me to do something, I’ll do it, but a lot of things have happened and I just need a minute.”)

(Thiago asked where she was and I said, “In the restroom,” and she glared at me.

I am not your social secretary, Amena, you want a better lie, make up one yourself.)

I had converted my timeline into a format humans and augmented humans could read, annotated it, and put it up in the feed. It showed that ART’s initial arrival in this system via the wormhole was its last substantiated memory. After that, everything was a reconstruction based on the status data. It looked like:

1.  ART’s arrival in the system.

2.  ART receives a distress signal with a Barish-Estranza Corporation signature. Sensors show one contact, a configurable explorer ship. There is no sign of the second B-E vessel, the supply transport, that Ras and Eletra said they were aboard when they were attacked. The distress call is marked as a request for medical assistance.

3.  ART tractors the B-E explorer’s shuttle into its module dock.

4.  Unsubstantiated but probably bad stuff happens.

5.  B-E explorer then links up with ART’s module dock, presumably to take ART’s crew prisoner and leave the Targets onboard, if the Targets hadn’t already boarded via the shuttle. (I’d taken a look at the shuttle via ART’s cameras, and going down to search it was next on my action list.)

6.  ART leaves the system via the wormhole.

7.  ART exits the wormhole at Preservation Station, after a trip barely lasting an impossible three hours, telling us the alien remnant tech was definitely in place on its engines at that point.

8.  After sending and receiving communications from Preservation Station, ART goes into standby for five ship-cycles. ART then targets our facility when it arrives, firing multiple times, missing spectacularly due to supplying faulty targeting data to its own weapon systems.

(I couldn’t tell exactly when targetControlSystem had been uploaded to ART’s systems, but it was before this point because the status updates told the story of a subtle but intense battle over the weapons. ART’s crew had been held hostage for its good behavior, but it hadn’t been willing to kill our survey team even after it knew it had me in its tractor. TargetControlSystem must have figured out who was jogging its arm every time it tried to fire, because that was when ART had been deleted, causing the equivalent of a giant seismic event in its status updates.)

I could see the others on ART’s cameras, digesting the information with increasingly concerned expressions. Overse said, “So the memory Perihelion had of firing on a corporate transport never actually took place?”

ART didn’t answer. I think it was upset. I was also upset, but somebody had to be the adult here. (I was used to ART being the adult.) I said, “From the navigation, sensor, and status data I reviewed, weapons were not fired until ART encountered our facility in Preservation space. And there is no archival video or interior sensor data of the docking with the B-E explorer, or of the arrival and docking of the shuttle Eletra and Ras said they were aboard.” I didn’t like to say it aloud, but I had to. “ART was compromised not long after the first contact with the explorer and its shuttle. Something first removed and then significantly altered sections of its personal memory.”

The humans were quiet, taking that in. Then Ratthi said, “Poor ART. Excuse me, poor Perihelion.”

Arada grimaced in agreement. “It’s disturbing. The B-E explorer must have arrived in the system first and was attacked. Taken over? By our friends the Targets. But if the supply transport actually exists, where is it now?”

Overse frowned. “It might have been destroyed. We have to assume Perihelion’s crew are being held prisoner on the explorer.”

“Is the explorer armed?” Ratthi asked worriedly. “I hate being shot at.”

Again, ART didn’t answer. I said, “Probably.” For a reclamation project in a technically uninhabited system, it would be easier for Barish-Estranza to afford a license and bond for an armed ship.

Thiago paced in front of the med platform, his arms folded. “Perihelion and I have translated the speech that SecUnit recorded and it was … confusing at best. The Targets—and we are going to have to come up with something else to call them—spoke of a need to complete their mission, but never said what the mission was.”