Artificial Condition--The Murderbot Diaries

  This was starting to make sense. “You don’t trust Tlacey.”

  “We just want somebody on our side,” Tapan clarified.

  “No, we definitely don’t trust Tlacey,” Maro countered. “Not at all. We need security for when we get there, if things get … touchy. Tlacey herself is supposed to meet us, and she has an entourage of bodyguards, and there’s no general security except what Umro has in the public areas and the port, and that’s not much.”

  I didn’t know exactly what she thought she meant by “touchy,” but all the scenarios I could imagine in that situation weren’t good ones.

  The company offered SecUnits so the clients didn’t have to hire humans to guard each other. From what I had seen in the serials, me doing a half-assed version of my job was still better than a human trying to do it.

  I was still watching us through the captured security camera even though I wasn’t allowing it to record. I could see my expression was dubious, but in this case I think the situation warranted it. I said, “The meeting with Tlacey could be held through a secured comm channel.” The company bonded those, too, for funds and data transfer.

  Maro, whose expression was even more dubious than mine, said, “Yeah, but Tlacey wants to do it in person.”

  Rami admitted, “We know it doesn’t sound like a good idea to go.”

  It was a great idea to go if you wanted to be murdered. I had hoped for an easier job, courier duty, or something similar. But this was protecting humans who were determined to do something dangerous, which was exactly the kind of job I was designed for. The job that I had kept doing more or less, often as less as possible, even after I had hacked my governor module. I was used to having something useful to do, taking care of something, even if it was only a contractually obligated group of humans who if I was lucky treated me like a tool and not a toy.

  After PreservationAux, it had occurred to me how different it would be to do my job as an actual member of the group I was protecting. And that was the main reason I was here.

  I phrased it as a question, because pretending you were asking for more information was the best way to try to get the humans to realize they were doing something stupid. “So do you think there’s another reason Tlacey wants you to do this exchange in person, other than … killing you?”

  Tapan grimaced, as if that was something she had been aware of but trying not to think about. Maro tapped the table and pointed at me, which was vaguely alarming until ART identified it as a gesture of emphatic agreement. Rami took a sharp breath and said, “We think … We weren’t finished, our process was incomplete, but we were so enthusiastic about it … We think they must have listened in using the security feeds and heard us talking, and thought we were much further along than we actually were. So I don’t know if they can complete it. Maybe they realized it’s not worth much without us to finish it.”

  “Maybe Tlacey wants us to work for her again,” Tapan said hopefully.

  Probably, before she murders you, I didn’t say.

  Maro snorted. “I would rather live in a box in a station mall than work for her again.”

  Once they had started to talk about it, it was hard for them to stop. The collective was completely divided on what to do, which was apparently painful for all of them since they were used to agreeing on everything. Tapan, who according to Maro was too naive for this existence, thought it was worth a try. Maro, who according to Tapan was a cynical impediment to both fun and progress, thought they were screwed and should just cut their losses. Rami was undecided, which was why te had been elected leader of the collective for the duration of this problem. Rami did not seem thrilled by the collective’s confidence, but was gamely trying to proceed.

  Finally, Rami finished up with, “So that’s why we want to hire you. We thought it would be better to go in with someone who could protect us, keep her crew from messing with us, show her we have backup while we negotiate.”

  What they needed was a security company willing to bond them for the meeting and return trip, and send a SecUnit with them to guarantee their safety. But security companies like that are expensive, and wouldn’t be interested in a job this small.

  They all stared at me worriedly. In the security camera view, from that angle, it was obvious how small they were. They looked so soft, with all the fluffy multicolored hair. And nervous, but not of me. I said, “I accept your job.”

  Rami and Tapan looked relieved, and Maro, who clearly still didn’t want to do this, looked resigned. She said, “How much do we pay you?” She glanced uncertainly at the others. “Can we afford you, I mean.”

  ART had a set of spreadsheets ready but I didn’t want to scare them off with a figure that was too high. “How much were they paying you before you were terminated?”

  Rami said, “It’s two hundred CRs per cycle for each worker for the limited term of contract.”

  It didn’t sound like this would take more than a cycle. “You can pay me that.”

  “One cycle’s share of the contract?” Rami sat up straight. “Really?”

  Ter reaction meant I’d asked for far too little, but it was too late to correct the mistake. I did need to give them a reason why I was willing to settle for a small amount, and I decided the partial truth was better. “I need to go to RaviHyral, and I need an employment contract to get there.”

  “Why?” Tapan asked, and Rami nudged her by way of admonishment. “I mean, I know we don’t have a right to ask, but…”

  Don’t have a right to ask. That wasn’t something that had ever applied to me, before PreservationAux. I told the truth again. “I need to do some research there for another client.”

  Like ART, they understood the idea of research, especially proprietary research, and they didn’t ask any further questions. Rami told me they were scheduled to leave for RaviHyral during the next cycle, and said te would put in the request for the private employment voucher. I arranged to meet them in the mall near the access for the shuttle embarkation zone and then left. I released the security camera as soon as I was out of range.

  I got back to ART and huddled in my favorite chair and we watched episodes for the next three hours while I calmed down. ART monitored the transit ring’s alert feed in case someone had realized what I was, but there was nothing.

  I told you so, ART said. Again.

  I ignored it. I hadn’t been detected, so now it was time to think about the rest of the plan. Which now involved keeping my new clients alive.

  Chapter Five

  I MET THEM AT the embarkation zone. I had the knapsack, which was part of my human disguise, but the only important thing I was carrying was the comm interface from ART. It would allow us to communicate once I was down on RaviHyral and let me continue to have access to ART’s knowledge bases and unsolicited opinions. I was used to having a HubSystem and a SecSystem for backup and ART would be taking their place. (Without the part where those two systems were partly designed to rat me out to the company and trigger punishment through the governor module. ART’s freedom to weigh in on everything I did was punishment enough.) I had inserted the comm interface in a built-in compartment under my ribs.

  All three of my clients were waiting, each with a small bag or pack, since hopefully they would only be staying a couple cycles. I hung back until they finished saying goodbye to the other members of their collective. They all looked worried. The collective was listed in the social feed as a group marriage, and had five children of various sizes. Once the others had left and Rami, Maro, and Tapan were alone, I came forward.

  “Tlacey bought us passage on a public shuttle,” Rami told me. “That could be a good sign, right?”

  “Sure,” I said. It was a terrible sign.

  The employment voucher got me through into the embarkation zone and there was no weapons scan. RaviHyral allowed private weapons and had a low security presence in public areas, which was one reason small groups of humans needed to hire private security consultants to go there. As we approached
the shuttle’s lock I sent to ART: Can you scan the shuttle for energy anomalies without transit ring security detecting the activity?

  No, but I’ll tell it I’m running scanning diagnostics and testing systems.

  As we reached the lock, ART reported No anomalies, 90 percent match to factory specs.

  That was normal, and meant if there was an explosive device, it was inert at the moment, buried somewhere inside the hull. Five other guest workers waited to board, and my scan read no energy signatures. They had stuffed packs and bags, indicating packing for a long-term stay. I let them board first, then slid in front of Maro and went through the lock, scanning as I went.

  The shuttle was bot-driven and the only crew was one augmented human who seemed only there to check employment vouchers and shuttle passes. She looked at me and said, “There’s only supposed to be three of you.”

  I didn’t answer, being in the middle of wrestling the security system for control. It was an entirely separate system from the bot pilot, which was non-standard for the shuttles I was used to.

  Tapan’s chin jutted out. “This is our security consultant.”

  I had control of ShuttleSecSys, and deleted its attempt to alert the bot pilot and the crew member to the fact that it was compromised.

  The crew member frowned, checked the voucher again, but didn’t argue. We went on into the compartment where the other passengers were getting seated. They were stowing their possessions or talking quietly. I hadn’t eliminated them as potential threats, but their behavior was lowering the probability at a steady rate.

  I took a seat next to Rami as my clients got settled and pinged ART again. ART said, I’m scanning for targeting anomalies and situation is currently clear.

  It meant it couldn’t see anything on the moon aiming at us. If that was the plan, it wouldn’t happen until we were underway. If somebody fired at the transit ring from the moon’s surface, I was pretty sure that would be a huge deal and there would be legal ramifications, if not immediate violent retaliation by ring security. I told ART, If they fire at us en route, it’s not like we can do anything about it.

  ART didn’t answer, but I knew it well enough by now to know that meant something. I said, You don’t have a weapons system. There hadn’t been one on the schematics. At least the schematics that ART made available in its unsecured feed. Do you?

  ART admitted, I have a debris deflection system.

  There’s only one way to deflect debris. I had never been on an armed ship but I knew they were subject to a whole different level of licensing and bond agreements. (If one of them accidentally shoots something it’s not supposed to, somebody has to pay for the damage.) I said, You have a weapons system.

  ART repeated, For debris deflection.

  I was starting to wonder just what kind of university owned ART.

  Rami was watching me worriedly. “Is everything okay?”

  I nodded and tried to look neutral.

  Tapan leaned past ter to ask, “Are you in the feed? I can’t find you.”

  I told her, “I’m on a private channel with a friend in the ring who’s monitoring the shuttle’s departure. Just making sure everything’s okay.”

  They nodded and sat back.

  The shudder went through the deck that meant the shuttle had uncoupled from the ring and started to move. I cozied up to the bot pilot. It was a limited function model, not nearly as complex as even a standard transport driver bot. I had the ShuttleSecSys tell it I was authorized by ring security, and it pinged me cheerfully. The crew member was sitting in the cockpit with it, using her feed to catch up on admin tasks and read her social feed download, but there was no human pilot aboard.

  I leaned back in my seat and relaxed a little. Media was tempting, and from the echoes I could pick up in the feed, that’s what most of the humans were doing. But I wanted to keep monitoring the bot pilot. This may seem overcautious, but that’s how I was built.

  Then twenty-four minutes forty-seven seconds into the flight, as we were on approach, the bot pilot screamed and died as killware flooded its system. It was gone before ShuttleSecSys or I could react; I flung up a wall around us both and the killware bounced off. I saw it register task complete and then destroy itself.

  Oh, shit. ART! I used ShuttleSecSys to grab the controls. We needed the course correction in seven point two seconds. The crew member, jolted out of her feed by the alarms, stared at the board in horror, then hit the emergency beacon. She couldn’t fly a shuttle. I can fly hoppers and other upper atmosphere aircraft, but I had never been given the education module for shuttles or other space-going vehicles. I nudged ShuttleSecSys, hoping for help, and it set off all the cabin alarms. Yeah, that didn’t help.

  Let me in, ART said, as cool and calm as if we were discussing what show to watch next.

  I had never given ART full access to my brain. I had let it alter my body, but not this. We had three seconds and counting. My clients, the other humans on the shuttle. I let it in.

  It was like the sensation humans describe in books as having their heads shoved underwater. Then it was gone and ART was in the shuttle, using my connection with ShuttleSecSys to leap into the void left by the erased bot. ART flowed into the controls, made the course correction and adjusted our speed, then picked up the landing beacon and guided the shuttle into approach on the main RaviHyral port. The crew member had just managed to hail Port Authority, and was still hyperventilating. Port Authority had the ability to upload emergency landing routines, but the timing had been too tight. Nothing they could have done would have saved us.

  Rami touched my arm and said, “Are you okay?”

  I’d squeezed my eyes shut. “Yes,” I told ter. Remembering that humans usually want more than that from other humans, I pointed up to indicate the alarms and added, “I’ve got sensitive hearing.”

  Rami nodded sympathetically. The others were worried, but there hadn’t been an announcement and they could see our route in the feed from the port, which was still giving us an on-time arrival.

  The crew member tried to explain to Port Authority that there had been a catastrophic failure, the pilot bot was gone, and she didn’t know why the shuttle was following its normal route and not slamming into the surface of the moon. ShuttleSecSys tried to analyze ART and almost got itself deleted. I took over ShuttleSecSys, turned off the alarms, and deleted the entire trip out of its memory.

  There were murmurs of relief from the passengers as the alarms stopped. I made a suggestion to ART, and it sent an error code to Port Authority, which assigned us a new priority and switched our landing site from the public dock to the emergency services dock. Since the killware had clearly been intended to destroy us en route, there might not be anybody waiting for us at our scheduled landing slot, but better safe than sorry.

  The feed was giving us a visual of the port, which was inside a cavern, carved out of the side of a mountain, surrounded by the towers of a debris deflection grid. (An actual debris deflection system, as opposed to ART’s concealed rail gun or whatever it had.) The lights of multiple levels of the port installation gleamed in the darkness, and smaller shuttles whizzed out of our way as we curved down toward the Port Authority’s beacon.

  Maro was watching me with narrowed eyes. When the notice of changed landing site came through the feed, she leaned forward and said, “You know what happened?”

  Fortunately I remembered that nobody expected me to be compelled to answer all questions immediately. One of the benefits to being an augmented human security consultant rather than a construct SecUnit. I said, “We’ll talk about it when we’re off the shuttle,” and they all seemed satisfied.

  * * *

  ART landed us in the Port Authority’s slot. We left the shuttle crew member trying to explain to the emergency techs what had happened as they connected their diagnostic equipment. ART was already gone, deleting any evidence of its presence, and the ShuttleSecSys was confused, but at least still intact, unlike the poor pilot bot.
r />   Emergency services personnel and bots milled around the small embarkation zone. I managed to herd my clients through and out onto the clear enclosed walkway to the main port before anyone thought to try to stop them. I had already downloaded a map from the public feed and was testing the robustness of the security system. The walkway had a view of the cavern, with the multiple levels of landing slots and a few shuttles coming and going. At the far end were the big haulers for the mining installations.

  Security seemed to be intermittent and based on the level of paranoia of whatever contractor operated in the territory you were passing through. That could be both an advantage and an interesting challenge. The transit ring’s public info feed had warned that a lot of humans apparently carried weapons here, and there were no screening scans.

  We came out into a central hub, which had a high clear dome allowing a view of the cavern arching overhead, with lights trained on it to show off the colorful mineral veins. I scanned to make sure nothing was recording us and stopped Rami. Te and the others looked up at me and I said, “The person you’re going to meet with just tried to kill you.”

  Rami blinked, Maro went wide-eyed, and Tapan drew breath to argue. I said, “The shuttle was infected with killware. It destroyed the bot pilot. I was in contact with a friend who was able to use my augmented feed to download a new pilot module. That’s the only reason we didn’t crash.”

  A module could have put the shuttle into a safe orbit, but wouldn’t have been sophisticated enough to manage the tricky, flawless landing. I was hoping they wouldn’t realize that.

  Tapan closed her mouth. Shocked, Maro said, “But the other passengers. The crew person. They would have killed everybody?”

  I said, “If you were the only casualties, the motive would have been obvious.”

  I could see it was starting to sink in. I said, “You should return to the transit ring immediately.” I checked the public feed for the schedule. There was a public shuttle leaving in eleven minutes. Tlacey wouldn’t have time to trace my clients and infect it if they moved fast.