Network Effect

The system’s assistance needed changed to caution, hazardous material, so it knew we were here.

Um, 2.0 said, adjust your filters. Scan for active signals below the standard channels.

I made the adjustments. 2.0 took in the data and made the diagram before I could.

This wasn’t so much an oh shit moment as it was a spike of brain-numbing terror. I was expecting a room full of active connections, from the components to the screens and then through the walls to the rest of the installation, even if some or most of those connections were sending or receiving from damaged or dead nodes.

Instead, the diagram showed the connections, but they came from the dead human body, and formed a weblike mass. It was interwoven with the central system, then stretched out to the walls, following the old connection pathways.

I bumped into the hatch, which was when I realized I had been backing up.

2.0 whispered, That’s targetControlSystem.

Chapter 19

SecUnit 03

Status: Retrieval. Initiate Stage One

Arada flies Perihelion’s shuttle with the assistance of its piloting module, and brings it down to the planet’s surface. She had instructed me to ride in the copilot’s observation seat, instead of the cargo compartment, which was an unusual experience.

Our landing site is a platform just below the edge of the plateau, near the Pre–Corporation Rim installation. The platform may have been a secondary landing site, or a base for a large construction bot, but its surface was now clear and it was out of direct line of sight from either the installation or the surface dock. Perihelion is also jamming comm and scan signals in the vicinity, so our approach would not be detected.

I had already disabled scan functions on myself and my drones, in accordance with intel from the retrieved clients.

It is late in the day-cycle on the planet and the weather is clear, with no sign of atmospheric interference that might affect the mission success assessment.

I have three additional inputs: (1) The second shuttle that Ratthi has landed on the flat ground outside the surface dock; (2) the drone controlled by Perihelion, which had been transported in Ratthi’s shuttle and now accompanied the humans Overse, Thiago, and Iris; (3) Perihelion itself, who is monitoring all locations and inputs.

Four of Perihelion’s clients had been persuaded to return to the space dock in the lift tower’s maintenance capsule. They have been successfully retrieved and are now receiving medical attention. Overse, Thiago, and Iris remained to assist in enacting Stage 01 of Plan B01.

All Targets had vacated the surface dock, except for a delegation of five who had agreed to meet with the humans. They had agreed to this meeting when Perihelion sent this message via general comm broadcast to all receivers in the vicinity of the colony site: I have located your primary terraforming engine. Agree to a meeting or I will destroy it.

There had been no response.

Second message: You require proof of intent.

And then Perihelion had crashed and detonated an armed pathfinder into the center of the agricultural zone between the space dock and the Pre-CR installation. The crater was large. The second pathfinder had been detonated in the air above the Pre-CR complex.

The Targets had agreed to the meeting.

Before we boarded our shuttle, Arada told me, “You don’t have to do this. I know facing these people, after what they did to your—the other two SecUnits. It can’t be easy. And I don’t feel right asking you to do this so soon after you hacked your governor module. This must be a confusing time for you.”

It is confusing. But following protocol and assisting in a retrieval are familiar. I told her, “I want to do this.”

She nodded. “Thank you. If you can get SecUnit back—well, a lot of people will be very grateful.”

I had read the HelpMe.file and accepted it as truthful. But there was a difference between accepting data as accurate and experiencing it. The humans would not abandon this SecUnit even though part of our function was to be disposable if necessary.

There is a lot about what is going on here that I don’t understand. But I am participating anyway.