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Okay, I had known that ART wouldn’t like this, even though my threat assessment on the idea looked great. But I hadn’t known it would react like this. “You wouldn’t have to rip me out of my body, just copy me. It wouldn’t even be me. Me is a combination of my archives and my organic neural tissue and this would just be... |
But you don’t want to kill/injure a client for walking in the wrong door.) I forgot where I was going with this, except that ART apparently has no concept of fairness, or minimum level of response, because the sense of ART’s almost full attention was overwhelming. Then the door slid open and Ratthi walked in with Amena... |
* * * When we arrived at the dock, the explorer wasn’t there. My threat assessment said there had only been a 40 percent chance that we would find the explorer in dock, but I could tell ART was disappointed and infuriated. Mostly infuriated. Arada, Overse, and Thiago were up on the control deck, and ART put up its scan... |
It’s not like you’re going to breach and seize control of a ship attached to a space dock by tripping or forgetting to bring your weapon or something.) Amena looked horrified. Ratthi’s expression did a whole progression. He said, “Are you telling us the colonists here were prisoners?” “It’s a possibility. Humans don’t ... |
And then there was “volunteering,” where you did something you shouldn’t have to do because the alternative was getting your insides fried by your governor module, or whatever the human equivalent was. Thiago didn’t say anything, so that was a win. ART said, I’m also detecting debris, probably from a series of destroye... |
(I mean they might have been plotting against me, but you know, probably not.) (Around the same time, I had also caught part of a conversation between Thiago and Ratthi. Thiago had told Ratthi about our conversation in the bunkroom, and Ratthi had told him what he knew about the whole attempted assassination incident. ... |
There is an exterior sensor that shows the box is currently locked in place at the top of the docking shaft. At least that meant I only needed to worry about being attacked by something already hiding in the dock or coming aboard in a ship. “Can you get me a scanner image of the interior?” I asked ART. I woke my drones... |
She was giving the side of my head this determined glare that made me remember the conversation back on the facility about me being supportive of Arada. I was being supportive of Arada. I was being supportive of Arada’s marital partner staying on ART and not dying. I said, “That provision is for humans.” It was worth a... |
Whichever, this version of DockSecSystem was a recent upgrade, but something was wrong with its configuration and it had put itself in standby mode. I was a little nervous, despite the fact that my walls are excellent and targetControlSystem had made no attempt to take me over despite a lot of provocation, what with me... |
Ha ha, vandalism expresses our corporate loyalty, right. Well, the joke was on you, Barish-Estranza employee, because not long after you did that you got killed and/or mind-controlled by alien remnant raiders. (I know, it’s a logo, but I hate it when humans and augmented humans ruin things for no reason. Maybe because ... |
There was another body further up the corridor but I already knew what had killed that one. What I wasn’t seeing was anywhere humans could be locked up. The dock hadn’t been anything but a temporary waystation while the colony was in development, so there were no cabins or facilities yet, just some minimal supply stora... |
I could go.” I started to answer (I don’t know what I was going to say but it was probably something I was going to feel bad about later). Overse and Thiago both took breaths to object. But ART got in before any of us (it helps to not actually need any air to talk) and said, No. Ratthi tried to clarify, “No to Amena, o... |
I thought the best chance for actual evidence was in the DockSecSystem’s archive, if I could just get the stupid system to load right. If we had to bring ART’s big fancy drones over and do a search for DNA traces, it would be a huge pain in the ass, and if they found nothing, it still wouldn’t be positive evidence that... |
(They make loud noises and bright lights, effective against humans who aren’t wearing safety visors. Yes, Barish-Estranza had been prepared to find colonists still alive and possibly resistant to being co-opted into new corporate indenture arrangements.) I collected them so nobody else could use them against us and wen... |
And you know, I don’t even know why I hadn’t yet.) I said, “No.” It still had its weapon, because it had been alive when the Targets left, and even with it helpless they had been just a little too afraid to try to take it away. The armor looked salvageable from the outside, but I’d have to scrape the body out to tell, ... |
You know, I hadn’t hacked my governor module to become a rogue SecUnit for no reason. I collected the projectile weapon and the spare ammunition, said, “We need to keep moving,” and went on through the access. I pretended not to hear Ratthi on the comm telling the others to drop the subject. We went through another foy... |
Thiago walked down into the bottom of the globe, looking up toward the curving top. “Overse, did you see this?” I was neck deep in SecSystem errors but I pointed a drone upward to see what he was talking about. At the top of the dome, above the highest row of stations, was a flat art installation. It was a cityscape wi... |
It was a large structure built around the base of the shaft, but while there were a lot of notes about adding admin and commercial space, there was nothing saying how far away from the main colony it had been built. (I don’t know anything about construction but I’m guessing you didn’t put your dock right in the middle ... |
It was a good line of inquiry; if there was another ship running around this system, even if it was a short-range type without wormhole capability, it would be important intel. Seeing the inside of the dock had caused some recalculations in my assessments. Who the fuck knew; Adamantine, planning optimistically for a fu... |
SecUnit, this is showing log entries from two drop boxes.” Well, that was interesting, but I’d pulled ART’s schematic of the dock already and checked—there was only the one shaft, the box tucked up into its lock below where we were in the control area. ART, who hates to be wrong, said, Physical structure indicates only... |
ART was annotating the displays in the feed so it wasn’t just a mash of numbers and lines and colors. Frustrated, Arada said, “Something blocked Perihelion’s ability to scan the explorer. I bet we’re dealing with more alien remnant technology.” It’s probable, ART said. I don’t know what the humans heard, but I read dea... |
Then she swallowed hard and forced herself past it. “Right. Thiago, did you see—” Thiago half-walked half-jumped down the wall toward another station. “Yes, it’s here.” While they were booting the station, I started my review of the security video again. It was patchy, with long sections dissolving into static. I’d rea... |
I skimmed past an infuriating nine minutes and twenty-seven seconds of nothing, then eight Targets ran past, heading down the forward corridor, interspersed with more blank video and patchy static. DockSecSystem caught another emergency code, probably from the SecUnit who had been or dered to stand down. DockSecSystem ... |
The face was obscured but the color and the logo on the uniform jacket were clear. They were alive. All this time, I hadn’t believed it. I’d been humoring ART, not really admitting it to myself. Not wanting to think about how I was going to handle it when we found evidence its crew was dead, or if we found nothing at a... |
The whole space was an airlock; when the box was ready to start its trip down the shaft, the hatch on the corridor behind us would close to protect the interior from a blow-out if anything went wrong with the undocking. The schematic I’d pulled from the SecSystem showed the box had passenger space for eighty-two humans... |
The hatch slowly revealed a dark space of empty cargo racks, then a set of stairs climbing to the passenger platform. Lights blinked on up in the passenger area where the seats were. I sent my drones in to check for anything lurking, though threat assessment was low. (Look, if there were space monsters, they probably w... |
As I reached the passenger platform I saw it curved around on top of the cargo racks. In the first row of seats I found more blood spotted on the upholstery and the safety straps. Like humans had rushed in here and flung themselves into the seats. No sign of bodies or pools of blood, no sign of energy weapon dam age. R... |
“Because I think we need to.” Yeah, I thought we needed to, too. But not via the giant drop box. I said, “Yes, but we’re going to be sneaky about it.” * * * While I went to get our EVAC suits, Overse checked over the maintenance capsule, running its diagnostics and making sure it was still in operational condition. It ... |
Overse was operating the simple control system through the capsule’s local feed connection. She’d initiated the pulse to check the shaft and it had come back clear. “Seals are good, we’re ready for drop.” She took a deep breath and added, “Technically, this is safer than landing a shuttle.” “Technically,” Thiago agreed... |
I eliminated all travelers in family groups or work groups, eliminated travelers who had booked continuing trips to the planet, or who were recurring visitors or longterm temporary residents. That left thirty-three total travelers. It’s probably not a human; I don’t think a human could do this through a removable inter... |
(I could force it open from the outside, but this was faster.) This could have gone a number of ways, but the fact that he had changed his booking told me he thought he had a chance to get out alive, so he probably wasn’t in there with an explosive device or anything. Probably. The door slid open and I stepped in. He s... |
My accidents were spectacular and usually involved me losing a big chunk of my organic tissue or something; she knew I could stop a human without hurting them, without even leaving a bruise, that was my stupid job. She would never trust me again. She would never stand close enough to touch (but without touching, becaus... |
And the agent’ll do better at trial if he admits to guilt. I don’t see how his advocates can mount a defense, with everything we have on video.” Mensah’s gaze narrowed in speculation. “Or if we can get him to turn and testify against GrayCris. Not that we need it, but it would help build our case for the order of data ... |
In my storage cubby, which was actually a relatively tiny partition of ART’s archives, I found some of my most recently used files, mostly episodes of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon and Timestream Defenders Orion and ART’s favorite episode of World Hoppers. Plus there was a download of my current active memory, wh... |
You can either have an existential crisis or get your crew back, ART, pick one. ART said, Prepare for deployment. This was tricky, since once I arrived via comm I’d have to hack into the explorer’s feed. If the explorer was using a filter with properties we hadn’t accounted for, or if it used the brief contact to deliv... |
Think of it like finding yourself in a deserted transit ring, giant echoing embarkation halls and a mall with places for hostels and shops and offices but all of it empty. (Or not, I was software so it really didn’t look like that at all.) I disguised myself as one of SecSystem’s maintenance processes and made a partit... |
But while the others wore the full protective suits and helmets, one wore more casual human clothing: dark green-black pants and jacket, and a black shirt with a collar. Their shoes had heavy treads, designed for rough planetary terrain. Their hair looked more normal, too, reddish brown in tight curls, cut close to the... |
I collected what data I could and ran a quick query in my stolen storage space, checking it against the identifying information I had for ART’s crew, trying to match weight/height/hair/skin combos. Result: an 80 percent chance that I was looking at Martyn, Karime, and Turi. But where were the others? I wasn’t finding a... |
This wasn’t a company SecUnit, its configuration was different, but I knew it would recognize the greeting as a protocol, and not one associated with hostile alien remnant entities. After four long seconds, it replied: System Unit Acknowledge: Identify? I could lie, say I was from Barish-Estranza. (Face it, considering... |
The second clip was of a group of five being prodded off the ship into an airlock and yeah I had a bad moment there but the ship’s status in the metadata showed the SecUnit was right, the ship was connected to the dock at that point. Also, four Targets followed them. I asked, Do you know where they were taken? This tim... |
So to summarize, the Targets had botched the install of their alien remnant drive onto the explorer’s engines, leaving the explorer no longer wormhole-capable. Also the group assigned to ART had lost control of it and now a giant armed transport was roaming the system implacably searching for vengeance. The SecUnit con... |
Then it said, Thank you for that information. I had one of the mostly dead SecSystem’s inputs monitoring the bridge and had picked up a brief conversation. Running it through the translation module told me it was a discussion about how to make engine failure look convincing. The Targets couldn’t contact ART to tell it ... |
I can disable your governor module, I said. I am not good at this kind of thing. Even Mensah was not good at this kind of thing, considering what happened when she bought me. I just knew it had to be SecUnit 3’s decision. I’ll do that whether you help me or not. But that was too much, too soon, and I knew that as soon ... |
But I was going to have to get uncomfortably close to targetControlSystem whose existence on this explorer was so far mostly theoretical. If mostly theoretical meant tripping over the huge path of destruction where it had slammed through the ship’s systems. I knew which channel the solid-state screen had used onboard A... |
“We’re here.” Overse shifted in her seat, edgy with nervous energy. Thiago sat up and said, “Good timing, I just finished the preliminary module.” Overse snorted. “I don’t know how you can work under these conditions.” “It gives me something else to think about.” Thiago made a move to rub his face and bonked his glove ... |
The door wasn’t a pressure hatch, it was a manually operated metal sliding door. Overse and Thiago had gotten to their feet, watching me. I sent the drone’s video to their interfaces and said, “Stay here. I’m going to take a look around. Don’t use the suit comms.” I was setting up a feed relay through my drones, which ... |
I got drone video of what was outside but I wanted to see it myself, so I sent them back into the interior corridors to keep scouting and went outside. From the map I’d pulled up on the space dock, the surface dock was a big oval structure, built around the shaft. I walked out onto a long stone balcony, sand grating un... |
It’s weird how something designed to take care of delicate lifeforms looks the most like it wants to tear you apart and eat your humans.) Anyway, back to what I was saying, what the hell kind of colony was this. It wasn’t the plants or the ag-bots—that was normal. Plants could be engineered to do a lot of things for co... |
That’s probably what the Adamantine colonists thought before they got eaten or turned into liquid or whatever. The ag-bot took another step, bending its neck down into the plants. I didn’t see any humans or Targets, but there were definitely power sources here because I was picking up some interference on my scan that ... |
The standoff was toward the center of the dock, in the main drop box loading chamber. With the map I’d downloaded from the space dock, I found a ramp to the upper levels, past corridors and doorways to empty rooms, out to an open gallery level overlooking the dark arrival chamber. It wasn’t a great spot for a sniper, e... |
I didn’t spot any of the distinctive Target weapons. They used projectile weapons without logos that looked badly hand-assembled out of spare parts, and I noted one weapon that had probably come from the Barish-Estranza contact party. With everybody running around so much, I couldn’t get an accurate count, but there we... |
Then you’d discover the power was out and the lift pods were inactive and you’d accidentally got yourself pinned down. I sent a drone in for a closer look. It got a good image of the human crouched behind the glass wall. It was Iris, ART’s Iris. I had a moment. ART was going to be so relieved. Iris was small, shorter a... |
* * * The hard part was fighting against thousands of hours of module-training and experience plus common sense that said never hand a weapon to a human and especially never tell them to do something with it. The weapons in question were just poppers, and the human was Overse who never panicked, but still. Now she was ... |
Just not as dramatically as the Targets on either side of the chamber who yelled, screamed, fell down, and randomly fired their weapons. I sprinted the fifteen meters along the back wall of the chamber and ducked around the glass partition shielding the doorway of the lift pod lobby. As I whipped around the wall, Iris ... |
I said, “They didn’t put an implant in you, did they? Show me the back of your neck.” She was understandably pissed off. “I’m not going to turn around and show you my neck, strange person I just met on a hostile planet.” Right, so, I could point out that I was the one with the weapons, but I didn’t want to make my firs... |
“If I am, will you do what I say so I can get you out of here?” She hesitated, undecided but wanting to believe. “I will if you show me your face.” “It showed you images of me?” What the shit, ART? “Obviously.” Her expression hardened. “If you’re really Peri’s friend, show me your face.” Well, fine. I told the suit to ... |
From ART’s records, he was Iris’s parent. “The colonists uploaded some sort of system when Peri was offline, they could have access to all Peri’s archives, they could know what you look like.” That didn’t make any sense but using logic with traumatized humans never works. (I could make a remark there about logic not wo... |
Adamantine thought the Pre–Corporation Rim colony had sterilized the site, but they were wrong.” Matteo tucked their hands under their armpits. They were small like Iris and Kaede, and had a lot of dark hair that had come loose from braids. “Apparently the Adamantine colonists started to get sick not long after they go... |
Remember, go to the left, down the corridor, and follow Thiago. I’ll cover you.” My drones showed him in the corridor, waiting tensely, and I tapped his feed to tell him it was almost time. He sent an acknowledgment. Overse had reached the maintenance capsule access and was bouncing on her heels, waiting. Iris glanced ... |
My timeline had seventeen seconds to provide covering fire in the chamber and I wanted to keep it chaotic, at least until the humans got out of the long straight corridor and into the section with the access to the maintenance capsule. It was at least a seven-minute run for a healthy human and these humans were barely ... |
But her weapon didn’t have the power to penetrate the casing and all it did was make the ag-bot, or whatever was controlling it, angry. It turned its limbs inward and grabbed her. But by that time I was there. I wasn’t sure my weapons would get through that reinforced body casing, either, so I shot it in the knee joint... |
Tell me all about it. It was resident in the explorer’s systems where the poor bot pilot had lived. I got a brief glimpse before it walled me off, but all that was left were random sections of code; the bot pilot’s kernel had been deleted. TargetControlSystem would like to haul me out of the SecSystem so it could kill ... |
There was no metadata to tell me where it had been recorded. Not a ship. The space dock, maybe? But what was an agricultural bot doing on a space dock? An agricultural bot that’s fighting with … Holy shit, that’s me. TargetContact told targetControlSystem, This is software, not a SecUnit. The SecUnit was on the surface... |
Other things were happening at the same time, three of which were: 1) CodeBundle.LockItDown had closed all the hatches on board except those directly between SecUnit 3’s position and the shuttle access. 2) CodeBundle.FuckThem had fried all targetDrones. 3) CodeBundle.FuckThisToo had cut the connections between the s... |
It panicked and moved to reinforce the hastily assembled walls there and I switched to weapons control and dropped off another code bundle that would blow a hole in the hull if anybody tried to lock in a target. TargetControlSystem wrote and ran a process to delete the duplicates of myself almost as fast as I could cre... |
It gave me the twenty-two seconds of breathing room I needed to get a local camera view and see SecUnit 3 holding off the Targets at the module hatch as Karime and Turi pushed the other humans aboard the shuttle. I managed to lock the module hatch, blocking the Targets’ access. SecUnit 3 turned immediately and chucked ... |
All clients appear in need of medical attention, most are semi-conscious again. And I promised Murderbot 2.0 I would deliver its clients here. Also, I don’t know where the rest of the task force is. Reply: I am a SecUnit aboard the shuttle designated— Response: I know you’re on the shuttle. Why are you approaching? Rep... |
I don’t know how to tell it I don’t want to hurt its clients. They are unarmed, and exhibit no threatening behavior toward my clients, the other unknown humans, or each other. Reply: I understand. I will comply. I tell the humans, “The clients need medical attention. They have been given implants by the hostiles who se... |
Reply: “I’m sorry, I will comply as soon as possible, but I have an important communication for someone onboard called ART.” The humans stop talking. Transport, public channel: Tell me. Reply: “The message is from Murderbot 2.0 and begins: ART, I’m going to download to the surface. Me version 1.0 is there with Overse a... |
You must all return here immediately.” :incoherent audio: several humans shouting at once: Iris: “Peri, this is Iris! We need—” Perihelion: “Iris, use the maintenance capsule to return to the space dock immediately so I can retrieve you.” Iris: “Tarik and Kaede and Dad need to get to medical so we’ll send them up, but ... |
They will threaten to destroy the SecUnit and you will be forced to destroy the colony. This is a failure scenario. Perihelion: I know that. I know I am taking a risk. The transport is very angry. I tell it, But I know how to proceed, this is my function. The solution is a targeted, stealth retrieval, possibly incorpor... |
Oh, and I was being held immobile, that was kind of a big issue, but until I finished my restart, I could only be terrified about one thing at a time. Functions were beginning to come online again and I tuned my pain sensors down. That made it easier to think. Oh yeah, memory archive active, I remember what happened. Y... |
Whatever the giant thing looming in the darkness that I was attached to was, it had a lot of arms, from large crane-sized arms that extended up and out into the shadows of this giant space, to much smaller, delicate arms that were holding the cables I was clamped to. It could be an assembler, which is a low-level bot t... |
I could feel the clamp at that point and tried to exert enough pressure to break it, but without the full connections to the heavy joints in the rest of my arm, I couldn’t do it. Ugh, this was going to be fun, in the not at all fun sense. Now I separated my attention and made sure I had individual control of both my ha... |
(Save for later: whoever had done this to me didn’t understand SecUnits or bots in general. They hadn’t known to look for the onboard weapons in my arms.) Once I got my ankles loose I hung from the left hand cable. I could see more from this angle, that this was definitely a deactivated assembler. Shapes in the darknes... |
I made it all the way to the top, to where a temporary scaffold/platform had been installed to one side of the shaft, near the assembler’s interface housing. The light source was there, a self-contained safety globe attached to what was left of the hand rail. Parts of the platform had fallen off, but I was able to craw... |
I tilted the safety light down to point at the platform and looked at the battered surface. No dust down here to show footprints, but it was clammy and a layer of faint dampness clung to the metal. I got down and put the side of my head against the platform, as close to eye level as I could get, and increased magnifica... |
I cautiously established a secure connection. Hey, is that you? It was loud, right in my ear, and I almost screamed. It was a feed contact but so close it was like it was already inside my head. Who are you? It said, I’m Murderbot 2.0. If this is going to be like one of those shows with the character trapped in a stran... |
My humans, the rest of ART’s humans? Did they get out of the surface dock? I don’t know, but before we look for them we have to find TargetContact and neutralize it. That’s not in your deployment directive. I was pretty sure of that, because I hadn’t known TargetContact existed until 2.0 had given me its report. Yeah, ... |
(Yeah, it was really depressing around here right now.) 2.0 was still pushing information at me. It said, TargetControlSystem has cut off the sender’s outside access, so that’s why we couldn’t pick up the signal until we got inside here. And Sender hasn’t responded to my pings, so it may be trapped in send-only. You’re... |
Making contact could cause UnidentifiedSender to try and kill me, but 2.0 could just kill it back, so … And if it wasn’t hostile I could use it to try to reach ART or contact the humans. I checked my secure connection to the empty feed and sent a tentative ping. The ten-second repeat stopped. The silence stretched to t... |
I still had my pain sensors tuned down but the grinding in my knee joint was distracting and made me feel vulnerable and it just wasn’t a good time to make changes to active killware. Then the corridor opened into a big hangar space, so big the safety lights were just spots in the shadows. I adjusted my filters again a... |
That was an outdated assessment but I didn’t need to argue with myself right now. I stepped inside. More tables and racks all made of skinny cylinders bolted together, the kind of assembly structure it would have been easy to transport in bulk and build into any configuration you needed. The tables circling the outer p... |
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... |
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 s... |
They are using a code to project the same type of interference emitted by the Targets’ protective gear. They will not be able to detect the targetDrones, but they will not be detected, either. I am projecting the same code, so hopefully the targetDrones will not detect me, but this is untested and it is better to avoid... |
We aren’t responsible for their actions.” Thiago: “That may be, but the transport holds all of you responsible. If we knew more about your situation, perhaps it would relent.” Target Three, sarcastically: “If the ship speaks, why didn’t it come in person?” Perihelion’s drone: You don’t want to meet me in person. The Ta... |
Iris: “Tell us what happened here, maybe that will help. We know you found alien remnants. You put one on the transport’s drive, and on the explorer.” Target Two: “We didn’t know they did that.” Target Four, speaking for the first time: “You could be lying. You want our findings.” Overse: “Was the explosion in your agr... |
Then I start up the rocks to begin a stealth approach of the installation and its central plaza. * * * Murderbot 1.0 So, we had found targetControlSystem. Sweat was sticking my shirt to what was left of my back and my performance reliability had dropped another three percent. The Adamantine colonists must have found th... |
And the remnant tech, the thing it put on ART’s drive and tried to install on the explorer. TargetControlSystem told the colonists what to do with them, and it wrote the code for the targetDrones and the protective gear and the sensor deflection. The whole plateau was probably a remnant site, maybe even a ruin, with wh... |
Conclusions: 1) The alien remnant had forced a contaminated human to bring it within range of the nearest operating system, a pre-CR central system. 2) The infected central system had partitioned itself (compulsively? Like the humans in alien contamination incidents who built weird things and killed each other?) and ... |
The death had to have happened at least months ago, if not more than a planetary year, or years, if it was the incident that had kicked off the major contamination spread. But the shape of the body I could see under the white growth didn’t look all sunken and gross or dried out. The white crystalline substance was grai... |
I was reluctant to go over there and put my fist through its head because (a) I thought I was immune to code contamination but maybe not if I actually got remnant on my organic parts and (b) if energy weapons wouldn’t work, punching probably wouldn’t, either. I needed to be smart about this. I made myself turn around a... |
Maybe that was the way it had to work. Human to machine to human. We’d been doing it wrong. I’d been trying to get ART to avoid contact with potentially infected systems, when it was infected augmented humans we had to worry about. And I had scanned this room, the infected human. It had been hoping to contaminate me in... |
Or I guess, it didn’t understand that we were two different iterations, with different capabilities. I was losing functionality and about to go into involuntary restart. But 2.0 was fine, and it was killware. It extracted targetControlSystem from my head and followed the active connection right back into the central sy... |
If there was anything left of the original human in there— Then it whipped to its feet and charged me. * * * SecUnit 03 Status: Retrieval in Progress I circle around the north side of the complex toward a passage between two of the surface structures. Drone intel provides me with a map of the complex, and the location ... |
You are go to proceed. I reply on the secure feed, Acknowledged, proceeding. On the terrace, Perihelion’s drone says, Run. You have three minutes to clear the area. Overse says, “Go, now!” and the humans run along the terrace toward the shuttle. The Targets are confused, then turn and run down the path away from the su... |
It spit me out at the next level and I tumbled into a shadowy corridor and fell on the floor again. Ouch. I was beginning to lose control over my pain sensors, a sign of an impending system failure. And I think I’d been too late, I think TargetContact saw I’d gotten off on this level. I was terrified of an involuntary ... |
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 ... |
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 ... |
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