Artificial Condition--The Murderbot Diaries Read online

  ART said, It’s not rogue. Its governor module is engaged. So it’s probably telling the truth.

  I asked ART, Can you hack it from here?

  There was a half-second pause while ART explored the idea. ART answered, No, I can’t secure the connection here. It could stop me by cutting off its feed.

  I told the sexbot, Your client wants to kill my client.

  It didn’t reply.

  I said, You told Tlacey about me. It must have recognized what I was during that first meeting. If it hadn’t been sure, seeing the damage I had done to the three humans Tlacey had sent would have been all the confirmation it needed. I was seething, but I kept it out of the feed. As I told ART, bots and constructs can’t trust each other, so I don’t know why it made me angry. I wish being a construct made me less irrational than the average human but you may have noticed this is not the case. I said, Your client sent a ComfortUnit to do a SecUnit’s job.

  It countered, She didn’t know she needed a SecUnit until today. It added, I told her you were a SecUnit, I didn’t tell her you were a rogue.

  I wondered if I could believe that. And I wondered if it had tried to explain to Tlacey the impossibility of this assignment. What do you propose to do?

  There was a pause. A long one, five seconds. We could kill them.

  Well, that was an unusual approach to its dilemma. Kill who? Tlacey?

  All of them. The humans here.

  I leaned against the wall. If I had been human, I would have rolled my eyes. Though if I had been human, I might have been stupid enough to think it was a good idea.

  I also wondered if it knew a lot more about me than what little was in the newsburst.

  Picking up on my reaction, ART said, What does it want?

  To kill all the humans, I answered.

  I could feel ART metaphorically clutch its function. If there were no humans, there would be no crew to protect and no reason to do research and fill its databases. It said, That is irrational.

  I know, I said, if the humans were dead, who would make the media? It was so outrageous, it sounded like something a human would say.

  Huh.

  I said to the sexbot, Is that how Tlacey thinks constructs talk to each other?

  There was another pause, only two seconds this time. Yes. Then, Tlacey believes you stayed behind to steal the files for the tech group. What did you do for so long in the feed blackout area?

  I was hiding. I know, not my best lie. Does Tlacey know you want to kill her? Because the “kill all humans” thing might have come from Tlacey, but the intensity under it was real, and I didn’t think it was directed at all humans.

  She knows, it said. Then I didn’t tell her about your client, she thinks they all left on the shuttle. She only wanted me to follow you.

  A code bundle came through the feed. You can’t infect a construct with malware like that, not without sending it through a Sec or HubSystem. Even then I would have to apply it, and without direct orders and a working governor module, there’s no way to force me to do it. The only way that code can be applied without my assistance is through a combat override module via my dataport.

  It might be killware, but I was not a simple pilot bot, and it would mostly just annoy the hell out of me. Maybe to the point where I tore a door off the wall and ripped the head off a ComfortUnit.

  I could just delete the bundle, but I wanted to know what it was so I knew how furious to get. It was small enough for a human’s interface to handle, so I shunted it aside to Tapan. I said aloud, “I need you to isolate that for me. Don’t open it yet.”

  She signaled assent through the feed and pulled the bundle into her temp storage. The other thing about killware and malware is that they can’t do anything to humans or augmented humans.

  The sexbot hadn’t said anything else and I sent a ping in time to feel it withdraw its feed. It was walking away down the corridor.

  I waited until I was sure, then stepped back from the door. I debated staying here, or moving Tapan. Now that I knew something was hacking the security cameras to watch me, I could use countermeasures. I probably should have been doing that from the beginning, but you may have noticed that for a terrifying murderbot I fuck up a lot.

  “It’s gone,” I told Tapan. “Can you check out that code bundle for me?”

  She got that inward look that humans have when they’re deep in their feed. After a minute, she said, “It’s malware. Pretty standard … Maybe they thought it would get your augments, but that’s kind of amateurish for Tlacey. Hold it. There’s a message string in here, attached to the code.”

  ART and I waited. Tapan’s face did something complicated, settling on worry. “This is weird.” She turned to the display surface and made the completely unnecessary gesture that some humans can’t help doing when they send something from their feed to display.

  It was the message string, three words. Please help me.

  * * *

  I moved us to a different room, near an emergency exit, in another section of the hostel. The sexbot might be alert for hacking, so I removed the access plate, manually broke the lock, and replaced the plate again while Tapan watched the corridor. Once we were inside, I told Tapan some of what the sexbot had said, mostly the part about how it claimed Tlacey didn’t know Tapan was here. (I didn’t tell her our visitor had been a sexbot because Tlacey had figured out what I was and didn’t want to waste any more human bodyguards on me.) “But we don’t know that that’s true, or that this operative won’t tell Tlacey you’re here now.”

  Tapan looked confused. “But why did they tell you anything?”

  That was a good question. “I don’t know. They don’t like Tlacey, but that might not be the only reason.”

  Tapan bit her lip, considering. “I think I should still try to keep the meeting. It’s only four hours from now.”

  I’m used to humans wanting to do things that can get them killed. Maybe too used to it. I knew we should leave now. But I needed time to hack enough of the security system to get past the sexbot. Once I did that, it seemed wrong not to wait the short time to make the meeting, which Tapan was reasonably sure Tlacey didn’t know about. Reasonably sure.

  It was probably a trap.

  I needed to think. I told Tapan I was going to sleep for a while and laid down on my side on my section of padding. My recharge cycle isn’t obvious but it doesn’t look like a human sleeping, so what I was actually going to do was play some media in the background of my feed while I worked on my security countermeasures and looked up my old module on risk assessment.

  Thirty-two minutes later, I heard movement. I thought Tapan was getting up to go to the restroom facility, but then she settled on the pads behind me, not quite touching my back. I had set my breathing to sound deep and even, like a human sleeping, with occasional random variations to add verisimilitude, so the fact that I had frozen in place wasn’t obvious.

  I had never had a human touch me, or almost touch me, like this before and it was deeply, deeply weird.

  Calm down, ART said, not helpfully.

  I was too frozen to respond. After three seconds, ART added, She’s frightened. You are a reassuring presence.

  I was still too frozen to answer ART, but I upped my body heat. Over the next two hours, she yawned twice, breathed deeply, and snorted occasionally. At the end of that time I changed my breathing and moved a little, and she immediately slid off my pad and over to hers.

  By that time, I had a plan, sort of.

  * * *

  I convinced Tapan that I should go to the meeting, and she should get on a public shuttle to the transit ring immediately. She was reluctant. “I don’t want to abandon you,” she said. “You’re only involved in this because of us.”

  That hit home so hard my insides clenched. I had to lean over and pretend to look through my bag to hide my expression. Company emergency protocol allows clients to abandon their SecUnits if necessary, even in situations where the company might never be abl
e to retrieve them. Tapan was making me think of Mensah, yelling that she wouldn’t leave me. I said, “It’ll help me the most if you go back to the transit ring.”

  It took a while, but I finally convinced her this was for the best for both of us.

  Tapan left the hostel first, wearing both extra jackets from her pack to change her body shape and with the hood of one pulled up to conceal her hair and shadow her face. (This was mostly to make her feel more confident, and because I didn’t want to explain the extent to which I could gain temporary control over portions of RaviHyral’s admittedly not-great security system.) I watched her on the security cameras until I saw her reach the public dock about one hundred meters away, go down the walkway to the embarkation area, then board the shuttle that was scheduled to leave in twenty-one minutes. ART sent me an acknowledgment as it slid into the shuttle’s controls to guard the bot pilot again. Then I left the hostel.

  I’d prepared a hack for the security cameras that was much more sophisticated than the one I’d been using up to this point. It involved getting into the operational code and setting the system on a tenth of a second delay, then deleting Tapan out and randomly replacing that part of the recording with pieces cut from earlier. This would work because the sexbot would be scanning the recordings the same way I would, using a body configuration scan. I didn’t match SecUnit standard anymore, but the sexbot had had plenty of time to scan my new configuration during that first meeting with Tlacey.

  Right now I wanted the sexbot’s attention on me, and not the public dock. I let the cameras track me out of the port and back toward the tube access. Then I started the hack.

  I was only 97 percent certain this meeting was a trap.

  Chapter Eight

  WHEN I REACHED THE small food service counter in the contractor district, a human was there who matched the image Tapan had sent to my feed. As I sat down at the table he looked up at me, his expression nervous, sweat beading on his pale forehead. I said, “Tapan couldn’t come,” and sent his feed the brief recording Tapan had made with her interface. It was her standing next to me in the room at the hostel, holding my arm and explaining that the files could be given to me. Wow, I looked uncomfortable.

  His gaze went inward as he reviewed the recording, then his body relaxed a little. He slid a memory clip over to me. I took it and checked the cameras.

  Nothing. No potential threats, no one showing interest in us. The counter served drinks with a lot of bubbles in them and fried protein in the shape of water fauna and flora. Everyone else was busy eating or talking. There was no one suspicious in the corridor or mall area outside, no one watching, no one waiting.

  This was not a trap.

  The human said uncertainly, “Should we order something? To make it look like we’re not—you know?”

  I told him, “No one’s watching, you can leave,” and pushed to my feet. I had to get back to the port.

  If this wasn’t a trap, the real trap was somewhere else.

  * * *

  On the way back to the dock, I checked the schedule. The shuttle was now listed as delayed.

  As I reached the embarkation area, I was reviewing the security recording from the time Tapan had boarded the shuttle. On visual, I spotted the sexbot coming toward me from the far end of the walkway.

  I had gotten to the point in the recording where two humans with Port Authority identification had stopped the shuttle’s departure and removed Tapan. ART slid out of the shuttle and back into my feed. It said, If I had my armed drones, this would be easier.

  When the sexbot reached me, I said, “Where is she?”

  “In Tlacey’s private shuttle. I’ll show you.”

  I followed it along the walkway, then down the ramp that split off toward the private shuttle docks. ART said, Why is it showing you where your human is?

  I said, Because Tlacey doesn’t want Tapan, she wants me.

  ART was quiet as we went past the private shuttle slots toward the bigger, more expensive section at the end. Then it said, Retrieve your human and make Tlacey regret this.

  We stopped in front of the access to a shuttle hatch. No one was outside, and most of the activity was down toward the other end of the docks. The sexbot turned to face me.

  It opened its hand, and I recognized the small object. It was a combat override module. It said, “They won’t allow you aboard unless you let me install this.”

  In my feed, ART said, Ah.

  They wanted us in the shuttle so that they could dispose of the bodies. Or Tapan’s body. Me they obviously intended to keep.

  A combat override module contains code that will take over my system, overriding the governor module and the company factory-set protocols, and placing me under the direct verbal or comm control of whoever the module designates. This was how GrayCris took over DeltFall’s SecUnits, and tried to take over me.

  I said, “If I accept that, will they release my client?”

  In the feed the sexbot whispered, You know they won’t. Aloud, it said, “Yes.”

  I turned and let it insert the module into my data port. (The data port that ART had disconnected when it altered my configuration. With my governor module hacked, it had been the only way left to assert control over me, so disabling it had been a priority.)

  The module clicked into place and I had a moment of purely irrational fear. ART must have picked up on it because it said, Please, my MedSystem makes no mistakes. Nothing happened, and from the security camera I had control of, I saw that I managed to keep the relief out of my expression.

  The sexbot’s expression was Unit standard neutral, and I followed it into the shuttle. A human stood just inside the lock, armed, his eyes flicking nervously between me and the sexbot. He said, “Is it under control?”

  “Yes,” the sexbot said.

  He stepped back and his jaw moved as he spoke in his feed. I couldn’t hack anything without the sexbot knowing, so I waited. I kept my expression blank. I had no way of knowing what the combat override module was supposed to make me do, but I was assuming it would put me under Tlacey’s control. I suspected the humans, and the sexbot, weren’t sure what the outward effect would be.

  Once we were through the lock, it cycled shut and a launch warning went through the feed, ending in an audible beep from the comm system. Tlacey must have bribed someone for immediate clearance, because there was a clunk as the lock disengaged and then the shuttle slid out of its slot.

  I have you on my scan, ART said.

  The human led the way through the shuttle. It was a large model, and the access corridor went past hatchways to cabins and the engineering section before ending in a big compartment. There was cushioned bench seating against the walls and acceleration chairs to the front, near the hatch that must lead to the forward part of the ship. There were six unknown humans in the room, four armed and two unarmed crew. One of the armed humans held Tapan by the shoulder and had a projectile weapon pressed to her head.

  Tlacey stood up from a chair and looked me over with a smile. She said, “Take little Tapan to a cabin. I’ll want to talk to her later about her work.”

  Tapan’s eyes were wide and frightened. I kept my expression blank. She tried to say, “Eden, I’m sorry! I’m sorry—” but the guard pulled her through another hatchway and down a corridor. I didn’t react, since I wanted her out of the line of fire. I listened for the hatch to close, then focused on Tlacey.

  She strolled toward me, thoughtful now. I guess the triumphant smile had been for Tapan’s benefit. The two other unarmed humans were watching with nervous curiosity, the armed guards still looked cautious. To the sexbot, Tlacey said, “You really think this is one of the units from the Ganaka Pit accident?”

  The sexbot started to reply, and I said, “But we all know that wasn’t an accident, don’t we.”

  Now I had everybody’s attention.

  I kept my gaze straight ahead, a good SecUnit still under the control of the combat override module. Tlacey stared at me, the
n her eyes narrowed. “Who am I talking to?”

  That was almost funny. “You think I’m a puppet? You know that’s not the way we work.”

  Tlacey was beginning to be afraid. “Who sent you?”

  I lowered my head to meet her gaze. “I came for my client.”

  Tlacey’s jaw moved as she gave a command in the feed, and the sexbot started to shift sideways into a combat position.

  ART said, The shuttle is clear of the port and moving into an orbit around the moon. Do you have a moment to let me in?

  I said, Be fast, and let ART in. I had the sensation again, my head shoved underwater, being temporarily incapacitated as ART used me as a bridge to reach the bot controlling the shuttle.

  It was quick, but the sexbot had time to punch me in the jaw. Tlacey must have ordered that; it wasn’t the way a unit would attack another unit. It hurt, but only in the way that would piss me off. When I didn’t react immediately, Tlacey relaxed and grinned. “I like a mouthy bot. This is going to be interesting—”

  ART was in the shuttle’s systems and I was clear. I caught the sexbot’s arm and flung it across the room toward the three armed guards. One went down, one stumbled into a chair, the third started to lift his weapon. I knocked Tlacey out of my way and stepped on the sexbot as I went over it, thumping it back down to the deck. I grabbed the muzzle of the energy weapon and shoved it upright just as he fired. The discharge struck the curved ceiling. I ripped it out of his grasp, dislocating his shoulder and at least three fingers, and slammed his head down on the console.

  The guard who had already fallen to the deck had a projectile weapon and I felt two impacts, one to my side and one to my thigh. Now that’s the kind of attack that actually hurts. I extended my right arm and fired my inbuilt energy weapon, catching him with two bolts in the chest. I stepped sideways to avoid an energy weapon blast from the guard who had fallen into the chair, and my third shot hit him in the shoulder. I had the blasts set to narrow, and they created deep burn wounds that usually incapacitated humans rapidly with shock and pain and, you know, having holes burned into their chest cavities.