Nebula Awards Showcase 2019 Read online

  Overse sounded mad. “It told us about the combat module, it told us to kill it. Why the hell would it do that if it wanted to hurt us?”

  I liked her, too. And even though being part of this conversation was the last thing I wanted to do, it was time to speak for myself.

  I kept my eyes closed, watching them through the security camera, because that was easier. I made myself say, “The company isn’t trying to kill you.”

  That startled them. Gurathin started to speak, and Pin-Lee shushed him. Mensah stepped forward, watching me with a worried expression. She was standing near me, with Gurathin and the others gathered in a loose circle around her. Bharadwaj was farthest back, sitting in a chair. Mensah said, “SecUnit, how do you know that?”

  Even through the camera, this was hard. I tried to pretend I was back in my cubicle. “Because if the company wanted to sabotage you, they would have poisoned your supplies using the recycling systems. The company is more likely to kill you by accident.”

  There was a moment while they all thought about how easy it would have been for the company to sabotage its own environmental settings. Ratthi began, “But surely that would—”

  Gurathin’s expression was stiffer than usual. “This Unit has killed people before, people it was charged with protecting. It killed fifty-seven members of a mining operation.”

  What I told you before, about how I hacked my governor module but didn’t become a mass murderer? That was only sort of true. I was already a mass murderer.

  I didn’t want to explain. I had to explain. I said, “I did not hack my governor module to kill my clients. My governor module malfunctioned because the stupid company only buys the cheapest possible components. It malfunctioned and I lost control of my systems and I killed them. The company retrieved me and installed a new governor module. I hacked it so it wouldn’t happen again.”

  I think that’s what happened. The only thing I know for certain is that it didn’t happen after I hacked the module. And it makes a better story that way. I watch enough serials to know how a story like that should go.

  Volescu looked sad. He shrugged a little. “My viewing of the Unit’s personal log that Gurathin obtained confirms that.”

  Gurathin turned to him, impatient. “The log confirms it because that’s what the Unit believes happened.”

  Bharadwaj sighed. “Yet here I sit, alive.”

  The silence was worse this time. On the feed I saw Pin-Lee move uncertainly, glance at Overse and Arada. Ratthi rubbed his face. Then Mensah said quietly, “SecUnit, do you have a name?”

  I wasn’t sure what she wanted. “No.”

  “It calls itself ‘Murderbot,’” Gurathin said.

  I opened my eyes and looked at him; I couldn’t stop myself. From their expressions I knew everything I felt was showing on my face, and I hate that. I grated out, “That was private.”

  The silence was longer this time.

  Then Volescu said, “Gurathin, you wanted to know how it spends its time. That was what you were originally looking for in the logs. Tell them.”

  Mensah lifted her brows. “Well?”

  Gurathin hesitated. “It’s downloaded seven hundred hours of entertainment programming since we landed. Mostly serials. Mostly something called Sanctuary Moon.” He shook his head, dismissing it. “It’s probably using it to encode data for the company. It can’t be watching it, not in that volume; we’d notice.”

  I snorted. He underestimated me.

  Ratthi said, “The one where the colony’s solicitor killed the terraforming supervisor who was the secondary donor for her implanted baby?”

  Again, I couldn’t help it. I said, “She didn’t kill him, that’s a fucking lie.”

  Ratthi turned to Mensah. “It’s watching it.”

  Her expression fascinated, Pin-Lee asked, “But how did you hack your own governor module?”

  “All the company equipment is the same.” I got a download once that included all the specs for company systems. Stuck in a cubicle with nothing to do, I used it to work out the codes for the governor module.

  Gurathin looked stubborn, but didn’t say anything. I figured that was all he had, now it was my turn. I said, “You’re wrong. HubSystem let you read my log, it let you find out about the hacked governor module. This is part of the sabotage. It wants you to stop trusting me because I’m trying to keep you alive.”

  Gurathin said, “We don’t have to trust you. We just have to keep you immobilized.”

  Right, funny thing about that. “That won’t work.”

  “And why is that?”

  I rolled off the table, grabbed Gurathin by the throat and pinned him to the wall. It was fast, too fast for them to react. I gave them a second to realize what had happened, to gasp, and for Volescu to make a little eek noise. I said, “Because HubSystem lied to you when it told you I was immobilized.”

  Gurathin was red, but not as red as he would have been if I’d started applying pressure. Before anyone else could move, Mensah said, calm and even, “SecUnit, I’d appreciate it if you put Gurathin down, please.”

  She’s a really good commander. I’m going to hack her file and put that in. If she’d gotten angry, shouted, let the others panic, I don’t know what would have happened.

  I told Gurathin, “I don’t like you. But I like the rest of them, and for some reason I don’t understand, they like you.” Then I put him down.

  I stepped away. Overse started toward him and Volescu grabbed his shoulder, but Gurathin waved them off. I hadn’t even left a mark on his neck.

  I was still watching them through the camera, because it was easier than looking directly at them. My suit skin was torn, revealing some of the joins in my organic and inorganic parts. I hate that. Everyone was still frozen, shocked, uncertain. Then Mensah took a sharp breath. She said, “SecUnit, can you keep HubSystem from accessing the security recordings from this room?”

  I looked at the wall next to her head. “I cut it off when Gurathin said he found out my governor module was hacked, then deleted that section. I have the visual and audio recording transfer from SecSystem to HubSystem on a five-second delay.”

  “Good.” Mensah nodded. She was trying to make eye contact but I couldn’t do it right now. “Without the governor module, you don’t have to obey our orders, or anybody’s orders. But that’s been the case the entire time we’ve been here.”

  The others were quiet, and I realized she was saying it for their benefit as much as mine.

  She continued, “I would like you to remain part of our group, at least until we get off this planet and back to a place of safety. At that point, we can discuss what you’d like to do. But I swear to you, I won’t tell the company, or anyone outside this room, anything about you or the broken module.”

  I sighed, managed to keep most of it internal. Of course she had to say that. What else could she do. I tried to decide whether to believe it or not, or whether it mattered, when I was hit by a wave of I don’t care. And I really didn’t. I said, “Okay.”

  In the camera feed, Ratthi and Pin-Lee exchanged a look. Gurathin grimaced, radiating skepticism. Mensah just said, “Is there any chance HubSystem knows about your governor module?”

  I hated to admit this but they needed to know. Hacking myself is one thing, but I had hacked other systems, and I didn’t know how they were going to react to that. “It might. I hacked HubSystem when we first arrived so it wouldn’t notice that the commands sent to the governor module weren’t always being followed, but if HubSystem’s been compromised by an outside agent, I don’t know if that worked. But HubSystem won’t know you know about it.”

  Ratthi crossed his arms, his shoulders hunching uneasily. “We have to shut it down, or it’s going to kill us.” Then he winced and looked at me. “Sorry, I meant HubSystem.”

  “No offense,” I said.

 
“So we think HubSystem has been compromised by an outside agent,” Bharadwaj said slowly, as if trying to convince herself. “Can we be certain it’s not the company?”

  I said, “Was DeltFall’s beacon triggered?”

  Mensah frowned, and Ratthi looked thoughtful again. He said, “We checked it on the way back, once we had you stabilized. It had been destroyed. So there was no reason for the attackers to do that if the company was their ally.”

  Everyone stood there, quiet. I could tell from their expressions they were all thinking hard. The HubSystem that controlled their habitat, that they were dependent on for food, shelter, filtered air, and water, was trying to kill them. And in their corner all they had was Murderbot, who just wanted everyone to shut up and leave it alone so it could watch the entertainment feed all day.

  Then Arada came up and patted my shoulder. “I’m sorry. This must be very upsetting. After what that other Unit did to you . . . Are you all right?”

  That was too much attention. I turned around and walked into the corner, facing away from them. I said, “There were two other instances of attempted sabotage I’m aware of. When Hostile One attacked Drs. Bharadwaj and Volescu and I went to render assistance, I received an abort command from HubSystem through my governor module. I thought it was a glitch, caused by the MedSystem emergency feed trying to override HubSystem. When Dr. Mensah was flying the little hopper to check out the nearest map anomaly, the autopilot cut out just as we were crossing over a mountain range.” I think that was it. Oh, right. “HubSystem downloaded an upgrade packet for me from the satellite before we left for DeltFall. I didn’t apply it. You should probably look at what it would have told me to do.”

  Mensah said, “Pin-Lee, Gurathin, can you shut HubSystem down without compromising the environmental systems? And trigger our beacon without it interfering?”

  Pin-Lee glanced at Gurathin and nodded. “It depends on what kind of condition you expect it to be in after we’re done.”

  Mensah said, “Let’s say don’t blow it up, but you don’t need to be gentle, either.”

  Pin-Lee nodded. “We can do that.”

  Gurathin cleared his throat. “It’s going to know what we’re doing. But if it doesn’t have any instructions to stop us if we try, it may do nothing.”

  Bharadwaj leaned forward, frowning. “It’s got to be reporting to someone. If it has a chance to warn them that we’re shutting it down, they could supply instructions.”

  “We have to try it,” Mensah said. She nodded to them. “Get moving.”

  Pin-Lee started for the door, but Gurathin said to Mensah, “Will you be all right here?”

  He meant would they be all right with me here. I rolled my eyes.

  “We’ll be fine,” Mensah said, firmly, with just a touch of I said now.

  I watched him with the security cameras as he and Pin-Lee left, just in case he tried anything.

  Volescu stirred. “We also need to look at that download from the satellite. Knowing what they wanted SecUnit to do might tell us a great deal.”

  Bharadwaj pushed herself up, a little unsteadily. “MedSystem is isolated from HubSystem, correct? That’s why it hasn’t been having failures. You could use it to unpack the download.”

  Volescu took her arm and they moved into the next cabin to the display surface there.

  There was a little silence. The others could still listen to us on the feed, but at least they weren’t in the room, and I felt the tension in my back and shoulders relax. It was easier to think. I was glad Mensah had told them to trigger our emergency beacon. Even if some of them were still suspicious of the company, it wasn’t like there was another way off this planet.

  Arada reached over and took Overse’s hand. She said, “If it isn’t the company that’s doing this, who is it?”

  “There has to be someone else here.” Mensah rubbed her forehead, wincing as she thought. “Those two extra SecUnits at DeltFall came from somewhere. SecUnit, I’m assuming the company could be bribed to conceal the existence of a third survey team on this planet.”

  I said, “The company could be bribed to conceal the existence of several hundred survey teams on this planet.” Survey teams, whole cities, lost colonies, traveling circuses, as long as they thought they could get away with it. I just didn’t see how they could get away with making a client survey team—two client survey teams—vanish. Or why they’d want to. There were too many bond companies out there, too many competitors. Dead clients were terrible for business. “I don’t think the company would collude with one set of clients to kill two other sets of clients. You purchased a bond agreement that the company would guarantee your safety or pay compensation in the event of your death or injury. Even if the company couldn’t be held liable or partially liable for your deaths, they would still have to make the payment to your heirs. DeltFall was a large operation. The death payout for them alone will be huge.” And the company hated to spend money. You could tell that by looking at the recycled upholstery on the habitat’s furniture. “And if everyone believes the clients were killed by faulty SecUnits, the payment would be even bigger once all the lawsuits were filed.”

  On the cameras I could see nods and thoughtful expressions as they took that in. And they remembered that I had experience in what happened after SecUnits malfunctioned and killed clients.

  “So the company took a bribe to conceal this third survey group, but not to let them kill us,” Overse said. One of the good things about scientist clients is that they’re quick on the uptake. “That means we just need to stay alive long enough for the pick-up transport to get here.”

  “But who is it?” Arada waved her hands. “We know whoever it is must have hacked control of the satellite.” In the security camera, I saw her look toward me. “Is that how they took control of the DeltFall SecUnits? Through a download?”

  It was a good question. I said, “It’s possible. But it doesn’t explain why one of the three DeltFall Units was killed outside the hub with a mining drill.” We weren’t supposed to be able to refuse a download, and I doubted there were other SecUnits hiding hacked governor modules. “If the DeltFall group refused the download for their SecUnits because they were experiencing the same increase in equipment failure that we were, the two unidentified Units could have been sent to manually infect the DeltFall Units.”

  Ratthi was staring into the distance, and through the feed I saw he was reviewing my field camera video of the DeltFall habitat. He pointed in my direction, nodding. “I agree, but it would mean the DeltFall group allowed the unknown Units into their habitat.”

  It was likely. We had checked to make sure all their hoppers were there, but it had been impossible to tell if an extra one had landed and taken off again at some point. Speaking of which, I did a quick check of the security feed to see how our perimeter was doing. The drones were still patrolling and our sensor alarms all responded to pings.

  Overse said, “But why? Why allow a strange group into their habitat? A group whose existence had been concealed from them?”

  “You’d do it,” I said. I should keep my mouth shut, keep them thinking of me as their normal obedient SecUnit, stop reminding them what I was. But I wanted them to be careful. “If a strange survey group landed here, all friendly, saying they had just arrived, and oh, we’ve had an equipment failure or our MedSystem’s down and we need help, you would let them in. Even if I told you not to, that it was against company safety protocol, you’d do it.” Not that I’m bitter, or anything. A lot of the company’s rules are stupid or just there to increase profit, but some of them are there for a good reason. Not letting strangers into your habitat is one of them.

  Arada and Ratthi exchanged a wry look. Overse conceded, “We might, yes.”

  Mensah had been quiet, listening to us. She said, “I think it was easier than that. I think they said they were us.”

  It was so simple
, I turned around and looked directly at her. Her brow was furrowed in thought. She said, “So they land, say they’re us, that they need help. If they have access to our HubSystem, listening to our comm would be easy.”

  I said, “When they come here, they won’t do that.” It all depended on what this other survey group had, whether they had come prepared to get rid of rival survey teams or had decided on it after they got here. They could have armed air vehicles, Combat SecUnits, armed drones. I pulled a few examples from the database and sent them into the feed for the humans to see.

  MedSystem’s feed informed me that Ratthi, Overse, and Arada’s heart rates had just accelerated. Mensah’s hadn’t, because she had already thought of all this. It was why she had sent Pin-Lee and Gurathin to shut off HubSystem. Nervously, Ratthi said, “What do we do when they come here?”

  I said, “Be somewhere else.”

  ◉ ◉ ◉

  It may seem weird that Mensah was the only human to think of abandoning the habitat while we waited for the beacon to bring help, but as I said before, these weren’t intrepid galactic explorers. They were people who had been doing a job and suddenly found themselves in a terrible situation.

  And it had been hammered into them from the pre-trip orientation, to the waivers they had to sign for the company, to the survey packages with all the hazard information, to their on-site briefing by their SecUnit that this was an unknown, potentially dangerous region on a mostly unsurveyed planet. They weren’t supposed to leave the habitat without security precautions, and we didn’t even do overnight assessment trips. The idea that they might have to stuff both hoppers full of emergency supplies and run for it, and that that would be safer than their habitat, was hard to grasp.

  But when Pin-Lee and Gurathin shut down HubSystem, and Volescu unpacked the satellite download that was meant for me, they grasped it pretty quick.

  Bharadwaj outlined it for us on the comm while I was getting my last extra suit skin and my armor back on. “It was meant to take control of SecUnit, and the instructions were very specific,” she finished. “Once SecUnit was under control, it would give them access to MedSystem and SecSystem.”