System Collapse (The Murderbot Diaries Book 7)

ONCE WE WERE OUT of sight behind an outcrop, I did a quick scan for stealth drones, then took my weight off Ratthi and straightened up. He said, “Are you all right?”

I said, “Sure.”

Iris was watching me worriedly and pretending not to. She said, “Why don’t you stay with us? We’ve only got one more router to do.”

I said, “Sure.”

We climbed a rough trail back up to their shuttle, which was set down on the small flat plateau above the router site. Since I was staying with the humans, ART recalled my shuttle. It would hopefully make the lurking B-E team think we had left.

The original Barish-Estranza task force had told us the new arrivals were a scheduled reinforcement, not a response to the distress beacon they had sent. But Seth had said they were probably lying about that. And if they were lying, it meant B-E had more backup waiting at a wormhole somewhere relatively close to this system. Which made sense, if they had been sending multiple explorer groups to systems in this general area.

But the real problem was that now B-E had a supply ship and an armed explorer, and there was still no sign of a support ship from the University of Mihira and New Tideland. And we really needed one.

Phase I of Plan A: Get the Hell Out of Here had involved trying to get a specialized decontamination update to the colonists’ MedUnits so they could run the alien decontamination protocol on each other. That took longer than it should have because all the medical equipment in the colony was proprietary-branded corporate designs from thirty-seven-plus corporate standard years ago.

Thiago and Karime had talked one faction of the colonists into sending us a copy of the software on their main medical unit, and ART had removed any traces of contaminated code and modified its own decontam package to run on old shitty equipment. Then each unit had to be individually accessed and reloaded with the cleaned and enhanced operating systems via elaborately overcautious procedures to eliminate cross contamination or recontamination. Mostly in case we had fucked up massively and there were dormant virus fragments in play somewhere in the medical systems whose behavior didn’t match the human-machine-human transmission pattern we had previously noted.

Fortunately, between ART, me, our humans, and the colonists, the level of paranoia about virus contamination on this planet was more than adequate, even by my standards.

Phase II of Plan A was the legal case to keep Barish-Estranza from asserting salvage-right ownership of the colony’s humans, which Pin-Lee was still working on. ART’s crew had also started a planetary alien contamination assessment, and things were looking iffy. There was a lot of technical detail I didn’t care about, but basically if they couldn’t make a good case to certify the contaminated site as sealable, then the planet would be placed under interdict and the colonists would have to leave anyway and Barish-Estranza could make yet another case for claiming them as salvage.

The first subsection of Phase II involved asking the colonists what they wanted to do. I know, it seemed simple. (And I am aware of the irony, since I know exactly how hard the question “what do you want” can be when you don’t have a fucking clue what you want. But we weren’t talking existential questions of existence here, just the basic: Do you want to be salvaged by Barish-Estranza as corporate contract labor for the rest of your lives? Select (1) yes (2) no.)

The problem was who to ask.

(“They’re split into even more factions than they were when we arrived,” Thiago had said, after collating early intelligence received via survey drones deployed by ART and by some comm conversations with different colonists. “They’ve divided their compound up into at least two different areas, and other groups have scattered out to camps on the far side of the inhabited plateau.”

Karime, who was the primary negotiator on ART’s crew, said, “They’ve done things to each other that can’t be easily forgiven. We know—and they know—it was caused by the alien contamination, but I think it’s going to take time for them to come to terms with that.”

“Time we’re running out of,” Mensah said.

Which, it’s not like I don’t understand the whole idea of not forgiving stuff that happens to you. But it seems like they could not-hate each other long enough to avoid getting turned into corporate slave labor, and then start hating each other again after the threat assessment percentage went down.)

We took the shuttle over to the next router, which was on a small rocky hill west of the main colony site, surrounded by sparse clumps of gray-greenish spindly tree-fern things.

By the time we got there the other current operation, the one I was supposed to be monitoring security for before redacted, was already in progress. I was bored, so I reversed Three’s video to watch from the beginning.

Karime had come down in a shuttle with Three, and they had disembarked on the secondary colony site’s landing pad. The primary colony had been near the Pre–Corporation Rim site and had been abandoned after the first encounter with alien contamination. The colonists had put this one on the lower terrace of a plateau, using heavy equipment to carve out chambers and passages before building their habitats on top, so the colony had both open-air structures and belowground shelters to retreat to and to protect supplies and vital systems. Below the habitat, they had carved vehicle landing areas and ramps down to another agricultural installation and water production plant.

Karime had to greet the colonists waiting for her. That took a while, so long I had time to catch up to real time where they had started up the rock-cut steps. The weather was clear over there, visibility good. We could replace me with an automated weather drone, that would work, too.

Iris and Tarik started on the router, which looked like another big rock and was surrounded by a ferny-tree grove. Past it was a plain with reddish vegetation and some rocky outcrops. There was no way for the humans to get lost out here. There was ART, and the human colony wasn’t far away, and the comm was working, and the lift tower for the drop box shaft was visible in the distance, stretching up until it finally disappeared into the upper atmosphere. So even if the shuttle broke down, even if the comm and our feed stopped working, all they would have to do was walk toward the tower until one of ART’s patrolling pathfinders came to look for them and called for another shuttle.

I could walk in the opposite direction, just walk until— Yeah, I’m going to tag this section for delete.

I accessed Three’s drone feed so I had a better view of it and Karime. It was out of its armor, wearing an enviro suit, pretending to be a human. I tapped Three’s feed and said, More casual. Are you running your walk-like-a-human code?

Three replied, I am running the walk-like-a-human code. But it slowed down, made its joints looser. After two seconds, it added, This is unexpectedly difficult.

Tell me about it. You’re doing fine, I said.

We didn’t want the colonists to know Three was a SecUnit, mostly to fend off conversations about how much the giant angry planet-bombing transport likes this SecUnit and will it lose its mind if a rock falls on it or something. The colonists thought Three was just a really awkward augmented human. It’s not like there aren’t a lot of those around.

Karime and Three followed the colonists through the main part of the secondary colony and it looked way more like a human habitation than what was left of the original Pre–Corporation Rim site. (Which before coming here is not something I would have thought was a positive, but right now anything that didn’t say “major alien contamination incident in progress” was a plus.) This colony’s occasional bits of exposed piping, recycling storage, decorative planting, and interrupted partial constructions all looked messy and human and very not hostile-alien-virus-intending-to-take-over-your-brain.

Because that had happened. Almost happened.

ART was all over this feed, because it was not exactly thrilled with any of its humans going down to the planet at all.

(Transcript of the conversation during the initial mission briefing:

ART: If Karime is present at the colony and the colonists or corporates attempt to harm her, a threat to bomb this site may be ineffective.

Seth: Peri, can I speak to you in private for a moment?

Iris: It’s just joking.

Ratthi: Is it.

Me: You can bomb the terraforming engines on the other continent, it’s a better target anyway.

Thiago: I suppose SecUnit is joking, too.)

(ART actually was joking. Mostly. Iris told Thiago that it had undergone a traumatic experience and would verbally act out until it had fully processed what had happened. Thiago said he knew that but he also thought it enjoyed terrifying people. Iris was pissed off and just smiled in an “I’m going to pretend you aren’t serious so I don’t have to fight you right here in this corridor” way.)

(I’ve realized that Iris is ART’s Ratthi.)

(Thiago is incorrect: ART doesn’t enjoy terrifying people, it enjoys getting its own way and it has a variety of techniques it finds effective for that and vaguely or not-so-vaguely threatening statements are sure one of them. Iris is also correct that ART is still processing its traumatic experience and the fact that it had such a great result with arming its pathfinders and making the colonists think it was about to bomb the crap out of them is maybe something we should worry about, but I just have a lot to do right now, okay.)

(I was not joking. The terraforming engines are a perfect target: zero casualties if we evacuate the colony site immediately afterward and irreparable damage to infrastructure.)

(I’m just saying.)

Even with Three shadowing her, it wasn’t easy to watch Karime follow her colonist guide through a doorway and down another set of steps into the depths of the habitation. From ART’s personnel file, she was older than Mensah and she didn’t look like an intrepid space explorer, either, even in the protective environmental suit.

They led her into a room where she took a seat on a cushion on a stone floor, Three taking up a position behind her. It tried to stay standing, but Karime looked back, smiled, and motioned for it to sit down. It did. It reminded me of the feed vids of very young and very awkward baby fauna with limbs they apparently can’t fully control yet.

I guess at some point I was that awkward, but seriously.

Three’s intel drone went to the ceiling where it had a 360-degree view. The room was round and carved out of the rock, with a couple of lights attached to the high domed ceiling. The colonists took seats on the floor cushions to face Karime.

One was an older female human named Bellagaia, who had been the first colonist to try to initiate contact again after the explosion of the Pre–Corporation Rim site. ART’s human Kaede thought Bellagaia had probably been instrumental in bringing Faction One around to the idea of actually talking to us. She was here with the leaders of Faction Two, Danis and Variset, the “we’re too confused to know what we want and trust no one” faction. Bellagaia had managed to talk them into this meeting and we had sent Karime because she was not only ART’s lead negotiator but also looked nonthreatening.

ART wasn’t happy, but Three was sharing its threat assessment, which was running acceptably low. The colonists had put out cups and a flask of hot liquid, and some pieces of food on a plate. Instead of their surface work clothes, the three participants in the meeting wore softer clothing in brighter colors. Body language and other signs indicated they really did want to talk. When all the humans had settled into place, Karime said, “Thank you for allowing me to come here and speak to you.” There was a few seconds’ delay on the feed, as Thiago’s language module translated for her.

Karime was clearly prepared to be all reasonable and calm and persuasive about how banding together temporarily with the other factions in order to get the whole population off the planet would be the best solution if the legal case couldn’t stop Barish-Estranza. Danis and Variset were looking at her like she was going to suggest they all set themselves on fire for fun. More colonists had gathered in the doorways to listen or pretend to listen and then inevitably interject stupid comments. So, situation totally normal.

On my mission (make that “mission” because I was actually just standing there) the humans were already finishing up. Tarik was carrying the tool cases back to the shuttle, which was parked on the flat ground past the trees. Iris had finished the router diagnostics and had tuned in to the team feed to watch Karime’s conference. Ratthi had stopped looking at his data and was watching Tarik walk.

Then Bellagaia said, “First, before we get started with our questions— Some of us don’t want to tell you this. But there’s another colony site on this planet.”

Uh, yeah, we know that. The primary, and the other factional sites.

It took Karime three seconds to process the abrupt statement. (She was almost as good at not looking annoyed as Mensah was.) She kept her expression neutral and patient. “I’m sure we can accommodate their needs.” She gestured to Danis and Variset. “If there are other members of the different groups who should be present—”

“No, not one of our groups.” Bellagaia cut her off. Danis and Variset gave Bellagaia “what the hell” expressions. They didn’t like that she was saying this, whatever it was about. “Another site entirely. They split off nearly thirty years ago. They’re at the pole, near the terraforming.”

On the team feed, ART said, For fuck’s sake.

I said, aloud, “You have to be kidding me.”

The last thing we needed was more colonists. It was going to throw off all the contingency planning and resource-estimating and calculating that the humans had been doing.

It was going to keep us here longer.

Onboard ART, Martyn, who was monitoring from ART’s lounge, almost spilled his cup of hot liquid and said, “What?”

Sitting next to him, Kaede tapped the ship-wide comm and said, “Seth, come in here, please.”

On our router hill, Iris muttered, “What?” Ratthi turned to stare at me, worried. He hadn’t been monitoring that feed, just our separate mission group. Tarik, on his way back from the shuttle, saw that there was agitation and jogged to reach us faster. I added Ratthi and Tarik to Karime’s mission feed, which was quicker than explaining.

In the underground colony room, Karime lifted her brows. “Another occupied site?” I thought she was being careful not to show too much reaction. It was the way Mensah would have played it. On the feed, she said, The terraforming stations on the other continents are all supposed to be uninhabited auxiliaries, correct?

Correct, ART said. Perhaps they are intoxicated.

Karime replied, You know, I’ll believe anything right now.

Bellagaia explained, “They left when the contamination reports first started. In the beginning, we would hear from them on the comm, sometimes they’d fly in for holidays. Less over the years. We grew apart. We can’t call them directly, they have to call us.”

When she said that, I had a moment of hope. Maybe these other humans were imaginary. Humans are great at imagining stuff. That’s why their media is so good.

Possibly Karime also had a moment of hope because she said in a very even voice, “Why do they have to call you?”

Bellagaia explained, “The comm won’t work up there. It’s interference from the terraforming batteries.”

On the team feed, Iris said, Peri, would that kind of interference block your initial scan for signals?

ART answered, Yes, it did. But there was no priority for further scanning after the active colony site was located.

Sounding resigned, Seth said, So there could be another colony site.

Kaede said, There’s nothing about that in the mapping data we found in the drop box station.

Martyn added, Didn’t we get visual images of the engines at the pole?

Reconstructed scan images of the engines themselves, not the terrain around them, ART said.

“If we want to talk to them, we have to go there,” Bellagaia was saying. “But when this last outbreak started, we were afraid to send anybody up there, that we’d just be spreading the contamination. So they were never infected.”

Danis muttered, “We think they were never infected.” Impatient to get back to refusing to be convinced to not be stupid, she added, “They’re probably dead.”

One of the others, standing back in the doorway, said, “We survived. Until now.”

There was a murmur of “Despite you” from someone in the back, but the other humans pretended to ignore it.

“I see.” Lines formed on Karime’s forehead. She was distracted, listening to the chatter in the feed. Before I could put up a filter for her, ART said, Please stop excessive speaking on the mission feed and they all shut up. I know what humans are like, so I had only given Ratthi and Tarik read access. Karime said, “You said they were at the pole?”

Bellagaia nodded. “Yes, near the service base for the terraforming engines. They were mostly the original technicians who serviced the engines before they went on full automatic. They said they had found a good site up there to build in.”

Karime was thinking fast. “We can speak to them, warn them. Does Barish-Estranza know about them?”

Bellagaia shook her head and looked pointedly at Danis. “I don’t know.”

Danis’s expression was militant. “Our group wouldn’t tell them.”

Variset added, “We think our group wouldn’t tell them.”

Danis conceded, “The others might. Some of them are still confused.”

That caused a lot more muttered commentary from the audience in the doorway. Apparently they also thought Danis’s group was confused. Three sent me a report saying the movement and activity in the surrounding humans was still non-hostile. Yeah, I fucking know. (I didn’t say that, I just sent Acknowledge.)

Another human wriggled into the doorway and said, “That site, it was never meant to be a secondary site. It won’t be on the original colony charter.”

In ART’s lounge, Seth pressed his hands to his face and groaned. For a second I didn’t get it. I mean, I want to press my hands to my face and groan, too, but I pretty much always do.NôvelDrama.Org exclusive content.

Oh, right, I get it. The University’s legal case stipulating that this planet was a sovereign political entity and not salvage was based on the re-creation of the original colony’s charter that Pin-Lee and other humans had been working on. This was going to trigger another revamp. And with the new Barish-Estranza explorer here, we were running out of time.

Planets are big, and we could have missed other landing and habitation sites. ART must have scanned for other air bubbles at some point (I didn’t know what it did in its spare time), but when we first got here it mostly hadn’t given a crap about anything except finding its crew. The kind of mapping scans that would turn up low-impact habitations were usually done by satellite. (Or pathfinders, most of which ART had weaponized.) The planet had no intact satellites, just orbital debris from dead ones, too fragmentary to be identified as Corporation Rim or Pre–Corporation Rim.

ART said, The terraforming site would create signal interference that would disrupt both communication and feed traffic. Yeah, that’s what I thought. ART added, It would also interfere with a colony-sized air bubble installation.

Seth was frowning as he flicked through reports. He said, Right, right. That initial pathfinder scan was looking for air bubbles.

Karime nodded to herself. “Okay, that makes— Can you tell me anything else about this other colony site?”

Bellagaia gestured to the doorway behind her and said, “This is Corian.” She used a pronoun that our translator rendered as vi. “Vi’s the historian.”

Corian elbowed someone out of the way to get into the room. Vi dropped to the floor and curled vir legs up, facing Karime. Three didn’t alert, which was good. Threat assessment was reading Corian as a non-hostile anxious to communicate. Vi patted vir chest. “I keep the records, understood? This is not personal knowledge.”

Karime nodded. “Understood.”

Corian had an intent expression, like vi had been waiting for a long time to talk about this. “Contact stopped twenty years ago. There have been reports of connections, from maintenance taking up birds to check on terraforming progress, but none verified. The engines are too noisy.”

Somebody else countered, “Auntie said the connections had the right signatures—”

Bellagaia was watching Karime carefully and must have gotten some sense of the turmoil that was going on. To the others, she said, “Shush. Let Corian speak.” Amazingly, they shut up.

Corian continued, “It wasn’t just the contamination, see. I read the journals from the time they left, and they were separatist. Multiple disagreements on multiple levels. That’s why the lack of communication. We can’t tell you where they are exactly, because we don’t know. They wouldn’t tell us.”

I thought Karime was having the same “oh shit” moment as the rest of the crew but hiding it very well. She looked around at the colonists. “Thank you for trusting us with this. We won’t share it with Barish-Estranza.” She hesitated, clearly trying to say the next part without sounding like she was giving them orders. “I understand you haven’t made a decision about what you want to do yet. It’s in your best interest not to share it with them, either, until you’re certain.”

They may already be aware of it, ART sent.

“Important, yes, but that isn’t my primary concern,” Corian said, still focused on Karime. “The journals talk about a rumor that they had settled underground, in a cave system.”

Three’s drone saw Karime’s face sink and her shoulders tighten. Me too, Karime, me too. She echoed, “A cave system.”

Danis tossed her head. “With the geology of that region? A cave system big enough for a colony? Not likely.”

Ugh, you are kidding me. I had (a) visual input, which was Ratthi shaking his fist at the sky and Tarik making hair-tearing-out gestures and Iris sitting there with her face set in a wince; (b) the video feed from ART’s lounge, where Seth was gently banging his head against the table while Martyn patted him on the back. Karime said, “You think it’s another Pre–Corporation Rim site. Or an alien remnant site?”

“More likely to be Pre–Corporation Rim, but—” Corian made an openhanded gesture. “You see the problem.”

Yeah, we saw the problem.

Mensah tapped my feed from the Preservation responder. Seth just messaged me that we have an unexpected development. Is Karime all right?

Yes. She’s busy getting some fantastic news right now. I forwarded the last section of the conversation.

Some of the other colonists were protesting that there was no evidence of any other Pre-CR site and certainly not any alien remnant site, how could you even think that, etc., while Bellagaia looked at them like she was exhausted. Karime stayed focused on Corian, listening intently as vi talked. After vi finished, Karime asked, “Can you give me any more information where this site might be?” No, it turned out, vi could not, and nobody else had a clue, either, just that it was near enough to the terraforming engines to disrupt attempts to reach them by comm. Corian had been checking the records vi had access to, trying to locate anyone still alive who might have talked to the separatists at some point in the last twenty years, but with no success.

Mensah had had time to review the feed video. She muttered, “Oh, you have to be kidding me.”

Yeah.