System Collapse
(The Murderbot Diaries #7)
by Martha Wells
Chapter One
DR. BHARADWAJ TOLD ME once that she thought I hated planets because of the whole thing with being considered expendable and the possibility of being abandoned. I told her it was because planets were boring.
Yeah, that was a lie. Objectively, planets are less boring than staring at walls and guarding equipment in a mining installation. But planets tend to be less boring in the bad way.
Planets where you have to investigate the probably-not-empty, possibly-alien-contaminated Pre–Corporation Rim occupation site while wearing an environmental suit instead of armor are especially not boring in the bad way, maybe the worst way.
Especially when you could have been wearing armor, but you decided to be weird about it instead.
I should back up.
So the next time I get optimistic about something, I want one of you to punch me in the face. Okay, not really, because let’s be real, that would end badly. Maybe remind me to punch myself in the face.
On the team feed, ART said, SecUnit, status report.
Or punch ART in the face. I sent back, I wish I could punch you in the face.
ART said, I wish you could try.
Yes, I know it was just humoring me. And yes, we were still on the stupid alien-contaminated lost colony planet despite the fact that we (me, ART, our humans, but mostly me) really wanted out of this system.
ART added, I still need a status report.
I said, Status: in progress. I’d been sending it drone video plus it had access to my visual data, so it knew I was still currently moving through tumbled rockfall at the foot of a low plateau, with an agricultural planting area to my right. Whatever was planted there was green and taller than me, and providing adequate cover from our currently designated Hostile One.
It was midmorning planetary time and the cloud cover, which was a by-product of the terraforming, was patchy enough for the sun to come through. ScoutDrone1 was overhead giving me a vantage point of the ongoing situation, so I could see the router installation on another rise past the far end of the planted field. The building itself was smallish, about the size of one of ART’s shuttles, but it was enclosed in a much bigger protective shell made of artificial stone. It looked like a big cylindrical boulder, placed at the foot of the low plateau, which had crumbled into a slope of slabs of rock and actual boulders. (Why artificial stone? Because the dead people from Adamantine Explorations had meant for everything to look pretty once the colony build was complete. I don’t know why that’s more depressing than them doing a shitty job and intending to abandon their colonists, but it just was.)
The thick green flora waved in the slight breeze under the colony’s air bubble, and despite my scan and the drone’s scan, it was making me nervous. At least it was making me nervous for a survival-based reason instead of … redacted.
The front of the installation had an indentation artistically carved to look like a natural curve in the rock, but it was actually shelter for the metal hatch that was currently open. At the moment, it would have been better for the hatch to be closed, but when Ratthi and ART’s humans Iris and Tarik ran in there, they hadn’t had time to close it behind them before Hostile One had jammed one of its long metal limbs through.
Remember those agricultural bots that I said looked scary but were actually harmless? Yes, I was hilariously wrong about that at the time and I hadn’t gotten any less wrong since then.
This ag-bot was only nine meters tall but still covered with spike-like feelers for planting or tilling or whatever. Its lower body had twelve long jointed limbs for moving through thick foliage without crushing plants, and its upper body was a weirdly long curved neck with a small head on top where its main sensors were. It was also batshit out of control, its feed locked, and, according to what Iris had been able to observe before she needed to run like hell, chock-full of alien contamination.
ART said, I need your status, not the mission status.
Ugh, my status.
I wasn’t supposed to come down to the planet again. Me, ART, Mensah, Seth, and Martyn had all made that decision, because of redacted. I had even had an assignment during this day-cycle, sort of. It wasn’t really busywork, but it wasn’t not busywork, either. Karime had an in-person meeting planned with a faction of colonists at the main site habitation, and Three was going with her for security while pretending to be a human (always a fun time) and I was supposed to monitor Three and make sure it knew what to do and to not let ART give it anxiety. (Or more anxiety than it already had on its own.) I had been lying on the bunk in one of ART’s cabins watching The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon (episode 121, on repeat) while waiting for Karime and Three’s shuttle to arrive at the meeting site, when ART had slammed into my feed and said, I need you.
ART couldn’t use one of its remaining weaponized pathfinders to take out the agricultural bot. I mean, it could, but that was problematic for a couple of reasons, one being that the pathfinders are jury-rigged bombs—they detonate on command but there’s no way to regulate their impact area. The bot was too close to the router installation and more importantly to the open hatch where the humans were taking shelter.
On the feed, Ratthi said, SecUnit, how are you doing?
I couldn’t get a drone into the router installation without alerting the ag-bot that I was there, but according to the humans they were in the far end of the housing, in a recessed maintenance bay, about three meters from what is apparently the maximum reach of the ag-bot’s … tentacle, poking limb, whatever it’s called. I’m fine, Ratthi. Don’t get any closer to the tentacle.
It’s a growth stimulator, Ratthi said. You don’t have to rush, we’re fine.
You’re not fine, Ratthi, for fuck’s sake. (For however many corporate standard years, all I got from humans was “Run in there now no matter how likely you are to get blown to tiny pieces when a quiet tactical approach has a higher percentage of success” and now it’s “Oh no we’re fine, we can hang out in this objectively terrifying immediately hazardous situation for however long.”)
(I’m just saying that it would be nice for the humans to give me a realistic situation report for once.)
(Dr. Bharadwaj says even good change is stressful.)
ScoutDrone1 hadn’t found a decent vantage point yet for me to get close enough to take a shot. Sort of a shot. The weapon I had was not actually a weapon, it was a recall beacon. (I know. It sounds like the whole retrieval is jacked from the beginning. “The weapon is a recall beacon.” They wouldn’t even pull this off on Sanctuary Moon.)
I had an actual gun, one of ART’s projectile weapons, but we knew from experience how many shots it took to down an enraged ag-bot, and getting up right on its processor for a point-blank impact was not something anybody wanted me to try to attempt, especially me. And shooting it with my onboard energy weapons was not going to work. (ART had altered an environmental suit for me so the sleeves locked in to my weapon ports and I could fire without burning holes through the fabric, but I just didn’t have the capacity to take out this thing.)
I needed something that would work from a distance, and the recall beacon was similar to certain models that the company used, though not nearly as powerful. It was designed to allow a human to hold it during operation and not be exploded into bits, so it could be operated by a landing party in distress. The idea was to get a payload with a transponder high enough in atmosphere that the signal pulse it would broadcast could easily be picked up by a ship in orbit. But you know, if you hit something with that payload at closer range, it’ll knock a really big hole in it.