In the other direction, the plain was open and mostly flat, except for some low mounds closer to the high metal shields around the base of the terraforming engines. Those mounds looked human-made, but were so close to the shield that they were probably only artifacts from the initial construction. It would be stupid to build a habitat so close to the engines. I’m not even sure putting one here under a roof that looked like a landing pad was a great idea. Any Pre–Corporation Rim structure that had already been here, buried or not, this close to the build site would have been discovered by Adamantine during the initial engine installation. Not that they would put it on the survey or anything.
Could Adamantine have found a Pre-CR underground structure that it had intended to repurpose, that only some of the colonists knew about? Maybe just the ones who had been involved with the initial installation? One of the things Corian had told Karime was that colony history/lore said at least some of the separatists had been part of the terraforming crew. Vi had also told her that census records for that point in the colony’s development were currently inaccessible due to the alien virus issue. (A lot of older data had been locked out of the active system to hopefully keep it safe, which was useless, since that wasn’t how the virus was transferred, which they didn’t know then, but anyway. Their systems colony-wide were completely shit-creeked and I don’t know who was going to fix it except it sure as hell wasn’t me.) So there was no way to know how many humans had actually left the main colony to come here.
Adamantine had leaned toward new permanent structures that could be repurposed as the colony grew, like the surface dock for the drop shaft, which could have been just a rough utilitarian cargo off-loader, and instead was a nice building with lots of space for storage and workshops and offices, designed to eventually become a commercial entry point for the colony, built solid enough to shelter a large portion of the population in a bad weather event. The drop box’s arrival and departure even had its own theme music. It was a great design. Except for the whole alien contamination thing.
If Adamantine had wanted a habitat up here, they would have made it a nice structure that could be expanded later for education or tourism or something. Which meant it would have been in the foothills, not down here close to the engines. Except why would Adamantine want a structure here at all, in a blackout zone?
Unless they had a compelling reason to need a more secure colony site. Like if they had some kind of warning of the hostile corporate takeover that had eventually destroyed them. Maybe these separatists had been following secret Adamantine directives to look for a new site near the engines to build a habitat.
That made sense, actually, on a lot of different levels. (Mark save-for-later: Did Adamantine direct a select group of colonists to build an emergency habitat up here? Because the blackout zone would hide them from scanners and/or because the terraforming engines were an expensive asset too essential for an invading corporation to bomb? Or both? Then the colonists had lost contact with Adamantine and changed their mission parameters.)
(If you think it sounds like I’m trying to talk myself out of the idea that there’s another buried Pre-CR structure up here, you’re right.)
ART-drone said, Your performance reliability level had a .05 percent spike.
ART has been monitoring me due to redacted. Which is a whole thing, I don’t know, I don’t want to talk about it.
The ground sensor had started to send readings into my feed, and I told ART-drone, I had an idea, and sent it the save-for-later tagged info.
ART-drone said, Interesting.
It was humoring me again.
Sensor results = a large volume of solid material with the chemical composition matching the dirt and rocks in this area. So no hidden underground habitat here, at least, not that I was really expecting one. But we were right about the pad. It was the same composition as the artificial stone in the surface dock and the other Adamantine-constructed structures at the main colony site. Which meant this landing zone was definitely Adamantine-era, not Pre–Corporation Rim. Which we probably knew anyway, but you know, science.
Also it was a relief. If there was a hidden Pre-CR structure up here, I wasn’t standing on it.
I’d given ART-drone access to my eyes so it had been looking at the terrain with me, and it said, There was only a twenty-two percent chance that the separatist colonists would construct an underground installation this close to the terraforming engines.
They might want to, if they were very, very stupid, I told it. But they wouldn’t be able to get a company bond on it. We didn’t know if Adamantine had contracted for safety bonds on its colony. That info would have been in the destroyed records that we only had fragments of. And I wasn’t sure how common safety bonds had been forty-plus corporate standard years ago, or how the presence of Pre-CR structures would affect the price. ART could probably find it in its historical data if I could construct a good query.
Or, you know, if there were safety bonds, or any kind of guarantor bond, it would be a reason to conceal the existence of additional Pre-CR structures that might be associated with past alien contamination incidents.
I don’t know, I’m kind of all over the place right now.
You’re stalling, ART-drone said.
I am not. I can stand here and be useless without any ulterior motives, thanks.
My drone on the shuttle heard Tarik say, “Are we going to get a report anytime soon?”
The drone watched as Ratthi’s face did a thing and his voice went a little tight. He said, “When there’s something to report.”
“Since when did you become a micromanager, Tarik,” Iris added, in what definitely wasn’t a question. She was smiling a little, and I’m pretty sure she was bantering at him, but it could also be a hint for him to leave me alone.
Tarik held up one hand. “I was just asking.”
ART-drone said, And I am asking if you are critiquing my administration of this mission?
Yes, because ART loves to be critiqued.
Tarik obviously knew that, too. “Hey, hey, I was just curious about what was happening, that’s all! I am absolutely not critiquing anybody!”
The thing about Tarik was that he was new and had only been with the crew for the previous three hundred and eighty-seven corporate standard day cycles. So everybody fucked with him constantly.
At least while they were fucking with Tarik nobody was noticing that I actually hadn’t made a report yet and was in fact just standing there. Well, obviously, ART-drone had noticed. And Ratthi had noticed or he wouldn’t have shut Tarik down in an un-Ratthi-like way. Iris had probably noticed, too.
Get it together, Murderbot.
I sent the ground sensor’s report into the team feed. While the humans read it and also came to the conclusion that there was nothing under the pad, I tried to think what to do next.
Okay, even if you’re using low-gravity movers to transport your heavy digging equipment or building supplies, there should still be some sign of a road between here and the habitat, wherever it was. As far as we knew, the separatist colonists weren’t hiding when they came up here; the other colonists knew where they went. They would have built a road, or a walkway or something. It was here somewhere, even if it was buried under the dust.
Or something.
I pulled some video of the digging equipment I had seen stored in the deep excavation under the Pre–Corporation Rim colony structure when the Targets had stuck me down there to get contaminated. I had been more occupied with leaving than with taking archival footage of aging construction equipment, but while there had been some wheeled vehicles, most had been the kind that can float a little distance above the ground. Which made sense in a developing colony where you would need to build your infrastructure as you went along. But it would also use a lot of power. There were more efficient ways to move those vehicles.