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.