“We’re just being cautious,” Mensah said, answering Overse. She took the hopper down at the edge of the valley, on the far side of the streams.
I gave Mensah a few hints through the feed, that they should break out the handweapons in the survival gear, that Ratthi should stay behind inside the hopper with the hatch sealed and locked since he’d never done the weapon-training course, and that, most important, I should go first. They were quiet, subdued. Up until now, I think they had all been looking at this as probably a natural disaster, that they were going to be digging survivors out of a collapsed habitat, or helping fight off a herd of Hostile Ones.
This was something else.
Mensah gave the orders and we started forward, me in front, the humans a few steps behind. They were in their full suits with helmets, which gave some protection but had been meant for environmental hazards, not some other heavily armed human (or angry malfunctioning rogue SecUnit) deliberately trying to kill them. I was more nervous than Ratthi, who was jittery on our comms, monitoring the scans, and basically telling us to be careful every other step.
I had my built-in energy weapons and the big projectile weapon I was cradling. I also had six drones, pulled from the hopper’s supply and under my control through its feed. They were the small kind, barely a centimeter across; no weapons, just cameras. (They make some which aren’t much bigger and have a small pulse weapon, but you have to get one of the upper-tier company packages mostly designed for much larger contracts.) I told the drones to get in the air and gave them a scouting pattern.
I did that because it seemed sensible, not because I knew what I was doing. I am not a combat murderbot, I’m Security. I keep things from attacking the clients and try to gently discourage the clients from attacking each other. I was way out of my depth here, which was another reason I hadn’t wanted the humans to come here.
We crossed the shallow streams, sending a group of water invertebrates scattering away from our boots. The trees were short and sparse enough that I had a good view of the camp from this angle. I couldn’t detect any DeltFall security drones, by eye or with the scanners on my drones. Ratthi in the hopper wasn’t picking up anything either. I really, really wished I could pinpoint the location of those three SecUnits, but I wasn’t getting anything from them.
SecUnits aren’t sentimental about each other. We aren’t friends, the way the characters on the serials are, or the way my humans were. We can’t trust each other, even if we work together. Even if you don’t have clients who decide to entertain themselves by ordering their SecUnits to fight each other.
The scans read the perimeter sensors as dead and the drones weren’t picking up any warning indicators. The DeltFall HubSystem was down, and without it, no one inside could access our feed or comms, theoretically. We crossed over and into the landing area for their hoppers. They were between us and the first habitat, the vehicle storage to one side. I was leading us in at an angle, trying to get a visual on the main habitat door, but I was also checking the ground. It was mostly bare of grass from all the foot traffic and hopper landings. From the weather report we’d gotten before the satellite quit, it had rained here last night, and the mud had hardened. No activity since then.
I passed that info to Mensah through the feed and she told the others. Keeping her voice low, Pin-Lee said, “So whatever happened, it wasn’t long after we spoke to them on the comm.”
“They couldn’t have been attacked by someone,” Overse whispered. There was no reason to whisper, but I understood the impulse. “There’s no one else on this planet.”
“There’s not supposed to be anyone else on this planet,” Ratthi said, darkly, over the comm from our hopper.
There were three SecUnits who were not me on this planet, and that was dangerous enough. I got my visual on the main habitat hatch and saw it was shut, no sign of anything forcing its way inside. The drones had circled the whole structure by now, and showed me the other entrances were the same. That was that. Hostile Fauna don’t come to the door and ask to be let inside. I sent the images to Mensah’s feed and said aloud, “Dr. Mensah, it would be better if I went ahead.”
She hesitated, reviewing what I’d just sent her. I saw her shoulders tense. I think she had just come to the same conclusion I had. Or at least admitted to herself that it was the strongest possibility. She said, “All right. We’ll wait here. Make sure we can monitor.”
She’d said “we” and she wouldn’t have said that if she didn’t mean it, unlike some clients I’d had. I sent my field camera’s feed to all four of them and started forward.
I called four of the drones back, leaving two to keep circling the perimeter. I checked the vehicle shed as I moved past it. It was open on one side, with some sealed lockers in the back for storage. All four of their surface vehicles were there, powered down, no sign of recent tracks, so I didn’t go in. I wouldn’t bother searching the small storage spaces until we got down to the looking-for-all-the-body-parts phase.
I walked up to the hatch of the first habitat. We didn’t have an entry code, so I was expecting to have to blow the door, but when I tapped the button it slid open for me. I told Mensah through the feed that I wouldn’t speak aloud on the comm anymore.
She tapped back an acknowledgment on the feed, and I heard her telling the others to get off my feed and my comm, that she was going to be the only one speaking to me so I wasn’t distracted. Mensah underestimated my ability to ignore humans but I appreciated the thought. Ratthi whispered, “Be careful,” and signed off.
I had the weapon up going in, through the suit locker area and into the first corridor. “No suits missing,” Mensah said in my ear, watching the field camera. I sent my four drones ahead, maintaining an interior scouting pattern. This was a nicer habitat than ours, wider halls, newer. Also empty, silent, the smell of decaying flesh drifting through my helmet filters. I headed toward the hub, where their main crew area should be.
The lights were still on and air whispered through the vents, but I couldn’t get into their SecSystem with their feed down. I missed my cameras.
At the door to the hub, I found their first SecUnit. It was sprawled on its back on the floor, the armor over its chest pierced by something that made a hole approximately ten centimeters wide and a little deeper. We’re hard to kill, but that’ll do it. I did a brief scan to make sure it was inert, then stepped over it and went through into the crew area.