Artificial Condition (The Murderbot Diaries, #2)(21)

“I’ll check my social feed profile on the ring,” I said, and felt pretty good that I had even remembered it existed. “Send a note to me there, and I’ll find you when I get back.”

“It’s just, I know we’re—” Tapan glanced around. Her expression was tense and unhappy, her body language bordering on desperate. “We can’t stay here, but I can’t give up, either. Our work—”

I said, “Sometimes people do things to you that you can’t do anything about. You just have to survive it and go on.”

They all stopped talking and stared at me. It made me nervous and I immediately switched my view to the nearest security camera so I could watch us from the side. I had said it with more emphasis than I intended, but it was just the way things were. I wasn’t sure why it had such an impact on them. Maybe I sounded like I knew what I was talking about. Maybe it was the two murder attempts.

Then Maro nodded, her mouth set in a grim line. She and Rami looked at each other and Rami nodded sadly. Maro said, “We need to get back to the others, figure out what to do next. Look for the next assignment.”

Rami added, “We’ll start over. We did it once, we can do it again.”

Tapan looked like she wanted to protest, but was too depressed to argue.

They wanted to say goodbye a lot and thank me, and I herded them up to the ramp while they were doing it, and watched Rami pay for their passage with a currency card that the crew person pressed to an interface. Then they were aboard.

The hatch closed and the shuttle’s feed signaled post-boarding mode, waiting for its clearance to leave. I went back down the access, heading for the walkway. I needed to get the tube over to the area where the tunnel diversion had occurred and start searching for Ganaka Pit. It was a relief to have my clients headed back to safety. But it felt odd to be on my own again, working for no one except myself.

I went to the tube access and boarded the next capsule to stop. Each capsule had seating for twenty people, plus an overhead rack to hold on to. The gravity was adjusted inside the cab to compensate for the motion. I took a seat with the seven humans already aboard. ART said, The shuttle has launched. I’ll monitor your feed, but much of my attention will be on it.

I sent an acknowledgment. I was trying to isolate why I felt so uneasy. Trapped in a small enclosed space with humans, check. Missing my drones, check. My Giant Asshole Research Transport too busy to complain at, check. Needed to actually focus on what I was doing so couldn’t watch media, check. But that wasn’t what it was. I hadn’t done a good job for my clients. I had had the opportunity, and had failed. As a SecUnit, I had the responsibility for my clients’ safety but no authority to do anything other than make suggestions, and try to use the company regulations inbuilt in a SecSystem to override the humans’ suicidal stupidity and homicidal impulses. This time I had responsibility and authority, and had still failed.

I told myself they were alive, I just hadn’t gotten their property back, which had actually not been part of the job they hired me for. It didn’t help.

I got off the tube on the far end of its circuit. This was a warren of tunnels that according to the map led off to various private tube accesses for the distant mining pits. Only a few humans got off the tube here, all heading immediately down the tunnel for the nearest tube interchange. I went the other direction.

I spent the next hour hacking cameras and security barriers, slipping in and out of half-completed tunnels, many with warning markers for air quality. Finally I located one that showed evidence of past use as a mining access. It was big enough for the largest hauler bots, and the cameras and lights were down. As I went along it, climbing over rock and metal debris, I felt the public feed drop out.

I stopped and checked ART’s comm, but it was only picking up static. I didn’t think it was any deliberate attempt to block my connection to the rest of the installation; I’d experienced that type of outage before and this felt different. I think this tunnel was so deep below the surface that the comm and the feed needed powered relays to get out, and those weren’t functioning anymore. Something ahead still had power, because my feed was picking up intermittent signals, all automated warnings. I kept going.

I had to open another security barrier, but past it found a cargo tube access and managed to push the sliding door open. A small passenger tube was still there. It hadn’t been used in a long time, long enough for the water and scattered trash on the carpet to combine and grow something squishy. I made my way up to the front compartment where the manual emergency controls were. There was still power in the batteries, though not much. It had been left here, forgotten, slowly dying in the darkness as the hours ticked away.

Not that I was feeling morbid, or anything.

I checked to make sure there was no active security attached to it, then got it started. It groaned into life, lifted off the ground, and started down the tunnel into darkness, following its last programmed route. I sat down on the bench to wait.

*

Finally the tube’s scan picked up a blockage ahead and threw an alarm code. I had five episodes of different drama series, two comedies, a book about the history of the exploration of alien remnants in the Corporation Rim, and a multi-part art competition from Belal Tertiary Eleven queued and paused, but I was actually watching episode 206 of Sanctuary Moon, which I’d already seen twenty-seven times. Yes, I was a little nervous. When the tube started to slow, I sat up.