Artificial Condition: The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

Author:Martha Wells
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Hard Science Fiction, Action & Adventure, Fiction
ISBN: 9781250186928
Publisher: Tor.com
Published: 2018-05-07T14:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

I TOOK THEM TO the public shuttle slots first, then past that section to the private docks. Checking the schedules, ART had already scanned a likely shuttle. It was privately owned but the frequency of its trips to and from the transit ring suggested an entrepreneur who was offering private rides for hard currency.

This proved to be accurate, and it would allow Rami, Maro, and Tapan to leave without their employment vouchers being scanned. It would probably have been safe at this point to put them on a public shuttle, as long as there was no advance notice of which one they were taking. Killware couldn’t travel over the feed to infect a shuttle; there were too many protections in place. Whoever had planned to kill us on arrival had had to deliver the killware directly, through a data port actually inside the shuttle’s cockpit.

But I’m programmed to be paranoid. This private shuttle had the benefit not only of anonymity, but of an augmented human pilot who would be in place in case something interfered with the bot pilot. Plus ART, who was already cozying up to said bot pilot and would be keeping an eye on the shuttle during the brief trip. (ART’s idea of “cozying” being somewhat overbearing, I had already had to intervene once to assure the bot pilot that the big mean transport had promised not to hurt it.)

“You’re not going with us?” Rami asked, standing in the small embarkation area. The private docks were dingy and small compared to the Port Authority’s docks, with stains on the metal partitions and some of the lights up in the rocky ceiling broken or dim. Humans and a few bots were moving along the walkway above us, and I kept an eye on both approaches through the security cameras. The shuttle was already loaded into its slot and its hatch was open, with a small augmented human standing on the ramp to take the money. Six other passengers had already boarded and it was taking a large portion of my self-control not to just scoop up my clients and carry them onboard.

I said, “I still need to do some research here. I’ll go back to the transit ring when I’m finished.”

“How do we pay you?” Maro asked. “I mean, can we still afford you after … everything?” After they tried to kill us, she added in our joint feed connection.

“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

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