Exit Strategy

Chapter Seven

ONE LAST THUMP ON the barrier told me the Combat SecUnit wasn’t happy about losing. My organic parts felt quivery, I had shrapnel stuck all over me, but I was still at 83 percent performance reliability. (It’s good there’s not a separate statistic for my mental performance reliability because I don’t think even I would rate it as all that great at the moment.)

Gurathin knelt beside an open maintenance floor panel next to the gate, tools scattered around, and Ratthi held a light for him. The panel was painted with an emergency feed marker label that in a selection of different languages read Manual Release. I didn’t even know they had those in ports. I’m a SecUnit, not an engineer.

Our shuttle slot was six locks down, glowing emergency lighting showing me Mensah standing beside it holding a small energy weapon. Why the hell did she have that? Oh, because although a security barrier had dropped in the other gate at the end of this section, a small crowd of humans had been trapped here and stood back against the stationside bulkhead.

We needed to get out of here before somebody convinced PortSec to get those barriers up.

I shoved up and my knee joint started to give way. I staggered and Ratthi ran up to me. He hesitated, waving his hands. “Do you mind if we help—”

I gripped his shoulder to stay upright and tried not to fall on him. I was fairly sure the joint had been hit by shrapnel from drones destroyed in the air, as a direct hit would have taken my leg off. Gurathin ran to shoulder my other arm and we limp-ran awkwardly to the shuttle.

Mensah jerked her head to tell us to go in first while she covered our retreat. Arguing with her would be stupid, but it was hard to override that programming. We went through the hatch and then she backed in after us. She cycled the lock closed and yelled, “Pin-Lee, we’re clear!”

Thumps vibrated through the deck as the shuttle pushed away from the lock. I pulled away from Ratthi and Gurathin, who climbed out of the way so Mensah could step past us and up to the cockpit. It was a small ship-to-ship shuttle, with only one compartment with seating along the bulkheads, and a cubby for emergency supply storage and a restroom. I had ridden in this exact model of shuttle before, on contract.

My knee joint gave out and I collapsed on the deck. I’d tuned my pain sensors down, but maybe too much. I said, “Ratthi, I really need you to get this shrapnel out of my knee joint.”

Ratthi leaned over me. “Can it wait? There’s a MedSystem on the ship.”

I could already feel the company systems at the edge of my feed, recognizing me, wanting in. I accessed the shuttle’s cameras, fought a brief battle with ShuttleSecSys, and started deleting everything that had been recorded since the Preservation team boarded. Ratthi was being an optimist again. On the company ship, it wouldn’t be a MedSystem, it would be a cubicle. “It absolutely cannot wait,” I told him.

Ratthi dropped to the deck beside me and yelled for Gurathin to bring the shuttle’s emergency kit.

In the cockpit, Pin-Lee was monitoring the bot pilot while Mensah stood beside her. A warning from station Port Authority set off a comm alarm. “What is it?” Pin-Lee asked.

Mensah’s expression was hard with fury. “An ‘unnamed corporate resident’ has just launched a ship and it’s on an intercept course with us.”

Pin-Lee said something really filthy that wasn’t supposed to be in my language base. “Guess which corporate resident.”

They thought it was GrayCris, but I’m pretty sure it would be a Palisade ship, contracted by GrayCris. Ratthi got the scalpel and extractor out of the emergency kit. With Gurathin leaning over his shoulder, he opened the organic material just above my damaged knee joint to reach the shrapnel.

A Palisade ship could catch the shuttle and board it. The last thing I wanted was to ask the company gunship for help. The last thing I wanted was for GrayCris to catch us. The two last things were incompatible. It was time to stop fucking around. I accessed comm and secured a feed channel to the company gunship.

I sent, System System.

I had three seconds to wonder if the company interface would still acknowledge me. I’d gotten to the bot pilot earlier, but that was a partial hack. This time I was going to the front door. Then I heard, Acknowledge.

I sent: Active, hazardous retrieval in progress, bonded clients, go go go go.

The reply was Received and the shuttle’s bot pilot reported that the gunship had just rotated toward us.

As Ratthi extracted the projectile from my knee joint, I watched the sensors.

The gunship accelerated. I couldn’t tell if it was communicating with the GrayCris intercept or not. Then Shuttle’s sensors picked up the energy signature that meant the gunship was powering up primary weapons. Oh yeah, they were communicating all right.

Ratthi tried to use wound sealant to close the hole in my organic tissue, but it wouldn’t take because of the proximity of my inorganic joint. I was going to leak for a while. “Are you okay?” he asked, watching me worriedly.

Gurathin sat on the bench, frowning at me.

“Not really,” I said.

Sensors showed that the Palisade ship had changed course and slowed. The view wavered as the gunship snatched us in passing and began to curve away from the station. The shuttle shivered as the hull closed around us. I grabbed the bench and started to climb to my feet.

Ratthi said, “Careful, careful. You don’t want to reopen—Oh, it’s still bleeding, sorry—”

Still frowning, Gurathin said, “They can’t take you away from us. Dr. Mensah will not allow it.”

The lock was cycling and Mensah stamped back through the shuttle, barefoot and mad. She handed her energy weapon to Gurathin, who shoved it into the shuttle’s emergency kit.

As the hatch opened, Mensah pushed forward in front of me.

Standing in the opening was a figure in a powered suit. It was an augmented human, not a SecUnit, but the gun was big enough.

Mensah planted her hands on either side of the hatch, making it clear they would have to come through her to get inside. “We are bonded clients, and this is my personal security consultant. Is there a problem?”

A crew member peered out from behind the suit and said, “Dr. Mensah, SecUnits are not allowed aboard armed transports, unless there are special circumstances. It’s … too dangerous.”

Mensah said, “These are special circumstances.” Her voice was icy.

Nobody moved. The ship’s secured feed activity went frantic for seven minutes that felt like thirty. (And the way I experience time, that’s a lot.) (Yes, I started some media in background.) The gunship’s bot pilot pinged me curiously. Active SecUnits are never carried on gunships because they’re right, it’s too dangerous; we’re shipped on unarmed transports as cargo. The bot pilot had communicated with SecUnits over the feed on missions, but it had never had one aboard before.

Then the comm activated and a voice said, “Dr. Mensah, this is the ship’s combat supervisor. I’ve been asked to secure a bond to guarantee safety aboard this ship.”

Ratthi objected, “What? We already have a bond.”

The comm clarified, “This bond is required when bringing an unsecured deadly weapon aboard an armed company transport.”

Yes, that’s me they’re talking about. It would have been more funny if I hadn’t been leaking onto the deck.

Pin-Lee’s voice was somewhere between furious and incredulous. “Are they serious? Right, never mind, that was a stupid question, of course they’re serious.” She turned as Gurathin handed her their bag. She muttered, “How much do these fuckers want now?”

She was right, they were fuckers. Not that I hadn’t known that before, but it was just harder to take now. I tapped my private feed connection to Mensah and said, I can take over this ship.

Mensah replied, No, there’s no need, we can pay them.

We shouldn’t have to. We don’t have to. The bot pilot was curious and friendly, but it was no ART, it couldn’t stop me. I could take over the ship’s SecSystem before this human with the temptingly large familiar projectile weapon could blink. I could get that weapon before that human could blink. I wanted to do it, and it bled through into the feed.

Mensah turned, gripped the collar of my jacket with both hands, and said, “No.”

Everyone got quiet. Ratthi and Gurathin, Pin-Lee still fishing in the bag for hard currency cards, the crew outside the hatch, the voice on the comm. I suddenly needed to see Mensah’s face and I dropped the shuttleSec camera views and looked down at her.

She looked mad and exhausted, which was exactly the way I felt. I sent, You have no idea what I am.

She tilted her head and looked more mad. I know exactly what you are. You’re afraid, you’re hurt, and you need to calm the fuck down so we can get through this situation alive.

I said, I am calm. You need to be calm, to take over a gunship.

Mensah’s eyes narrowed. Security consultants don’t get their clients into unnecessary pitched battles for control of their rescue ship. She added, Because that would be stupid.

She wasn’t afraid of me. And it hit me that I didn’t want that to change. She had just been through a traumatic experience, and I was making it worse. Something was overwhelming me, and it wasn’t the familiar wave of not-caring.

Fine, I sent. I sounded sulky, because I was sulky.

I hate emotions.

“Good,” she said aloud. “Pin-Lee, do we have the money for this idiotic unnecessary bond?”

“Yes.” Pin-Lee waved a handful of hard currency cards. “If that’s not enough, I have our account info, I can transmit an authorization—”

Mensah finished glaring at me and turned around. The crew who had just watched her face down a rogue SecUnit, in person and via the powered armor’s helmet cam, stared wide-eyed. She said, “Since we are bonded clients, may we come aboard while we settle our bill?”

There was a hesitation, then the comm said, “Please come aboard, Dr. Mensah.”

I told you the thing about SecUnits not being allowed to sit on human furniture while on or off duty. So the first thing I did when the crew led us through the lock and down the corridor to a passenger seating area was to sit down on the padded bench.

(I’m not sure it made any impression on the humans. Humans don’t notice these things. But it felt good to me.)

Gurathin sat on the bench against the opposite wall and Ratthi plopped down next to me. This was a big compartment a couple of levels below the flight deck, probably used for meetings with non-company personnel, since it was isolated from the rest of the ship’s structure and the upholstery was relatively new.

The ship’s security crew had stationed themselves in the wide corridor outside the compartment, though the one in powered armor had retreated out of immediate view. (The crew thought they had the SecSystem locked down so I couldn’t get into it. They were wrong.) One crew member was trying to convince Dr. Mensah to go to a cabin to rest, but Dr. Mensah was busy checking over the new bond agreement while Pin-Lee arranged payment.

Listening to the SecSystem’s audio, I heard a crew member in the corridor say, “I’ve never seen one out of armor. They really do look human.”

I made a gesture in that direction that I had only seen in the shows that were rated high on the obscenity scale. Gurathin saw me and made a choking noise.

Then Mensah gave Pin-Lee her okay on the bond agreement, and walked over to glare down at me. In a low voice, she said, “I am so furious with you.”

Ratthi drew back nervously. (Me, Ratthi wasn’t afraid of, but when Dr. Mensah was mad it was better to be in another room.) He said, “Uh, do you want to speak in private—”

“You should sit down,” I told her. “You’ve been through a traumatic experience. Tell them you need the MedSystem’s Retrieved Client Trauma Evaluation protocol—”

“It’s right, you really should get a medical evaluation—” Gurathin began, Ratthi and Pin-Lee chiming in to agree.

“Never mind that.” Mensah had no intention of being distracted. “You stayed behind to get yourself killed.”

Okay, aside from the fact that that was actually my intention at the time, that was not my fault. “They wouldn’t have let me through. I told PortSec if they let you through to the shuttle, I’d stay behind.”

That stopped her. Her brow furrowed. “Is that why you stayed?”

I could have lied. I didn’t want to. “Mostly,” I said. I looked at her with my actual eyes again. “I wanted to win.”

Ratthi, Gurathin, and Pin-Lee all watched me. The company crew incompetently pretended not to try to eavesdrop. Dr. Mensah’s expression softened, just around the edges. Ratthi said, “Why did you come through, then, when Gurathin got the barrier open?”

“Because that last one was a Combat SecUnit and it was going to tear me apart. That’s not winning.” I wish I knew what winning was. And once I started telling the truth, it was hard to stop. “I don’t want to be here.”

Pin-Lee sat down beside Ratthi. “We won’t be here for long. We’re going to rendezvous with a Preservation ship after this wormhole jump and get off this flying vending machine.” She glared toward the crew. “It’s like everything I hate about the corporates wrapped up in one heavily armed package.”

You could say that about me, too. I asked Dr. Mensah, “Then what?”

“That’s what you and I need to talk about,” she said. She glanced at the company crew. “Though let’s wait until we’re not being recorded—”

I lost the rest because I caught an alert from the bot pilot to the gunship’s human captain. We were on approach to the wormhole but the hostile was still tracking us. The ship’s SecSystem had just deflected an attempt to establish a connection via comm to the ship’s internal feed.

“Hostile engaging,” I said. I stood up automatically, but there was nowhere to go. This could be really bad. I didn’t know anything about ship-to-ship combat, but from the alert levels … Palisade couldn’t deliver a code attack via our comm, could they? Outside in the corridor the crew had all gone still, heads tilted, listening to the captain’s feed.

“What?” Ratthi said.

“They’re firing on us?” Mensah said.

“No. It’s a— Incoming!” Too late. Comm had just engaged and was receiving. Above us on the flight deck the captain yelled for someone to manually shut down the feed and someone else was ripping open panels to get to the components. SecSystem snapped into defense mode and walled off life support and weapons. I yelled, “Disengage from the feed, now!” Ratthi and Pin-Lee fumbled to take their interfaces out of their ears, and I cut the connection to Mensah’s implant and threw a wall around Gurathin’s internal augment. Two augmented humans in the corridor fell to the deck, writhing, and I threw walls around them, too. SecSystem should do that, but it was busy fighting off the commands to open the airlocks and allow the ship to decompress.

On the flight deck someone said, “How—How could they—”

Someone replied, “Shitfuckers have our codes, they overrode comm protection—”

Palisade had obtained a set of company comm codes, and had tried the list on our comm until they found one that worked. (Like my list of drone control keys that I used to take over the security drones on Milu and in the TranRollinHyfa port.) Once the connection was made, they had delivered a code bundle to the ship’s feed. Not standard malware or killware, not something I had ever seen before. It was in the ship’s systems, trying to cause a catastrophic drive failure, trying to take down life support, jamming the bot pilot’s command system. SecSystem flung up walls but the hostile code was eating right through them. It was eating SecSystem.

SecSystem lost another wall and the main airlock started to cycle. I slipped into the ship’s control feed and caused a heat surge in all airlock hatches, fusing everything but the manual controls. I tried to cut all non-manual access to engineering but I was too late, the drive started to fail, our engines were cycling down. Sensors showed the Palisade ship on approach. On the flight deck the captain had given two orders to fire main weapons but the bot pilot no longer had access. Gravity ceased abruptly in a backbone tube, trapping the humans trying to get manual access to systems. The captain was trying to assemble the armed retrieval team to repel boarding, but half were augmented humans who were now incapacitated by the attack on their augments and the other half were fighting sealed doors to reach their defensive positions.

I flailed. I tried to help SecSystem but it was dissolving under my hands.

The bot pilot couldn’t speak in words like ART, but in my head I felt its terror. It sent Code: System System. Assistance. Endangered.

It was trying to ask me for help using the company codes, the way I’d asked for help for my clients.

Fuck this. GrayCris is not going to win.

I slipped all the way into the ship, into the pilot bot’s hardware. I’d seen ART do it.

(Yes, ART’s processing capacity is much larger than mine. I’ll address that issue when it comes up, which is real soon now.)

I suddenly had a different body, hard vacuum on a metal skin, I saw the approaching ship with my eyes, not just sensors. It had dispatched a boarding shuttle that was coming in fast, heading toward the gunship’s main docking lock. I pulled back in; there was no time for sightseeing. The bot pilot wanted to know what we should do. It was a good question.

Inhabiting the same hardware like this, the bot pilot and I could communicate almost instantaneously. I pulled SecSystem’s analysis of the attacker so we could both examine it. It wasn’t just a code sequence like malware or killware. It was a conscious bot, moving through the feed like I did, like ART, but with no physical structure to go back to; that was why it was so fast. It was like a disembodied combat bot.

The bot pilot asked if the Attacker was a construct created from human neural tissue, rather than a bot, and indicated points in the analysis that would confirm that theory.

I told it that was worse, and better. A disembodied construct would be more vicious, but it would also be easier to trick.

I had an idea I outlined for the bot pilot. If we could trap the Attacker’s code bundle in a contained area and destroy it, we could regain control of the affected systems. But to get the Attacker to go into a contained area, we needed bait. We needed to know what the Attacker wanted/had been sent to do.

Bot pilot said that it wanted to destroy the ship and crew.

I said there had to be a reason. There was no profit for GrayCris in killing us, and a lot of risk in antagonizing the bond company by destroying a ship this expensive.

I reactivated my body, standing rigid in the passenger seating area. Ratthi was out in the corridor, doing rescue breathing on an augmented human crew member who had collapsed due to the attack on her augments. Gurathin was out there, too, both hands in a panel access, holding a corridor hatch open so crew could bypass the backbone and get to the drive. Pin-Lee and Mensah both sat on the floor with two crew members. All four had portable manual interfaces open and were frantically entering code, shoring up SecSystem’s walls. They weren’t fast enough, but what was left of SecSystem probably appreciated the thought.

I said, “Dr. Mensah, why do you think GrayCris is doing this? What do they want?”

Everybody flinched. “What is it doing?” a crew member demanded. “It could have been taken over by the—”

“Shut up,” Dr. Mensah snapped at the crew member. To me, she said, “We think it’s Milu. They must think you have the data you took from Milu with you.”

“It’s got to be that,” Pin-Lee added, not looking up from her display surface. “They could have killed us as soon as we arrived on TranRollinHyfa, but they wanted the money. It’s only been since they realized you were here that things got violent.”

You know, I bet that’s it. And I bet it had something to do with the memory clip I took from Wilken and Gerth. CrayGris must know it existed, must believe I had it. They were too late, since it was in the Preservation system by now, but I doubt they were going to believe that. But it did give me something to work with. “I need someone to trigger a manual disengage of the shuttle we arrived in.”

Mensah dropped her interface and shoved to her feet. “We’ll do it. Pin-Lee—”

“Coming!”

“Thank you for your assistance,” my buffer said, as I shut down again and went back to the bot pilot.

Back in accelerated time, I explained to the bot pilot what I wanted to try. It was fighting for control of its weapon systems, trying to follow the captain’s order to fire. It showed me an intel fragment from the boarding shuttle: manifest suggested a Combat SecUnit was aboard, along with an augmented human boarding team.

Yeah, we couldn’t let that shuttle lock on.

I hadn’t made a copy of the memory clip, but I still had all that data I had recorded on the trip to Milu, all those cycles of Wilken and Gerth talking about not much of anything. It had been analyzed and compressed, but it might resemble the parameters of what Attacker was searching for long enough to make this work.

I couldn’t risk cameras or feed, so I walked my body out of the passenger area and into the shuttle access corridor. I’d fused that hatch, too, but Mensah and Pin-Lee had the panel open for the emergency disengage. “Wait for my signal,” I said.

I told bot pilot we were going to have to make this good. It agreed, and we worked out what we were going to do.

Then bot pilot disengaged SecSystem.

I knew we had to do it but it was terrifying to be so vulnerable. I could feel Attacker bearing down on bot pilot, on me. I told bot pilot we needed to protect this important information so the company could retrieve it later and that I would hide it in the shuttle. Bot pilot ripped the confused ShuttleBotPilot out of its memory core and I dumped the data bundle into its place.

And Attacker transferred itself into the shuttle’s system.

Three things happened at once: (1) ShuttleSecSystem walled the shuttle’s comm system. (2) Bot pilot deleted its own comm system codes and I overloaded and fused its hardware. (3) My body told Dr. Mensah and Pin-Lee, “Now.”

Pin-Lee’s hands moved in the panel and Dr. Mensah worked the controls. The shuttle disengaged.

The gunship was moving slowly at that point, so the shuttle didn’t drop very far away, but with our comms fried it might as well have been on the other side of the wormhole. Attacker was gone, trapped in the shuttle.

Hah, I thought. Take that, you fucker.

Ship’s feed and system codes were trashed, but bot pilot was already reasserting control. SecSystem did the system equivalent of staggering drunkenly to its feet. Someone on the flight deck said, “Oh, mothergods, we’re clear!”

Bot pilot regained control of its weapon system and queried the captain. The captain said, “Confirm, fire.”

I stayed long enough to enjoy the boarding shuttle disappearing in one explosive burst, and the multiple impacts breaching the Palisade ship’s hull, then pulled my scattered code together and dropped back into my body. It felt weird.

Mensah and Pin-Lee still stood in the corridor, watching me worriedly. “We’re clear,” I told them.

Pin-Lee made an excited whooping noise and Mensah grabbed her and swung her around.

I felt weird. Very weird. Very bad.

Performance reliability at 45 percent and dropping. Catastrophic failure—

I felt my body crumple, but I didn’t feel myself hit the deck.