Network Effect

Chapter 4

Going out in space in an EVAC suit was not something I did before I hacked my governor module.

(One reason was because there’s always a distance limit on a contract. So if you, being a SecUnit, go more than, say, a hundred meters from your clients, your HubSystem uses the governor module to flashfry your brain and neural system. That doesn’t mean a client won’t order you to do something that would cause you to violate your distance limit, it just means they’ll have to pay the company a penalty for destroying their property.)

But the EVAC suits I’d used since then had such good instruction modules that it was almost like having an onboard bot pilot. This one was no exception, plus being new enough to not smell like dirty socks.

(Right, I should probably mention that I find 99.9 percent of human parts physically disgusting. I’m also less than thrilled with my own human parts.)

I came out of the airlock first, towing Amena behind me, and pulled us along the facility’s hull. One of the first things I’d discovered about space was that it was boring when there were no pretty planets or stations or anything to look at. This space was empty of planets but not boring.

The EVAC suit had scan and imaging capabilities but I didn’t need it as something huge moved out from below us. (I designated that direction as “down” because it was toward where my feet were currently pointed.) It was the baseship, falling slowly away. The hostile was above us, clamped to the facility, a big scary blot on the suit’s scan.

I tapped the baseship’s feed and without the interference from the dying facility, they heard me. Roa said hurriedly, We’ve got you on visual. I’m sending coordinates and Mihail will pull you in with the tractor.

I downloaded the projected path, then said, Where is Overse? She reported that she was in the facility safepod with other survey team members.

Roa said, Copy that, we’re contacting them now.

Contacting them now? If the safepod had launched it should be on the baseship by now. But I couldn’t do anything about it, I had to get Amena to the baseship first.

Amena said, What does that mean? Is Overse and everyone okay?

I was about to trigger the suits’ maneuvering system when scan picked up an energy surge. My suit’s imaging went down and the helmet plate went dark, protecting my eyes against a flash. (I didn’t need the protection, but the EVAC suit didn’t know that.)

Amena made a startled noise. Static blotted out the feed connection, then Mihail said, That was a miss, repeat, attacker fired and missed—

Rajpreet’s fainter voice said, Are they aiming at the safepod?

The rest was lost in static. I ordered my suit to clear the visor and swung around so I could see the hostile. I don’t know why—my suit wasn’t armed. I just wanted to see what was after us as something other than a sensor blot. It was almost as dumb an impulse as some things I’ve seen humans do.

I saw a big dark hull, reflecting light from Preservation’s distant primary. There was still nothing coming from it, no feed, no comm, no beacons, so it was like a giant inert object. (A giant inert object dragging us toward the wormhole.) The EVAC imaging system came back online to add in sensor data and give me a more accurate outline, making the hostile show up as part dark shape, part schematic. It was odd, since the configuration looked just like—

The EVAC scans found a registry designation embossed on the ship’s hull and rendered it for me. And I recognized it. I didn’t even have to search my archive. I recognized it from a transport embarkation schedule on the station I had gone to after leaving Port FreeCommerce.

“That’s—” That’s ART, I almost said on the feed, like an idiot.

It was so shocking and so weird, my performance reliability dropped and I lost circulation to my organic parts. And not weird = violating norms in an annoying way but weird = eerie, like in Farland Star Roads, the story arc with the haunted station with ghosts and time-shifting.

Or weird like I was having memory failure again, mixing up archival memory with current data collection.

That was a terrifying thought.

That’s what? Amena asked, then the ship—the hostile—ART fired again.

The EVAC suit tracked it this time as a spark across my scanner. It went wide, so wide I thought it must be aimed at the station responder but it was so far away, what would be the point? I pulled the data the suit had collected about the first shot and saw it had gone wide, too.

On our feed, Roa said, It’s another miss! No damage.

Mihail said, The vector was way off, I don’t even think— Maybe a warning shot.

Maybe I wasn’t having memory failure.

I said, Baseship, are you still ready to catch us?

Roa said, Mihail, are you— Then, Yes, yes, SecUnit, go, we’re ready!

The trajectory Mihail had sent was still good, we just had a little longer to go. With Amena’s suit in tandem with mine, I launched us off the facility’s hull.

Twenty seconds later, something grabbed my suit and tugged it. It was fairly gentle and wouldn’t have seemed like a disaster at all except for my suit’s emergency alarms and Mihail cursing frantically on the baseship feed.

The ship—the hostile—ART had us in a tractor and pulled us toward its hull. I was facing the wrong way and my suit gave me a sensor view. It was bringing us toward a large lock in the port hull, not that I could do anything about it. I saw ART’s lab module was in place, which meant it wasn’t acting as a cargo transport, but as a research vessel.

Her voice high with distress, Amena said, They’ve got the facility, why do they want us?

I said, I don’t know.

I don’t know anything.

As the tractor pulled us into the large airlock, Roa’s voice yelled over the feed, It’s accelerating toward the wormhole! We’re losing it—as the hatch slid shut. The baseship feed dropped. I made an attempt to reconnect, but hit a wall as solid as … I don’t know, but it was solid.

I hadn’t been in this lock before but it still had the clean, well-kept ship look that matched my memories. If I could trust my memories. If this was real.

I really needed to run a diagnostic but there was no time.

The lock cycled, air whooshing in, and the hatch slid open. It sure looked real and my EVAC suit scan matched what I was seeing/scanning. No feed, no comm activity.

The wide corridor beyond the lock was empty, lights tuned to medium-strength, blue bands on the bulkheads serving no function except decorative. A transparent locker built into the bulkhead held a row of empty EVAC suits, dormant and ready for emergencies.

The corridor was quiet, empty on visual, scan, and audio. The lights brightened for us, which was typical for crewed ships, which adjust the lighting based on what the humans are doing and on request. My suit read the air system level as full, which meant normal for humans and augmented humans. When ART ran as an uncrewed cargo transport, it kept its support level on minimum, though it had upped it for me.

There were too many ways to kill us using the airlock, so I stepped over the seal into the corridor. I pulled Amena’s suit with me, to make sure there was no opportunity to separate us. The lock cycled closed behind us.

On our suit comm, Amena was saying, “Where are the crew? Why did they do this? What do they want with us?” Then, in a smaller voice, “Please talk to me.”

I still had a client, even if I was damaged and hallucinating. If this was a memory failure, I had to tell her. I wished she was Mensah, or any human I trusted to help me. Even Gurathin would have been better in this situation. If I told her that indications suggested that I was having some bizarre memory crash, she would never trust me and I needed her to trust me to get her out of this alive. Except could she trust me when I couldn’t even tell if what I was seeing/scanning was real or not?

And if this was really ART, then where the hell was it?

I sent a ping. It was almost like it echoed in the empty feed, like the giant presence that should be here was just absent, like the heart of the ship was hollow.

Amena was breathing harder with building panic, and I needed to say something. What came out was pretty close to the truth: “I think I recognize this ship, but it’s not supposed to be here.”

Saying it aloud made it seem a lot less like a memory failure, and more like something that was actually happening.

Amena made a sniffing noise. She said, “What—what ship is it?”

Then I had a brilliant idea that I should have had earlier. I said, “What do the patches on those EVAC suits say?”

Mensah and most of the others would have realized immediately that something was wrong; I never asked clients for information if I could help it. (For a lot of reasons but close to the top was the all-too-common suicidal lack of attention to detail humans were prone to.) Amena stepped closer to the transparent locker. There were two rows of suits visible, one above the other, so if a suit was removed from its slot another would slide down to replace it. The patches were throwing a localized broadcast into the feed in multiple languages, readable by interfaces and our EVAC suits even while ART’s feed was inaccessible, the same way marker paints worked. Amena said aloud, “Perihelion. Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland.”

That was ART’s designation and registry. Okay, so. Good news: I’m not having some kind of memory or system crash, this was really ART. Bad news: what the fuck?

I sent another ping.

Amena turned back to me. “This must be a stolen survey ship.” Her voice was firmer, less breathy with incipient panic. “I guess the raiders armed it.”

“It was already armed.” I thought, It’s my friend. It helped me because it wanted to, because it could. I couldn’t say any of that. I hadn’t told anyone about ART. “It’s a deep space research and teaching vessel with a full crew and passenger complement. Between missions it travels as a bot-piloted cargo vessel, but Preservation isn’t on its route.”

“Research and teaching vessel,” Amena repeated. “If the raiders had a ship this big, with weapons, why bother with us? Maybe they thought we had something valuable on board? Or they just go around attacking research ships? They hate research?”

She was being sarcastic but I knew of raiders who had done things like this for reasons almost as stupid. But this wasn’t a memory ghost/hallucination, which meant it was still a statistically unlikely coincidence, and that was … statistically unlikely.

“Wait, you know this ship.” Her voice turned suspicious. The statistically unlikely part must have occurred to her, too. “Did you do something to them? Are they here after you?”

“Of course not.” That was a total lie, because ART had to have come here after me, though knowing that didn’t make this any less baffling. It wasn’t like ART’s crew came here for revenge because the murderous rogue SecUnit— Hold it, could they be here for revenge? I hadn’t hurt ART or anything onboard, unless you counted some power and resource usage that ART had expunged from its logs.

That seemed a weird thing to shoot up an unarmed survey ship over. I mean, they could have just sent Dr. Mensah an invoice.

Unless somebody had managed to get aboard after I left and do something to ART, and blamed me for it.

One big problem with that scenario, no wait, two: 1) getting aboard without ART’s cooperation and 2) doing something to ART without getting violently murdered. (I knew of forty-seven ways that ART could kill a human, augmented human, or bot intruder, and the only reason I didn’t know more is because I got bored and stopped counting.)

And where the hell was ART? Where was its feed, its drones, its comm, its humans? Why wouldn’t it answer my pings?

I didn’t forget that I had one of ART’s comms tucked into the pocket under my ribs. (Okay, I did forget until three minutes and forty-seven seconds ago, but it wasn’t like I’d needed to access the information until now.) The comm had been deactivated and inert since I left ART on RaviHyral’s transit ring. If ART wanted to call me, it could have used it as soon as we were in range. But that was assuming that ART was still in control of itself. Was something else—bot or human or augmented human—controlling ART’s ship-body?

I was starting to panic. I didn’t want ART to be hurt, and anything that could hurt ART could destroy me and Amena.

This wasn’t helping. Start with the assumption that ART was still here, intact but under some sort of constraint I didn’t have time to speculate about but would anyway.

Had ART been able to use the deactivated comm to track me after our survey ship arrived through the wormhole? Yes, probably. But why? Why come to Preservation space after me? ART loved its crew, like, a lot. It would do anything to help them.

Including betray me? Was something forcing ART to do this? Did it want the facility, or was that collateral damage? As soon as it had me and Amena in its tractor, it had increased acceleration toward the wormhole. We had to be in the wormhole by now, heading away from Preservation. The responders wouldn’t be able to track us.

At least that meant that Overse and whoever was with her in the safepod could be picked up by the baseship.

I needed to get rid of my EVAC suit. In gravity they made movement cumbersome, and could be hacked if I wasn’t careful, and I wasn’t sure how much protection the suit would give Amena from projectiles or other weapon fire. It wasn’t like it would be a good idea to go outside now, and freedom of movement was more important.

I got the EVAC suit to open its helmet and released my drones. I told two to take up guard positions at the entrance to the corridor and sent the others to make a cautious sweep through the ship … through ART. Then I opened my suit and stepped out. Amena said, “Is that a good idea?”

I really didn’t need to be second-guessed by an adolescent human right now. “Do you have any other suggestions?”

“I guess we can’t stay in these things forever,” she muttered, and opened her suit.

I waited for her to climb out. She was shaking a little, and sweating, and favoring her injured leg. I needed to get access to the medical suite. Whatever was going on here, it would be easier to deal with if Amena wasn’t hurt.

I moved toward the corridor, gesturing Amena to stay behind me. My scan still picked up nothing but background interference from ART’s systems. My drones were seeing empty corridors, closed hatches. I directed them toward the control deck, specifically the crew meeting area under the bridge. Somebody had to be here, bot or human or augmented human. This time I pinged the comm system.

The ship’s comm chimed, an automatic response. Amena flinched at the sound. Keeping my voice low, I told her, “That was me.”

“Why?” She managed to whisper this in a way that sounded very demanding. Then she grimaced in frustration. “Right. I guess they know we’re here, since they kidnapped us.”

So far my drones hadn’t detected any crew. There was no response to the comm, and I moved toward the corridor. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Maybe go up to ART’s bridge and bang on the shield over its control core?

This was one of the corridors I had walked up and down, working on my pretending-to-be-a-human code, where ART had critiqued my performance. Maybe that made me less cautious. That and the fact that my drones had just passed through here seconds ago. As I stepped into the corridor, something moved in my peripheral vision.

This is why we have drones. Unfortunately, whatever this was, my guard drone hadn’t registered its presence. I didn’t see it until it moved, and that was too late.

I took the hit right in the side of my head and got body-slammed against the bulkhead.

Performance reliability catastrophic drop.

Shutdown.

Restart.

I was lying in a heap on the deck, a broken fragment of something grinding into my cheek. I knew I’d had an emergency shutdown. (I miss my armor all the time, but particularly at times like this.)

I need the organic parts inside my head, but they have much better shock absorption in there than inside a human skull. You can hit a SecUnit hard enough to make our performance reliability drop so fast and so low it triggers a temporary shutdown. (Operative word: temporary.) But it’s really not a good idea. Not if you want to keep your internal organs inside your body and not smeared on the bulkheads of your stolen transport.

Oh, it’s on now.

My drones had gone dormant and my systems weren’t online to access them yet. My audio kicked back in and I picked up sound coming from down the corridor. A voice, Amena’s voice, too low for me to make out the words. I tapped the input for my drone relay feed; it was a passive connection and still transmitting.

Amena’s voice was hard with what was clearly false bravado: “You’ve made a big mistake. There are armed ships minutes away. They’ll be here—”

“Oh, little child, we’re in the bridge-transit. No one will ever find you again.” The voice (Unidentified: One) was light, arch, with an echo caused by an out-of-date pre-feed translator system. “Now tell us about the weapon.”

Amena’s bravado was turning into real anger. “Our survey facility wasn’t armed. If it was, you’d be blown to pieces.” (Note to humans and augmented humans: no one likes being patronized.)

Unidentified One sounded even more amused. “You had better have the weapon we were told of, or I’ll take your ribs out one by one and break them in front of your little face.”

I saved that for future reference. Unidentified One seemed to have gone to some trouble with the wording of that threat, it would be a shame if they never experienced it firsthand.

Another voice (Unidentified: Two) said, “I hate lying, all these things lie.” It sounded almost identical to Unidentified One, except it was slightly deeper in tone.

Amena said, “I’m not lying, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” A little of her fear leaked through. I think she was beginning to realize she wasn’t talking to an intelligence that was open to rational argument.

Unidentified One said, “You lie, it lies, everything’s lying. Don’t think we don’t know better.”

Tinged with desperation, Amena said, “I can’t do anything about that.”

The rest of my parts were checking in as functional and my performance reliability was climbing. The temporary shutdown had flushed a lot of stress toxins secreted by my organic parts and I actually felt better. Scan showed the fragments under my cheek were from components shielded by a case that read as stealth material. I’d been hit by a drone, maybe the same type I’d caught an image of in the facility before EVACing. It had hit me so hard it had knocked itself to pieces. None of ART’s drones—at least the ones it had let me see—had stealth construction. And maybe the forced restart had definitely done me some good because I was an idiot to not think of this before. If there were drones receiving orders, there had to be a feed active inside ART, just not on any of the standard channels. As my legs and feet came back online and I eased slowly upright, I tweaked my receivers to scan the whole range for activity.

My projectile weapon lay on the deck in pieces, like someone had used a tool to pound it apart. My saved schematic of ART’s interior layout came in handy as I mapped the direction of Amena’s voice. Down this curving corridor, to a cross corridor, to a crew lounge area. I didn’t make any noise.

By the time I got to the first curve in the corridor, I found their drone control feed. It was on an encrypted channel, like a military feed. Clever, except their encryption was practically ancient, in bot terms if not human. My last update of my ex-owner bond company’s proprietary key-breaker was 8700+ hours out of date, but it snapped their encryption like a twig.

Their feed was almost empty, no voices that I could detect, just drone commands. If their encryption was old, their drone codes might be, too. I pulled the oldest version of my drone key files and started cycling through them. My own drones were still in standby as I rebuilt my inputs and connections, but they were semi-useless at the moment, since the stealth material prevented them from scanning the hostile drones.

The doorway to the lounge where I’d detected Amena’s voice was open, brighter light falling into the half-lit corridor. I meant to wait until I was back up to at least 90 percent performance reliability but I heard Amena say, “There’s no weapon, you got the wrong ship.” The fear in her voice was more obvious and I was suddenly in the room.

(Impulse control; I should try to write a code patch for that.)

The compartment was large, with padded couches and seats built against the bulkheads, a few low tables that were designed to fold down into the deck, and various display surfaces, now inert, floating above them. Occupants included one client: Amena, backed up against the far wall, disheveled and wide-eyed but no apparent new damage. Two potential targets/possible casualties: both backed toward the far end of the compartment, past Amena. They had visible bruises and shocked/frightened expressions. Both casualties wore red and brown uniforms, disheveled and torn, with corporate logos. Another anomaly, since ART’s crew uniforms were dark blue.

Two Targets faced Amena and the casualties: possibly augmented human; scan results null.

Both Targets turned toward me. They looked like tall, thin augmented humans, with dull gray skin. (Injury, illness? Or an uncommon skin augment/cosmetic modification?) They both wore form-fitting protective suits and partial helmets that left a surprising (surprisingly stupid) amount of the face bare. Narrow human features, dark brows standing out against the smooth gray skin. Both smiled with colorless lips.

Accusingly, one said (Unidentified One = Target One) to the other, “You said this one was dead.” They weren’t quite identical. Target One was slightly taller and had broader shoulders.

“Poor thing was dead,” Unidentified Two = Target Two responded, and laughed.

Poor thing. I think a capillary just burst inside one of my organic parts.

Three drones hovered behind the Targets, of a model that didn’t match anything in my archives. They were round, as big around as my head, the apertures for cameras or weapons hidden despite their size. The stealth material interfered with my scan, but not with the image in the organic part of my brain. It gave me an uneasy kind of double vision, where my scan insisted there were floating anomalies that wouldn’t appear on my camera, yet I had a clear image in my temp data storage, supplied by my organic nerve tissue.

I knew the targetDrones weren’t slow, but they looked cumbersome. I needed intel before proceeding. I said, “What did you do to ART?”

That wasn’t the intel I needed. But it was the intel I wanted.

Target One cocked its head inquiringly and bared sharp teeth. Another possible cosmetic modification or genetic variance. Target One said, “You’re babbling, poor thing.”

Target Two, in almost the same tone, said, “These creatures seem to have no control over their vocalizations.”

I was aware of Amena, watching me with wide eyes, both hands pressed to her mouth. Casualties One and Two, still behind her, stared at me in confusion.

I clarified, “This transport. What did you do to the bot pilot?” ART was so much more than a bot pilot but I didn’t have a word for what it was.

Target Two sighed and folded its arms, like I’d asked a stupid question. Target One grinned at me, maliciously. It didn’t know who I was, what I was, it might not even know who ART was, but it knew I cared, and it was going to enjoy what it said next. “We deleted it, of course.”

I felt my face change. The muscles were all stiff, and not from the hit I’d taken. I’m still not great at controlling my expressions, and I had no idea what I looked like. Behind her hands, Amena whispered, “Oh shit.”

“Oh, this one looks angry,” Target One said.

Target Two said, “How boring. Angry, then afraid, then dead. Boring boring boring.”

Target One began, “You belong to us now, all of you. This is what’s going to happen. You will tell us—”

I grabbed Target One’s face. Not my best strategic attack, but the quickest way to shut it up. Using its face as a handle, I slung it sideways into the couch built against the bulkhead.

TargetDrone One came at my head. It was fast but I was ready this time. I ducked sideways and as it stopped and reversed to come back at me, I put my fist through it. I slammed it against the side of the hatch to break the remnants off my hand as I turned.

Target Two actually looked at the other two targetDrones at this point, obviously wondering why they hadn’t responded.

The good thing about being a construct is that I can have a dramatic emotional breakdown while still running my background search to find the drone key commands. I’d had a hit and a responding ping from the targetDrones right when Target One had called me boring. (Irony is great.) I sent the order to power down and they dropped to the deck with two loud thunks.

Target Two’s gray face went surprised, then furious. It was kind of funny. This was a point where if I was a human (ick) I might have laughed. I decided to go with my first inclination and kill the shit out of some ass-faced hostiles instead. I told the Targets, “Angry, then afraid, then dead. Is that the right order?”

Casualty One whispered, “Oh deity, that’s a—”

Target One, flailing on the couch, reached for something that was clearly a weapon, clipped to the suit plate on its thigh. I lunged forward and had its wrist before it could close around the weapon. This turned out to be a trick, because it slapped its free hand on my shoulder and I felt a stab of pain from an energy weapon.

Target One grinned at me with its whole face.

Projectiles hurt but energy weapons just piss me off. I crushed the wrist I was holding and twisted, caught the arm with the energy weapon and snapped it. (The arm. The weapon, a clunky tube-shaped device about ten centimeters long, clattered to the deck.)

Target One shrieked in a combination of rage and disbelief that did not make me any less mad. Target Two, with what I have to say was an entirely misplaced confidence, stepped in and shoved another energy weapon at my chest.

I was moving so fast that later I had to run my video back to analyze my performance. I shoved Target One away and smashed an elbow into Target Two’s face. I tore the energy weapon out of Target Two’s hand along with a few fingers, stabbed the weapon into its chest (it didn’t have a sharp end but I made do) and ripped a large hole. Then I used the weapon, and the large hole, to lift Target Two up and slam it into the upper bulkhead. Three times. Fluid and pieces went everywhere.

That was satisfying. I think I’ll do it again.

But I’d taken too long and it gave Target One time to scramble up and bolt for the hatch.

I started to follow but then registered that Amena was bellowing “SecUnit, look!” at me.

I looked. On the deck, the two remaining targetDrones were flashing awkwardly placed lights; they were powering up. I sent a power down order but the key wasn’t working anymore. I stomped the first one with a boot and then caught the second as it lifted off. I smashed it on a chair, accidentally taking out a display surface in the process. The two casualties were yelling agitatedly at Amena and I had to run back my audio to understand.

Casualty One grabbed Amena’s arm and said, “You have to come with us! We have to get away, try to hide!” This close, though ART’s primary feed still wasn’t working, I could pick up some info from her interface. (Feedname: Eletra, gender: female, and an employee ID from a corporation called Barish-Estranza.)

Casualty Two (Feedname: Ras, gender: male, and another Barish-Estranza employee ID.) “Quick, before they send more drones!” He threw a look at me. I knew that look. “With your SecUnit, we have a chance.”

Amena turned to me. “We should go with them.”

I’d already sent a restart command to my dormant drones. Target One wasn’t hard for them to track since it was wounded, leaking fluid, and shrieking. (You know, if you don’t want to be manually eviscerated with your own energy weapon then maybe you shouldn’t go around killing research transports and antagonizing rogue SecUnits.)

I told Amena, “I have something I need to finish off.”

“There are too many drones,” Eletra insisted. Her gaze went from Amena to me and back again. She wasn’t sure who she had to convince. “You have to come with us!”

Amena took a step toward me, wincing as she put weight on her damaged leg. “Are they right? Can you tell if the drones are coming for us?”

Target One ran through the hatch into the crew meeting area below the bridge.

The crew meeting area where I’d spent most of my time with ART, where we watched World Hoppers. My drones caught video of another hostile already in there (designated Target Three) standing on the steps that led up to the control deck. The hatch into the meeting area started to slide down. Eight of my drones reached the hatch in time to dart under just before it closed.

The humans weren’t wrong about the targetDrones, which weren’t responding to my key commands anymore. (Which meant there was a highly motivated controlling system somewhere that had pushed through a quick security update.) I still had access to the Targets’ feed, and from the encrypted traffic, somebody was telling the targetDrones to do something. Which most likely involved converging on our position to kill us.

I said, “Probably.”

Amena waved her hands impatiently. “Then let’s go!”

I tried cutting off the targetDrones’ control feed. It confused some but others still seemed to be receiving orders. There were obviously parts of this system I couldn’t access. Working within it was like trying to operate a projectile weapon when someone had shot half my fingers off. All the data needed to be converted to other formats, nothing was right, it was a pain in the ass. To take full control of it I was going to have to start at the beginning, with penetration testing.

Exasperated, Ras said, “Just give it an order!”

Amena snapped, “It doesn’t take orders.”

I’d wanted to do this up close and personal but that wasn’t an option. The eight drones now inside the control deck with Targets One and Three were on standby near the floor, in surveillance positions. Target One had collapsed against a padded station chair, panting, both damaged arms hanging uselessly. Target Three stepped down to an inactive display surface and activated it with a hand gesture. Weird to see a human or whatever these were do it manually. They hadn’t set their non-standard encrypted feed to access ART’s systems yet.

Target Three said on the all-ship comm, “Intruders, escapees, slice them open like—”

The translator fizzled on the last few words so I guess I’d never know what I’d be sliced open like. I cut one drone out of the swarm of eight to observe, and gave the others their instructions. With the protective suit and the partial helmets, I needed to aim for the exposed face.

Target Three had time to make a gurgling noise and Target One a gaspy scream. My seven drone contacts winked out one by one. Drone Eight continued to record, sending me video of the bodies jerking helplessly, then finally dropping in leaking sprawls to the deck.

“But that’s a SecUnit—” Ras protested.

Eletra, her expression increasingly desperate, listened to the comm announcement and its abrupt end. “We have to go!”

Amena limped forward another step. She grabbed my arm and glared up at me. “Listen to me!”

I looked down at her and made deliberate eye contact because she had almost all my attention right now and the last person/target who had done that was still dripping down the bulkhead behind me. She was too self-absorbed or brave or some combination of both to realize what she was doing was not smart. She set her jaw and said, “We have to go with them. Now.”

I gently peeled her small hand off my jacket and said, “Never touch me again.”

Amena blinked and pressed her lips together, then turned to Eletra and Ras. “Let’s go.”

Eletra stepped toward the hatch. “This way—”

Ras said, “Is that thing going to listen—”

I stepped past Eletra and out the hatch in time to catch the targetDrone waiting there. I slammed it into the bulkhead and shook the remnants off my hands. Following ART’s schematic, I said, “This way.”

They followed me.