Rogue Protocol

Chapter Five

SOUNDING PROFESSIONALLY COMPETENT and not at all like someone who had just let a client get abducted, Wilken said, “My scan’s not showing anything, but my range is limited. As long as Hirune’s feed is still up, we can track her with it.”

Really, you think? Miki had already set that up and informed Abene. I hadn’t done anything yet but try not to panic.

I tapped my private channel to Miki and then had no idea what to say. (“Thank you for not exposing my lies” seemed a little too blatant.) Then Miki said, You saved Don Abene, Rin/SecUnit.

I had the feeling I needed to review my conversations with Miki and see where I went wrong. Did you know I was a SecUnit, Miki?

I don’t know what being a SecUnit means. It’s not included in my knowledge base. What should I call you if you’re not Rin anymore?

Call me SecUnit. I had somehow committed myself to acting as a security consultant and I wasn’t even going to get another hard currency card for it this time. As usual, I had no one to blame but myself. I thought it could turn out okay, though. All we had to do was retrieve Hirune, and then I’d think up a reason for why I needed a ride back on their shuttle, say I had to return to Consultant Rin, and then run off.

And possibly it could turn out better than okay. If GrayCris was behind the attack, then I could get video evidence of it to send back to Dr. Mensah along with my geo pod data.

The corridor was dark, and from her camera video Wilken was using her night-filter. Marker emergency lights on the floor and walls came on as we passed. Swearing softly, Abene tried to get her helmet back on, but I had broken the tab getting it off. She leaned down to leave it on the floor and asked Wilken, “Do you have any idea what attacked us? Some kind of bot? A retrieval device?”

That was a good guess, actually. I had one good image of the spidery hand thing, and I figured a comparison with the inventory of the bio pod would show it was something intended to work with or as part of a device designed to obtain surface samples. With the facility’s system cores removed, there was no way to run that inventory. My theory was that the hostile that Miki had heard approaching had activated and used the retrieval device to distract the team while it grabbed Hirune. Wilken said, “My camera didn’t pick it up. I believe raiders are in the facility and using the equipment left behind here against us. SecUnit, does Consultant Rin have any confirmation of that?”

I said, “Consultant Rin has no additional intel,” because why should I do her work for her when I wasn’t even getting a hard currency card, am I right?

On the feed, Abene asked Miki, Miki, are you sure about this Consultant Rin? When did she contact you?

On the station, Miki replied. Rin is my friend. GI sent Rin to help you stay safe. It added, You were almost hurt, and Wilken and Gerth didn’t try to help you at all.

They were trying to protect Ejiro and Brais, Abene said absently, her mind obviously on something else, probably how terrible my cover story was. There was no time.

I didn’t want her thinking about the likelihood of mysteriously appearing SecUnits and their (possibly apocryphal) security consultant contractors. I tapped her feed and said, Don Abene, you can speak to me privately on this channel. I maintain contact with my clients at all times. Please note that Consultant Rin has specified that you are my principal client, not your security team.

I was trying to let her know I was on her side, not theirs. I probably could have phrased it better. But I was pretty certain there were going to be sides, since Wilken and Gerth clearly didn’t believe it would be possible to recover Hirune.

That’s the other problem with human security: they’re allowed to give up.

Abene took a second to regroup, then asked me, Do you know what took Hirune?

I noted she had asked me again, directly, despite having heard the exchange with Wilken. Abene figured there were going to be sides, too. I said, I think you’re correct, I think it was a retrieval device. The hostile intended to take at least one member of the team and kill or injure others before retreating. That is not something a party of raiders would do. I added, Its plan is probably to draw you further into the facility to kill the rest of you, and hopefully cause more members of the team to leave the shuttle so it can kill them, too. Trying to make things sound less dire than they are never helps. The client has to believe your assessment of the situation is accurate. (And I know, not my client.)

She took three seconds to process the fact that we were doing what the hostile probably wanted us to do. But we have to find Hirune. Is there a way to counter it?

You’ve already countered it. It doesn’t know you have a SecUnit with you. For a human, that would be a hormone-fueled ego talking. For a SecUnit, it’s just a fact. Like I told Tlacey before I killed her, I’m just telling you what I’m going to do.

Abene went quiet for five more seconds while we walked along the dark corridor. Then she asked, Did you know there was something dangerous here? Did you know we would be attacked?

I didn’t know, not until Miki alerted me that something was approaching your position. That was true. I would much rather be hiding on the shuttle watching entertainment media right now. Consultant Rin had no intel on hostiles inside the facility.

Where were you? What did Rin really send you to do here?

I flailed mentally. Did I lie, did I tell the truth? It had to mesh with what I’d already told Miki, which was only partly a lie, sort of, and Abene might not register my hesitation but Miki would notice it unless I answered right now—I was in the geo pod, I said in desperation. I was gathering data about a possible violation by GrayCris of the Strange Synthetics Accord.

Ah, Don Abene said. This begins to make sense. She hesitated. Can you save Hirune? If she’s still alive.

Yes. I’m pretty sure.

Abene let out her breath. Good, then. We’ll work together.

Telling the truth was sort of working out for me.

We came out of the dark section into another corridor with low but active lighting. Wilken said, “Have you ever worked with a SecUnit before, Don Abene?”

“No. They’re illegal in the homesystems.” She was impatient. Right now she didn’t want to hear anything from Wilken that didn’t involve getting her friend back.

We were nearing a junction. Wilken signaled a halt through the feed, and paused while she took a scan. I was scanning continuously, but my readings were shit. The static had to be interference from the storm. Wilken continued, “I know you’re close to your bot, but that thing is not like Miki. It’s a killing machine.”

Abene looked up at me and it was probably a mistake, but I looked down at her. It was surprisingly easy to make eye contact and not be nervous, maybe because I was used to seeing her face through Miki’s feed. She touched her neck, the mark where the helmet rim had pressed in when the retrieval device had tried to wrench her head off. Her gaze went to Wilken’s back again, but on our private channel she said, I’ve never worked with a SecUnit before—I’ve never seen or interacted with a SecUnit before—so please tell me if you need any information or instruction from me.

I had never had a human ask me how to give me orders before. It was an interesting novelty. I have standing orders from Rin to assist you. I can do the rest.

Wilken’s scan picked up some interference, the same static at the edge of the range that both Miki and I were getting. We started to move again, taking the right-hand corridor leading away from the junction. Abene asked me, Can you tell me why GI didn’t inform me that there was a second assessment underway?

I had an answer for this one and everything. GrayCris has been accused of killing the members of a DeltFall survey team and attacking a PreservationAux team on a Corporation Rim assessment world. When you have access to newsfeeds again, check references to Port FreeCommerce for more information. There was reason to suspect GrayCris used this terraforming facility for interdicted activity and might try to prevent a reclamation effort. That was all true, and it even sounded good when I said it.

I see. Abene sounded grim. So GrayCris was using the facility to mine strange synthetics instead of to terraform, and they suspected a detailed survey of the remaining equipment would reveal it.

Probably. I was certain of it, but it was longtime habit to give myself wiggle room if it turned out I was wrong. It didn’t usually manage to prevent punishment from the governor module, but it was always worth a shot. Until the geo pod data is reviewed and analyzed, we won’t know for certain. Consultant Rin decided it was best to combine the data retrieval with additional security for your team.

Ahead the corridor ended in an open space. Wilken signaled a halt, five seconds after I would have done it. The schematic said this was a transition zone between pods. The shadows ahead moved, but I could tell it was reflections from outside. There was a large view port to the left, like the one in the geo pod but in the wall, and the play of light and clouds cast shadows across the floor.

Wilken used her scan unit, then motioned us to move forward with her. The interference was worse but I was getting nothing on audio. I asked Miki, Can you tell what’s causing that scanner noise?

No, SecUnit. I compared it to the static caused by the weather, and it looks the same, but it has a different source. That’s strange, isn’t it?

Wilken led the way into the large space, into the shadows from the storm churning on the other side of the transparent wall. Most of her attention was still on her scanner. Supports curved and twisted overhead, solid stationary metal somehow mimicking the constant motion of the cloud layers outside. There were three tall arched locks, open now to dark corridors leading off toward different pods. A gallery ran three quarters of the way around, opposite the transparent wall, with more corridor accesses. Miki’s feed locater pointed toward the third corridor on the right on this level.

It’s not strange, it’s strategic, I told Miki. Something is using the interference caused by the weather to mask a signal. It was also frustrating. I missed having a SecSystem to do a real analysis. Even if we could break down the signal, I just didn’t have the databases to match it to anything.

Miki switched to the general feed, Don Abene, there is a signal using the storm interference to—

I sensed motion, the whisper of sound as joints moved, and I flashed a warning to Miki just as a shape exploded off the gallery overhead. I caught Abene around the waist and bolted for that third corridor on the right, because that was the direction we needed to go to achieve our mission objective. Step one was to get there while the hostile was busy with Wilken.

I stopped far enough down the corridor to get Abene out of range of any stray friendly fire. (Wilken’s weapon was discharging so rapidly I assumed she didn’t have a lot of time to aim.)

Miki arrived a second later. I deposited Abene on her feet and she staggered before Miki caught her. Now this is something else I hate about human security. If Wilken was a SecUnit, my priority would be clear: continue ahead to retrieve Hirune, get her and Abene to safety, then return to retrieve/clean up what was left of Wilken and the hostile. But Wilken was human, so I had to go back and retrieve her stupid ass now.

Miki sent an image into my feed and said, It’s a combat bot!

Yeah, thanks for the newsburst, Miki. I’d managed to get a clear picture of it while it was in mid-leap, when I was crossing the room with Abene. I told Miki, Stay with Don Abene, and ran back down the corridor.

Again, I know in the telling it sounds like I was on top of this situation but really, I was still just thinking, Oh shit oh shit oh shit. Combat bots are faster, stronger, and more heavily armed than me. Even if a SecSystem feed had been available, I couldn’t hack a combat bot without making a direct physical connection, and trying for that would result in me being torn apart. (I’ve been torn apart before, and on my list of things to avoid, it was right up there at the top.)

The only good thing about combat bots is that they aren’t combat SecUnits. Those are worse.

I exited the corridor at close to my top speed and had time to get one clear image of the situation to plot my attack. (I should put “plot” in quotes because it’s really hard to plan under these circumstances.)

Wilken was on the floor and her large weapon had just been knocked out of her hands. The combat bot stooped over her. In shape it was close to a human-form bot. Sort of like Miki if Miki were three meters tall, had multiple weapon ports in its chest and back, four arms with multiple hand mods for cutting, slicing, delivering energy bursts, etc., and a not very endearing personality.

I went up the wall just enough to give myself the right trajectory, then pushed off into a jump and landed on the combat bot’s head. Its cameras and scanners were up there, but the place where it did its actual processing and kept its memory was down in its lower abdomen. (So was Miki’s; it was more protected down there since people always shoot for the head.) (At least, people always shot for my head, so I assumed they did it to bots, too.)

The combat bot knew I was a SecUnit because it sent a pulse through its skin that caused my pain sensors to max out. (I’d anticipated that and already dialed them down, but it didn’t feel good.) The next pulse was meant to fry my armor and my explosive projectile weapon. Since I left both back at Port FreeCommerce, it didn’t do much of anything to me and the mistake gave me the half second I needed to shove the port of the energy weapon in my right arm up against its sensory input collectors. I fired it at full capacity.

I had needed that half second, because just as I fired the bot swept its arm up and slammed me off its head. I hit the floor and slid three meters but the bot staggered sideways, temporarily (and I can’t stress that “temporarily” part enough) blind, deaf, and with no ability to scan for movement or energy, no ability to acquire a target with any of its inbuilt weapons.

Wilken was just rolling over as I shoved upright. I grabbed an explosive pack off her harness and threw myself at the combat bot. From the burst of static in the feed, it had just cleared its sensory inputs, but I’d already hit the spot just above its right hip joint and slammed the explosive pack into place.

It grabbed me by the head and shoulder, big hand gripping me, and I felt the shift in the metal that meant something sharp was about to come out of its hand. I thought, Well, okay, that didn’t work. It could have destroyed me with any one of the many weapons in its chest, but it was mad and it wanted to make me hurt. Then there was a small muffled thump from the explosive pack.

The pack had two charges, and that was the first one, the one designed to bore a tunnel through heavy shielding and would do much the same to a combat bot’s carapace. I still had the channel open to Wilken’s feed and heard the pack’s countdown start.

If the combat bot had been more self-aware, it might have stopped to crush my head, but its defensive mode kicked in and it shoved me away so it could get at the pack.

I hit the floor again and scrambled back as it clawed at the pack. Wilken rolled to her knees and opened fire at the bot’s chest and head. She hit sensors and weapons ports, which granted, was a good idea. It was keeping the bot from targeting us while the charge had a chance to work.

The plastic outer casing came away but the explosive had already tunneled through the bot’s carapace. The bot tried to insert a probe into the hole to get the explosive. Wilken managed to hit the vulnerable joint as it extended. That bought the explosive the extra two seconds it needed. I put my hands over my head, tuned down my hearing, and rolled.

The explosion was muffled but I felt the vibration when the bot’s body hit the floor. I came to my feet, mostly shocked that it had worked and that I was still alive and functional. (That’s how SecUnits are taught to fight: throw your body at the target and kill the shit out of it, and hope they can fix you in a repair cubicle. Yes, I’m aware I didn’t have armor or access to a repair cubicle anymore, very aware, but old habits die hard.)

The bot slumped on the floor like so much salvage. The carapace had contained the explosion, so there was no shrapnel, and the blast had damaged the bot’s processor and the other important bits in its abdomen. But it was still active. I said to Wilken, “I need more packs.”

She was sprawled on the floor, but her armor had protected her hearing. She yanked a set of packs off her harness and held them up.

I took them, armed each one, and dropped them into the bot’s open carapace, then retreated.

Wilken staggered to her feet and backed away, covering the bot.

I reached the corridor entrance as the explosions went off. Each blast made the bot’s body jerk and spasm. After the last one I scanned for activity. The bot still had power, but the charges had destroyed the first and secondary processors. That ought to do it.

Wilken was checking her scan. She made a relieved noise. “Good save. Come on. If there’s one of those things here, there’s more.”

Well, yeah.

I followed Wilken up the corridor to where Miki and Abene waited. Abene had a hand on Miki’s arm, holding on to it almost protectively. As we approached she let go and said, “Whoever activated that thing took Hirune, correct?”

“Has to be.” Wilken tried to stop but Abene started up the corridor, and Wilken had to follow her. I got up in front, and Miki stayed beside Abene without prompting from me. Which was good; Miki might be no help in combat, but at least I knew Abene would be its priority, whatever Wilken told it to do.

I heard Abene in the feed for the shuttle, warning Vibol and the others and telling them again to stay onboard, not to come after us under any circumstances. Wilken sent her camera’s recording of the attack to Gerth, and Gerth sent an acknowledgment. It was more professional than Kader, who was clearly agitated, but reported that they had sent a warning to the transit station and were keeping the PA updated.

Wilken added, “I’ve never seen raiders with access to combat bots, but there’s a first time for everything.”

I was pretty sure the combat bot had been original equipment for the facility. We were talking about GrayCris here, whose company motto seemed to be “profit by killing everybody and taking their stuff.”

Abene didn’t respond. After what I’d told her, she probably didn’t think it was raiders, either. “They’ll know we’re coming.”

They knew that already, I told her and Miki on our private three-way channel. And now the other combat bots would know a SecUnit was in play and adjust their strategy accordingly.

I wish I had a strategy.

[Query: SecUnit active in watch zone.]

I stopped. I did not scream, though I thought about it for .02 of a second.

I was pretty sure I kept my face blank, but Abene and Miki turned to look at me. Wilken kept moving.

I started to walk again, trying to figure out what channel it was coming in on so I could block it.

[Query: respond.]

In my feed, Miki said, SecUnit, what is that?

Don’t answer it, Miki. It’s a combat bot, trying to fix our position. Combat bots can’t hack like combat SecUnits. They don’t work linked to Sec or HubSystems like security SecUnits do. But still. I didn’t want it in my head. Or Miki’s head.

[Query: SecUnit has subordinate unit.] It sounded implacable, and amused. [Query: pet bot.]

I almost had it.

[Objective: We will tear you apart.]

I blocked the channel. I breathed out, slowly, so as not to draw attention from the humans. Miki sent me a glyph of distress. I said, It’s okay, which was a complete lie. I reminded myself a combat bot wasn’t a human, it wasn’t a villain from one of my shows. It was a bot, and it wasn’t threatening us.

It was just telling us what it was going to do.

Combat bots usually needed a human controller. Well, they needed a human controller when you were trying to achieve an objective. If the objective was as vague as “attack everybody who lands on the facility while disguising your network feed traffic with static designed to match the interference created by the storm,” maybe they didn’t. But taking a prisoner, luring us further into the facility, did suggest a plan. GrayCris might have left an operative on the station, hiding out in plain sight with the Port Authority staff, keeping an eye on the facility. They had known when our shuttle left and when it docked with the facility, and had estimated how long it would take for the team to get into one of the pods and start the assessment. Then they sent a signal to activate the combat bots.

A signal that got through the facility’s shielding? Maybe.

It would be nice to know how many bots, but at least now I knew the location of the first trap. It had failed, so the combat bots would be adjusting their position to create a second trap. I checked the schematic again, verifying that we were about to cross into the central hub.

I said, “Don Abene, I need to scout ahead. It’ll be better if Wilken comes with me, and you and Miki wait here.” I added on the feed, And we need to hurry.

Abene was all for hurrying and I didn’t want to give Wilken time to argue. Abene said, “Yes, go ahead.”

I started up the corridor, walking faster. Wilken hesitated, then followed me, her powered armor letting her catch up. “Hold it,” she said. I stopped, to humor her, and because I could tell from the feed she was checking the schematic. “I see. Let’s move.”

I let Wilken lead the way.

We followed the tube that bypassed the central node to curve toward engineering. I’d been scanning automatically for drones, but I was still turning up a negative result. I tapped Miki’s feed. Have you checked the ship recently?

I’m monitoring Kader’s feed for Don Abene and checking the onboard system status every 2.4 seconds, SecUnit. Ejiro is in the medical suite and is expected to fully recover.

This was the first time I’d heard Miki sound even minimally annoyed. I was vaguely encouraged by that, for some reason. Acknowledged, just checking.

Miki sent me a smile glyph. It’s good to check on our friends.

Well, I’d asked for that.

The tube curved ahead and, as I’d suspected, I saw the shadows and light play that indicated big windows in both walls. What we were about to do was an obvious tactic, and the combat bots could have sent some miniature drones up here to see if we tried it. But I wasn’t picking up any hint of surveillance, movement, or suspicious static on my scan. It was support for the theory that they didn’t have an on-site controller; the schematic didn’t show that these access tubes had windows, it had just seemed likely given the rest of the facility’s design. That wasn’t something a combat bot was going to pick up on.

I stopped inside the shadow of the opaque part of the tube, and Wilken halted nearby. In the feed, I saw she was adjusting the magnification on her helmet cam.

One side of the transparent tube looked down at the engineering pod’s hub. It was only twenty-two meters away at this point, and we had a view through the big curving roof, identical to the one in the geo pod. Wilken put her helmet cam against the tube wall, then sent me the video.

I could see the movement and extrapolate the positions myself, but the greater detail was nice.

One combat bot stalked across the hub floor as we watched, passing under a central sculptural structure that must have been part staircase to the upper gallery level, and part artistic statement. Wilken’s scope registered powered movement in the upper level, and I could tell by the pattern it was a flight of combat drones. Most of my contracts used the much smaller (cheaper) model, designed for intel and better for collecting the clients’ proprietary data, as well as keeping an eye on your base perimeter and making sure nothing snuck up on your teams in the field. These were the bigger model that had intel capacity, extra shielding, and an onboard energy weapon.

Still scanning, Wilken muttered, “So we’ve got one more combat bot, plus the drones.”

We had at least two more combat bots; one was standing back under the shadow of the gallery. Wilken had missed it but I was extrapolating its existence based on the energy patterns Wilken’s scope had picked up. I was willing to bet there were one or two more in reserve, or active somewhere else in the facility. Probably between us and the shuttle, because that’s how these things work.

Then Wilken said, “There’s the target.”

By “target” she meant her client Hirune, lying on the floor next to the foot of the staircase. (You should never refer to the clients as targets; you don’t want to get confused at the wrong moment.) (That’s a joke.) She lay curled on her side, facing away from us, and I couldn’t tell if she was alive. There was something else that worried me. “Why did they choose the engineering pod?”

We had to pass through the central node to get there, and unless there was a trap set there, the atmospheric pod was closer and better defended, as it only had the one entrance. The engineering pod had one access through the central node and a second tube branching off from the production pod, plus a lift junction in the hub, right under that gallery.

“No telling what goes on in bot brains,” Wilken said, then threw a glance at me. I stared straight ahead. If there was one thing good about this situation, it was reinforcing how great my decisions to (a) hack my governor module and (b) escape were. Being a SecUnit sucked. I couldn’t wait to get back to my wild rogue rampage of hitching rides on bot-piloted transports and watching my serials. Wilken added, “Let’s go. I’ve got a plan.”

Yeah, I’ve got a plan, too.

Now that we knew where the combat bots were, Wilken had us take the central node access to the production pod, where we could walk across the alternate tube access to the engineering pod. Or where I could walk across the alternate tube access, because that was her plan.

“We’ll send the SecUnit in to distract them, and then I’ll go in to get Hirune,” Wilken told Abene.

Miki cocked its head. Abene’s brow furrowed, and the look she threw at me was startled. “That’s suicide, surely.”

Wilken said patiently, “It’s a SecUnit. That’s what they do.”

Miki signaled alarm through the feed. This is not a good plan, SecUnit.

Abene’s expression went hard again. “It’s against the GI standards of operation.”

Wilken lifted her brows. “Do you want Hirune back?”

I watched Abene’s face. She was struggling, torn between her fear for Hirune and the thought of sending me into what was probably going to be a terrible but at least abrupt death. It was interesting to watch, because she knew I was a SecUnit. She grated out, “There has to be another way. Consultant Rin would surely not allow this.”

But she had said she had never seen or worked with a SecUnit before, and Miki didn’t even have an entry in its knowledge base for it. And Abene was a human with a pet robot. She might think of me as Consultant’s Rin pet, like Miki was hers.

We didn’t have time to argue, and I really didn’t want anybody thinking about Consultant Rin, whose fictional existence seemed to be increasingly flimsy, at least to me. I said, “It’s all right, Don Abene. It’s what I do.” It was still extremely difficult not to sound ironic.

On our private connection, I said to her and Miki, It’s all right, I have another plan. It’s safer for Hirune.

Are you sure? Abene said, then, You don’t want to tell Wilken your plan.

No, I didn’t, mostly because I didn’t want her giving me orders I had to ignore. Also because I had only a vague idea of what I wanted to do; most of it was going to be created on the fly. You’re my client. You can monitor me on this connection. I told Wilken, “We should go now. Give me your weapon.”

“What?” Wilken didn’t fall back into a firing position, but the way the armor shifted over her joints made me think that was her first impulse.

I said, “If I’m going in first, I’ll need a projectile weapon.” I just wanted to see what she’d do.

“No, I’m going to follow you in,” Wilken said, not so patiently. “I’ll be at the hatch junction between the production pod corridor and the tube, to give you cover.” She started up the corridor, telling Abene, “Wait here. If I send you a feed message to run, get back to the shuttle.” I followed her, like a good little SecUnit/killing machine.

Behind me, Miki moved to watch us head away up the corridor, sending its camera-view to Abene.

Once we were out of earshot, Wilken muted her comm and feed and said, “Any word from Consultant Rin?”

“No, the station feed isn’t accessible from here.” Which Wilken knew. “I may be able to reach her on comm if you need to speak to her.” I could fake that, but I’d need a little time to work on it.

Fortunately Wilken decided she didn’t want to invite another Security Consultant to give opinions on her strategy, especially since she was planning on getting that Security Consultant’s contracted SecUnit killed. I don’t know what bond companies charge clients when we get killed, but it’s probably a lot.

I figured Wilken’s plan was to send me in, seal the hatch, and when the combat bots killed me, she would tell Abene and Miki that she had tried and now they needed to go back to the shuttle and leave. Without a SecUnit on her side, Abene was unarmed and not wearing powered armor, and Wilken could drag her back if Abene resisted. Of course, if Wilken touched Abene, Miki would intervene, but I’m not sure Wilken realized that.

We reached the hatch junction and Wilken stopped. She said, “Good luck.”

Yeah, fuck you, I thought, and kept walking.

All right, so I wasn’t happy about this. It wasn’t like I had a repair cubicle waiting somewhere. I could repair with a MedSystem but I needed access to one, and the closest one I had any chance of getting to myself was onboard my cargo ship still docked at the station. But I knew I could do this.

(I hoped I could do this. I had been wondering a lot about my judgment lately.)

As I got further up the access tube, out of Wilken’s sight, I backburnered her channel and tapped my connection to Miki and Abene to give them a visual through my feed. (It’s not as good as a helmet camera would be; it uses my eyes to record so it jumps around a lot.) Miki was talking, more to Abene than to me, but I stopped listening. I was fishing for a drone.

I was broadcasting little spurts of static on an open channel. The drone should read it as signals from a vocal comm, like if some poor human was wandering through here, trying to call for help on their comm rather than on the secured interfaces Abene, Miki, and Wilken were using for our feed.

This could blow up in my face in that all the drones might decide to slam through here at once to get me, but I didn’t think that would happen. The bots hadn’t sent them after us yet because they didn’t want us to know they had them, probably because that’s how they intended to attack the shuttle. I was hoping the drones were set to protect the perimeter and a sentry would come to investigate.

I came to a spot where a connector in the tube had empty slots where equipment was supposed to be fitted. It formed shadowy cubbies and I stepped into one. My scan stretched as far as it would go, still sending my tempting intermittent signal. And I got a response. A staticky burst, like a comm trying to reply to me and being drowned out by interference.

A normal SecUnit (you know, one that still had its governor module, less anxious than me but probably more depressed) could do this part, but would be restricted to the canned responses available in the combat stealth module. A drone might be able to recognize those responses as coming from another combat unit and not a human. I didn’t have the combat stealth module anyway (I had never been upgraded with it, probably due to RaviHyral and the whole “killing all the clients” thing, go figure), so I used snippets of dialog from my media storage, extracted and processed to eliminate background noise and music and to remove any identifying code underlying the audio. I sent my prerecorded “Are you—can’t find—where—ship—” artistically obscured with static.

The drone sent another artistic burst of static in response. From its signal strength it was getting closer. I stayed where I was, waiting.

On the feed, Miki said, We’re worried about what you’re doing, SecUnit.

Nothing on scan yet, so I had time to chat. Why are you worried, Miki?

Because we don’t know what you’re doing. Wilken is telling Dr. Abene on her feed that you aren’t doing anything—

The drone had just come into my scan range, moving slowly so as not to alert the human it thought was here. Standing in the dark cubby, I had stopped breathing, stopped any activity it might pick up. I teased it with a little more comm audio. The schematic showed these slots as part of an atmospheric gas sampling station, so the drone had no idea there was room for something human-sized to hide. Confused at the apparently empty passage, it tried to trace the signal. And I pinged it with a compressed list of drone control keys.

(That’s not in the stealth module, and it’s not a function of company-supplied SecSystems. I got it from the proprietary data of a company client who worked on countermeasures for combat drones. I had managed to resist deleting it to fill that space up with new serials. I knew someday it would come in handy.)

One of the keys worked and the drone switched into neutral standby. I wandered around in its control code for a minute or two, making sure I knew how it worked. It, all the other drones (it was reading thirty active), and three combat bots were all operating on a secured feed. All the drones were in the engineering pod foyer with two of the combat bots. The third bot was reading as active in the facility, but there was no location for it. (I had a bad feeling it was heading toward the shuttle to cut us off.) The bots had more layers of security and even now, from within their own network, if I started trying to hack them they’d have time to run up here and kill me. But I could take control of all the drones.

In another twenty seconds, they were all my new drone friends.

Oh, I see, Miki said. Never mind.

But I was going to have to move fast. I told Drone One to remain in standby, and ordered the twenty-nine others to turn on the two combat bots in the engineering pod. Then I started to run.

I rounded a curve, went through two open hatch junctions. I was already hearing energy and projectile weapon fire, metal smashing against walls, and that funny high-pitched whine combat drones make when attacked. I wasn’t controlling them individually; once given the order, the drones knew what to do, and me trying to jumpseat pilot them would just slow them down.

I accelerated as the hatch entrance to the engineering pod came into sight. I reached the end of the corridor at top speed and threw myself forward into a dive.

The hub foyer was now a warzone. I hit the floor and slid out across it. The combat bot nearest the door flailed wildly at the cloud of drones firing and diving at it. It thrashed around like an irritated metal whirlwind, stray blasts from its weapons hitting the walls, the floor, the columns. It smacked a drone with its cutting hand and shrapnel sprayed the room. I’d tuned down my pain sensors in anticipation, but I still felt impacts all over my back and shoulders, little thumps that I knew meant something had cut through my clothes and pierced my skin. (Does that sound terrifying? Because it was terrifying.) The second bot tried to run forward but the drones made a wall and slammed into it, forcing it back with a haze of weapon fire and their own armored bodies.

I rolled to my feet, dove again, and landed next to Hirune. Her body looked intact and I didn’t see any blood pools, but I didn’t have time to check if she was alive. (It didn’t matter. In a retrieval like this, humans wouldn’t believe the hostage was dead unless I brought the body back.) I scooped her up and here came the hard part, I had to run out of the foyer.

The bots had had time to figure out (a) the SecUnit was here (b) what the SecUnit had done to take over their drones and consequently (c) they were really pissed off at that SecUnit. I bolted across the room toward the door.

The two bots had taken out twenty-three of the drones, each one a light, a connection, blinking out of my awareness. But the drones had done a lot of damage, targeting joints, weapons ports, and hands. A camera view from a surviving drone told me the bot behind me had lunged for my retreating back but crashed to its knees; drones had been concentrating fire on its ankle joints while others distracted it.

The bot in front of me threw itself forward to block the door. And I turned right and ran straight for the lift junction.

The combat bots had taken over the lift system like I’d warned Brais, but combat bots can’t hack like a SecUnit. I hadn’t tried for control of the whole system, just this one lift, telling it to wait here for me. The door slid obediently open as I reached it. I ordered it to take me to the production pod. The door slammed on a set of sharp metal fingers and the pod whisked me away.

Drone One was still waiting in the corridor, and I ordered it to close the junction hatches between the engineering pod and the production pod, drill through the walls, and fuse the controls. It whizzed into action as the lift stopped and opened its doors.

I stepped out into an empty junction in the production pod, and sent the code I’d prepared into the lift system. It shut the system down and set a password lock. The combat bots could get past it if they had the right code modules, and if they devoted resources to it that they could be using for other things. It would still buy me the time I needed. I hoped.

Now that I had time to evaluate my own condition, I eased up my pain sensors a little. The impacts I’d felt turned from dull aches to sharp burning, like little explosions under my skin. Ow, ow, okay, ow. I locked my knee joints to stay upright and upped my air intake.

I had taken multiple shrapnel hits from the drones being shredded all around me. I had two hits from projectile weapons, one in my lower left side and one in my left shoulder. I was pretty certain I had been hit by stray shots meant for drones. If the bots had been able to target me, I would be in pieces. I tuned down my pain sensors and the impact sites faded from explosions down to embers. (I know that’s actually not a permanent solution and pretending bad things aren’t happening is not a great survival strategy in the long run, but there was nothing I could do about it now.) The arm where I was storing my memory clips was undamaged, which was a relief.

I started down the corridor toward the production pod foyer, where the others should be.

I tapped Miki’s feed for a report because neither it nor Abene were saying anything and I wasn’t sure what they had been able to see through my visual feed. At that point, Hirune’s gloved hand squeezed my shoulder.

Fortunately I remembered I was carrying a possibly living human and didn’t scream or drop her or anything. Her helmet with its comm mic had been ripped off, and her head rested on my shoulder. She slurred the words, “Who are you?”

I was distracted, and what came out of my buffer was the standard, “I’m your contracted SecUnit.” I was distracted because confused noise was coming from the connection with Miki and Abene. It wasn’t communication from a feed interface, it was audio; Miki was sending me open comm audio over the feed.

Her voice rough and deep with fury, Abene shouted, “Who sent you? GrayCris?”

On my shoulder, Hirune made a confused “huh?” sound.

The other comm audio I could hear was too faint even for me to tell what it was. I had to waste four seconds converting it to a spectrogram before I recognized it. It was two noises, the low pitch of Miki’s joints and the higher pitch of powered armor, bracing against each other.

Well, shit.

I do make mistakes (I keep a running tally in a special file) and it looked like I had made a big one. I had interpreted all of Wilken’s behavior as being about me, about the discomfort and paranoia associated with a SecUnit suddenly appearing out of nowhere, supposedly sent by another security consultant whose existence implied that the clients didn’t trust her and Gerth. (I know, the “it’s all about me” bit is usually a human thing.) But now it seemed she had been uneasy for a whole other reason.

The good thing about getting your security through a bond company like the one that had owned me is that for small contracts you take delivery at a company office, and for big ones it arrives in a company transport. This greatly reduces opportunities for somebody to show up pretending to be your security team when they’ve really been contracted to kill you.

Wilken and Gerth were good. I had listened in on and analyzed their conversations aboard Ship and not picked up any hint of it. But then, if they worked for GrayCris, they would be alert for the kind of bond company security surveillance in use throughout the Corporation Rim.

By this point my drone had reached the hatch junction where Wilken was supposed to be waiting. She wasn’t there, obviously, being busy betraying her clients. (When I said I didn’t like humans working security you thought I was just being an asshole, right?)

I used my connection to Miki’s feed and accessed its camera view. Oh yeah, not good. The image was shaky but I could see Miki had Wilken backed up against a pillar. Miki had one arm pinning Wilken’s right wrist against the pillar, as Wilken tried to bring her projectile weapon down to bear on Abene. Something was wrong with Miki’s hand but I didn’t have a clear view, and I didn’t want to distract Miki at the moment by pulling a damage report. Wilken had her other forearm braced against Miki’s face, like she was trying to shove it away, but that wasn’t what she was doing. She had energy weapons built into the forearms of her armor and she was trying to slide one into position to blow Miki’s head off.

(Miki could operate without its head, but its sensory inputs and cameras were there, and it would be really awkward.)

Wilken had cut me out of her feed connection, but I used Abene’s to bypass the block: This is SecUnit. We can talk about this. Consultant Rin can offer you immunity from prosecution if you testify. I hoped that made sense (it was a line from Sanctuary Moon) and I’m sure it sounded like I was stalling. I wasn’t stalling and I didn’t need her to answer me, I just needed her distracted enough to not think about what I was doing in her feed. Your bosses are going down. Whatever they paid you, it won’t make up for a stint in prison. (Yeah, that was from Sanctuary Moon, too.) In the meantime, I was frantically looking for the right code. The companies that make powered armor are different from the ones that make SecSystems, intel drones, cameras, and so on, and their system architectures were different and it made everything harder.

Abene had a grip on Wilken’s projectile weapon, trying to help Miki wrench it away, but couldn’t do much against the powered armor. I could tell she had no idea about the forearm energy weapon, which was in a much more dangerous position. In the feed, I could hear Abene telling Miki to let go and run, and Miki refusing on the basis that Wilken would then shoot Abene. Who should be running, frankly, but wasn’t going without Miki, obviously.

I reached the turn into the production pod’s foyer where Abene and Miki struggled with Wilken. Her energy weapon slid slowly but inexorably into position next to Miki’s head, despite its attempts to hold her and Abene hanging off her other arm and kicking her. In about thirty seconds I was going to have to put Hirune down on the floor and do this the hard way, if I couldn’t find this code.

On yet another channel, Drone One reported that it couldn’t detect any activity suggesting that the combat bots were trying to blast their way through the hatches it had sealed and jammed. The drone had been cut off from the network and couldn’t report further on the movements of any active units. Which meant that the combat bots had stopped to repair each other (Yes, they’re self-repairing unless their main processing center is destroyed. Yes, that is a pain in the ass and also terrifying.) and would soon be taking another route out of the engineering pod to come after us. Like I didn’t have enough to do right now.

Frantically scanning Wilken’s armor, I finally found the right code. That was a relief. I opened a channel and sent the “freeze” command via the feed.

The reason the company doesn’t use powered armor like Wilken’s is not only because the company is cheap. Powered armor like Wilken’s is hackable.

Miki twisted free and stepped backward, still keeping its body between Wilken and Abene. Wilken froze in place (literally) her face grimacing as she shouted into a comm that wasn’t working anymore. (I had cut off her comm and feed; I wanted current developments to be a surprise to Gerth.) The projectile weapon started to fall from Wilken’s frozen fingers and Abene lunged forward and grabbed it.

Now I could see Miki’s damage; it had two energy impacts on its chestplate and its right hand was a stump.

I said, “It’s all right, I’ve locked her armor.” I ran Miki’s feed back, skimming it to see what had happened. Wilken had waited until I was busy with the combat bots, then had returned to Abene and Miki. She had moved toward them fast, saying she had something important to tell them off the comm and feed. Then she had grabbed Abene by her hair. It was still hanging loose, her helmet left behind after I’d broken the release tab to get her away from the bio sampler.

Wilken had pointed the weapon at Abene’s head and said, “Sorry, it’s not personal.” That comment had cost her the kill, it had given Miki time to slam in between them and force the weapon up and away. (Just because Miki was a pet bot that carried things for humans didn’t mean it wasn’t strong enough to take on powered armor.) Wilken had fired the weapon, destroying Miki’s hand, which hadn’t slowed Miki down, either.

Abene saw me and gasped, “Hirune—”

“She’s alive,” I said, because Abene was armed now and traumatized humans with unsecured weapons make me nervous.

Miki said plaintively, “SecUnit, Consultant Wilken tried to shoot Don Abene.”

Abene slung the weapon over her shoulder and hurried to me. She touched Hirune’s face, then looked up at me. “Oh thank you, thank you.”

It’s nice to be thanked. “Miki, damage report.”

“I am at eighty-six percent functional capacity.” It held up its arm stump. “It’s only a flesh wound.”

For fuck’s sake. Abene turned toward it, shocked. “Miki, your poor hand!”

Oh good, another Abene/Miki lovefest. I said, “Miki, take Hirune.”

Miki stepped forward and held out its arms. Hirune was only semiconscious but had a convulsive grip on my jacket. Abene gently pried her hand away and I deposited her into Miki’s arms.

I turned to Wilken. It was the hair-grabbing thing that bothered me. Along with the snide “it’s not personal.” If Wilken had shot with no warning, Abene would be dead and Miki would be in pieces now. But Wilken had wanted Abene to know that she was betrayed. That was personal.

I don’t like personal.

This was another reason I didn’t like human security consultants. Some of them enjoyed their job too much.

I stepped up to Wilken and pulled off the utility harness that held the explosive packs and other gear. She glared at me through the faceplate. I slung the harness over my shoulder and said, “Don Abene, you might not want to watch this.”

Abene turned away from Miki and Hirune. “No!” Then she added more calmly, “I know you’re angry that she sent you to the combat bots, but don’t kill her.”

I wasn’t angry on my account. Being sent into situations to get shot at was literally my job, or had been my job. I thought everything had happened so fast Abene hadn’t had time to process what Wilken had nearly done to her.

It must have been obvious that her first argument was not compelling, because Abene continued, “If she’s working for GrayCris, we need her as a witness.”

Okay, that did make sense. The whole reason I was here was to find more evidence against GrayCris. I looked into Wilken’s faceplate. Her expression had gone blank, trying to conceal fear. With her comm and feed down, she could still hear us, though our voices would sound like we were at the bottom of a mining tunnel. When it powered down, the armor had automatically opened some vents to allow air circulation, so she wouldn’t suffocate or cook in her own heat. I could give it a delayed command to close the vents once we’d left, and Abene would think it was an accident.

There’s that caring thing again. Did I care if Wilken survived or not? Not really.

I said, “We need to go,” and held out my hand for Wilken’s projectile weapon. Abene handed it to me, and I walked away. I left the vents open.

As Miki and Abene followed me, I said, “The bots in the engineering pod will be trying to reach us once they self-repair, and the drone I captured says that there’s one more active combat bot. It’s probably somewhere between us and the shuttle.” We also knew they would use whatever mobile equipment was left behind in the facility against us. I didn’t want to have to fight another bio sampler.

Abene lengthened her stride to keep up with me. “I can’t reach the shuttle on my feed or comm,” she said. “Neither can Miki.”

“That’s because I’m blocking you,” I told her. “I didn’t want you to say anything that might alert Gerth.” At least not until I figured out what to do about Gerth. I couldn’t get to her armor from here, even if I unblocked the feed. The codes for the armor were unique to each unit (the manufacturers weren’t completely stupid) so I had to be close enough to be able to scan for them.

“I see.” Abene, amazingly, didn’t argue. Or maybe it wasn’t amazingly; she was pretty smart. “I suppose it’s too much to hope that Gerth is not also a hired killer.”

“Analysis from the cargo ship suggested they had worked together for some time,” I said. “We have to assume they were suborned together, or at some point deflected and replaced the security team your company sent.”

“Deflected,” Abene repeated. “That means killed?”

“Probably.” When I picked up the Milu cargo ship on HaveRatton, I hadn’t downloaded any local news, just the bursts about Port FreeCommerce and GrayCris. If there had been reports of two bodies discovered with all identification burned out, I had missed them. (You can’t space people off a transit ring; security looks for that kind of thing and gets very agitated about it.) “With Gerth at the ship, we have a hostage situation.”

I hate hostage situations. Even when I’m the one with the hostages.

Miki said, “That’s not good.”

See, that? That is just annoying. That contributed nothing to the conversation and was just a pointless vocalization to make the humans comfortable.

In her feed, Abene was doing a quick review of my video from the engineering pod. It was less than a minute, so it didn’t take her long. She said, “Was Wilken giving the bots orders? Perhaps they will go dormant without her. But if they report to Gerth, we’re back in the same situation.”

“I don’t think she or Gerth gave them orders,” I said. “I was listening in on their feeds, and I would have heard that, even if it was encrypted.” They hadn’t spoken to each other much at all, which was maybe suspicious in itself. (I know, hindsight is awesome.)

Miki said, “The combat bots could have been in standby and received instructions to activate once anyone arrived at the facility.” Hirune stirred and murmured and Miki responded, “There, there, Hirune. It’s all right.”

Well, yeah, I thought of that already.

Abene was saying, “I don’t understand this. If Wilken and Gerth were sent to kill us, why were the combat bots sent here? Obviously GrayCris wants to stop the assessment, but that’s—”

I said, “Hold it,” and stopped. I needed to do a quick review of my video and prove or disprove this theory and there’s only so many things I can do while walking and scanning for hostiles without a Sec-or HubSystem to help. I let Miki view my feed as I started my analysis, and I was distantly aware of Miki explaining to Abene what I was doing.

I pinged my drone and told it to open its log and query its records and build a list of activations, standbys, and sleep phases. Then I pulled my copy of Miki’s video of the first attack when Hirune had been taken, and did a quick review of it and my video of the second attack, when the combat bot had gone after Wilken. I finished and then checked the log digest the drone had ready for me. (It was really nice to work with such an advanced drone.)

“The combat bots and drones weren’t sent here for you,” I reported to Abene. “They were part of the facility’s manifest from the start. The transit station was still in construction at that point, and wouldn’t have been much help in driving off potential raiders. And GrayCris wouldn’t have wanted to call on any outside agency for help, since they were trying to conceal the fact that they were building an illegal mining platform disguised as a terraforming facility.” And the bots probably weren’t here just for protection from raiders, but also to keep any human workers in line. “The combat bots and drones have been in sleep mode since the facility was abandoned. They were activated when your shuttle docked here. Analysis suggests Wilken and Gerth were surprised by their existence.” A bot analysis would have missed that entirely, but I’m better at reading human faces and voices. (The organic parts in my head do come in handy for that, and of course it was much easier on recorded video, when I could do freezes and zoom-ins, and not in anxiety-causing realtime.) “I think Wilken did believe it was raiders who staged the attack and took Hirune, up until the second attack when she saw the combat bot. There’s a good chance GrayCris didn’t tell her and Gerth about the combat bots, hoping that the bots would eliminate them.” And helpfully tie up any loose ends.

I wondered how Wilken felt about that. It sure hadn’t made her hesitate to finish her mission. She had expected me to be destroyed by the combat bots; she meant to kill Abene and Miki. She had counted on getting out of this and collecting her fee.

Abene let out a breath in frustration and anger. But she said, “Can we use that on Gerth, do you think? Tell her that GrayCris tried to kill her and Wilken as well, that they should testify to what happened. Or use Wilken as a hostage…” She shook her head, biting her lip.

She was thinking strategically, which is always a relief, and asking me questions instead of giving me stupid orders. I didn’t have to obey orders anymore, but that doesn’t make them any less annoying. I said, “Our only advantage right now is that Gerth doesn’t know Wilken was compromised.”

The drone was still reporting no activity from the hatches, which meant the bots had gone the other direction, or were working on the lifts. I told it to come to my position. (When it reached Wilken, I had it stop and hover in front of her face for twenty-six seconds. Okay, so I was a little angry.)

Abene was looking at me again. I could see her doing it from the view through Miki’s camera. She said, “Gerth must be waiting for a sign from Wilken before she acts against the others on the shuttle, surely. I should try to contact Kader. I can get a tight feed connection with him.”

“Are you sure he won’t say aloud, ‘Hey everybody, Don Abene’s just signaled me on the feed’ before you can tell him not to?” That’s a problem with humans.

Abene started to speak, hesitated, and then shook her head once. “He might, he might. But we must find out what is happening aboard the shuttle.”

Miki said, “Vibol doesn’t speak very fast. Maybe we should call her.”

I sent Abene and Miki a warning in the feed right before the drone passed us in silent mode; I was sending it ahead to scout. Abene still flinched, then stared after it. But she was right about the shuttle. If we could get a report from onboard, it would help us plan. Also, Abene and Miki would stop asking me about it, which would be a very big bonus right now. (I’d forgotten how stressful being a SecUnit was.) I said, “You don’t have any security monitoring aboard your shuttle? No cameras? No other bots, even a currently inactive one?”

“No.” Abene pushed her hair back, frustrated but thinking. “There’s no need. There are cameras in the evac suit helmets, but they’re inactive in the emergency lockers.”

Miki said, “Don Abene, there are two evac suits on the flight deck. I have the hard addresses for their comms.”

Abene turned to me. “Can you activate their comms from here?”

I probably could. But whether Gerth had killed the others yet, or was still waiting for a signal from Wilken, it didn’t matter. We still needed to get Gerth off the shuttle.

We needed to get everyone off the shuttle.

I was getting an idea. It was probably a bad idea. (When most of your training in tactical thinking comes from adventure shows, that does tend to happen.) I said, “We need to get back to the geo pod.”