Rogue Protocol

Chapter Six

NOW THAT I KNEW where we were going, it was a lot easier to get there. We went to the next lift junction, and I spent a careful minute cutting my code-protected lift out of the system and making its actions invisible to the rest of the lifts. (That sounds like an obvious thing to do, but the problem is, if the other lifts can’t see your lift, they can attempt to occupy the space your lift is already in. This is just as catastrophic for the occupants as it sounds.)

I sent my drone on the lift first, just to make sure there was nobody waiting for us outside the geo pod, then I took Miki, Abene, and Hirune through. We reached the geo pod hub, walking in under the transparent dome with the shifting storm clouds overhead. I sealed and code-locked the hatches, which admittedly was just to make the humans feel better. The combat bots could blast their way through if they tried hard enough, especially with three of them concentrating on one hatch. I was hoping they were planning to trap us on the route to the shuttle, which was not a great scenario either, but would at least buy us some time. I sent the drone to scout the access corridors that led to the shuttle to see if it could locate the bots’ ambush point.

(I didn’t think the bots would use the lifts even if they got control of the system again, since they would be alert for the kinds of things SecUnits can do. But I told my invisible lift pod to careen randomly around the facility anyway. It was worth a shot.)

Anyway, Step One to getting us back in the shuttle was getting Gerth out of it.

It occurred to me I could do this faster if I had help. Miki had put a semi-conscious Hirune down in one of the padded console chairs while Abene pulled the emergency kit off her harness and rifled through it. I said, “I’m going to try to get a feed connection to your shuttle via the suit comms on the flight deck, but I need to get this control station active. There are diggers still attached to the facility that we might be able to use against the combat bots.” That wasn’t exactly what I was going to do with the diggers, but I didn’t want to argue about it.

Abene nodded understanding and put the med tabs for concussion and shock into Miki’s good hand. “Miki, please take care of Hirune while I work on the control station.” Then she frowned at me and said, “You’re bleeding.”

I looked down. I was dripping onto the floor, a mix of blood and fluid. I hate it when I leak. My veins seal automatically and some of the shrapnel had popped out, but the projectile in my side had moved around, reopening that wound. I cautiously dialed up my pain sensors to check; oh yeah, that’s what had happened. Ouch.

Abene said, “Were you hit?” She stepped toward me, reaching to push my jacket aside.

I jerked back a step. She stopped, startled. Miki turned, its visual sensors focusing in on me. I checked its camera and got a view of my face. I thought I had gotten good at controlling my expression, but apparently only when I wasn’t feeling actual emotions. In our feed connection, Miki said, Abene won’t hurt you, SecUnit.

Abene held up her empty hand, palm out in a gesture that usually meant “don’t shoot me,” except she wasn’t afraid. She was matter-of-fact. She said, “I’m sorry, but you need treatment. Will it be better if Miki helps you?”

I said, “I don’t—” and stopped there because I didn’t have any way to finish that sentence. I needed help, I didn’t want anyone to touch me. These were two mutually exclusive states.

Abene waited, watching me. Then she said, “Miki, can you leave Hirune?”

“I’m okay,” Hirune rasped. She was blinking and clutching a bulb of hydrating solution from the emergency kit. “I’m fine.”

Abene said, “Good. I’ll work on the console and Miki, you come here and help Rin.” Still watching me, she held out the emergency kit and Miki came to take it.

As Abene went to the console, Miki said, “Please lift your left arm and pull your shirt up, SecUnit.”

I had to set down Wilken’s projectile weapon and harness to do that. I did, putting them on the station chair behind me, because it would look like a normal SecUnit thing to do, because I needed to look normal now. I was devoting a lot of attention to the response I needed to make to Abene. I decided a simple error correcting statement was best. “I’m not Rin. Rin is—”

Abene was powering up the digger control station. Not looking at me, studying the console’s interface in the feed, she said, “Consultant Rin is your supervisor, yes, I’m sorry.”

Miki scanned me and sent the results to my feed. Wow, those were kind of big chunks of metal stuck in me. Miki extended a secondary clamp out of its chest and used that to hold the emergency kit as it got the extractor probe out with its good hand. I don’t need the nerve-block, I told Miki on the feed. I can turn my pain sensors down.

That must be handy. Miki poked the probe into the wound in my side. I don’t have pain sensors, but then, I don’t have pain.

Yeah, one of the differences between bots and SecUnits. I had talked to ART about the other differences, once. How we couldn’t trust each other, because of the orders humans could give. And ART had said, There are no humans here.

Well, there were humans here. I said, Miki, did you tell Don Abene that there is no Consultant Rin, there’s just me?

Yes, Miki said. It found the projectile and carefully eased it out. I told her when the first combat bot attacked Wilken, when she asked me if I knew if you were telling the truth. Then it added, I told her because I wanted to, not because I had to.

I was sure Miki believed that. Why does she think I lied about it?

She thinks it’s because it’s illegal in the jurisdictions that GoodNightLander Independent operates in to employ SecUnits. Miki finished applying the wound sealant patch and went for the second projectile. She said someone who works for GoodNightLander Independent must have sent you here but doesn’t want us to know who they are. She said it didn’t matter, since they sent you to help us.

Abene was using the console to boot the interfaces for each digger. I needed to start trying to get intel on the shuttle.

It was tricky since I wanted to keep Abene and Miki’s comm and feed connections cut off so Gerth or anything else that might be wandering the facility with murderous intent couldn’t use them to trace us. But it helped that Miki had the hard addresses for the two suits on the flight deck. The shuttle’s feed was still active, and I was able to sneak in and ping the first suit. After some poking, I got it to activate its comm.

I heard Kader first, asking for a report on Ejiro’s condition. Brais answered, saying the MedSystem had put Ejiro into recovery. Vibol said something in the background that the audio couldn’t quite pick up. Then I heard Gerth say, “Any response from the station yet?”

Sounding frustrated, Kader replied, “Not yet. It’s got to be interference from that storm.”

Vibol spoke again, still too muffled. Gerth answered, “No, we need to sit tight until we hear from them.”

Uh-huh. She sounded calm and confident and reassuring, though I was pretty sure a voice analysis would show the tension underneath.

I pulled out of the connection and backburnered it. Abene had the station display set to visible, floating above the console’s surface, showing the control screens for the diggers. She muttered, “There. All the diggers are powering up. It’s going to take a few minutes. I hope you can control them, it looks like their procedures have all been deleted.”

Miki was picking shrapnel out of my back now. I said, “The rest of the team hasn’t been injured and Gerth is still acting as their security. She won’t let them leave the shuttle to look for you. They’re having trouble contacting the station for help.”

Abene looked up, frowning. “What trouble? We were in contact with the station when we arrived. It shouldn’t—”

I actually lost the rest of it because my drone pinged me with a report. It had reached the decontam room and had the hatch of the shuttle in scan range, and it hadn’t found any sign of the combat bots. I said aloud, “They aren’t there.”

“What?” Abene stood up from the console, alarmed. “Who?”

“The combat bots. The drone didn’t find them on the route to the shuttle.” I was skimming through everything it was sending me, the scans, the visual data, audio. The drone’s scan was a lot better than mine, and it had been actively searching the route, checking spots for potential ambush. Comparing it to the schematic, I couldn’t see anything it had missed. “They aren’t there.” I sent the drone’s visual into our closed feed connection.

Miki’s head cocked as it reviewed the video. Abene threw a worried look at Hirune. She said, “Then they must be here, near this pod, trying to trap us.”

Maybe. I found my careening invisible lift pod, told it to go to the nearest lift junction to the drone, and ordered the drone to take the lift to the junction outside the geo pod. Within a minute the drone was in the access corridors outside the hatches I had sealed, scanning. I watched it record empty corridors and junctions. Nothing. The bots weren’t setting up an ambush for us on the way to the shuttle and they weren’t outside the geo pod.

My potential strategy hadn’t experienced a catastrophic failure or anything, but I was missing something.

Right, this wasn’t a good time to panic. I went back to my first contact with the drone, the intel I’d gotten before it had been locked out of the combat bots’ network. There was the entry for that third active combat bot. It was marked “active out of range.”

I had assumed it was out of range because it was headed toward where the shuttle was docked, to set up a trap for us when we tried to retreat, but I didn’t know that.

Go back further. Wilken and Gerth had been sent here in place of the contracted GI security to stop/kill the assessment team. So why hadn’t they acted as soon as they arrived on the transit station? With so few people there, it wouldn’t have been difficult. They would have needed an exit scenario if they had acted on the station, but they needed an exit scenario even more here on the facility. The team’s shuttle wasn’t wormhole capable. They would have to return to the transit station, kill the PA staff who would possibly be asking a lot of questions about what had happened to the rest of the assessment team, and steal a wormhole capable ship. (Preferably a ship without a bot pilot who would vigorously resist being stolen.) That sounded like a lot of work, especially considering the fact that there were combat bots on the facility, ready to destroy intruders, so why had GrayCris hired someone else?

The obvious answer was that Wilken and Gerth weren’t here to kill the team, but wanted to get into the terraforming facility because there was something, either data or a physical object, that they intended to retrieve. But they had made no move to retrieve anything. I was certain Wilken had been surprised by the combat bot attack, my analysis there was not faulty. Had Wilken and Gerth even been sent by GrayCris, or was there another corporate or political entity in play?

I needed help. I was rattled, I was still leaking a little, and I hadn’t been able to watch any media in what felt like forever. In desperation, I copied all my possibilities into a potential strategy/decision tree diagram and threw it into the feed for Abene and Miki.

Abene winced, startled at the sudden large image in her feed. Then her face went still as she studied the diagram. Miki wiped wound sealant onto the last shrapnel laceration in my back and shifted into analysis mode. Hirune, still half conscious, watched us with a confused expression.

In the feed, Abene detached one of the assumption squares and moved it away from the tree. She said, If we assume Wilken and Gerth were sent by GrayCris, then they aren’t here to retrieve anything. GrayCris had ample opportunity to remove anything they wanted when they abandoned the facility. She hesitated, her attention moving from one assumption square to another. I think we have to ask ourselves, what does GrayCris want?

That was easy. I said, To destroy the facility. If GoodNightLander Independent hadn’t installed the tractor array, the facility would have collapsed into the planet by now.

Abene’s brow furrowed as she looked at the squares listing possible exit scenarios and the problems with each one. So why weren’t Wilken and Gerth sent to destroy the tractor array? Actually, perhaps they were.

Miki said, aloud, “Wilken altered the flat display on her right forearm armor to show local facility time.” It sent us an image in the feed: Wilken adjusting the display on her armor. The image had been captured when I asked Miki to look at the two security consultants as they stowed their equipment when the shuttle was getting ready to undock from the transit station. “She checked that display approximately fifty-seven times during our walk through the facility, until she attempted to hurt Don Abene.”

I hadn’t noticed that, but when I reran a portion of my video, there it was. Abene said slowly, “Wilken knew something would happen to the facility, and approximately when it would happen. She could only wait so long before she had to get back to the shuttle. When she had the opportunity, she sent you off to be killed by the combat bots, and intended to kill me and Miki. Then she would tell the others it was hopeless and force them to return to the transit station—”

The combat bots’ behavior was starting to make sense. If they had been waiting for something, too, it explained why they had taken Hirune prisoner. They had assigned one bot to mess with us. To attack, grab a prisoner, retreat, attack again. I had destroyed it when it attacked Wilken, but the other three hadn’t come rushing after us. Two had been in the engineering pod, and one was out of range, doing what?

Abene took a sharp breath. She said, “It has to be the tractor array. There’s no other real benefit for GrayCris.” In the feed, she flicked away the assumption squares for the actions of a theoretical station-bound GrayCris operative. “We know from the drone there is no controller for the combat bots, no one aboard the transit station sending orders to them. They are original equipment, meant to defend the facility until it collapsed naturally into the planet, leaving no evidence that it was an illegal mining operation. Wilken and Gerth didn’t know about the bots and weren’t sent to kill us, because killing us is not the goal. The goal is to let the facility be destroyed as planned. The thing that prevents the facility being destroyed is the tractor array. Therefore Wilken and Gerth were sent here to do something, and they thought the only consequence of that something was that the tractor array would fail, and we would be forced to leave the facility. We would all return to the transit station and they would leave aboard the next cargo ship, with no one the wiser.” She slipped out of the feed and turned to me. “But what could they have done? They were with us the whole time.”

I thought she was right, and there was only one thing they could have done without me or someone in the team noticing. “They sent an encrypted signal.” A comm signal, not a feed signal. With all the storm interference, and more importantly the fact that I hadn’t been looking for it, I had missed it.

“Yes, yes.” Abene’s brows lifted. “But to who? The combat bots? Is there a weapon, a way for the bots to destroy the array from here?” She turned to look at the other consoles.

I checked my connection to the shuttle’s audio again. Kader was pushing Gerth about trying to go aboard the facility to search for the others, backed up by Brais and Vibol. No mention of any problem with the tractor array. They had to be monitoring it. Gerth was pushing back, saying they had to wait like they agreed. I ran the audio back. She wanted them to wait thirty minutes. The digger display sent a ping into the feed, indicating that the diggers had finished their full power-up. I sent the shuttle audio into the feed for Abene and Miki and sat down at the digger control station. Whatever was going to happen, it was going to be soon.

As I sent the first set of orders for three of the diggers, Abene said to Miki, “We need sensors. Check all the consoles. Anything in here will be pointed at the surface, but we can try to redirect—”

I backburnered everything but the diggers. Abene was obviously still interested in saving the facility, but my priority was in getting off the facility before it broke up in the atmosphere.

The three diggers uncoiled out of their housings and started to walk across the outside of the lower half of the geo pod. Their multiple arms gripped the surface securely as they moved, the cameras giving me a dizzying view of the storm. They didn’t have the memory cores with their mining protocols, but then they wouldn’t need them for what I wanted them to do.

Abene had booted another console and data popped up above the display surface as Miki leaned over it. Hirune shoved to her feet and limped over to them, leaning on the back of a chair.

I needed to copy over some specialized code from the console, but once I had it, I could control the three diggers through the feed. I assigned them yet another channel in my overworked brain, and stood up. Oh, okay, ouch. Without their protocols, controlling them was tricky. I basically had to drive all three of them at once. Keeping my voice level and patient, I said, “We need to go. You have six minutes.”

Abene waved a hand. “We’ve almost got it.”

I reminded myself I was still pretending to be a SecUnit under contract, and put the countdown in the feed with no additional commentary. Then I collected Wilken’s weapon and harness and went to stand by the hatch.

Hirune looked around, picked up the emergency kit from where Miki had left it, and limped over to stand beside me. She was unsteady on her feet and still clearly a little out of it, but having been carried off by a combat bot once, she was obviously ready to call it a day.

Abene pushed to her feet. “Yes, there! Copy that trajectory, Miki.” Miki acknowledged and followed Abene as she strode to the doorway. “Some sort of structure launched from the engineering pod and is heading toward the tractor array. The missing combat bot must be aboard it, and it means to destroy the array. Those orders must have been in the encrypted transmission Wilken and Gerth sent.”

That’s great! And I will care about the fucking tractor array once I get us on the fucking shuttle! Watching my own countdown, I pulled three inputs forward, my drone, Miki, and the diggers. No wait, I needed my own camera, too. Four inputs. Oh, and the suit audio from the shuttle. Five inputs. I had the drone do a quick check of the foyer and the access to the lift junction, making sure it was clear. I said, “We need to move fast. We don’t know where the other combat bots are.”

Abene nodded and gripped Hirune’s arm. Hirune whispered, “Where are we going?”

Abene shushed her. “Back to the shuttle. It’s all right.” Miki patted Hirune’s shoulder.

I hit the release for the hatch and stepped out. The fast walk to the lift junction made every nerve in my human skin itch. The drone scouted ahead of us, scanning, but I irrationally expected the bots to leap out from around the next corner.

We reached the junction and I sent the drone ahead in my invisible lift. Abene and Miki talked on the feed, occasionally making a reassuring comment to Hirune. They could be plotting to sell me for parts and I couldn’t spare the attention to listen in. Outside the diggers neared the curve of the geo pod. They would need to follow the trough between it and the habitation pod to avoid being spotted by the shuttle.

The lift reached the junction nearest our docking area and the drone zipped out. I sent it on a quick scouting pattern, up and down the access and through into the decontam room, then up to get a view of the shuttle’s lock. The scan was clear, and I told the drone to return to the lift junction and hold position.

The lift returned and I got the humans inside. (And Miki, but at the moment I was classing it with the humans.) I directed the diggers to speed up a little. I wanted us to spend as little time in the access corridor to the shuttle as possible. If the combat bots decided we were putting their mission at risk, they’d come after us and they knew they could catch us there. As I started the lift, I sent Abene the diggers’ video so she’d have some idea of what the shuttle was about to see, and told her, “When I unlock your feed, connect to Kader and tell him to make sure to get everyone off the shuttle.”

“I will.” She nodded sharply and squeezed Hirune’s hand, and tapped Miki’s feed.

The lift reached the junction and I was out as soon as the doors slid open. I moved toward the decontam room, the humans behind me, and I sent the diggers over the curve of the habitation pod and straight in toward the shuttle.

On board, through my connection to the evac suits on the flight deck, I heard Vibol say something in a language I didn’t have loaded, and Kader say, “We’ve got something approaching, unknowns are approaching—”

Distantly, from somewhere below the flight deck, Gerth shouted, “What? What direction?”

I opened Abene’s feed connection, and told her, Now.

She made the private connection to Kader and said, Kader, listen. No questions, don’t tell anyone I’m here. You must get everyone off the shuttle into the facility now, at once. Do whatever you must, pretend to be in a panic, but get everyone off. Your lives depend on it.

Through Abene’s feed, I heard Kader trigger an emergency evacuate order that blared across the team’s feed and the shuttle comms. Gerth had started up to the flight deck and snarled, “Stop, stop where—”

I thought she might trap Kader and Vibol in the cockpit, and we’d be back to a hostage situation. But Kader, who must have taken the “pretend to panic” advice to heart, sent the vid of the approaching diggers from the shuttle’s sensors into the feed and screamed for the others to get out.

I reached the corridor and had a view of the docking chamber as the shuttle’s hatch cycled open. Brais staggered out, a semi-conscious Ejiro leaning on her. Miki ran to help them, Abene hanging back with Hirune, and I followed.

I told one digger to let go of the facility’s surface and dive at the shuttle’s nose, where the forward sensor would have the best view. Abene was in Kader’s feed but with no cameras I got nothing but a confused jumble of impressions.

(I found out later from Gerth’s armor cam that the sudden sensor view of something large coming at the shuttle had made Gerth jerk backward out of the flight deck access. Vibol, taking Kader’s performance as evidence that the shuttle was about to be torn apart, grabbed Kader and dove past Gerth with him tucked under her arm, using the lighter gravity in the access to keep from slamming into the bulkhead. When they hit the corridor floor, they stumbled in the heavier gravity, staggered, and bolted for the hatch.)

Anyway, Kader and Vibol flung themselves out of the hatch, and Gerth, in her powered armor, strode out after them. I was standing to one side of the shuttle hatch by that point, so all Gerth saw was the others, confused and panicked, with Abene and Hirune, and a one-handed Miki holding up Ejiro.

I scanned her armor and found the right code. (It was a much quicker process now that I knew where to look.) Just as she brought her projectile weapon up, I sent the command.

Her armor froze in place, and I stepped around into view. Her expression as she realized what had happened was gratifying. If she had been using her scan, she would have detected me just outside the hatch, but even with the feed, even augmented, humans can only think about one thing at a time.

Abene said, “Now we must get back on the shuttle!”

The others demanded answers and she explained rapidly as she shooed them toward the hatch. I tuned it out to check on all my other inputs. Without my orders, the diggers had gone dormant and stopped where they were. Two were still on the surface of the habitation pod, and the one that had lifted off to dive at the shuttle had landed on the atmosphere pod. Then I checked the drone, which I had left in the lift junction to watch our backs.

It started to respond with a scan of the area, then the transmission cut off abruptly. I felt the connection drop, the drone going out like a light.

I said, “Abene, Miki, bots!” I crossed the room, pulling Wilken’s projectile weapon off my back.

Abene yelled, “Aboard, now!”

I reached the doorway and started to pull explosive packs off Wilken’s harness, arm them, and toss them down the corridor. I still had Miki’s camera as an input and I backburnered it, but I was peripherally aware of the humans scrambling, getting the wounded Ejiro and Hirune through the lock, and Abene telling Miki to pick up Gerth and carry her in. It was about that time when the combat bot slammed around the corner and the first explosive charge went off.

I fired three projectiles, just to make it think I was going to stand here like an idiot and shoot at it, then sprinted back across the room. The charges in the corridor delayed the bot long enough for the humans and Miki to get Gerth in and clear the lock. I flung myself through and I hit the emergency close. Both hatches slammed down.

Finally, I had gotten these fucking people back on this fucking shuttle.

The combat bot hit the outer hatch with an impact like we had been rammed by another small shuttle. I sent to Abene, We need to go.

The clamps gave way and the shuttle fell away from the lock. I checked the camera view of the outer hatch and saw the combat bot standing in the open docking port, holding onto the sides as the chamber decompressed. There was a second one behind it. Miki stood beside me, and I shared the image with it on our feed connection. It said, “Those bots were mean, SecUnit.”

I was losing the connection with distance but one of my diggers was close enough to the lock, crouched in sleep mode. I sent it a last order and it whipped its big hand down, snatched the first bot out of the port, and crushed it.

“Ouch,” Miki commented. SecUnit, why don’t you talk to me on the feed anymore?

Miki knew why, or it wouldn’t have asked.

I stepped around it and went down the access corridor. Miki said in the feed, I didn’t tell on you until I had to.

I went up the corridor toward the crew area. Miki picked up Gerth and followed. In the comm audio, I had been monitoring Abene while she gave the others the quick version of what had happened with Wilken, how I had saved Hirune, how Wilken had shot Miki’s poor hand off, how I had saved her and Miki, and so on, whatever. I had my geo pod data for Dr. Mensah, I had saved Miki’s stupid humans, I just wanted to get out of here. The shuttle was moving away from the facility and I could feel the transit station’s feed just on the edge of my range.

I stepped into the crew area. Kader and Vibol were up in the cockpit, but the others were here, though Ejiro and Hirune were collapsed into seats. Ejiro looked woozy but more alert than Hirune, who probably needed to be stuffed into the MedSystem. Miki set Gerth on her feet, and everyone stared at her for a second, then at me.

Brais stood, facing the floating display. It showed a sensor view of the tractor array above the facility. “Yes, there it is. The object is heading toward the tractor array.”

Abene looked grim. “We think it’s a work zipper from the engineering pod. One of the combat bots is aboard.”

I said, “Don Abene, we need to return to the transit station as soon as possible. When the tractor array fails, it could damage the shuttle.” I guess it could. I don’t know, it sounded good.

In my feed, Miki said, I never talked to a bot like me before. I have human friends, but I never had a friend like me.

I had to bite my cheek to keep my expression at SecUnit neutral. I wanted to block Miki’s feed, but I needed to keep monitoring it in case the humans started plotting against me. (I know, it sounds paranoid. But Miki and Abene knew I’d made Consultant Rin up, and I needed to get away before they told that to a human who knew just how not normal that behavior was for a SecUnit.)

On the comm from the flight deck, Kader said, “We’ve got to commit in the next minute, are you sure about this?”

Wait, what? I ran back my recording and listened to Brais say, “We can use the shuttle to knock the zipper off course. Our shielding will protect our hull—”

Squinting at the display, Ejiro said, “But wouldn’t the zipper be able to return and try again?”

Brais shook her head, still watching the flight projection. “I’ve pulled the specs on that model of zipper. It’s meant for facility maintenance and needs a feed connection to the engineering pod to operate. We can push it out of range and it’ll lose navigation control.”

Oh, great. How long was that going to take?

By the time I caught up to realtime, they had already decided to do it, they were just arguing about specifics.

I stood there watching the glowing shapes on the display as Kader took the shuttle closer to the zipper. I admit, I did watch a little more of the episode I had paused while this was going on. (It was only six minutes, but it was a boring six minutes, okay? Also, Miki had walked over to stand sadly next to Abene and stare at me, and I was ignoring it. Abene thought Miki was sad about the missing hand, and kept patting it and telling it they would get it fixed as soon as they got back to the station.)

(It’s a good thing I don’t have a stomach and can’t vomit.)

Finally the shuttle bumped the zipper off its course, dramatically saving the tractor array and GoodNightLander Independent’s investment with forty-five seconds to spare, yay. The humans congratulated each other, and Abene and Brais helped Hirune stand so they could take her to the medical unit. There was still one combat bot left on the facility, but that sounded like somebody else’s problem. The shuttle had altered course to head back to the station and we were close enough already for me to ping Ship through the feed. It pinged back, still waiting for me. That was a relief.

And I heard a clank from the hatch.

I’m not an expert on space, but I was pretty sure stuff wasn’t supposed to knock on the hatch. It might have been debris from the zipper, but I knew. I just knew it wasn’t. I checked the hatch camera, and got a wide-angle view of combat bot face.

The next connection overrode the station feed, temporarily blotting out all my channels: [Objective: kill intruders.]

Oh, shit.

I blocked the bot out of my feed and yelled, “Emergency! Lock breach imminent!” I sent the images from the hatch camera to Miki and through it into the rest of the team’s feed. The humans froze and it felt like forever, it felt like they weren’t going to believe me. But I had forgotten how slow humans seemed to move when I actually had all my attention on what I was doing. Kader hit the all-ship alarm and sealed the two interior hatches between the lock and the crew area. Great, that would buy me a minute, maybe two.

I told Abene, “Get everyone into the flight deck.” There was another hatch there and it might buy another minute. I turned for the access to the compartment just below us where Gerth and Wilken had stored their gear.

As I climbed out of the access I heard Abene yelling, “Go, go,” and I knew from the team feed that the shuttle was heading toward the station and Vibol was tersely explaining to the Port Authority that we were about to be torn apart by a combat bot.

(Frankly, I didn’t know what station security was going to do about it, either. In fact, I’m sure station security was now shitting itself almost as hard as I metaphorically was.)

The hatch camera helpfully showed me the outer hatch being punched apart, then the feed fizzled and died. The bot would be working on the first inner hatch now. I reached the compartment and saw that Wilken and Gerth had left one case beside the empty ones that had held their armor, the large projectile weapons, explosive packs, and ammo. I tore the remaining case open and found another set of small charges, the kind used more for getting through security doors and hatches. There was a bag that felt empty when I grabbed it and I used it to scoop up the charges and some extra ammo for the projectile weapon I had across my back. It wasn’t going to be that helpful since I doubted I’d have time to use it. Maybe I should have spent the time trying to set up a position instead of coming down here hoping for a decent bot-busting weapon. In the bot-fighting business, small mistakes like that get you torn apart.

In the feed, I heard Abene and Brais handing Hirune up the access to the cockpit. They had already got Ejiro up there. In my feed, Miki said, Hurry, hurry. Abene had told it to bring Gerth and it was holding her. The combat bot pounded on the hatch to the crew area. I shoved upright, turned, and that’s when I saw the assessment team’s equipment storage.

There were cases and racks of environmental testing and sampling tools. One was a core cutter, made to take nice round cylinders out of walls of rock for whatever reason humans need to do that. It was an extension meant to attach to a sampler unit, but they probably had it because Miki was strong enough to lift it and use it; it’s a long tube that uses directed explosive cutters to extract meter-length sections.

I slung the ammo bag over my back, grabbed the cutter off the rack, switched on its power pack, and climbed up the access.

I stepped back into the crew area just as Miki flung Gerth after Abene and hit the manual seal for the hatch. It dropped and Miki turned. I told it, Miki, get out of here! Go hide in the cargo!

No, Rin, it said, I’m going to help you!

In the feed, Abene yelled at Miki to come in with them, she would tell Kader to open the hatch if it would just come in—and Miki told her, Priority is to protect my friends.

Priority change, Abene sent. Priority is to protect yourself.

That priority change is rejected, Miki told her.

The core cutter had powered up and accessed my feed to deliver a canned warning and a handy set of directions. Why yes, I did want to disengage the safety protocols, thanks for asking.

I’d meant to give the core cutter to Miki so it could get the combat bot while I distracted it. But the combat bot blew the hatch and was suddenly in the crew area with us, and there was no time for a plan, no time for strategy.

The bot knew I was there and it turned, reaching for me as I lifted the cutter. Miki braced its feet against the hatch protecting the flight deck access and pushed off. It launched across the cabin, its body cutting through the floating display, straight at the combat bot’s head. I don’t know if Miki was trying to distract the combat bot, or if it had seen me make a similar attack on the bot that came after Wilken, and was trying to duplicate the technique. Air rushed out of the pressurized cabin, down the access corridor and out the ruined airlock, and as Miki jumped the flow gave it an extra boost of speed.

The bot caught the motion and turned away from me, lifted up and extended an arm to catch Miki by the torso. I took the opening and lunged in to slam the core cutter right against the bot’s side, where its brain was. I triggered the cutter. I didn’t have time to brace myself, and the recoil knocked me backward and for three seconds my vision went black.

I was flat on the deck, and all I could hear in the feed was humans yelling from the cockpit, humans yelling over the comm from the Port Authority, and the shuttle’s emergency siren making sure everyone knew the air had just explosively vacated due to lock breaches. The core cutter was on top of me and I pushed it off and sat up. I knew at some point I had heard Abene scream in anguish, but I wasn’t sure when it had happened.

The combat bot still stood, but it was unmoving, joints frozen. The core cutter had gone through its torso from one side to the other and extracted a neat cross-section of the protective shielding and the bot’s processors. The core had been ejected from the back of the cutter and had fallen to the deck. I realized that was what had hit me in the head. I guess despite the instructions I had been holding it wrong.

Miki was crumpled in front of the bot, and something looked wrong. I was climbing to my feet, trying to see how Miki was damaged, when I froze. Something looked wrong because Miki’s chest was crushed, its processor, memory, everything that made it Miki squeezed to nothing in one flex of the combat bot’s hand.

I just sat on the deck. The shuttle neared the station, and the humans were on the comm, talking to the PA from the cockpit. They couldn’t lower the flight deck hatch because of the lock breaches, and I hadn’t answered their attempts to call me on feed or comm. I had still been sending visuals from my camera to the team feed, and they had seen the fight and Miki’s last moment from my point of view. Before I cut my feed connection to them, I’d heard Abene sobbing, Hirune trying to comfort her, the others murmuring in shock.

I need air, too, though not nearly as much as humans, and maybe the lack of it was what made me feel so slow and disconnected. I used the station feed to ping Ship again and told it to unlock from the station, and I gave it a rendezvous position. Its calm acknowledgement felt strange, like everything was normal and nothing disastrous had happened.

Vibol knocked on the other side of the flight deck hatch, calling, “SecUnit, are you there? Please answer!”

I needed to get out of here. I shoved to my feet and went down the corridor to the emergency suit locker. I put on a full evac suit with maneuvering jets and the burst of air once I got the helmet sealed made me feel more alert. I made sure to leave the locker open and unclamp the other suits, so when anyone noticed one was missing, they would assume it had happened during the attack and the suit had been drawn out with the other debris. I wanted them to think that that was what had happened to me, that I had been sucked out of the lock in pieces. Then I went down the corridor to the ruined lock, pulled myself out and away.

I hadn’t used a suit like this before (they don’t generally let murderbots float around in space unsupervised) but the internal instruction feed was very helpful. By the time Ship arrived, I was able to jet into its airlock like a pro.

To the station, it would have looked like Ship had paused to let the shuttle get past so it could safely dock at the PA’s slot. I didn’t think anybody would be looking at the sensors for escaping SecUnits in evac suits.

Once I’d cycled through the lock and had Ship crank up its air system a little, I told it to proceed on its usual course for the wormhole and HaveRatton Station. I got the suit off, dumped it aside with Wilken’s weapon and the ammo bag I had grabbed out of the case. I sat down on the deck and started methodically checking all the equipment to make sure there were no tracers.

Abene had tried to change Miki’s priority to saving its own life, and it had refused her. Which meant she had allowed its programming that option, that ability to use its own judgment in a crisis situation. It had decided its priority was to save its humans, and maybe to save me, too. Or maybe it had known it couldn’t save any of us, but it had wanted to give me the chance to try. Or it hadn’t wanted me to face the bot alone. Whatever it was, I’d never know.

What I did know was that Abene really had loved Miki. That hurt in all kinds of ways. Miki could never be my friend, but it had been her friend, and more importantly, she had been its friend. Her gut reaction in a moment of crisis was to tell Miki to save itself.

After I checked the charges and ammo in the bag, I found a fake pocket in the bottom. Inside it were several sets of identity markers and a larger, different brand of memory clip from the ones I had stored in my arm. I heaved myself upright, and found a reader in the cargo console.

Well, that was interesting.

I hate caring about stuff. But apparently once you start, you can’t just stop.

I wasn’t going to just send the geo pod data to Dr. Mensah. I was taking it to her personally. I was going back.

Then I laid down on the floor and started Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon from episode one.