Марта Уэллс: Rogue Protocol

“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!