Марта Уэллс: Fugitive Telemetry

Human One took a sharp breath. “Thanks for trying, Station Security.”

Above us the ship’s camera picked up a hostile in an armored suit, the one that the refugees had mistaken for a SecUnit, stepping into view of the hold camera near the jury-rigged lock above us. Oh, I get it. The hostile wasn’t strong enough to activate the manual release without the armor. But I’d finally found the code they used for the jury-rigged hatch.

In one of my shows, this would have been a great time to say something brave and encouraging. I suck at that, so I said, “Get to the back of the module, on the floor, and cover your heads.”

I checked my input for the life-tender; it had reached the colony ship’s hull and was blorping along toward the airlock. In my peripheral vision, Human One jerked her head at the others and they scrambled toward the far end of the module. I said, “When I yell clear, I need you to follow me up into the ship.”

Skeptically, Human One said, “How are you gonna—”

I pulled my explosive projectile weapon off its strap, then climbed the folded cargo rack nearest the module lock, braced my feet against the bulkhead, and held on with my free arm. As the armored hostile leaned down to reach the release, I triggered the ship’s system to open the jury-rigged hatch.

It rotated open with a hiss of released air, and the module immediately smelled better.

I didn’t move. The camera showed the armored hostile jerking back in surprise. A panicky yell from a hostile on the bridge came over the comm; they must have realized the bot pilot was unresponsive. But the armored hostile couldn’t pull the release now, while the lock was open, without depressurizing the ship. (I’d also frozen open all the interior hatches, which, from the additional yelling over the comm, was something the bridge crew had just discovered.)

The armored hostile hesitated. Come on, look down here, you know you want to. There was going to be an orientation change between the ship’s gravity field and the module’s gravity field, and I’d have to take it into account. The humans huddled at the far end of the module, frozen, waiting.

The armored hostile leaned down and cautiously extended a weapon through the lock.

(I already knew it wasn’t another SecUnit inside that suit, but this was another giveaway. A SecUnit would have moved fast, propelling itself into the module. There’s no point in being cautious when your job is to draw fire, right?)

I woke my drones as I grabbed the armored arm and yanked it down. Twisting the hostile’s weapon free and dropping it, I swung myself over to clamp my body around the armor’s helmet and upper body.

I have a file of access codes I could have used to take control of the armor, but that would take time, and this was an expensive brand and might be newer than my code list. Another reason this wasn’t a SecUnit—our armor was never this nice.

With my chest clamped to its helmet, Armored Hostile couldn’t see and events were moving a little too fast for it to take advantage of the armor’s scan, cameras, or defensive functions. I jammed the nozzle of my projectile weapon into the back neck joint where the important parts were, switched it to full power, and fired. The armor spasmed (an explosive projectile in your motor control functions will do that) and went limp.

My drones shot up through the lock and the hold, and straight into the faces of the two hostiles in tactical gear running toward us down the corridor. They screamed and flailed backward.

I climbed around the dead weight of the armored hostile and up into the ship. Then I dragged the body out of the way and yelled, “Clear!”

I took a guard position at the inner hatch and watched my drones zip through the ship. Behind me the humans scrambled to climb up through the hatch, exhausted and struggling, trying to help each other. When the last one collapsed on the deck, gasping at the fresh air, I let the lock close. That was a relief. Now that there was no more danger of everybody getting sucked into space, I checked my other inputs.

I had confirmation from the bag that it had delivered its humans to the colony ship, where the airlock had accepted its safety code and cycled them through. The responder had sent a confirmation code, and, according to the hostile ship’s SecSystem, had just hailed the hostiles and informed them that they were about to be apprehended.

The armored hostile was still alive, just stunned and trapped in the immobile suit. The other hostiles were confused, panicking about the drones, and there was every chance of getting them to surrender, or at least violently encouraging them to surrender without having to kill them. To the humans, I said, “I’m going after the others, just stay here—”

I felt a hard thump from behind. It was low and to one side, where a fairly important part would be, if I was human.

I turned. Human One had the armored hostile’s weapon, the one I had taken away and dropped down into the module. And she had shot me with it.

I reached her before she could fire again, twisted it out of her grip. Then I walked out of the hold and let the hatch shut behind me.

By the time the responder locked on and its armed intervention team boarded, I had the other hostiles disarmed, restrained with cuffs I’d found in a locker, and sitting on the deck near the main airlock. I’d found their medical unit (it was an off-brand model, and installed in the galley, but whatever) and was letting it seal up the hole in my back. (Just a regular projectile, not an explosive one, so most of my back was still there. I just didn’t feel like walking around leaking in front of humans right now.) I’d gotten Aylen on comm and confirmed she had called in her team for support and was now trying to coax the six refugees out of the colony ship’s airlock corridor. Apparently they weren’t believing the whole “we’re Station Security and we’re here to help” story. Whatever, it wasn’t my problem.

I’d switched my feed ID back to SecUnit.

Senior Indah walked in. I knew from listening to the responder’s comm that she had taken a shuttle out to it, but I hadn’t expected her to come looking for me. She frowned at the galley. The surfaces were smeared with dried food, and it smelled bad, even worse than human food prep areas usually smell. She looked at me and said, “You were hurt?”

I told the MedUnit to stop and pulled my shirt back down. “What gave it away?”

She folded her arms and leaned against the side of the hatch. My drones showed her expression was sour. “The refugees told me they shot you. They realized you were a SecUnit and thought…” She scratched her head, leaving her short hair sticking up unevenly. “I don’t know what they thought, I’m too tired to sort that out. Do you want to make a criminal complaint against them?”

Uh-huh, very funny. “No.” I didn’t want to talk about it, so I stared at the wall. I just wanted to get off this ship, back to the station, back to my regular job making sure no one killed Mensah. “My short-term contract is completed.”

“Is it?” Indah lifted her brows. “Do you know who killed Lutran?”

With everything else, I’d forgotten about the original objective of this whole mess. “No, who?”

Now she rolled her eyes. “I was asking you.”

Oh, right. “But the hostiles will know who they were working with in the Port Authority.”

“We questioned them briefly and they say they don’t. They were given some instructions to send to a scramble-coded feed address, and they have no idea who was on the other end. We checked and the address has been deleted. I don’t know if I believe they really didn’t know who they were talking to, but it’s going to take time to get them to realize that they can help themselves more by telling us everything.” Her mouth set in a grim line. “I don’t want to wait. I want to find that traitor before they do any more damage.”