She fell toward a major hatchway. The stranger, a man, she saw now, launched himself at her. His shoulder was leaking red bubbles. Al Shei yanked on the hatch with one hand and pressed the shot gun against her ribs and fired again. Again, the recoil knocked her backwards, through the hatchway this time.
She didn’t slow down to see if she’d hit him. The spin was slowing and the alarms were silencing one by one. The AIs were regaining control. They’d have the lights back on soon. She flew through a broad corridor, ricochetting off the curved walls. She coughed painfully and tasted blood. The gun’s recoil had broken something inside.
The lights came on, flooding the corridor and making Al Shei blink hard. Something grabbed her left arm ruthlessly and hauled her toward the wall. Al Shei gasped and twisted. A waldo gripped her forearm, and a second reached out toward her. She stuffed the gun’s stock into its pincers. They closed down and the stock splintered, sending slivers of plastic flying in every direction. Al Shei ripped the wire cutters off her tool belt. She wrapped their jaws around the waldo’s smallest pincer, and wrenched it back. The pincer casing bent and snapped, exposing a series of multi colored wires. In the corner of her eye, Al Shei saw a cart-sized drone racing toward her down a grooved track in what was now a wall. She was close enough to the corridor’s side to brace her feet against it. She hooked the cutters around the waldo’s newly exposed wires, arched her back and yanked. The mechanical hand spasmed, and her abrupt motion pushed Al Shei into open air again. She bounced off the wall/ceiling, sending a whole wave of pain through her. That was when she really saw the cameras. They were directing the waldos. These AIs had hands and eyes and they had spotted her.
She pushed herself toward the cart. The wall waldos hadn’t oriented on her yet and she dropped past them. She hit the grooved track and bounced. As she rose, she hooked her hand under the cart’s belly, holding herself against the wall/floor. A waldo swooped toward her and she swung her wire cutters up to block it. It wrenched them out of her hand and tossed them away. As it did, Al Shei braced her feet against the nearest wall and shoved backwards. The force of her movement jarred one pair of the cart’s casters out of the groove. Its right side rose at a drunken angle and its waldos flailed to reach the track again, catching some of the wall’s arms in their grip.
Another waldo stretched out from the wall to catch hold of her. Al Shei’s body rose to meet it. She grabbed its forearm with both hands and used it to lever herself up into the relatively clear air, snatching her wire cutters as she passed. The cart arms and the wall arms were still grappling with each other, trying to sort themselves out. Al Shei pried open a panel in the ceiling/wall over them. She caught up a clipper full of wires just as a waldo closed on her ankle. She clamped both hands around the wire cutter’s handles as the waldo dragged her backwards. The wires broke and a shower of sparks exploded out against Al Shei’s face. The lights went dead, leaving only the narrow beam of her lamp to cut the darkness. The waldo holding her relaxed and Al Shei was able to launch herself around the curve of the hallway.
On her right she drifted past a doorway, not a hatch. Her brain skimmed memories of the schematic she had pored over in her cabin. Maintenance Closet! thought Al Shei jubilantly and she scrabbled at the edge of the door. Fortunately, the power was out here too, so any electronic locks had been disabled.
Al Shei slid the door open, pulled herself inside and slammed the manual bolts shut behind her. She hung in the darkness for a moment, trying to catch her breath and collect her thoughts. Her abdomen burned painfully and the taste of salt and iron wouldn’t leave her mouth. Anonymous objects bumped against her. She turned her head to shine the lamp’s beam around. Multiple cabinets had been knocked open, and the detritus formed a whirlpool around her. Flotsam scraped past her hands and torso as the walls turned. The air had cooled perceptibly since the disaster began, but not dangerously. The Fools had obviously maintained their generator batteries well, at least.
First things first. The power. They’d have a drone down to repair the damage she’d done to the wires in no time, and it wouldn’t take them long to guess where she’d gone. Her light glanced on a whole host of waldos on the walls. She swam across to a maintenance panel, pulled it away from the wall and looked at the underside. She smiled. They’d gotten rid of all the exterior labels, but the AIs hadn’t thought to erase the panel diagrams. She scanned the symbols and her smile grew wider. There was a breaker cluster in here with her.
She counted three panels up and four over from the one she had opened. Underneath it, she found a gorgeous set of orange, green and blue cables all feeding into a group of four squat wafer stacks. Bobbing unsteadily in front of her target. Al Shei pulled her overall sleeves up over her hands and grabbed the stacks. She closed her eyes, braced her feet against the wall and pulled. The wafers came free, almost burning her hands even through the cloth. The pin-pricks of sparks landed against her cheeks and brows. Al Shei drifted gently through the sea of detritus and bounced off the far wall.
She let the cluster go and shook her hands free of her sleeves.
Take that! She thought wildly. She shone her light all around the closet. The waldos remained still. Most of the level should be out of power. Which was good for now, but the AIs most certainly knew where their own breakers were. Her light landed on the silver-grey doors of a locker below her feet and Al Shei felt a surge of hope. Maybe there was one other human necessity the AIs hadn’t been able to quite do away with.
Al Shei tucked her legs and dove towards the locker. She grabbed the handle to steady herself. She could hear a distinct rattle inside.
Didn’t they have anything secured? She thought as she opened the door. She hid behind it as the contents of the locker spilled out. As she had hoped, a pressure suit floated past her. It must be for emergencies. The AIs couldn’t install their ubiquitous waldos on the outside of their can without someone noticing. For the same reason, they couldn’t send any of their customized drones out there. There was too much activity outside. Too many chances to be seen. If something happened to the outer hull of this can that they had electronically hidden from the rest of Port Oberon, one of them would have to take the cold walk outside to fix it.
She nabbed the suit out of the stream by its collar and pulled it behind her toward the nearest wall. Her lamp showed her that it was a standard industrial issue get-up; mustard yellow emergency gear, a back pack for gas tanks, a cutting/welding torch holstered on the side. It had a chest plate for tools, and pockets for the wrenches and screwdrivers that were now swimming through the whirlpool. She checked the gauges on the gas tanks and batteries. The suit was charged and ready to go.
Al Shei abandoned her tool belt to the whirlpool and climbed into the suit. Her body had given up trying to reason with her about relative directions and she was able to ignore the fact that she was rolling perpendicular to the rest of the room as she locked herself inside and secured the helmet. As soon as she did, the suit batteries kicked in and lit up the chin keys and interior displays. She bumped a key with a jerk of her chin and the external lamps came on. A quick glance around showed her where the tool belt had drifted. She retrieved it and loosened the cinch out as far as it would go so she could strap it around the suit’s waist.
Al Shei nudged the chin control to darken the faceplate down enough to conceal her face, but not enough to hinder her vision. She checked the readout of her air, her gasses and her batteries one more time, and then opened up the door.