“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.”
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.