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.