Right, this wasn’t a good time to panic. I went back to my first contact with the drone, the intel I’d gotten before it had been locked out of the combat bots’ network. There was the entry for that third active combat bot. It was marked “active out of range.”
I had assumed it was out of range because it was headed toward where the shuttle was docked, to set up a trap for us when we tried to retreat, but I didn’t know that.
Go back further. Wilken and Gerth had been sent here in place of the contracted GI security to stop/kill the assessment team. So why hadn’t they acted as soon as they arrived on the transit station? With so few people there, it wouldn’t have been difficult. They would have needed an exit scenario if they had acted on the station, but they needed an exit scenario even more here on the facility. The team’s shuttle wasn’t wormhole capable. They would have to return to the transit station, kill the PA staff who would possibly be asking a lot of questions about what had happened to the rest of the assessment team, and steal a wormhole capable ship. (Preferably a ship without a bot pilot who would vigorously resist being stolen.) That sounded like a lot of work, especially considering the fact that there were combat bots on the facility, ready to destroy intruders, so why had GrayCris hired someone else?
The obvious answer was that Wilken and Gerth weren’t here to kill the team, but wanted to get into the terraforming facility because there was something, either data or a physical object, that they intended to retrieve. But they had made no move to retrieve anything. I was certain Wilken had been surprised by the combat bot attack, my analysis there was not faulty. Had Wilken and Gerth even been sent by GrayCris, or was there another corporate or political entity in play?
I needed help. I was rattled, I was still leaking a little, and I hadn’t been able to watch any media in what felt like forever. In desperation, I copied all my possibilities into a potential strategy/decision tree diagram and threw it into the feed for Abene and Miki.
Abene winced, startled at the sudden large image in her feed. Then her face went still as she studied the diagram. Miki wiped wound sealant onto the last shrapnel laceration in my back and shifted into analysis mode. Hirune, still half conscious, watched us with a confused expression.
In the feed, Abene detached one of the assumption squares and moved it away from the tree. She said, If we assume Wilken and Gerth were sent by GrayCris, then they aren’t here to retrieve anything. GrayCris had ample opportunity to remove anything they wanted when they abandoned the facility. She hesitated, her attention moving from one assumption square to another. I think we have to ask ourselves, what does GrayCris want?
That was easy. I said, To destroy the facility. If GoodNightLander Independent hadn’t installed the tractor array, the facility would have collapsed into the planet by now.
Abene’s brow furrowed as she looked at the squares listing possible exit scenarios and the problems with each one. So why weren’t Wilken and Gerth sent to destroy the tractor array? Actually, perhaps they were.
Miki said, aloud, “Wilken altered the flat display on her right forearm armor to show local facility time.” It sent us an image in the feed: Wilken adjusting the display on her armor. The image had been captured when I asked Miki to look at the two security consultants as they stowed their equipment when the shuttle was getting ready to undock from the transit station. “She checked that display approximately fifty-seven times during our walk through the facility, until she attempted to hurt Don Abene.”
I hadn’t noticed that, but when I reran a portion of my video, there it was. Abene said slowly, “Wilken knew something would happen to the facility, and approximately when it would happen. She could only wait so long before she had to get back to the shuttle. When she had the opportunity, she sent you off to be killed by the combat bots, and intended to kill me and Miki. Then she would tell the others it was hopeless and force them to return to the transit station—”
The combat bots’ behavior was starting to make sense. If they had been waiting for something, too, it explained why they had taken Hirune prisoner. They had assigned one bot to mess with us. To attack, grab a prisoner, retreat, attack again. I had destroyed it when it attacked Wilken, but the other three hadn’t come rushing after us. Two had been in the engineering pod, and one was out of range, doing what?
Abene took a sharp breath. She said, “It has to be the tractor array. There’s no other real benefit for GrayCris.” In the feed, she flicked away the assumption squares for the actions of a theoretical station-bound GrayCris operative. “We know from the drone there is no controller for the combat bots, no one aboard the transit station sending orders to them. They are original equipment, meant to defend the facility until it collapsed naturally into the planet, leaving no evidence that it was an illegal mining operation. Wilken and Gerth didn’t know about the bots and weren’t sent to kill us, because killing us is not the goal. The goal is to let the facility be destroyed as planned. The thing that prevents the facility being destroyed is the tractor array. Therefore Wilken and Gerth were sent here to do something, and they thought the only consequence of that something was that the tractor array would fail, and we would be forced to leave the facility. We would all return to the transit station and they would leave aboard the next cargo ship, with no one the wiser.” She slipped out of the feed and turned to me. “But what could they have done? They were with us the whole time.”
I thought she was right, and there was only one thing they could have done without me or someone in the team noticing. “They sent an encrypted signal.” A comm signal, not a feed signal. With all the storm interference, and more importantly the fact that I hadn’t been looking for it, I had missed it.
“Yes, yes.” Abene’s brows lifted. “But to who? The combat bots? Is there a weapon, a way for the bots to destroy the array from here?” She turned to look at the other consoles.
I checked my connection to the shuttle’s audio again. Kader was pushing Gerth about trying to go aboard the facility to search for the others, backed up by Brais and Vibol. No mention of any problem with the tractor array. They had to be monitoring it. Gerth was pushing back, saying they had to wait like they agreed. I ran the audio back. She wanted them to wait thirty minutes. The digger display sent a ping into the feed, indicating that the diggers had finished their full power-up. I sent the shuttle audio into the feed for Abene and Miki and sat down at the digger control station. Whatever was going to happen, it was going to be soon.
As I sent the first set of orders for three of the diggers, Abene said to Miki, “We need sensors. Check all the consoles. Anything in here will be pointed at the surface, but we can try to redirect—”
I backburnered everything but the diggers. Abene was obviously still interested in saving the facility, but my priority was in getting off the facility before it broke up in the atmosphere.
The three diggers uncoiled out of their housings and started to walk across the outside of the lower half of the geo pod. Their multiple arms gripped the surface securely as they moved, the cameras giving me a dizzying view of the storm. They didn’t have the memory cores with their mining protocols, but then they wouldn’t need them for what I wanted them to do.
Abene had booted another console and data popped up above the display surface as Miki leaned over it. Hirune shoved to her feet and limped over to them, leaning on the back of a chair.
I needed to copy over some specialized code from the console, but once I had it, I could control the three diggers through the feed. I assigned them yet another channel in my overworked brain, and stood up. Oh, okay, ouch. Without their protocols, controlling them was tricky. I basically had to drive all three of them at once. Keeping my voice level and patient, I said, “We need to go. You have six minutes.”