There were cases and racks of environmental testing and sampling tools. One was a core cutter, made to take nice round cylinders out of walls of rock for whatever reason humans need to do that. It was an extension meant to attach to a sampler unit, but they probably had it because Miki was strong enough to lift it and use it; it’s a long tube that uses directed explosive cutters to extract meter-length sections.
I slung the ammo bag over my back, grabbed the cutter off the rack, switched on its power pack, and climbed up the access.
I stepped back into the crew area just as Miki flung Gerth after Abene and hit the manual seal for the hatch. It dropped and Miki turned. I told it, Miki, get out of here! Go hide in the cargo!
No, Rin, it said, I’m going to help you!
In the feed, Abene yelled at Miki to come in with them, she would tell Kader to open the hatch if it would just come in—and Miki told her, Priority is to protect my friends.
Priority change, Abene sent. Priority is to protect yourself.
That priority change is rejected, Miki told her.
The core cutter had powered up and accessed my feed to deliver a canned warning and a handy set of directions. Why yes, I did want to disengage the safety protocols, thanks for asking.
I’d meant to give the core cutter to Miki so it could get the combat bot while I distracted it. But the combat bot blew the hatch and was suddenly in the crew area with us, and there was no time for a plan, no time for strategy.
The bot knew I was there and it turned, reaching for me as I lifted the cutter. Miki braced its feet against the hatch protecting the flight deck access and pushed off. It launched across the cabin, its body cutting through the floating display, straight at the combat bot’s head. I don’t know if Miki was trying to distract the combat bot, or if it had seen me make a similar attack on the bot that came after Wilken, and was trying to duplicate the technique. Air rushed out of the pressurized cabin, down the access corridor and out the ruined airlock, and as Miki jumped the flow gave it an extra boost of speed.
The bot caught the motion and turned away from me, lifted up and extended an arm to catch Miki by the torso. I took the opening and lunged in to slam the core cutter right against the bot’s side, where its brain was. I triggered the cutter. I didn’t have time to brace myself, and the recoil knocked me backward and for three seconds my vision went black.
I was flat on the deck, and all I could hear in the feed was humans yelling from the cockpit, humans yelling over the comm from the Port Authority, and the shuttle’s emergency siren making sure everyone knew the air had just explosively vacated due to lock breaches. The core cutter was on top of me and I pushed it off and sat up. I knew at some point I had heard Abene scream in anguish, but I wasn’t sure when it had happened.
The combat bot still stood, but it was unmoving, joints frozen. The core cutter had gone through its torso from one side to the other and extracted a neat cross-section of the protective shielding and the bot’s processors. The core had been ejected from the back of the cutter and had fallen to the deck. I realized that was what had hit me in the head. I guess despite the instructions I had been holding it wrong.
Miki was crumpled in front of the bot, and something looked wrong. I was climbing to my feet, trying to see how Miki was damaged, when I froze. Something looked wrong because Miki’s chest was crushed, its processor, memory, everything that made it Miki squeezed to nothing in one flex of the combat bot’s hand.
I just sat on the deck. The shuttle neared the station, and the humans were on the comm, talking to the PA from the cockpit. They couldn’t lower the flight deck hatch because of the lock breaches, and I hadn’t answered their attempts to call me on feed or comm. I had still been sending visuals from my camera to the team feed, and they had seen the fight and Miki’s last moment from my point of view. Before I cut my feed connection to them, I’d heard Abene sobbing, Hirune trying to comfort her, the others murmuring in shock.
I need air, too, though not nearly as much as humans, and maybe the lack of it was what made me feel so slow and disconnected. I used the station feed to ping Ship again and told it to unlock from the station, and I gave it a rendezvous position. Its calm acknowledgement felt strange, like everything was normal and nothing disastrous had happened.
Vibol knocked on the other side of the flight deck hatch, calling, “SecUnit, are you there? Please answer!”
I needed to get out of here. I shoved to my feet and went down the corridor to the emergency suit locker. I put on a full evac suit with maneuvering jets and the burst of air once I got the helmet sealed made me feel more alert. I made sure to leave the locker open and unclamp the other suits, so when anyone noticed one was missing, they would assume it had happened during the attack and the suit had been drawn out with the other debris. I wanted them to think that that was what had happened to me, that I had been sucked out of the lock in pieces. Then I went down the corridor to the ruined lock, pulled myself out and away.
I hadn’t used a suit like this before (they don’t generally let murderbots float around in space unsupervised) but the internal instruction feed was very helpful. By the time Ship arrived, I was able to jet into its airlock like a pro.
To the station, it would have looked like Ship had paused to let the shuttle get past so it could safely dock at the PA’s slot. I didn’t think anybody would be looking at the sensors for escaping SecUnits in evac suits.
Once I’d cycled through the lock and had Ship crank up its air system a little, I told it to proceed on its usual course for the wormhole and HaveRatton Station. I got the suit off, dumped it aside with Wilken’s weapon and the ammo bag I had grabbed out of the case. I sat down on the deck and started methodically checking all the equipment to make sure there were no tracers.
Abene had tried to change Miki’s priority to saving its own life, and it had refused her. Which meant she had allowed its programming that option, that ability to use its own judgment in a crisis situation. It had decided its priority was to save its humans, and maybe to save me, too. Or maybe it had known it couldn’t save any of us, but it had wanted to give me the chance to try. Or it hadn’t wanted me to face the bot alone. Whatever it was, I’d never know.
What I did know was that Abene really had loved Miki. That hurt in all kinds of ways. Miki could never be my friend, but it had been her friend, and more importantly, she had been its friend. Her gut reaction in a moment of crisis was to tell Miki to save itself.
After I checked the charges and ammo in the bag, I found a fake pocket in the bottom. Inside it were several sets of identity markers and a larger, different brand of memory clip from the ones I had stored in my arm. I heaved myself upright, and found a reader in the cargo console.
Well, that was interesting.
I hate caring about stuff. But apparently once you start, you can’t just stop.
I wasn’t going to just send the geo pod data to Dr. Mensah. I was taking it to her personally. I was going back.
Then I laid down on the floor and started Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon from episode one.
ALSO BY MARTHA WELLS
All Systems Red
Artificial Condition