Humans are horrible with weapons, in every sense of the word. I lifted Iris’s hand off my sleeve because I was planning to take out all three hostiles. (Energy pulse from my left arm to Adelsen’s left shoulder, then right arm to Beatrix’s right shoulder and Huang’s forearm, all disabling hits.) But then ScoutDrone2 alerted. Behind me the hatch was opening, the hatch we needed to use to take the quickest route to the shuttle.
And the Barish-Estranza SecUnit ran in.
(ART-drone said, Ratthi, get in the fucking shuttle. Tarik, if you have to be stupid, don’t run toward the hostile SecUnit.
Running through the hatch back into the installation, Tarik sent back, Then give me the motherless map!)
I swung Iris away from me and pushed her toward the hatch in the opposite wall. It went deeper into the installation, but it wasn’t the colonists we needed to worry about right now. I told her, “Run.” ART, get Iris out.
Leonide yelled out, “Unit, stop! Command code—”
It didn’t stop. Because when you want to murder your supervisor (it’s not uncommon) one of the first things you do is revoke her security codes.
This changed the whole strategic whatever of our situation from “somewhat tricky” to “oh shit.” If they were just trying to take out Leonide, that would be one thing. (I had mixed feelings about it, frankly.) (I wouldn’t kill her myself unless I had to, to protect another human from her, but I wouldn’t have to watch a lot of Sanctuary Moon episodes to cope with it if it happened in front of me, let’s put it that way.) But Iris was a witness and they had their SecUnit ready to take me out, so obviously my humans were next on the list.
This also meant Barish-Estranza, or at least this faction of this task group, planned to just take the colonists, whether they signed the contract or not. Indentured employees can’t testify against the corporation that holds their contract. (I hadn’t known that; it was in the documentary, we’d gotten it from Iris’s research archive.) There were no statistics on how common forcible indenture was, but it did happen a lot, apparently. (That was also in the documentary.)
The SecUnit was lifting one arm, pointing it toward me. Three had an onboard projectile weapon, and this one’s armor configuration looked similar. The B-E hostiles were starting to lift their weapons. I had a SecUnit and three armed humans in play and I needed to not have them anymore.
With the SecUnit coming at me I needed my projectile weapon but I couldn’t use it on the humans. (Even at this point, kill shots would kick this up to a whole other level of “oh shit.” The plan was still to keep anybody from ending up dead.) I needed the drones too much and they couldn’t get past the SecUnit’s armor anyway. But I couldn’t leave Iris vulnerable during her retreat.
So I pivoted and shot Adelsen with my left arm, then used my right for two quick pulses to Huang and Beatrix. (I went for disabling shots, aiming for the muscley part in the side they were using to hold their weapons. It caused more physical damage than my original plan, but was just as survivable. If Mensah or Karime or anyone else could salvage this situation, they would have to be like space wizards from one of my shows, but I had to give them the chance. If it was going to be a bloodbath, it couldn’t be my bloodbath.)
Before I could pivot again, I took the SecUnit’s projectile in my upper right back which, yeah, I had been expecting. I tuned down my pain sensors because it hurt, but I finished the pivot in time to pull my projectile weapon off my back—
That fucker had shot me through my projectile weapon, right through the casing, smashing the trigger mechanism.
Yeah, very clever, and you’re going to fucking regret it.
I dropped my broken weapon and flung myself at the SecUnit. I slammed into it, wrapped myself around its helmet and upper body, and threw us both down.
I used every bit of force I had and we hit the artificial stone floor hard. It wasn’t expecting to suddenly have me wrapped around its face and hadn’t been able to brace itself. Because this is not how SecUnits fight. (We shoot at each other and take hits until we can’t anymore.) But it was how this SecUnit fights when it doesn’t have armor, so get used to it, asshole.
Unlike suits that have life-support functions for humans, there aren’t a lot of ways to get into armor from the outside. On one channel I was running my list of control codes on the off chance I had one that would let me take over the armor, but I knew that was unlikely. (SecUnit armor isn’t usually vulnerable to hacking because it’s so cheap and doesn’t have a lot of higher-level functions. I was only giving it a shot because the armor looked newer and fancier than Three’s.) I was also trying the more direct solution, trying to fire my energy weapon directly into the weakest junction in its neck, but it had grabbed my wrist and was holding me away from my target.
ART-drone was (1) yelling at Iris on their private channel; (2) lifting the shuttle off the landing pad with Ratthi in it while Ratthi was yelling at it; (3) guiding Tarik through the installation. Tarik had just run into a confused and understandably upset group of colonists who had been watching the live feed, and he was talking to them via (4) ART-drone’s translation. And (5) ART-drone had managed to pull an unencrypted B-E comm transmission originating from the B-E shuttle and—oh shit they just deployed the second SecUnit.
Then the SecUnit under me froze in a way that meant an order from a human had triggered the governor module. I checked ScoutDrone2’s channel and ran the video back a few seconds.
Adelsen was on his knees, where he had collapsed after I shot him. Iris stood behind him, gripping his shoulder, pointing his weapon at his head. She had just said, “Tell it to stop or I’ll blow his head off.” The other two humans were half sprawled on the ground. Watching her warily, Huang put down the weapon she had managed to still lift despite her wound. (Note to self: next time two disabling shots per hostile.)
On the team feed, ART-drone said, Iris, I am both proud of you and greatly disappointed.
She was breathing hard. Thanks, Peri.
Leonide was still on her feet, blood dripping from the tear in the shoulder of her environmental suit. She had her weapon out, though was carefully not pointing it anywhere near Iris. She collected the dropped weapons from the other two humans and said, “They’ve called the second SecUnit.” Her voice sounded strained, as if her throat was dry.
ART-drone said, Confirmed, ETA 2.32 minutes. It put a partial map in our team feed, with a moving dot. The map was partial because AdaCol2 hadn’t given us a complete map yet and I was really fucking hoping it had done the same to Barish-Estranza.
I climbed off the B-E unit. Its helmet turned to track me. It didn’t have any drones, which was unfortunate. I really wanted more drones. “Iris, tell Adelsen to say, ‘Manual operation engage: shutdown delay restart’ and to add his command initiate. Leonide can tell us if he uses the wrong code.”
“I will, if you take me with you,” Leonide said. She was still calm, though the pinched look on her face said she did not actually feel great right now.
Grimly determined, Iris said, “We’ll take you.” She gave Adelsen a shake. “Say it.”
Sweating and trembling, he ignored her, saying to Leonide, “You brought this on yourself. You knew what would happen to us if we go back without this contract. You don’t need a promotion, you don’t care—”