There were two other humans in the cockpit, one in the pilot seat and one in the copilot seat, monitoring systems. I need you to distract them, I told ART-drone.
It hailed them on comm. The human pilot picked up immediately, which was his first mistake. He said, “We have your group locked down and are negotiating surrender. Set your shuttle down—”
“I’m not with them,” ART-drone replied. It was using a human voice, the same vaguely menacing one it used to speak on the feed. “You’ll have to negotiate your surrender to me separately.”
“We’re not surrendering to you—” The pilot blurted, while the copilot glared at him. The augmented human HubSystem winced in either sympathy or disgust.
The copilot interrupted, “Stand down or we will engage.”
This shuttle wasn’t armed, and a quick look through their security archive said nobody had planted any explosives or anything. She was bluffing.
ART-drone said, “I wouldn’t recommend it. I lack a sense of proportional response. I don’t advise engaging with me on any level.”
The pilot gave the copilot an “it’s not so easy, is it” look. But the augmented human was ignoring them again.
In our little storage room, the next punch broke the seal along the top of the hatch. I said, ART, you need to distract them right the fuck now.
ART-drone pushed the shuttle forward in one abrupt surge of power. It stopped just short of ramming the B-E shuttle; the cockpits were less than a meter apart. All the humans, Barish-Estranza and Ratthi, screamed.
And the augmented human dropped all their inputs, jerking back in their seat. I picked up the one to HostileSecUnit2 and sent a “stand down, cancel all current orders” command through the governor module.
In our room, on the other side of the hatch, it went silent. Iris and Leonide stared at each other, not sure what I had done. ART-drone accessed Iris’s comm and cut off the B-E supervisor who was dicking around with the surrender discussion.
I could have destroyed HostileSecUnit2’s governor module. Also HostileSecUnit1’s governor module; it had restarted back in the meeting room and was stuck in standby mode waiting for new orders. (I told it to render assistance to the wounded B-E employees still there, which nobody had thought to do yet, then shut down again.)
In the two spare seconds I had before the humans would start reacting, I thought about it.
But at best it would be leaving two SecUnits to fend for themselves, who might not be smart or aware enough yet to hide what had happened. They could be killed. They could be recaptured and memory-wiped, or broken down for parts. At worst, or the other worst, they could become typical rogues just like in the media and attack the Barish-Estranza personnel and the colonists. It did happen. And if we survived this situation long enough to have to justify what we had done here, it would look like that had been my plan all along, to let the other two SecUnits murder the humans. The colonists would lose their chance to escape; Preservation and the University would be in the shit. ART and all my humans would be blamed for my actions.
I’m not spiraling, this is all accurate. But whatever.
But I couldn’t just leave them like this. I should, but I couldn’t.
ART-drone was no fucking help, sitting there waiting for me to make the decision, and we were running out of time.
I took the file bundle 2.0 had given Three, and the code to hack the governor module, and buried it in both SecUnits’ archives.
Then I wiped their shuttle’s comm and feed code and sent their bot pilot into a forced shutdown and restart diagnostic that would take an hour.
Take that proportional response and like it.
AdaCol2 sent: mark: time, and I let the connection go. I lost the B-E shuttle cameras, but I had our shuttle’s exterior cameras and my drone in the cockpit, so I had a clear view when ART-drone rocked the shuttle sideways. It looked horrifically like it was about to roll. (You can’t roll on hover, I don’t have a shuttle piloting module and I know that.) But ART-drone used the motion to dip around the B-E shuttle. It clipped something I hoped was not important, and shot out through the hangar exit into the darkness and the dust-filled wind.
In the storage room, Iris and Leonide stared at me. Leonide was wary and confused, Iris was hopeful and beginning to be relieved. I thought ART-drone was updating her on their private channel. Tarik was still braced in his cubby, too busy keeping visual watch to check the feed.
With the new permissions to view AdaCol2’s cameras, I finally had accurate video intel and maps. Five armed Barish-Estranza from Leonide’s original group were stalking us and Tarik through the corridors, but AdaCol2 had sealed two strategic doors and they were heading in the wrong direction now. Nine B-E humans had come in on the second shuttle, three remaining with it where it had landed outside the east hangar while the others made their way inside. The two humans Tarik had taken out were from that group. This group did not apparently have SecUnits. (Huh. That bothered me. I’d rather see the SecUnits I’d expected to see than not see them, if that makes sense.) They could have landed somewhere near the installation and dropped off the SecUnits as backup and reserve, especially if they thought they were going to be rounding up colonists to be taken away as contract labor, and they didn’t want anybody making a break for it across the surface.
So it was a really good thing ART-drone got Ratthi out in the shuttle. If I had sent him and Tarik overland and they had run into— Yeah, let’s not.
The colonists had managed to lock themselves down in various places, mostly the other side of the installation, and hopefully they would stay out of our way and out of danger, thinking hard about their choices regarding signing any kind of contract with fucking Barish-Estranza.
The door was broken so I shoved it open. I slipped past the stationary HostileSecUnit2. I could feel it watching me through its opaque visor. I wondered if it had found the files yet. Whatever, I didn’t come here to make friends.
I held my hand out to Iris and she took it, let me guide her behind me so I could stay between her and the SecUnit while she got past and out the door. Leonide followed her without a protest. I started down the corridor; I still needed to put as much distance between us and the SecUnit as possible.
It occurred to me belatedly (the way most important things occur to me) that if the SecUnit found the code I put in its archive immediately, it could take out its governor module, go rogue, and attack us anyway. Well, it’s a little late to worry about that, Murderbot.
Are we clear? Tarik asked on the feed.
Good question. I sent to AdaCol2: second B-E shuttle query: network bridge?
Will you give me access to the other B-E shuttle? I could find out if there were new SecUnits in play and wipe out their comm and feed and ground them. Then we’d be clear. Except for the armed humans, but with AdaCol2’s camera access we could avoid those now.