As we climbed the ramp, ScoutDrone2 entered the hangar twenty meters ahead of us. I told it to accelerate into a quick scout run. From its camera, the hangar was another giant shadowy cavern, but the very faint gray storm-light from where the opening had been cut into the jammed overhead hatch let the drone make out a lot more visual detail. The humans would still need the hand-light.
ScoutDrone2 was sending video of the tall landing platforms, the one occupied by the aging and half-assed hopper possibly built by amateurs, the stacks of supplies and salvaged materials. Nothing looked disturbed, except there were more drifts of windblown dust.
It would have been nice to go up through the opening in that overhead hatch and have the shuttle meet us there like the humans had done before, but (a) the armed shuttle was still in play somewhere and there was an unknown chance it would be out looking for our shuttle; and (b) we didn’t have ART-drone with us so it could carry the humans up to the unresponsive hatch. (That was such a big “but” it should probably have been (a) instead of (b).) Our shuttle could land or hover to let ART-drone out, but it would have to come all the way down here to get the humans and that was more time on the ground, more time for the B-E shuttle to find us.
There was a lot of equipment here and Iris and Tarik were smart, there might be something they could use to get up to the hatch. But that didn’t help the problem of the shuttle landing and being a static target.
No, even risk assessment thought my original plan was better. We’ll take the tunnel back to the terraforming construction access.
As I led the humans into the hangar, the contact with AdaCol2 started to drop. I sent, End session, acknowledge.
It sent back, End session. There was a pause, then: Be safe.
I can’t deal with that right now.
The lack of visibility in the hangar was not great for the humans but it had less of an air of “Pre-CR site with monsters” than it had initially. On the feed, Leonide said, What is this place?
It’s an unused part of the old Pre–Corporation Rim site, Iris told her. As far as we know.
The humans started talking on the feed about the feasibility of waiting until dark again to land our shuttle near the construction access. With the blackout conditions, the armed B-E shuttle wouldn’t have any short-range much less long-range scanners to pick us up at night. Iris pointed out that we wouldn’t have any scans to assist with a night landing, either, and we couldn’t afford the chance of even a minor accident that might strand us. Tarik said the shuttle could land farther away and we could walk to it. Ratthi said the visibility was still shit out here and started going through the last weather reports that AdaCol2 had issued. I had the conversation mostly backburnered. For once we had time to figure out the best strategy, and they were doing a good job of going through all the relevant issues—
The vehicle was gone.
I stopped. The humans jostled to a halt behind me.
ScoutDrone2 had gotten far enough to get a view of the tunnel entrance, and under the stark emergency lighting, it was empty. The vehicle from the terraforming access was gone. Ugh, organic neural tissue, whatever the hell you’re doing with the secretions and neuron firing, it’s not helping. Okay, okay. Maybe a colonist found it and moved it, let’s check threat assessment—
ScoutDrone2 winked out, gone between one tenth of a second and the next.
Iris drew breath to ask what was wrong. On teamFeed+Leonide I said, Kill the light.
Fortunately, Tarik was the one holding the hand-light. He clicked it off instantly, corporate death-squad training making him comply while any of the others would have needed a second or two to figure out if I was talking to them or which light. I said, We have to move. Hold hands, stay tight behind me.
Tarik grabbed Leonide’s good arm and stepped close to put a hand on my shoulder. Iris grabbed him and the back of my suit utility belt. Leonide was squished in the middle but did not protest. I walked as fast as I could while still letting them keep up and stay in position. Their boots shuffled a little and on the comm I could hear them trying not to breathe loudly. Their suits would muffle a lot of that. Hopefully enough of it to keep the hostiles from audio tracking us. I took us in a zigzag pattern through some stacks of metal salvage and past two looming broken stalks for missing landing platforms.
The hostiles could have marked our position from the hand-light; the hangar was big but if there were two of them there was a 96 percent chance one had taken a position high up somewhere to watch for us. The other had to be where ScoutDrone2 had gone offline.
And quiet and fast enough to take it out with no warning.
It had to be SecUnits. Something in my organic neural tissue said it was SecUnits.
On the feed, I said, One, possibly more, hostile SecUnits in immediate range. I was falling back on company protocol to talk, the rest of me running terrifying potential sequences of events and trying to figure out where to send the humans. This was a fucking worst-case scenario. In the shuttle, Ratthi gasped in dismay.
These SecUnits must have come from the second Barish-Estranza shuttle, the armed one. It might be still on the ground where Ratthi and ART-drone had seen it last, it might be hunting for our shuttle, but at some point it had dropped its SecUnits outside the installation, to watch for escape attempts by colonists. I knew their SecUnits had the same 100-meter limit … No, I didn’t know that. They had the same kind of kill switch if they were too far from their human supervisors, but I had no idea what the limit was, or if this proprietary brand allowed a human supervisor to waive the limit for emergencies.
I was 98 percent certain that they would be using that same weird HubSystem setup with an augmented human controller. I couldn’t get to it to hack it; there were no signals in here that I could detect, which meant their communications were locked down as tight as ours were. AdaCol2 was out of range this far into the hangar.
The Barish-Estranza shuttle would have to stay in contact with their SecUnits. I asked ART-drone, Are you close enough to jam their comm?
Not yet, it replied. The interference has shortened my range. Their HubSystem may be operating inside the shelter of the installation.
Which meant the rest of their task group was closing in on us.
I had been in worse situations with humans to protect, but I couldn’t pull any from my archive right now. I had never been in a worse situation with humans to protect when I was this likely to panic and shut down from a stupid memory of something that hadn’t fucking happened. (Okay, it had happened, but nobody ate my leg.)
The fear that a hostile SecUnit would snatch one of my humans away in the dark was almost incapacitating.
ART-drone said, We’re six minutes out. We’ll land and I’ll go in for you.
On our private channel, I said, You can’t risk the shuttle. And Ratthi, I didn’t say. If it went like it looked like it was going to go, he was the only one we still had a high chance of saving.
The purpose of the shuttle is to retrieve the team, ART-drone replied, deliberately misunderstanding. Or not misunderstanding. It wasn’t going to listen to me about this, was the point. Back on the team feed, it said, Prepare for evac.
Iris let out a breath, probably about the risk to the shuttle, but she must have remembered I was supposed to be in charge of security and this was definitely security. On the feed, she asked, Do you want this?