I held out a hand and she put the tiny Barish-Estranza sidearm into it.
Despite faster pulse rates the humans were moving quietly, but we were pressing our luck; somebody was going to step on something loud or fall at some point. I stopped behind a blocky obstruction that was big enough to cover us, then told them, Crouch down.
Everybody did. Leonide made a little mostly-suppressed gasp of relief. ART-drone had started a time-to-arrival countdown in the feed. We had to be in a good position. So I needed to find one. On the feed, Tarik said, If we were higher up, it would be easier for Peri to get us out.
Iris agreed. They won’t be watching for that. They don’t know what Peri can do, they don’t know that we have a way up there.
That was a really good point. But I didn’t like this plan, it would leave them vulnerable throughout the process. But the only other option that was coming up in my procedure module (I called it the panic module because that was the only time I looked at it) was to find a secure area to shelter in place until retrieval, which was just unbelievably stupid in our current situation. Who wrote this fucking module, for fuck’s sake, it’s not factoring in the exceptions. No wonder taking advice from Sanctuary Moon was better.
Put the fucking panic module away, you know what to do.
Ratthi hadn’t said anything because he was in the feed tearing through the shuttle’s equipment inventory listing looking for anything to help us. (“SecUnit isn’t in armor and they are,” he said feverishly to ART-drone. “We can exploit that, yes? Is there something that would disrupt the armor but not SecUnit’s onboard systems—”
A number of things, ART-drone said, none of which we currently have aboard.)
I had led them at an angle, toward the side of the hangar that was closer to the dim shaft of light from the gap in the hatch. The SecUnits would expect us to avoid the place where it was easier to spot us, so I’d done the opposite. (I know, believe me, I know. This is an illustration of the phrase “grasp at straws.”) The landing platform with the pseudohopper on it was the closest high spot, and a quick review of the video the drones had taken on the way in here showed the access stairs were intact. Also it would give them something to take cover behind. I sent Iris and Tarik an image of it, with more detail than they could see with unaugmented vision. We’re going to this one, with the aircraft, I told them. When we get there, start climbing. I’ll cover you.
With no drones and no cameras I had to look at them to make sure they were listening and just to see what they were doing. They didn’t move immediately, and it stretched .04 seconds past the point where even a human would have reacted by now. ART-drone said, There is no time to waste, move now. And I think it added something to Iris on her private feed.
Iris said, Right, let’s go. SecUnit, we’ll wait for you up top.
I know they will, which is why I’m willing to die to get them up there.
We were twenty meters from the target platform access and it was mostly under cover, except the last approximately thirteen meters. I eased upright and led the way toward the platform, watching for moving patches of darkness that might be SecUnits.
Two minutes out, ART-drone said, and added privately to me, Prioritize escape. You can’t kill more than one in your current circumstances.
It meant without armor or a larger projectile weapon and with no feed for hacking. It was giving me a lot of credit to think I could do even one right now.
We were just crossing into the area without cover, low visibility for humans but not bad at all for SecUnits. And suddenly I knew the second one was about to hit us.
I said on the feed, Run now.
They ran, blundering a little in the dark, and it made its first mistake. It bolted toward them and its boot scraped on the gritty floor and I had its position. A quick speed/direction analysis and I ran forward, jumped to the top of a crate, and leapt off.
It might have been prepared for me to run up on it, but it was not prepared for me to come from that angle. It flung an arm up and managed to fire three projectiles before I grabbed the arm and swung my weight and momentum and whatever it’s called and flipped us both onto the ground.
I said before, most SecUnit armor isn’t powered like armor for humans, it’s just giving our squishy bits extra protection and protecting the manufacturer’s investment. So it’s not like this SecUnit was stronger than me, it was just a lot easier for it to tear bits off me if I wasn’t careful. Also it had that stupid projectile weapon arm, which it immediately started trying to shoot me with again.
We scrambled around on the pavement, it tried to keep me off its helmet and I fired energy pulses into the joints I could reach, and it shot me three more times. My advantages were that it didn’t know how to fight this way, at least not with another construct (governor modules aren’t helpful for learning and dealing with new experiences, you may have noticed) and that I knew how its armor worked, where all the vulnerable points were likely to be, even though it wasn’t the same as company armor. But I had no cameras, no intel, no idea what else was happening except heavy breathing as the humans ran and Ratthi cursing quietly in the shuttle. You’d think it would be nice not to have distractions and you would be so, so wrong. I am not meant to function without multiple simultaneous inputs. If this was what being a human was like, it sucked massively.
HostileSecUnit managed to clamp a leg around my knee and flip me over. It got a hand on my environmental suit helmet (which was not meant for this kind of pressure and was already creaking) and tried to smash my skull into the floor. It had my left arm pinned in its armpit, which was a bad move because I fired my energy weapon in a sustained stream and that was a weak point in its armor.
Suddenly I had a camera view on the humans. It was disorienting for a second, it was such a relief. Then I realized the shuttle had arrived and ART-drone and Ratthi had let my last drone, ScoutDrone3 = FinalDrone, out. Fuck yes.
It had gone into a standard surveillance mode, focusing on movement, and I immediately saw two things: (1) the humans had reached the access stair for the landing platform and started up; and (2) a second SecUnit ran across the open stretch of paving toward them.
(3) ART-drone dropped through the gap in the overhead hatch.
I sent the drone’s camera feed to ART-drone with HostileSecUnit2’s approach tagged acck, which was a typo but ART-drone got what I meant. It jammed the comm that Barish-Estranza was using to connect their SecUnits with the weird augmented human HubSystem setup. At the same time it changed direction and swooped down on the approaching HostileSecUnit2.
HostileSecUnit1 twisted desperately to get away from my energy stream as I drilled through the weak patch in its armpit. I twisted with it, got an arm free and a finger under its helmet’s release.
HostileSecUnit2 spun and fired projectiles up at ART-drone. It should have dodged, but it didn’t. ART-drone took the impacts to the right of its carapace. One of the four limbs on that side fell off.
HostileSecUnit2 spun back around, barely breaking stride as it ran toward the tower. Tarik and Iris were on the stairs, Leonide behind them. The central stalk of the landing platform gave them temporary cover from HostileSecUnit2’s projectile fire until it reached a better position on the other side of the platform access.
HostileSecUnit1’s helmet came loose under my hand and I reached in and gripped the back of its neck. My angle was bad but I didn’t have a choice; I fired an energy pulse right into its spine and through my palm and fingers. (I’ve had to do this before and it’s never fun.)