She was right. We had come here from the other end of the inhabited continent, across the planet. Now the faster we could get out of the blackout zone, the better.
The bot pilot engaged thrusters and we lifted straight up out of the bay. The pathfinders pinged in, pulling back into a scouting formation around us. But I could tell ART-drone was losing function; it was taking in their data from the bot pilot but not sending back instructions. I took over, gently slipping the connections away from it across our shared processing space and sorting them into the same inputs I used for drones. It changed the positioning a little, but bot pilot thought it would work.
Even with the bot pilot assisting, I couldn’t fly the pathfinders all simultaneously like they were little miniature shuttles like ART-drone or ART-prime could. They were too different from intel drones and also, I didn’t know shit about flying into space.
The shuttle’s scan was still limited, but the dust was providing some visual cover. The navigation interface showed where the projected edge of the blackout zone was and our time to exit. It was somewhere in the upper atmosphere, that part where it stops being atmosphere and starts being space, I don’t know what it’s called and ART-drone was drifting, watching World Hoppers, and I didn’t want to disturb it by asking.
Minutes passed and the humans were starting to relax, folding down environmental suit helmets and hoods. Tarik and Ratthi were monitoring controls but had started a conversation in their private feed. Iris was still watching the navigation interface but absently patting ART-drone. Leonide sank back in her seat and let out a long breath of relief. I was almost relaxed, too; ART has nice shuttles and I liked this one. The upholstery was in good shape and it didn’t smell like human feet. We were minutes from ART-prime and safety.
We came out of the dust cloud and the pathfinder in the lead pinged me a warning right before its input went dead. I sat up and said, “Incoming.”
Leonide threw a startled look at me. Tarik flicked through interfaces, pulling up the exterior cameras. His voice tense and controlled, he said, “There it is.”
“Oh no,” Ratthi whispered.
I already knew from the pathfinders’ visual data. Yeah, there it was. The armed Barish-Estranza shuttle, coming up at us from below at an angle, closing in.
Her face grim, Iris said, “SecUnit, if you need me to authorize deadly force—”
I didn’t, but it’s always nice when they do.
I’d put the pathfinders in a variation of drone formation that can be used for both scouting and defense. Anticipating the pulse attack and trajectory, bot pilot did something that made the shuttle jerk and dip. With bot pilot assisting with the navigation, I sent one pathfinder into the path of the estimated trajectory and the B-E shuttle’s pulse struck it instead. The pathfinder exploded.
The B-E shuttle prepared to fire again, but its blackout-limited scan would be full of noise from that explosion. It didn’t see the second pathfinder I’d already put into motion. It finished its dive with an impact directly on the B-E shuttle’s nose.
The shuttle fell away, still intact but probably dealing with damage, a disoriented bot pilot, and a terrified human crew.
Our shuttle powered upward, back on course and widening the distance between us.
The humans were tense and quiet, waiting as the wind dropped away and it started to get dark. We were up there now in space or still in some sort of transition zone, but there was no sign of the B-E shuttle following us.
I picked up whispers in the feed and comm, and it freaked me out until I realized I was stupid. “We’re coming out of the blackout zone,” I said. Bot pilot was reaching for ART-prime, sorting all the communication signals for us.
Tarik studied the interface. “Iris, there’s another ship. It’s a big—” He let out his breath and made a hooting noise of relief. “We’re picking up a University ID beacon. It’s one of ours.”
Ratthi slumped in his seat. “Oh, finally. What a ride.”
Iris got on the comm and called Seth to tell him we were alive. I backburnered her conversation and found ART-prime’s comm signal. I sent, We’re coming in with possible pursuit and sent it a vid of the B-E shuttle getting booped by the pathfinder.
Acknowledge, it said.
Bot pilot picked up a B-E comm signal. I notified Iris (we’d broken their comm codes two days after they arrived) and told bot pilot to decode. Iris added Seth to our team feed so he could hear and said, “Can you play it, please?”
I put it on the feed and we listened to several Barish-Estranza employees having a collective fight/panic attack:
“There’s another ship, it must have arrived via wormhole but we didn’t pick it up on approach—”
“You lame-skulled pieces of excrement—”
“Stand down! You heard me! What do you think is going to happen—”
“It’s armed and powering weapons, oh high one, oh deity—”
“You stupid—”
“Stand down—”
Leonide said, “Please, give me access to comm.” She was urgent, as agitated as someone like her could be. “That’s my command staff, talking to the mutineers.”
Tarik turned to look at Iris and she nodded. He gave Leonide access to the comm channel.
Leonide took a breath, her expression hardening back into a cool sardonic mask, and said, “You heard her. Stand down. That’s an order from your supervisor.”
The channel got so quiet, Tarik tapped it to make sure it hadn’t gone dead.
We were close enough now that I felt ART-prime—ART—in my feed again. It took over the pathfinders I’d clumped around us, and they split away and turned back toward the planet. It was going to redeploy them now that they weren’t needed to protect us.
ART slid into the shared processing space with ART-drone. For a brief moment, there was two of it.
ART-drone: Which baseship?
ART: Guess.
ART-drone: It’s Holism, isn’t it? Oh, joy.
I was monitoring ART-drone’s systems and it was dropping toward catastrophic failure. I said, You need to hurry.
ART: handoff initiated.
ART-drone: handoff.
And ART-drone shut down. Suddenly, it was just a chunk of metal. Iris made a half-sob noise that startled me so badly I flinched. She threw a wary look at Leonide and said on our private channel, Did they have time for the upload?
Yes, I said.
She nodded and wiped her eyes. I know they’re the same, it’s all just Peri. That the drone will be repaired and the next time we need it, it’ll be the same. But still, when something happens like this, it scares me. I just don’t want to lose any piece of Peri, you know?
I know, I said. And I did know, and now I was having an emotion. Like a big overwhelming emotion. It felt bad but good, a weird combination of happy and sad and relieved, like something had been stuck and it wasn’t stuck anymore. Cathartic, okay. This fits the definition of cathartic. It was like the way I’d felt when I killed the Target who threatened Amena and laughed at me because I was upset when I thought ART was dead. Except without the violence, and that only lasted a minute or so, and this seemed like it would go on a while. Nobody was dead and I hadn’t had a relapse of my stupid memory thing. And if I did have a relapse, at least I knew what it was now.
Don’t just sit there, ART said to me and Iris as it brought the shuttle into its docking module. Console each other.