by Martha Wells
The pack had two charges, and that was the first one, the one designed to bore a tunnel through heavy shielding and would do much the same to a combat bot’s carapace. I still had the channel open to Wilken’s feed and heard the pack’s countdown start.
If the combat bot had been more self-aware, it might have stopped to crush my head, but its defensive mode kicked in and it shoved me away so it could get at the pack.
I hit the floor again and scrambled back as it clawed at the pack. Wilken rolled to her knees and opened fire at the bot’s chest and head. She hit sensors and weapons ports, which granted, was a good idea. It was keeping the bot from targeting us while the charge had a chance to work.
The plastic outer casing came away but the explosive had already tunneled through the bot’s carapace. The bot tried to insert a probe into the hole to get the explosive. Wilken managed to hit the vulnerable joint as it extended. That bought the explosive the extra two seconds it needed. I put my hands over my head, tuned down my hearing, and rolled.
The explosion was muffled but I felt the vibration when the bot’s body hit the floor. I came to my feet, mostly shocked that it had worked and that I was still alive and functional. (That’s how SecUnits are taught to fight: throw your body at the target and kill the shit out of it, and hope they can fix you in a repair cubicle. Yes, I’m aware I didn’t have armor or access to a repair cubicle anymore, very aware, but old habits die hard.)
The bot slumped on the floor like so much salvage. The carapace had contained the explosion, so there was no shrapnel, and the blast had damaged the bot’s processor and the other important bits in its abdomen. But it was still active. I said to Wilken, “I need more packs.”
She was sprawled on the floor, but her armor had protected her hearing. She yanked a set of packs off her harness and held them up.
I took them, armed each one, and dropped them into the bot’s open carapace, then retreated.
Wilken staggered to her feet and backed away, covering the bot.
I reached the corridor entrance as the explosions went off. Each blast made the bot’s body jerk and spasm. After the last one I scanned for activity. The bot still had power, but the charges had destroyed the first and secondary processors. That ought to do it.
Wilken was checking her scan. She made a relieved noise. “Good save. Come on. If there’s one of those things here, there’s more.”
Well, yeah.
I followed Wilken up the corridor to where Miki and Abene waited. Abene had a hand on Miki’s arm, holding on to it almost protectively. As we approached she let go and said, “Whoever activated that thing took Hirune, correct?”
“Has to be.” Wilken tried to stop but Abene started up the corridor, and Wilken had to follow her. I got up in front, and Miki stayed beside Abene without prompting from me. Which was good; Miki might be no help in combat, but at least I knew Abene would be its priority, whatever Wilken told it to do.
I heard Abene in the feed for the shuttle, warning Vibol and the others and telling them again to stay onboard, not to come after us under any circumstances. Wilken sent her camera’s recording of the attack to Gerth, and Gerth sent an acknowledgment. It was more professional than Kader, who was clearly agitated, but reported that they had sent a warning to the transit station and were keeping the PA updated.
Wilken added, “I’ve never seen raiders with access to combat bots, but there’s a first time for everything.”
I was pretty sure the combat bot had been original equipment for the facility. We were talking about GrayCris here, whose company motto seemed to be “profit by killing everybody and taking their stuff.”
Abene didn’t respond. After what I’d told her, she probably didn’t think it was raiders, either. “They’ll know we’re coming.”
They knew that already, I told her and Miki on our private three-way channel. And now the other combat bots would know a SecUnit was in play and adjust their strategy accordingly.
I wish I had a strategy.
[Query: SecUnit active in watch zone.]
I stopped. I did not scream, though I thought about it for .02 of a second.
I was pretty sure I kept my face blank, but Abene and Miki turned to look at me. Wilken kept moving.
I started to walk again, trying to figure out what channel it was coming in on so I could block it.
[Query: respond.]
In my feed, Miki said, SecUnit, what is that?
Don’t answer it, Miki. It’s a combat bot, trying to fix our position. Combat bots can’t hack like combat SecUnits. They don’t work linked to Sec or HubSystems like security SecUnits do. But still. I didn’t want it in my head. Or Miki’s head.
[Query: SecUnit has subordinate unit.] It sounded implacable, and amused. [Query: pet bot.]
I almost had it.
[Objective: We will tear you apart.]
I blocked the channel. I breathed out, slowly, so as not to draw attention from the humans. Miki sent me a glyph of distress. I said, It’s okay, which was a complete lie. I reminded myself a combat bot wasn’t a human, it wasn’t a villain from one of my shows. It was a bot, and it wasn’t threatening us.
It was just telling us what it was going to do.
* * *
Combat bots usually needed a human controller. Well, they needed a human controller when you were trying to achieve an objective. If the objective was as vague as “attack everybody who lands on the facility while disguising your network feed traffic with static designed to match the interference created by the storm,” maybe they didn’t. But taking a prisoner, luring us further into the facility, did suggest a plan. GrayCris might have left an operative on the station, hiding out in plain sight with the Port Authority staff, keeping an eye on the facility. They had known when our shuttle left and when it docked with the facility, and had estimated how long it would take for the team to get into one of the pods and start the assessment. Then they sent a signal to activate the combat bots.
A signal that got through the facility’s shielding? Maybe.
It would be nice to know how many bots, but at least now I knew the location of the first trap. It had failed, so the combat bots would be adjusting their position to create a second trap. I checked the schematic again, verifying that we were about to cross into the central hub.
I said, “Don Abene, I need to scout ahead. It’ll be better if Wilken comes with me, and you and Miki wait here.” I added on the feed, And we need to hurry.
Abene was all for hurrying and I didn’t want to give Wilken time to argue. Abene said, “Yes, go ahead.”
I started up the corridor, walking faster. Wilken hesitated, then followed me, her powered armor letting her catch up. “Hold it,” she said. I stopped, to humor her, and because I could tell from the feed she was checking the schematic. “I see. Let’s move.”
I let Wilken lead the way.
We followed the tube that bypassed the central node to curve toward engineering. I’d been scanning automatically for drones, but I was still turning up a negative result. I tapped Miki’s feed. Have you checked the ship recently?
I’m monitoring Kader’s feed for Don Abene and checking the onboard system status every 2.4 seconds, SecUnit. Ejiro is in the medical suite and is expected to fully recover.
This was the first time I’d heard Miki sound even minimally annoyed. I was vaguely encouraged by that, for some reason. Acknowledged, just checking.
Miki sent me a smile glyph. It’s good to check on our friends.
Well, I’d asked for that.
The tube curved ahead and, as I’d suspected, I saw the shadows and light play that indicated big windows in both walls. What we were about to do was an obvious tactic, and the combat bots could have sent some miniature drones up here to see if we tried it. But I wasn’t picking up any hint of surveillance, movement, or suspicious static on my scan. It was support for the theory that they didn’t have an on-site controller; the schematic didn’t show that these access tubes had win
dows, it had just seemed likely given the rest of the facility’s design. That wasn’t something a combat bot was going to pick up on.
I stopped inside the shadow of the opaque part of the tube, and Wilken halted nearby. In the feed, I saw she was adjusting the magnification on her helmet cam.
One side of the transparent tube looked down at the engineering pod’s hub. It was only twenty-two meters away at this point, and we had a view through the big curving roof, identical to the one in the geo pod. Wilken put her helmet cam against the tube wall, then sent me the video.
I could see the movement and extrapolate the positions myself, but the greater detail was nice.
One combat bot stalked across the hub floor as we watched, passing under a central sculptural structure that must have been part staircase to the upper gallery level, and part artistic statement. Wilken’s scope registered powered movement in the upper level, and I could tell by the pattern it was a flight of combat drones. Most of my contracts used the much smaller (cheaper) model, designed for intel and better for collecting the clients’ proprietary data, as well as keeping an eye on your base perimeter and making sure nothing snuck up on your teams in the field. These were the bigger model that had intel capacity, extra shielding, and an onboard energy weapon.
Still scanning, Wilken muttered, “So we’ve got one more combat bot, plus the drones.”
We had at least two more combat bots; one was standing back under the shadow of the gallery. Wilken had missed it but I was extrapolating its existence based on the energy patterns Wilken’s scope had picked up. I was willing to bet there were one or two more in reserve, or active somewhere else in the facility. Probably between us and the shuttle, because that’s how these things work.
Then Wilken said, “There’s the target.”
By “target” she meant her client Hirune, lying on the floor next to the foot of the staircase. (You should never refer to the clients as targets; you don’t want to get confused at the wrong moment.) (That’s a joke.) She lay curled on her side, facing away from us, and I couldn’t tell if she was alive. There was something else that worried me. “Why did they choose the engineering pod?”
We had to pass through the central node to get there, and unless there was a trap set there, the atmospheric pod was closer and better defended, as it only had the one entrance. The engineering pod had one access through the central node and a second tube branching off from the production pod, plus a lift junction in the hub, right under that gallery.
“No telling what goes on in bot brains,” Wilken said, then threw a glance at me. I stared straight ahead. If there was one thing good about this situation, it was reinforcing how great my decisions to (a) hack my governor module and (b) escape were. Being a SecUnit sucked. I couldn’t wait to get back to my wild rogue rampage of hitching rides on bot-piloted transports and watching my serials. Wilken added, “Let’s go. I’ve got a plan.”
Yeah, I’ve got a plan, too.
* * *
Now that we knew where the combat bots were, Wilken had us take the central node access to the production pod, where we could walk across the alternate tube access to the engineering pod. Or where I could walk across the alternate tube access, because that was her plan.
“We’ll send the SecUnit in to distract them, and then I’ll go in to get Hirune,” Wilken told Abene.
Miki cocked its head. Abene’s brow furrowed, and the look she threw at me was startled. “That’s suicide, surely.”
Wilken said patiently, “It’s a SecUnit. That’s what they do.”
Miki signaled alarm through the feed. This is not a good plan, SecUnit.
Abene’s expression went hard again. “It’s against the GI standards of operation.”
Wilken lifted her brows. “Do you want Hirune back?”
I watched Abene’s face. She was struggling, torn between her fear for Hirune and the thought of sending me into what was probably going to be a terrible but at least abrupt death. It was interesting to watch, because she knew I was a SecUnit. She grated out, “There has to be another way. Consultant Rin would surely not allow this.”
But she had said she had never seen or worked with a SecUnit before, and Miki didn’t even have an entry in its knowledge base for it. And Abene was a human with a pet robot. She might think of me as Consultant’s Rin pet, like Miki was hers.
We didn’t have time to argue, and I really didn’t want anybody thinking about Consultant Rin, whose fictional existence seemed to be increasingly flimsy, at least to me. I said, “It’s all right, Don Abene. It’s what I do.” It was still extremely difficult not to sound ironic.
On our private connection, I said to her and Miki, It’s all right, I have another plan. It’s safer for Hirune.
Are you sure? Abene said, then, You don’t want to tell Wilken your plan.
No, I didn’t, mostly because I didn’t want her giving me orders I had to ignore. Also because I had only a vague idea of what I wanted to do; most of it was going to be created on the fly. You’re my client. You can monitor me on this connection. I told Wilken, “We should go now. Give me your weapon.”
“What?” Wilken didn’t fall back into a firing position, but the way the armor shifted over her joints made me think that was her first impulse.
I said, “If I’m going in first, I’ll need a projectile weapon.” I just wanted to see what she’d do.
“No, I’m going to follow you in,” Wilken said, not so patiently. “I’ll be at the hatch junction between the production pod corridor and the tube, to give you cover.” She started up the corridor, telling Abene, “Wait here. If I send you a feed message to run, get back to the shuttle.” I followed her, like a good little SecUnit/killing machine.
Behind me, Miki moved to watch us head away up the corridor, sending its camera-view to Abene.
Once we were out of earshot, Wilken muted her comm and feed and said, “Any word from Consultant Rin?”
“No, the station feed isn’t accessible from here.” Which Wilken knew. “I may be able to reach her on comm if you need to speak to her.” I could fake that, but I’d need a little time to work on it.
Fortunately Wilken decided she didn’t want to invite another Security Consultant to give opinions on her strategy, especially since she was planning on getting that Security Consultant’s contracted SecUnit killed. I don’t know what bond companies charge clients when we get killed, but it’s probably a lot.
I figured Wilken’s plan was to send me in, seal the hatch, and when the combat bots killed me, she would tell Abene and Miki that she had tried and now they needed to go back to the shuttle and leave. Without a SecUnit on her side, Abene was unarmed and not wearing powered armor, and Wilken could drag her back if Abene resisted. Of course, if Wilken touched Abene, Miki would intervene, but I’m not sure Wilken realized that.
We reached the hatch junction and Wilken stopped. She said, “Good luck.”
Yeah, fuck you, I thought, and kept walking.
All right, so I wasn’t happy about this. It wasn’t like I had a repair cubicle waiting somewhere. I could repair with a MedSystem but I needed access to one, and the closest one I had any chance of getting to myself was onboard my cargo ship still docked at the station. But I knew I could do this.
(I hoped I could do this. I had been wondering a lot about my judgment lately.)
As I got further up the access tube, out of Wilken’s sight, I backburnered her channel and tapped my connection to Miki and Abene to give them a visual through my feed. (It’s not as good as a helmet camera would be; it uses my eyes to record so it jumps around a lot.) Miki was talking, more to Abene than to me, but I stopped listening. I was fishing for a drone.
I was broadcasting little spurts of static on an open channel. The drone should read it as signals from a vocal comm, like if some poor human was wandering through here, trying to call for help on their comm rather than on the secured interfaces Abene, Miki, and Wilken were using for our feed.
This could blow up in my face in that all the drones might decide to slam through here at once to get me, but I didn’t think that would happen. The bots hadn’t sent them after us yet because they didn’t want us to know they had them, probably because that’s how they intended to attack the shuttle. I was hoping the drones were set to protect the perimeter and a sentry would come to investigate.
I came to a spot where a connector in the tube had empty slots where equipment was supposed to be fitted. It formed shadowy cubbies and I stepped into one. My scan stretched as far as it would go, still sending my tempting intermittent signal. And I got a response. A staticky burst, like a comm trying to reply to me and being drowned out by interference.
A normal SecUnit (you know, one that still had its governor module, less anxious than me but probably more depressed) could do this part, but would be restricted to the canned responses available in the combat stealth module. A drone might be able to recognize those responses as coming from another combat unit and not a human. I didn’t have the combat stealth module anyway (I had never been upgraded with it, probably due to RaviHyral and the whole “killing all the clients” thing, go figure), so I used snippets of dialog from my media storage, extracted and processed to eliminate background noise and music and to remove any identifying code underlying the audio. I sent my prerecorded “Are you—can’t find—where—ship—” artistically obscured with static.
The drone sent another artistic burst of static in response. From its signal strength it was getting closer. I stayed where I was, waiting.
On the feed, Miki said, We’re worried about what you’re doing, SecUnit.
Nothing on scan yet, so I had time to chat. Why are you worried, Miki?
Because we don’t know what you’re doing. Wilken is telling Dr. Abene on her feed that you aren’t doing anything—
The drone had just come into my scan range, moving slowly so as not to alert the human it thought was here. Standing in the dark cubby, I had stopped breathing, stopped any activity it might pick up. I teased it with a little more comm audio. The schematic showed these slots as part of an atmospheric gas sampling station, so the drone had no idea there was room for something human-sized to hide. Confused at the apparently empty passage, it tried to trace the signal. And I pinged it with a compressed list of drone control keys.