Roa said, Rajpreet, SecUnit, get out of there.
I told Rajpreet, “Go, I’ll be behind you.”
Rajpreet backed toward the corridor access. If the hostiles chose this moment to board, before we could seal off and separate, we were screwed.
I heard Ratthi yell, “No, No!” through my drone audio. His voice was harsh with fury, fear. The impulse to run to him made me flinch, but I needed to hold my position. Something had gone wrong up there. On the feed, I said, Dr. Ratthi, report.
Ratthi, of all my humans except Dr. Mensah, listens to me the most carefully. Probably it has something to do with the time he was about to step out of the hopper to retrieve some equipment and if he had, he would have been eaten by giant predatory fauna. Sounding simultaneously frustrated, angry, and terrified, Ratthi said, Amena and Kanti aren’t here. Thiago is looking for them. They aren’t in the quarters or the upper labs, they must be down in the lower level somewhere.
Well, shit.
I had audio and visual of the baseship access through my drones, so I was able to see when it exploded. (No, not physically exploded. Emotionally exploded.) Humans yelling and waving their arms and other unhelpful things.
You know, it’s not like I’m having a good time either right now.
I told Rajpreet, “Get to the gravity well access,” and started down the corridor toward the labs and sample storage, where Adjat had tried to tell Rajpreet about jammed doors. I ordered a drone to stay near the hatch so I would have some warning if anything came through it. I split the rest of the formation, sending two-thirds up the access to take a guard position with Rajpreet and telling the rest to follow me. On the feed, I said, calmly, Acknowledged, I’ll find them. SHIT.
I’d made a stupid mistake. Feed access in the facility was down unless your interface was in range of one of my drones, so the connection could be relayed to the baseship, and the comm was patchy and unreliable. We, me and the humans, were too used to the feed, which made it impossible to lose track of someone, to leave them behind. With an active feed, even if you were unconscious, your interface could be used to track your location.
Arada said over the feed, We’re holding for you, SecUnit.
Get to the baseship, Arada, I sent back.
It was amazing how fast our mostly orderly retreat had turned into a disaster. My drone formation formed around Rajpreet, who was waiting anxiously at the bottom of the gravity well. At the top, baseship crew and survey team members gathered, clutching handweapons they barely knew how to use. I just hoped nobody accidentally shot themselves or anyone else. I tapped my drone relay and saw Arada, Overse, Ratthi, and damn it Thiago waiting at the facility access junction. Arada was talking on the feed to Roa and trying to shove a resisting Overse into the gravity well. I started to tell them—I don’t know what I was going to tell them, but it was going to involve the words “I can’t do my job if none of you fucking listen to me” but then interference blotted out the connection and I lost all my drones in the baseship.
I reached a hatch to lab 3 that was stuck partly open, just a few centimeters from the deck. I hit the floor and directed my scan under the hatch, but I couldn’t pick up any indication of a human body, living or otherwise. But drone audio detected a muffled human voice, coming from farther up the corridor.
I shoved upright and slammed around the curve and oh right, that must be the hatch Adjat had seen. The bulkhead was crumpled along the top of the seal, and the panel with the manual release had been blown in a power surge. The plastic parts were melted and the whole hatch assembly was dripping with fire suppressant foam where the automated emergency system had engaged. The facility’s systems in this area must be down or cut off, and the emergency report had never reached the control deck. My audio picked up a muffled voice from the blocked compartment, but it was too faint for human hearing.
My first impulse was to blow the hatch. Fortunately my second impulse was to grab the manual release and pull. It didn’t give, but I could feel the seal was broken. At least some of the locks that held it shut had been disengaged. Which meant someone had already triggered the manual release inside but something was jammed. I ripped the panel open and found crumpled metal pinning the release mechanism. I shoved my sleeve back, tuned the energy weapon in my right arm down to the lowest setting, and burned through it. The hatch clunked as it released and I dragged it open.
Kanti jolted forward and I caught her. “It wouldn’t open,” she gasped. She clutched the kind of tool used on surveys for chipping rock samples and her hands were bloody. The power inside was out, the only light from the emergency glows along the walls, and equipment and sample cases were jumbled everywhere. Amena was across the compartment, her leg pinned under a lab bench that had collapsed when the bulkhead crumpled. She was conscious and struggling to free herself.
My hatchway drone showed the warning lights blinking around the lock. Yikes. I pulled Kanti out into the corridor and took the tool away from her. “Get to the gravity well, now.” On what was left of the feed I told Rajpreet, I’m sending Kanti to you.
Kanti hesitated, eyes wide and glazed over. Blood trickled down from a cut above her hairline. Behind me, Amena yelled, “Kanti, go!”
Kanti pulled away and ran erratically down the corridor, bouncing off the bulkhead. I ducked into the compartment and went to Amena. Tears streamed down her face, her nose running in that gross “badly upset human” way. She banged on the lab bench. “Here, here, we couldn’t pry it up!”
I felt under it carefully, where the support strut had pinned her leg. There wasn’t blood, though it had to hurt. I felt marks on the metal from the tool Kanti had been clutching. She had had it in the right spot, but didn’t have the leverage needed to pry up the strut. I wedged the tool back in place and leaned on it. My drones met Kanti at the end of the corridor and formed a protective cloud around her as she stagger-ran through the foyer toward the gravity well.
The strut bent back and Amena tried to wriggle out and yelped in pain. I said, “Just take it slow,” and managed to sound like we had all the time we needed. (We did not.) My hatchway drone relayed the rising energy readings from the airlock where something was trying to override the security seal.
In the access tube, Rajpreet had grabbed Kanti and was climbing with her up the gravity well, both surrounded by my cloud of drones. Amena wriggled some more, wincing, then reached for my arm and said, “Just pull really hard!”
I took her arm and tugged and she slid out from under the bench. I stood, pulled her with me, and picked her up in one arm. I’d lost contact with Rajpreet but my drones confirmed she wasn’t in the gravity well anymore. I told Amena, “Hold on,” and ran down the corridor.
I couldn’t make anywhere near my top speed; there was too much debris, the corridor too narrow and curving.
I made it almost to the end of the corridor just as the hatch blew with a loud pop. The smell of melted metal and ozone filled the corridor. My hatch drone sent me a view of hazy smoke and movement inside the lock. Time for a split millisecond decision—could I sprint through the foyer, past the breached hatch, up the ramp to the gravity well, and climb up into the baseship so we could close the hatches and separate before the hostiles stormed inside?
Uh, maybe?
Then my input from the hatch drone dissolved in an abrupt burst of energy. I took a silent step backward, then another, keeping the motion smooth and slow. I started a quick analysis of the drone’s last transmitted intel. On the feed, I sent, Hatch is breached, hostiles onboard, seal and jettison now.