I’m fast, so I’d finished by the time Target Leader shook Thiago and said, “Order it to back off.”
Thiago made a noise suspiciously like a derisive snort. “I wish I could! It doesn’t listen to me.”
I listen to you plenty, Thiago.
“Who does it—” Target Leader wisely gave up on that tack. “Listen, whoever controls this thing, I’m taking this one on my ship—”
“I’ve destroyed your engine,” I said. I really should have done that. Well, too late now.
Glaring with fury, Target Leader jerked Thiago and Thiago stumbled and leaned away from him. And I saw the hole blossom in Target Leader’s upper arm, in the scant few centimeters of clothing and skin exposed between the joints of the badly fitting armor.
I lunged forward and grabbed Thiago, slung him aside, then ripped the projectile weapon away from Target Leader. I knocked him lightly in the stomach and chest with the stock and he dropped to the deck.
Arada stepped out of the hatch, the projectile weapon sensibly pointed down even though my scan showed she had already engaged the safety. She said, “Are you all right? Thiago? SecUnit?”
I said earlier that I was trying to set up a shot; I didn’t say whose.
Arada had taken a course in weapons use after the whole thing with GrayCris. I guess having a bunch of murderers chasing you around a planet so they can suppress your research by murdering you would tend to make you more cautious, even if you are a terminal optimist.
On the feed, I said, Dr. Thiago, Dr. Arada, get inside. I grabbed Target Leader and tossed him onto the deck of his boat, where the other targets were crawling around trying to get to their hatch. My scan picked up a power surge in the boat’s weapon system. That’s what happens when you don’t have time to clear your hostile vehicle. I said over the comm, “Overse, now would be good.”
The thing Overse and the others had been doing while all this was going on was preparing our facility for launch. Under my boots, the deck rumbled and vibrated and our outer supports heaved out of the water, sending waves crashing into the boat as we lifted up.
I don’t think the raiders had realized the facility was mobile. The force of displaced water as our drive kicked in shoved the boat sideways, and the raiders lost their targeting lock.
Our outer supports folded in and we lifted further above the surface. The comm loudspeaker broadcast a siren and a translated warning about minimum safe distance and I guess the raiders believed it because their engines revved frantically. I recalled my drones and they shot down toward us to stream in through the hatch. I walked in after them and let the hatch close behind me as the launch protocols started.
2
I told myself it wasn’t as much of a shit ending to my first time as Survey Security Consultant While Not Pretending to be a Human and/or Faking the Existence of a Human Supervisor as it could have been. Everybody was alive, they had all their sampling and scans done. Our original schedule actually had us leaving in six planetary days, but since we had finished early Arada had moved that up to three planetary days, that’s why most of the facility had already been prepped for launch.
But we’d been lucky, and I hate luck.
Standing in the access corridor I settled my drones, tasking four to stay with me and sending the others to take up various positions around the facility and go dormant. Then I checked the feed for alerts. The team members who weren’t busy piloting the facility up through the atmosphere were yelling at each other on the comm. Arada came down the corridor. She didn’t have her weapon anymore and my safety protocol check showed she’d unloaded and secured it back in the locker. “SecUnit, you need to get to Medical!”
I checked the feed again; still no alerts. “What happened in Medical?”
“You happened, you got shot.”
Oh, right, that. Arada was gesturing at me so I followed her down the corridor to the main ramp. I poked through the hole in my jacket and shirt and upped my pain sensors a little. The projectiles were still in there. (Sometimes they pop out on their own.)
Medical was at the top of the ramp, a small compartment on the same level as the crew lounge area and galley. The quarters, labs, and storage were on the two levels below and the control deck was above. Ratthi was there waiting for us, standing beside the MedSystem. “Are you all right?” he demanded. “You better lie down!”
I didn’t want to bother with it. “No, I’m fine. Just give me the extractor.”
“No, no, you were in the water, you need decontam and an antibiotic screen. When the system is prepped, you lie down.” He pointed emphatically at the narrow platform and pulled one of the emergency kits down from the rack. “Thiago has some scrapes on his neck,” he told us, “but otherwise he’s fine.”
Ratthi went out with the kit. The yelling on the comm had calmed down but I could hear tense voices from the rec room. Preservation-controlled facilities like this don’t have SecSystems recording everything and cameras everywhere because privacy blah blah blah but I could eavesdrop through the comm and my drones. If I wanted to, which I didn’t, not right now.
Arada said, “Ratthi’s right, SecUnit, you should let the system make sure the wounds aren’t contaminated.” She hesitated. “Did I…” She took a sharp breath. I just stood there because I didn’t understand the question yet. She added, “Was there any other way…”
She didn’t finish again but this time I knew what she was asking. “No. If you’d waited any longer, I would have had to try to use a drone. He’ll probably survive, if the others give him medical attention.”
She really hadn’t wanted to shoot anybody, and had told me she had to force herself to learn how to use the weapon. I hadn’t particularly wanted her to learn, either. (Humans have a bad tendency to use weapons unnecessarily and indiscriminately. Of the many times I had been shot, a depressingly large percentage of hits had come from clients who were trying to “help” me.) (Another significant percentage came from clients who had just wanted to shoot something when I happened to be standing there.)
Arada rubbed her eyes and her mouth pulled in at one side. “Are you trying to make me feel better?”
“No.” I actually wasn’t. I lie to humans a lot, but not to Arada, not about this. “I wouldn’t try to make you feel better. You know what I’m like.”
She made a snorting noise, an involuntary expression of amusement. “I do know what you’re like.”
Her expression had turned all melty and sentimental. “No hugging,” I warned her. It was in our contract. “Do you need emotional support? Do you want me to call someone?”
“I’m fine.” She smiled. On the feed, the MedSystem signaled it was ready. “Now you make sure you’re fine, too.”
She stepped out of the compartment and set the privacy filter on the doorway. I stripped off my clothes and dropped them in the decontam bin and got onto the platform. It would run a check for contaminants and pop the projectiles out of my shoulder and chest.
The process only took three minutes, just long enough to finish the scene of Lineages of the Sun I’d had to pause when Thiago had decided to get me shot. The MedSystem tried to cycle into the therapy and post-treatment options and I stopped it and climbed off the platform. The feed told me we had made orbit and were in the process of rendezvous with our baseship.