The DeltFall SecUnits hadn’t been rogues, they had been inserted with combat override modules. The modules allow personal control over a SecUnit, turn it from a mostly autonomous construct into a gun puppet. The feed would be cut off, control would be over the comm, but functionality would depend on how complex the orders were. “Kill the humans” isn’t a complex order.

Mensah stood over me, Ratthi leaned across a seat to look out toward the DeltFall camp, Overse popped open one of the storage lockers. They were talking, but I couldn’t catch it. I sat up and said, “Mensah, you need to shut me down now.”

“What?” She looked down at me. “We’re getting—emergency repair—”

Sound was breaking up. It was the download flooding my system, and my organic parts weren’t used to processing that much information. “The unknown SecUnit inserted a data carrier, a combat-override module. It’s downloading instructions into me and will override my system. This is why the two DeltFall units turned rogue. You have to stop me.” I don’t know why I was dancing around the word. Maybe because I thought she didn’t want to hear it. She’d just shot a heavily armed SecUnit with a mining drill to get me back; presumably she wanted to keep me. “You have to kill me.”

It took forever for them to realize what I’d said, put it together with what they must have seen on my field camera feed, but my ability to measure time was glitching, too.

“No,” Ratthi said, looking down at me, horrified. “No, we can’t—”

Mensah said, “We won’t. Pin-Lee—”

Overse dropped the repair kit and climbed over two rows of seats, yelling for Pin-Lee. I knew she was going to the cockpit to take the controls so Pin-Lee could work on me. I knew she wouldn’t have time to fix me. I knew I could kill everyone on the hopper, even with a blown hip joint and one working arm.

So I grabbed the handweapon lying on the seat, turned it toward my chest, and pulled the trigger.

* * *

PERFORMANCE RELIABILITY AT 10% AND DROPPINGSHUTDOWN INITIATED

Chapter Five

I CAME BACK ONLINE to find I was inert, but slowly cycling into a wake-up phase. I was agitated, my levels were all off, and I had no idea why. I played back my personal log. Oh, right.

I shouldn’t be waking up. I hoped they hadn’t been stupid about it, too soft-hearted to kill me.

You notice I didn’t point the weapon at my head. I didn’t want to kill myself, but it was going to have to be done. I could have incapacitated myself some other way, but let’s face it, I didn’t want to sit around and listen to the part where they convinced each other that there was no other choice.

A diagnostic initiated and informed me the combat override module had been removed. For a second I didn’t believe it. I opened my security feed and found a camera for Medical. I was lying on the procedure table, my armor gone, just wearing what was left of my suit skin, the humans gathered around. That was a bit of a nightmare image. But my shoulder, hand, and hip had been repaired, so I’d been in my cubicle at some point. I ran the recording back a little and watched Pin-Lee and Overse use the surgical suite to deftly remove the combat module from the back of my head. It was such a relief, I played the recording twice, then ran a diagnostic. My logs were clear; nothing there except what I’d had before entering the DeltFall habitat.