There was nothing else, steps fading until the door slid shut.

Gurathin, Pin-Lee, and Ratthi all started to speak at once. Mensah said, “Quiet.” They shut up. “SecUnit, your opinion.”

Fortunately, I had one now. Up to the point where we’d gotten the drone download, my opinion had been mostly oh, shit. I said, “They have nothing to lose. If we come to this rendezvous, they can kill us and stop worrying about us. If we don’t, they have until the end of project date to search for us.”

Gurathin was reviewing the landing video now. He said, “Another indication it isn’t the company. They obviously don’t want to chase us until the end of project date.”

I said, “I told you it wasn’t the company.”

Mensah interrupted Gurathin before he could respond. “They think we know why they’re here, why they’re doing this.”

“They’re wrong,” Ratthi said, frustrated.

Mensah’s brow furrowed as she picked apart the problem for the other humans. “But why do they think that? It must be because they know we went to one of the unmapped regions. That means the data we collected must have the answer.”

Pin-Lee nodded. “So the others may know by now.”

“It gives us leverage,” Mensah said thoughtfully. “But what can we do with it?”

And then I had a great idea.

Chapter Seven

SO AT THE APPOINTED time the next day, Mensah and I were flying toward the rendezvous point.

Gurathin and Pin-Lee had taken one of my drones and rebuilt it with a limited scanning attachment. (Limited because the drone was too small for most of the components a longer and wider range scanner would need.) Last night I had sent it into upper atmosphere to give us a view of the site.

The location was near their survey base, which was only about two kilos away, a habitat similar to DeltFall’s. By the size of their habitat and the number of SecUnits, including the one Mensah had taken out with a mining drill, they had between thirty and forty team members. They were obviously very confident, but then, they’d had access to our hub and they knew they were dealing with a small group of scientists and researchers, and one messed-up secondhand SecUnit.

I just hoped they didn’t realize how messed up I actually was.

When the hopper picked up the first blip of scanner contact, Mensah hit the comm immediately. “GrayCris, be advised that my party has secured evidence of your activities on this planet, and hidden it in various places where it will transmit to the pickup ship whenever it arrives.” She let that sink in for three seconds, then added, “You know we found the missing map sections.”

There was a long pause. I was slowing us down, scanning for incoming weapons, even though the chances were good they didn’t have any.

The comm channel came alive, and a voice said, “We can discuss our situation. An arrangement can be made.” There was so much scanning and anti-scanning going on the voice was made of static. It was creepy. “Land your vehicle and we can discuss it.”