Three steps away I felt a sharp impact in the back of my right knee. I dove and scrambled under just as Hostile One hit the barrier. Armored arms shoved through the opening and I yelled, “Drop it! Drop it!” and discharged my weapon into the gap. Hostile One jerked back and the barrier slammed into place.

Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

ONE LAST THUMP ON the barrier told me the Combat SecUnit wasn’t happy about losing. My organic parts felt quivery, I had shrapnel stuck all over me, but I was still at 83 percent performance reliability. (It’s good there’s not a separate statistic for my mental performance reliability because I don’t think even I would rate it as all that great at the moment.)

Gurathin knelt beside an open maintenance floor panel next to the gate, tools scattered around, and Ratthi held a light for him. The panel was painted with an emergency feed marker label that in a selection of different languages read Manual Release. I didn’t even know they had those in ports. I’m a SecUnit, not an engineer.

Our shuttle slot was six locks down, glowing emergency lighting showing me Mensah standing beside it holding a small energy weapon. Why the hell did she have that? Oh, because although a security barrier had dropped in the other gate at the end of this section, a small crowd of humans had been trapped here and stood back against the stationside bulkhead.

We needed to get out of here before somebody convinced PortSec to get those barriers up.

I shoved up and my knee joint started to give way. I staggered and Ratthi ran up to me. He hesitated, waving his hands. “Do you mind if we help—”

I gripped his shoulder to stay upright and tried not to fall on him. I was fairly sure the joint had been hit by shrapnel from drones destroyed in the air, as a direct hit would have taken my leg off. Gurathin ran to shoulder my other arm and we limp-ran awkwardly to the shuttle.

Mensah jerked her head to tell us to go in first while she covered our retreat. Arguing with her would be stupid, but it was hard to override that programming. We went through the hatch and then she backed in after us. She cycled the lock closed and yelled, “Pin-Lee, we’re clear!”

Thumps vibrated through the deck as the shuttle pushed away from the lock. I pulled away from Ratthi and Gurathin, who climbed out of the way so Mensah could step past us and up to the cockpit. It was a small ship-to-ship shuttle, with only one compartment with seating along the bulkheads, and a cubby for emergency supply storage and a restroom. I had ridden in this exact model of shuttle before, on contract.