Still on the floor, Karime gasped and staggered to her feet. As she and Turi hauled Martyn upright, she said, “There were other people with us—in uniforms like this, are they—”

“They are no longer aboard.” SecUnit 3 stepped over and pulled a Barish-Estranza tech off the couch and set him on his feet. “Please follow me quickly.”

Real killware would have destroyed the ship by now but I had to wait for the humans to get to safety. TargetControlSystem fought me for the bridge life support and lost, then retaliated with a hit on SecSystem and deleted my file storage. Well, now I’m really mad. I hit the engine control systems and made it think I was going for an overload. It panicked and moved to reinforce the hastily assembled walls there and I switched to weapons control and dropped off another code bundle that would blow a hole in the hull if anybody tried to lock in a target.

TargetControlSystem wrote and ran a process to delete the duplicates of myself almost as fast as I could create them. (The other iteration of it aboard ART must have been able to send a report of how Me 1.0 had taken it down the first time. Luckily I wasn’t sloppy enough to use the same primary attack twice.) I was splitting my attention and fighting on a dozen fronts. I lost CodeBundle.LockItDown and all the interior hatches opened. I got a glimpse of a corridor camera where Karime dragged Martyn along while Turi guided the stumbling Barish-Estranza crew ahead of them. A woman with bridge crew insignia said blearily, “The rest of the crew— Is the supervisor—”

“You are the only survivors aboard,” SecUnit 3 said.

Two armed Targets reeled out of the corridor junction to the module dock and fired at the humans. SecUnit 3 lunged to take the hits on its armor, fired the projectile weapon in its arm, and was on top of the Targets when I lost the view.

All this time (it was 3.7 minutes, which is a long time when you’re in a viral attack) TargetContact had been trying to break its connection to the ship. If I let it go, I’d have more resources for kicking the shit out of targetControlSystem, but I wanted that connection.

Almost there.

TargetControlSystem had broken down my walls to fry sections of SecSystem and I was running out of time. I couldn’t contact SecUnit 3 and couldn’t get a camera view of the shuttle’s module lock. Oh, I’ve got an idea.

I abandoned SecSystem as targetControlSystem triumphantly destroyed the rest of its functions and transferred myself to the relatively small system that controlled the module dock. It gave me the twenty-two seconds of breathing room I needed to get a local camera view and see SecUnit 3 holding off the Targets at the module hatch as Karime and Turi pushed the other humans aboard the shuttle. I managed to lock the module hatch, blocking the Targets’ access. SecUnit 3 turned immediately and chucked the last wavering Barish-Estranza human aboard, pushed Turi and Karime in, stepped in after them, and closed the hatch. As soon as the seal was solid, I jettisoned the shuttle.