Still no acknowledgment. I didn’t know if they could hear me, if they had already jettisoned, what the hell was going on up there. We had to be close to the wormhole by now.

(It sounds like I was calm, but I had no idea what the hell I was going to do.)

I felt feed static like a drill through the back part of my head, and then Overse saying, SecUnit, SecUnit, can you hear me? We’ve jettisoned the facility from baseship and are in the safepod, about to launch. Can you get to the EVAC suits in the lower secondary lock? The baseship can catch you in their tractor.

I almost said aloud, “Why are they in the fucking safepod and not in the baseship?” but managed not to. Amena watched me with a not reassuring combination of fear and exasperation. The EVAC suit thing … was not a bad idea at all.

Copy, we’ll go for the EVAC suits, I told Overse. If there was an acknowledgment, I didn’t hear it.

I held out an arm and Amena grabbed my jacket. I picked her up and sent half the drones ahead to scout our path. There was no sign of any hostile movement yet.

I stepped out into the corridor and headed away from the main hatch foyer to the junction to the engineering pod. It looked worse than the lab corridor. Lights were down to emergency levels and the deck had buckled.

Fortunately we didn’t have far to go, just straight through the pod. My audio picked up a banging and grinding noise—maybe the intruder’s drones trying to get through a hatch somewhere.

We reached the engineering outer hatch foyer, light from the emergency markers pointing to the EVAC suit locker.

These were a different model than I’d used before, more expensive, where you could step into them and pull them up with an assist from the suit’s own power supply. I set Amena down and she rapidly tied her hair up, then did a one-legged hop into the suit. I ordered my drones to land on me and go dormant, and had my suit on by the time she was fastening her helmet. Something vibrated deep in the deck; was it the safepod launching? My organic parts didn’t feel good about this. If that was the safepod, I think they’d waited too long. Human actions often seem way too slow to me because of my processing speed, but I didn’t think this was one of those times.

The suits also had secure feed connections, so I could check to make sure Amena’s was working and sealed properly, and access its controls. Don’t use your comm, I told her over the secured feed. They could be scanning for any kind of activity and it was easier for me to mask our feed than the comm.

Got it, she replied. Her feed voice was nervous but not panicky. The suit was supporting her injured leg, letting her stand upright. I’m ready.