I wasted .002 seconds throwing a code into Miki’s feed like I was responding to another SecUnit. I was at the hatch to the geo hub before I realized I needed to say it, or Miki wouldn’t understand what to do. I slammed around the corner and up the corridor toward the lift junction. Miki, you have an incoming unknown/potential hostile moving toward your position. Determine direction, then alert your clients, in that order.

Miki widened its scan, and the rest of its senses went dark as it shifted all its attention to audio. It was rotating, trying to get a wider field. I was still getting the comms on the humans’ feed, and Gerth said, “What’s the little bot doing?”

“What’s wrong, Miki?” Abene asked.

Rin— Miki stopped trying to sound like a human and sent me an urgent assistance request tied to the raw audio data. I should have realized, Miki wasn’t a security bot, it had no code to deal with this and no one had ever shown it what to do in an emergency involving active and probably sentient hostiles. I reached the lift junction but the stupid lift had returned to a neutral station somewhere.

While I stood there like an idiot during the wasted seconds while the stupid lift returned to this position, I ran a quick analysis and compared it to the facility’s schematic. I put markers up for Miki, the humans, and the incoming hostile, and shoved it back into Miki’s feed. Miki was already saying, “Don Abene, something is coming toward us. We need to take the outer corridor back to the shuttle.” It forwarded my active schematic to the humans.

I stepped into the lift as the doors opened. As I hit the destination sequence, I compared the ambient audio Miki was still processing with the projection on my schematic. This thing, whatever it was, was moving much faster than my first projection had indicated. I sent to Miki, No time to withdraw, tell client to shelter in place and try to lock down area.

Miki was saying to Abene, “Don Abene, it’s too close, we have to stay here and seal the door.”

But Wilken and Gerth had finally understood what was happening and I heard them shout at the assessment team to fall back down the corridor to the shuttle.

I didn’t need to look at my projections again. They weren’t going to make it to the end of the corridor. This is why humans shouldn’t work security; the situation changes too fast and they can’t keep up.

I had sent the lift to the bio pod, the nearest junction to the team’s position. The door slid open and I stepped into a wall of sound: screaming, energy weapon fire. I ran down the corridor and rounded the corner.