The combat bots had taken over the lift system like I’d warned Brais, but combat bots can’t hack like a SecUnit. I hadn’t tried for control of the whole system, just this one lift, telling it to wait here for me. The door slid obediently open as I reached it. I ordered it to take me to the production pod. The door slammed on a set of sharp metal fingers and the pod whisked me away.

Drone One was still waiting in the corridor, and I ordered it to close the junction hatches between the engineering pod and the production pod, drill through the walls, and fuse the controls. It whizzed into action as the lift stopped and opened its doors.

I stepped out into an empty junction in the production pod, and sent the code I’d prepared into the lift system. It shut the system down and set a password lock. The combat bots could get past it if they had the right code modules, and if they devoted resources to it that they could be using for other things. It would still buy me the time I needed. I hoped.

Now that I had time to evaluate my own condition, I eased up my pain sensors a little. The impacts I’d felt turned from dull aches to sharp burning, like little explosions under my skin. Ow, ow, okay, ow. I locked my knee joints to stay upright and upped my air intake.

I had taken multiple shrapnel hits from the drones being shredded all around me. I had two hits from projectile weapons, one in my lower left side and one in my left shoulder. I was pretty certain I had been hit by stray shots meant for drones. If the bots had been able to target me, I would be in pieces. I tuned down my pain sensors and the impact sites faded from explosions down to embers. (I know that’s actually not a permanent solution and pretending bad things aren’t happening is not a great survival strategy in the long run, but there was nothing I could do about it now.) The arm where I was storing my memory clips was undamaged, which was a relief.

I started down the corridor toward the production pod foyer, where the others should be.

I tapped Miki’s feed for a report because neither it nor Abene were saying anything and I wasn’t sure what they had been able to see through my visual feed. At that point, Hirune’s gloved hand squeezed my shoulder.

Fortunately I remembered I was carrying a possibly living human and didn’t scream or drop her or anything. Her helmet with its comm mic had been ripped off, and her head rested on my shoulder. She slurred the words, “Who are you?”

I was distracted, and what came out of my buffer was the standard, “I’m your contracted SecUnit.” I was distracted because confused noise was coming from the connection with Miki and Abene. It wasn’t communication from a feed interface, it was audio; Miki was sending me open comm audio over the feed.