Wilken had cut me out of her feed connection, but I used Abene’s to bypass the block: This is SecUnit. We can talk about this. Consultant Rin can offer you immunity from prosecution if you testify. I hoped that made sense (it was a line from Sanctuary Moon) and I’m sure it sounded like I was stalling. I wasn’t stalling and I didn’t need her to answer me, I just needed her distracted enough to not think about what I was doing in her feed. Your bosses are going down. Whatever they paid you, it won’t make up for a stint in prison. (Yeah, that was from Sanctuary Moon, too.) In the meantime, I was frantically looking for the right code. The companies that make powered armor are different from the ones that make SecSystems, intel drones, cameras, and so on, and their system architectures were different and it made everything harder.

Abene had a grip on Wilken’s projectile weapon, trying to help Miki wrench it away, but couldn’t do much against the powered armor. I could tell she had no idea about the forearm energy weapon, which was in a much more dangerous position. In the feed, I could hear Abene telling Miki to let go and run, and Miki refusing on the basis that Wilken would then shoot Abene. Who should be running, frankly, but wasn’t going without Miki, obviously.

I reached the turn into the production pod’s foyer where Abene and Miki struggled with Wilken. Her energy weapon slid slowly but inexorably into position next to Miki’s head, despite its attempts to hold her and Abene hanging off her other arm and kicking her. In about thirty seconds I was going to have to put Hirune down on the floor and do this the hard way, if I couldn’t find this code.

On yet another channel, Drone One reported that it couldn’t detect any activity suggesting that the combat bots were trying to blast their way through the hatches it had sealed and jammed. The drone had been cut off from the network and couldn’t report further on the movements of any active units. Which meant that the combat bots had stopped to repair each other (Yes, they’re self-repairing unless their main processing center is destroyed. Yes, that is a pain in the ass and also terrifying.) and would soon be taking another route out of the engineering pod to come after us. Like I didn’t have enough to do right now.

Frantically scanning Wilken’s armor, I finally found the right code. That was a relief. I opened a channel and sent the “freeze” command via the feed.

The reason the company doesn’t use powered armor like Wilken’s is not only because the company is cheap. Powered armor like Wilken’s is hackable.