I rolled to my feet, dove again, and landed next to Hirune. Her body looked intact and I didn’t see any blood pools, but I didn’t have time to check if she was alive. (It didn’t matter. In a retrieval like this, humans wouldn’t believe the hostage was dead unless I brought the body back.) I scooped her up and here came the hard part, I had to run out of the foyer.

The bots had had time to figure out (a) the SecUnit was here (b) what the SecUnit had done to take over their drones and consequently (c) they were really pissed off at that SecUnit. I bolted across the room toward the door.

The two bots had taken out twenty-three of the drones, each one a light, a connection, blinking out of my awareness. But the drones had done a lot of damage, targeting joints, weapons ports, and hands. A camera view from a surviving drone told me the bot behind me had lunged for my retreating back but crashed to its knees; drones had been concentrating fire on its ankle joints while others distracted it.

The bot in front of me threw itself forward to block the door. And I turned right and ran straight for the lift junction.

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.