I wasn’t angry on my account. Being sent into situations to get shot at was literally my job, or had been my job. I thought everything had happened so fast Abene hadn’t had time to process what Wilken had nearly done to her.

It must have been obvious that her first argument was not compelling, because Abene continued, “If she’s working for GrayCris, we need her as a witness.”

Okay, that did make sense. The whole reason I was here was to find more evidence against GrayCris. I looked into Wilken’s faceplate. Her expression had gone blank, trying to conceal fear. With her comm and feed down, she could still hear us, though our voices would sound like we were at the bottom of a mining tunnel. When it powered down, the armor had automatically opened some vents to allow air circulation, so she wouldn’t suffocate or cook in her own heat. I could give it a delayed command to close the vents once we’d left, and Abene would think it was an accident.

There’s that caring thing again. Did I care if Wilken survived or not? Not really.

I said, “We need to go,” and held out my hand for Wilken’s projectile weapon. Abene handed it to me, and I walked away. I left the vents open.

As Miki and Abene followed me, I said, “The bots in the engineering pod will be trying to reach us once they self-repair, and the drone I captured says that there’s one more active combat bot. It’s probably somewhere between us and the shuttle.” We also knew they would use whatever mobile equipment was left behind in the facility against us. I didn’t want to have to fight another bio sampler.

Abene lengthened her stride to keep up with me. “I can’t reach the shuttle on my feed or comm,” she said. “Neither can Miki.”

“That’s because I’m blocking you,” I told her. “I didn’t want you to say anything that might alert Gerth.” At least not until I figured out what to do about Gerth. I couldn’t get to her armor from here, even if I unblocked the feed. The codes for the armor were unique to each unit (the manufacturers weren’t completely stupid) so I had to be close enough to be able to scan for them.

“I see.” Abene, amazingly, didn’t argue. Or maybe it wasn’t amazingly; she was pretty smart. “I suppose it’s too much to hope that Gerth is not also a hired killer.”

“Analysis from the cargo ship suggested they had worked together for some time,” I said. “We have to assume they were suborned together, or at some point deflected and replaced the security team your company sent.”

“Deflected,” Abene repeated. “That means killed?”