“Probably.” When I picked up the Milu cargo ship on HaveRatton, I hadn’t downloaded any local news, just the bursts about Port FreeCommerce and GrayCris. If there had been reports of two bodies discovered with all identification burned out, I had missed them. (You can’t space people off a transit ring; security looks for that kind of thing and gets very agitated about it.) “With Gerth at the ship, we have a hostage situation.”

I hate hostage situations. Even when I’m the one with the hostages.

Miki said, “That’s not good.”

See, that? That is just annoying. That contributed nothing to the conversation and was just a pointless vocalization to make the humans comfortable.

In her feed, Abene was doing a quick review of my video from the engineering pod. It was less than a minute, so it didn’t take her long. She said, “Was Wilken giving the bots orders? Perhaps they will go dormant without her. But if they report to Gerth, we’re back in the same situation.”

“I don’t think she or Gerth gave them orders,” I said. “I was listening in on their feeds, and I would have heard that, even if it was encrypted.” They hadn’t spoken to each other much at all, which was maybe suspicious in itself. (I know, hindsight is awesome.)

Miki said, “The combat bots could have been in standby and received instructions to activate once anyone arrived at the facility.” Hirune stirred and murmured and Miki responded, “There, there, Hirune. It’s all right.”

Well, yeah, I thought of that already.

Abene was saying, “I don’t understand this. If Wilken and Gerth were sent to kill us, why were the combat bots sent here? Obviously GrayCris wants to stop the assessment, but that’s—”

I said, “Hold it,” and stopped. I needed to do a quick review of my video and prove or disprove this theory and there’s only so many things I can do while walking and scanning for hostiles without a Sec-or HubSystem to help. I let Miki view my feed as I started my analysis, and I was distantly aware of Miki explaining to Abene what I was doing.

I pinged my drone and told it to open its log and query its records and build a list of activations, standbys, and sleep phases. Then I pulled my copy of Miki’s video of the first attack when Hirune had been taken, and did a quick review of it and my video of the second attack, when the combat bot had gone after Wilken. I finished and then checked the log digest the drone had ready for me. (It was really nice to work with such an advanced drone.)