I need air, too, though not nearly as much as humans, and maybe the lack of it was what made me feel so slow and disconnected. I used the station feed to ping Ship again and told it to unlock from the station, and I gave it a rendezvous position. Its calm acknowledgement felt strange, like everything was normal and nothing disastrous had happened.

Vibol knocked on the other side of the flight deck hatch, calling, “SecUnit, are you there? Please answer!”

I needed to get out of here. I shoved to my feet and went down the corridor to the emergency suit locker. I put on a full evac suit with maneuvering jets and the burst of air once I got the helmet sealed made me feel more alert. I made sure to leave the locker open and unclamp the other suits, so when anyone noticed one was missing, they would assume it had happened during the attack and the suit had been drawn out with the other debris. I wanted them to think that that was what had happened to me, that I had been sucked out of the lock in pieces. Then I went down the corridor to the ruined lock, pulled myself out and away.

I hadn’t used a suit like this before (they don’t generally let murderbots float around in space unsupervised) but the internal instruction feed was very helpful. By the time Ship arrived, I was able to jet into its airlock like a pro.

To the station, it would have looked like Ship had paused to let the shuttle get past so it could safely dock at the PA’s slot. I didn’t think anybody would be looking at the sensors for escaping SecUnits in evac suits.

Once I’d cycled through the lock and had Ship crank up its air system a little, I told it to proceed on its usual course for the wormhole and HaveRatton Station. I got the suit off, dumped it aside with Wilken’s weapon and the ammo bag I had grabbed out of the case. I sat down on the deck and started methodically checking all the equipment to make sure there were no tracers.

Abene had tried to change Miki’s priority to saving its own life, and it had refused her. Which meant she had allowed its programming that option, that ability to use its own judgment in a crisis situation. It had decided its priority was to save its humans, and maybe to save me, too. Or maybe it had known it couldn’t save any of us, but it had wanted to give me the chance to try. Or it hadn’t wanted me to face the bot alone. Whatever it was, I’d never know.

What I did know was that Abene really had loved Miki. That hurt in all kinds of ways. Miki could never be my friend, but it had been her friend, and more importantly, she had been its friend. Her gut reaction in a moment of crisis was to tell Miki to save itself.