“Of course.” The repair drone, looking like a vastly larger and more unpleasant cousin to the brain-spiders, launched forward. A blobby black sphere the size of a bowling ball flew from some concealed cannon in Shall’s body and struck one of the spiders, pinning it in a puddle of epoxy, stuck to the cable. The other kept coming, and Shall lashed out with a number of small multi-jointed manipulators to grab it. The brain-spider wriggled free from Shall’s grasp and scuttled up onto the repair drone’s back, where it crouched, making atonal humming sounds.

“No you don’t.” Shall reached onto his own back, grabbing the wriggling brain-spider by its many legs and wrenching it free, holding it aloft while it struggled. “This thing tried to splice its way into my systems! Very impolite.”

“Rip its legs off for me?” Ashok said.

Shall complied, tearing the limbs off deftly and sending them spinning across the empty space.

“Cool, let me have it?”

Shall passed over the body, which was just an irregular ellipsoid that whirred and chirped, and Ashok took it and stuffed it into a thick-walled mesh bag at his waist. “Question,” he said. “Why did the lights come on? Do the brain-spiders really need lights to see?”

“No,” Lantern said. “But the bio-drone responds to light.” She clambered out of the goldfish bowl and pointed.

An iridescent, many-limbed bug the size of a tram car crawled out of a hole on the ceiling, which irised closed after it.

“Do we shoot it?” Callie said.

Elena tried to stay calm, watching the closed-bud at the end of the thing’s neck sway back and forth, as if searching for something. “Hans and Ibn tried that. It didn’t help.”

“We have better guns than they did,” Callie said.

“Wait,” Lantern said. “I’m trying to see if I can take control of it.” The infosphere spun around in her tentacles, the traceries of blue light twisting and writhing and turning red in places. “No, no good, the bio-drone is fully autonomous, but I can see its protocols… It’s coming to collect us and take us for reconditioning.”

“How can it not see us as hostiles who need to be killed?” Callie said.

“The Axiom didn’t have enemies. They had slaves, who served them, and malfunctioning slaves, who needed to be repaired or recycled. They’ll try to fix us before they destroy us.”

“If it collects us,” Elena said, “will it take us to the same place it took Ibn and Hans?”

“I think so,” Lantern said. “I doubt a station this size has more than one area set aside for reconditioning.”

Elena nodded. “Callie. We should let it eat us.”

“Ha. Right.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know you are, but my sense of self-preservation is really intense right now.”

“Hans and Ibn kept transmitting, even once they were devoured.”