Network Effect

Speaking of which, my alert monitors on comm and feed weren’t picking up any attempts by the hostile to make contact. That might just mean they already knew there was no bot pilot to attack with killware or malware.

I went up the ramp past the crew lounge toward the control deck. My drone had zipped ahead up into the baseship and through the passage to its bridge. When the bridge hatch opened to let Rajpreet out, it slipped in. Now I had a camera view of the sensor display surfaces floating above the control boards. Mihail sat in a station chair, sweat plastering their light hair to their forehead. Roa was on his feet pacing, dark brow furrowed in thought, one hand pressed to his feed interface. It looked like a clip from an action series, right before something drastic happened.

Then something drastic happened.

The hit wasn’t at all like the way they show ship combat in the media. I felt something more like a power surge than anything else. Gravity fluctuated just enough to thump me against the bulkhead and the ramp lights flickered. A flood of automated warnings came from the facility engineering pod and then the feed and comm cut out. I scrambled to pick up the baseship’s feed, then gravity fluctuated again as the facility’s drive went offline and we switched to reserve power for life support. My drones scattered as the gravity flux interfered with their propulsion, then pulled back into formation.

On the baseship bridge, my drone watched as Roa and Mihail froze, like a scene on pause. Then Roa said, “That was an impact.”

Mihail’s voice was hoarse as they cycled through displays. “On the facility’s drive housing. A locator missile. Attacker must have fired it when they spotted us leaving the wormhole.”

Oh, shit. Seriously: oh, shit.

My organic parts had a reaction that reminded me how lucky I was not to have a digestive system. We didn’t blow up in the next ten seconds so I pushed off from the bulkhead and kept going toward the facility control deck.

I stepped through the hatch. It was a small hub-shaped control area, with the stations for attaching lab modules and everything else the facility needed to do when it was sitting on a planet. Overse was in the pilot suite though right now the baseship had control. Ratthi was hanging on to the back of the comm chair. Both looked frantic. From the flashing displays, frantic was the right reaction.

“I can’t reach Roa on the comm or feed,” Ratthi was saying.

“It’s all down,” Overse reported. “Arada—” she began, and then grimaced as she remembered there was no feed, no one outside the compartment could hear her. “Damn it!”

I told my drone in the cockpit to establish a connection between Overse’s and Arada’s interfaces and the baseship’s feed. I said aloud and on the feed, Baseship, I’ve reestablished a temporary connection to the interfaces on the facility control deck.

Roa replied, What, SecUnit? Can Arada hear me?

She’s not— Overse began, then Arada swung through the hatch on the far side of the control deck. Overse’s face twisted with relief and she bit her lip hard, then added, Here she is.

I hear you, Roa, Arada said, her mental voice hurried but calm. She reached to squeeze Overse’s shoulder, and nodded to Ratthi and me. Can we tell where the attacker means to board?

The words “means to board” made something uncomfortable happen to my organic parts again. Maybe similar to what Ratthi, who had just made a little “urk” noise, felt.

This would have all been a lot easier if I wasn’t so worried about the stupid humans.

Roa’s voice stayed calm but my baseship bridge drone saw his expression as he said, Looks like they’re heading for the lower level facility hatch, the lab level. I’ve sent Rajpreet down there.

Ratthi and Overse exchanged horrified expressions. Arada set her jaw and told Roa, Understood.

She looked up at me. “SecUnit, could you please…?”

I said, “On my way.”

I ducked back out to the corridor, telling one of my drones to stay in the control deck as a relay. The center foyer was just around the curve, and above it the gravity well access to the baseship. Safety protocols had engaged an air barrier, which allowed solid objects (like humans and SecUnits) to pass through but blocked air flow, so the atmosphere couldn’t rush out if a seal breached.

Leading down from it was a second gravity well that had ladders and a set of stairs for use when the facility was sitting on a planet. Without fluctuating power to worry about, I could have just stepped in and floated down to the lowest facility level, but getting smashed to pieces against a bulkhead wouldn’t be handy just now so I swung down the ladders instead.