Network Effect

Mihail replied, calm but breathless, He’s working on it, checking sensor view to see if our clamps are clear—

So they had already thought of it. It was nice working with smart humans. Now if I could just keep them all alive.

A lot of my attention was on the hatch two meters away from me. I was scanning for any attempt to breach it, either physically or via the hostile’s feed. I tried a breach of my own through the feed, but the hostile’s wall was so solid I couldn’t get any kind of read off it.

On my feed relay, Arada said, We can remote-jettison from here—the facility command center—if you transfer control. But we need to get the rest of the team up to the baseship.

Ratthi added, I’m doing a headcount now, but with the feed and comm not responding—

Roa broke in: Our clamps are clear, we can jettison.

Arada said, Roa, will they be able to scan us? If they can tell we’ve abandoned the facility—

Roa replied, They may be able to.

They would definitely be able to. Before anybody else could butt in, I said, They may fire on the baseship once the facility is jettisoned.

That was the downside I mentioned. It just depended on how anxious the hostile was to get to the wormhole with the facility before the responder and merchants arrived, whether they were ordinary assholes or huge assholes, if they wanted the facility or the humans in the facility, if they were afraid of retaliation by Preservation or just didn’t care.

The survey team members still trying to talk on the relay feed all shut up.

Roa said, Yes, that’s … Yes. Dr. Arada, we don’t have a lot of time, do we evacuate and jettison or—?

Still sounding calm, Arada said, SecUnit, do you agree we should jettison?

Oh right, I was the security team head.

If I/we were wrong about this, the hostile would fire on the helpless baseship and we would all die. If we stayed with the facility, there might be a chance for rescue. If the hostiles didn’t drag us into the wormhole, overwhelm me, and kill all the humans or do other terrible things to them.

The cheap education modules the company gives SecUnits had never mentioned this kind of dilemma, so I didn’t have anything strategic to go on.

Ugh, self-determination sucks sometimes.

I reminded myself I had always wanted humans to listen to my advice. I said, Jettison.

Arada said, We jettison. Ratthi, confirm head count and send everyone up to the baseship. She sounded calm and certain. Much more so than Roa.

“Attacker is still pulling us toward the wormhole,” Mihail announced on comm, not sounding too much like someone who was restraining the urge to scream a little.

On the relay, I heard Ratthi yelling at people to get moving and I got sporadic drone views of survey team members hurrying into the gravity well.

Roa took a breath. “Facility control, prepare for separation.”

Overse announced, “Facility module will seal in two minutes and counting.”

Drone audio picked up someone arguing but I had to prioritize Roa and Mihail and Arada, who were all telling different humans to do different things. My bridge drone’s view of the sensor display started to show more interpretable detail. That big wobbly thing was the wormhole. The two blips way off (way way off) in the distance were our potential rescue ships. There was no blip for the hostile because it was too close.

Another vibration traveled through the deck but this one was more familiar. Rajpreet’s gaze was on the hatch display, her eyes wide. She whispered, “They attached to our lock.”

Whispering may have been an irrational impulse, but I could definitely sympathize. I said on the feed relay, Hostile has matched locks.

Overse said, Ratthi, I need a confirmed head count, now. My gravity well drone picked up two stragglers, Remy and Hanifa, scrambling up the ladders to the baseship and Ratthi, for fuck’s sake, coming back down.

I started to tap his feed but I picked up something on audio. It was scraping, vibrating through the outer hatch. Okay, that’s definitely happening. I sent on the feed, Hostile is attempting to breach the hatch, boarding may be imminent.

Roa said, Rajpreet, SecUnit, get out of there.

I told Rajpreet, “Go, I’ll be behind you.”