Network Effect

Rajpreet backed toward the corridor access. If the hostiles chose this moment to board, before we could seal off and separate, we were screwed.

I heard Ratthi yell, “No, No!” through my drone audio. His voice was harsh with fury, fear. The impulse to run to him made me flinch, but I needed to hold my position. Something had gone wrong up there. On the feed, I said, Dr. Ratthi, report.

Ratthi, of all my humans except Dr. Mensah, listens to me the most carefully. Probably it has something to do with the time he was about to step out of the hopper to retrieve some equipment and if he had, he would have been eaten by giant predatory fauna. Sounding simultaneously frustrated, angry, and terrified, Ratthi said, Amena and Kanti aren’t here. Thiago is looking for them. They aren’t in the quarters or the upper labs, they must be down in the lower level somewhere.

Well, shit.

I had audio and visual of the baseship access through my drones, so I was able to see when it exploded. (No, not physically exploded. Emotionally exploded.) Humans yelling and waving their arms and other unhelpful things.

You know, it’s not like I’m having a good time either right now.

I told Rajpreet, “Get to the gravity well access,” and started down the corridor toward the labs and sample storage, where Adjat had tried to tell Rajpreet about jammed doors. I ordered a drone to stay near the hatch so I would have some warning if anything came through it. I split the rest of the formation, sending two-thirds up the access to take a guard position with Rajpreet and telling the rest to follow me. On the feed, I said, calmly, Acknowledged, I’ll find them. SHIT.

I’d made a stupid mistake. Feed access in the facility was down unless your interface was in range of one of my drones, so the connection could be relayed to the baseship, and the comm was patchy and unreliable. We, me and the humans, were too used to the feed, which made it impossible to lose track of someone, to leave them behind. With an active feed, even if you were unconscious, your interface could be used to track your location.

Arada said over the feed, We’re holding for you, SecUnit.

Get to the baseship, Arada, I sent back.

It was amazing how fast our mostly orderly retreat had turned into a disaster. My drone formation formed around Rajpreet, who was waiting anxiously at the bottom of the gravity well. At the top, baseship crew and survey team members gathered, clutching handweapons they barely knew how to use. I just hoped nobody accidentally shot themselves or anyone else. I tapped my drone relay and saw Arada, Overse, Ratthi, and damn it Thiago waiting at the facility access junction. Arada was talking on the feed to Roa and trying to shove a resisting Overse into the gravity well. I started to tell them—I don’t know what I was going to tell them, but it was going to involve the words “I can’t do my job if none of you fucking listen to me” but then interference blotted out the connection and I lost all my drones in the baseship.

I reached a hatch to lab 3 that was stuck partly open, just a few centimeters from the deck. I hit the floor and directed my scan under the hatch, but I couldn’t pick up any indication of a human body, living or otherwise. But drone audio detected a muffled human voice, coming from farther up the corridor.

I shoved upright and slammed around the curve and oh right, that must be the hatch Adjat had seen. The bulkhead was crumpled along the top of the seal, and the panel with the manual release had been blown in a power surge. The plastic parts were melted and the whole hatch assembly was dripping with fire suppressant foam where the automated emergency system had engaged. The facility’s systems in this area must be down or cut off, and the emergency report had never reached the control deck. My audio picked up a muffled voice from the blocked compartment, but it was too faint for human hearing.

My first impulse was to blow the hatch. Fortunately my second impulse was to grab the manual release and pull. It didn’t give, but I could feel the seal was broken. At least some of the locks that held it shut had been disengaged. Which meant someone had already triggered the manual release inside but something was jammed. I ripped the panel open and found crumpled metal pinning the release mechanism. I shoved my sleeve back, tuned the energy weapon in my right arm down to the lowest setting, and burned through it. The hatch clunked as it released and I dragged it open.