Fugitive Telemetry (The Murderbot Diaries #6)(31)

Modules didn’t have an airlock, they relied on attaching to the transport or station cargo lock; I wouldn’t have been able to open the module’s hatch for the EVAC suit without killing everyone inside, so the plan had been to get into the hostile ship through its lock and then run around getting shot and murdering my way through whoever was aboard until I could get control. (I hadn’t used those exact words during the planning process with Indah and Aylen, but we all knew what we were talking about.) But my maybe-not-so-dumb bag made its own airlock, that was the whole point of it.

If I could get the refugees out of the module and over to the colony ship’s lock without the hostiles even realizing I was there, then the responder would be free to take over the hostile ship.

That plan was easier plus 100 percent less murdery. And I liked it better.

Huh. I liked it better because it wasn’t a CombatUnit plan, or actually a plan that humans would come up with for CombatUnits. Sneaking the endangered humans off the ship to safety and then leaving the hostiles for someone else to deal with, that was a SecUnit plan, that was what we were really designed for, despite how the company and every other corporate used us. The point was to retrieve the clients alive and fuck everything else.

Maybe I’d been waiting too long for GrayCris to show up and try to kill us all. I was thinking like a CombatUnit, or, for fuck’s sake, like a CombatBot.

I got the bag to blorp along the hull over to where the module should be, then along its side to where scan detected the outline of the module’s access hatch. Once the bag was in place, its automatic functions took over and it enlarged itself to completely cover the hatch. The bag assured me it had made a secure seal. Okay, it hadn’t lied to me so far.

Now this part might be tricky. I carefully felt around in the empty feed, looking for the ship’s bot pilot. Oh, there it was. It was a limited bot pilot, just there to steer and dock the ship and guide it through wormholes. It was startled to be accessed, even though I was spoofing a Port Authority ID. It’s usually easy to make friends with low-level bot pilots, but this one had been coded to be adversarial, directed to operate in stealth mode, and was wary of incursion attempts. It tried to alert its onboard SecSystem, but as the old saying (which I just made up) goes, if you can ping the SecUnit, it’s way too late.

I took control, disabled the SecSystem, and put the bot pilot in sleep mode. Having to keep it dormant was annoying, because it limited my ability to use the ship’s functions, but it meant the hostiles wouldn’t be able to fly off toward the wormhole or fire weapons at the responder or whatever else they felt like shooting at.

Next I accessed the module’s hatch control. I didn’t want to risk trying to use the comm or feed to check if anybody was inside, because not alerting the hostiles was the whole point of going in this way.

I checked the bag’s airlock seal again, then told the module to open its access hatch.

Oh, shit, my stupid, stupid feed ID that identified me as a SecUnit. Just as the hatch slid up, I switched it to the last one in my buffer, the Kiran ID I’d used on TranRollinHyfa.

The lighted interior would have blinded me if my eyes worked that way. I meant to say something before I went inside but the bag had no grav function and the module did, so let’s put it this way, my entrance was abrupt and not graceful.

The module was a big oblong container with ribbed supports and racks folded into the bulkheads and no padding anywhere, making it clear it was designed for cargo, not passengers. It was colder than the bag and the air smelled wrong. The bunch of humans inside screamed and threw themselves away from the hatch that from their perspective had apparently just opened into empty space. Then they realized I was standing there and they screamed again.

Fortunately I had a lot of experience being screamed at and stared at by terrified humans. It was never comfortable, and I couldn’t let my drones deploy so I had to look at them with my actual eyes, but I was sort of used to that by now. Also, I’d spent a whole trip through a wormhole pretending to be an augmented human security consultant for humans who badly needed one, so I had coping mechanisms in place. Sort of.

I held up my hands and said, “Please calm down. I’m from Preservation Station Security and I’m here to get you to safety.” They huddled at the other end of the module, still staring, but I thought that was shock and surprise. I added, “You’ve been abducted by whoever is aboard this ship, they were not sent by your contact Lutran.”

“We know that,” one of the humans said. They started to unfold from defensive positions as they realized I wasn’t here to shoot them. I didn’t see any signs of serious injury but from the disarray of their clothes and some visible bruises, they had been knocked around in the module at some point. I wasn’t picking up any augments or interfaces. Which made sense; only the non-augmented contract labor would be able to leave BreharWallHan without being traced, and the escapees would know to leave their interfaces behind. Their captors would have confiscated any comms or interfaces the Lalow crew had given them. Human One continued, “They’re bounty-catchers, sent by the supervisors.” She pointed up.

It could have been a trick but I looked up anyway. Oh shit, the module is attached to a lock. An appallingly jury-rigged lock, way too small.

The module’s other hatch, the large one meant to load and unload bulk cargo, was open, sealed directly against the hull of the ship. For fuck’s sake, I could see part of the ship’s registration number.