Which is why we had to keep moving. Ratthi and Arada stopped to answer a question about the medical equipment power cells and I shooed them back to the habitat for the next load.
The problem I was going to have is that the way murderbots fight is we throw ourselves at the target and try to kill the shit out of it, knowing that 90 percent of our bodies can be regrown or replaced in a cubicle. So, finesse is not required.
When we left the habitat, I wouldn’t have access to the cubicle. Even if we knew how to take it apart, which we didn’t, it was too big to fit in the hopper and required too much power.
And they might have actual combat bots rather than security bots like me. In which case, our only chance was going to be keeping away from them until the pick-up transport arrived. If the other survey group hadn’t bribed somebody in the company to delay it. I hadn’t mentioned that possibility yet.
We had everything almost loaded when Pin-Lee said on the comm, “I found it! They had an access code buried in HubSystem. It wasn’t sending them our audio or visual data, or allowing them to see our feed, but it was receiving commands periodically. That’s how it removed information from our info and map package, how it sent the command to the little hopper’s autopilot to fail.”
Gurathin added, “Both the hoppers are clear now and I’ve initiated the pre-flight checks.”
Mensah was saying something but I had just gotten an alert from SecSystem. A drone was sending me an emergency signal.
A second later I got the drone’s visual of the field where our beacon was installed. The tripod launching column was on its side, pieces of the capsule scattered around.
I pushed it out into the general feed, and the humans went quiet. In a little voice, Ratthi said, “Shit.”
“Keep moving,” Mensah said over the comm, her voice harsh.
With HubSystem down, we didn’t have any scanners up, but I had widened the perimeter as far as it would go. And SecSystem had just lost contact with one of the drones to the far south. I tossed the last crate into the cargo hold, gave the drones their orders, and yelled over the comm, “They’re coming! We need to get in the air, now!”
It was unexpectedly stressful, pacing back and forth in front of the hoppers waiting for my humans. Volescu came out with Bharadwaj, helping her over the sandy ground. Then Overse and Arada, bags slung over their shoulders, yelling at Ratthi behind them to keep up. Guranthin was already in the big hopper and Mensah and Pin-Lee came last.
They split up, Pin-Lee, Volescu, and Bharadwaj headed for the little hopper and the rest to the big one. I made sure Bharadwaj didn’t have trouble with the ramp. We had a problem at the hatch of the big hopper where Mensah wanted to get in last and I wanted to get in last. As a compromise, I grabbed her around the waist and swung us both up into the hatch as the ramp pulled in after us. I set her on her feet and she said, “Thank you, SecUnit,” while the others stared.
The helmet made it a little easier, but I was going to miss the comfortable buffer of the security cameras.
I stayed on my feet, holding on to the overhead rail, as the others got strapped in and Mensah went up to the pilot’s seat. The little hopper took off first, and she gave it time to get clear before we lifted off.
We were operating on an assumption: that since They, whoever They were, didn’t know that we knew They were here, They would only send one ship. They would be expecting to catch us in the habitat, and would probably come in prepared to destroy the hoppers to keep us there, and then start on the people. So now that we knew They were coming from the south, we were free to pick a direction. The little hopper curved away to the west, and we followed.
I just hoped their hopper didn’t have a longer range on its scanners than ours did.
I could see most of my drones on the hopper’s feed, a bright dot forming on the three dimensions of the map. Group One was doing what I’d told them, gathering at a rendezvous point near the habitat. I had a calculation going, estimating the bogie’s time of arrival. Right before we passed out of range I told the drones to head northeast. Within moments, they dropped out of my range. They would follow their last instruction until they used up their power cells.
I was hoping the other survey team would pick them up and follow. As soon as they had a visual on our habitat they’d see the hoppers were gone and know we’d run away. They might stop to search the habitat, but they also might start looking for our escape route. It was impossible to guess which.
But as we flew, curving away to the distant mountains, nothing followed us.
Chapter Six
THE HUMANS HAD DEBATED where to go. Or debated it as much as possible, while frantically calculating how much of what they might need to survive they could stuff into the hoppers. We knew the group who Ratthi was now calling EvilSurvey had had access to HubSystem and knew all the places we’d been to on assessments. So we had to go somewhere new.
We went to a spot Overse and Ratthi had proposed after a quick look at the map. It was a series of rocky hills in a thick tropical jungle, heavily occupied by a large range of fauna, enough to confuse life-sign scans. Mensah and Pin-Lee lowered the hoppers down and eased them in among rocky cliffs. I sent up some drones so we could check the view from several angles and we adjusted the hoppers’ positions a few times. Then I set a perimeter.
It didn’t feel safe, and while there were a couple of survival hut kits in the hoppers, no one suggested putting them up. The humans would stay in the hoppers for now, communicating over the comm and the hoppers’ limited feed. It wasn’t going to be comfortable for the humans (sanitary and hygiene facilities were small and limited, for one thing) but it would be more secure. Large and small fauna moved within range of our scanners, curious and potentially as dangerous as the people who wanted to kill my clients.
I went out with some drones to do a little scouting and make sure there was no sign of anything big enough to, say, drag the little hopper off in the middle of the night. It gave me a chance to think, too.
They knew about the governor module, or the lack of it, and even though Mensah had sworn she wouldn’t report me, I had to think about what I wanted to do.
It’s wrong to think of a construct as half bot, half human. It makes it sound like the halves are discrete, like the bot half should want to obey orders and do its job and the human half should want to protect itself and get the hell out of here. As opposed to the reality, which was that I was one whole confused entity, with no idea what I wanted to do. What I should do. What I needed to do.