makes me scared, so I was just making sure that you’re not the Human.]
“This is my mother,” says Sarya. “She’s injured.” Badly.
[Yes], says the cart. [She just killed some people.]
Of course. If one Networked drone knows, they all know. “That’s true,” says Sarya. “But—”
[But the station is about to explode], says the cart, lowering itself to the deck for loading. [You’re lucky: that’s actually the one circumstance in which I can help you.]
Perhaps Sarya is beyond surprise now, in some sort of survival state, because the news barely registers. So the station is in danger. How is that any more extreme than anything else that’s happened today? “How long to the nearest airlock?” she asks briskly, as if she’s planning a day trip. She begins throwing one black limb after another over the lip of the cart, since her mother seems to have lost any ability to move on her own.
[Three minutes], says the cart, [I feel that I should warn you, however, that all lifeboats at that airlock have already been launched.]
“Twenty-four minutes, everyone!” says Ellie’s voice in Sarya’s earbuds. “I also thought you might want to know that I myself have been successfully evacuated. I am now broadcasting from the fine ship Wanderlust, which was kind enough to host my intelligence core.”
“Okay,” says Sarya, voice tight. “How long to the closest airlock with lifeboats?”
[Calculating…], says the cargo cart. [Twenty-five minutes! Would you like me to plot the route?]
No, because that is an idiotic plan that would only occur to a low-tier mind. Sarya wonders briefly if all the sub-legal intelligences on Watertower have escape plans. Is there space on a lifeboat for a cargo cart, let alone the tens of thousands that run through Watertower’s back corridors? Perhaps that’s another hint that she’s in some strange mental space, because the image of fleeing drones piling into lifeboats is so ridiculous she nearly laughs. No, a lifeboat is clearly not the answer…but there could be another possibility.
She throws her own legs over the edge and works her way into a corner of the cart. She lifts her mother’s head onto her lap and holds it as the cart rises, swaying. “You’re okay,” she tells her mother, willing it to be true.
“It was only a matter of time before they found us,” says Shenya the Widow, and Sarya has to bring her ear almost to those trembling mandibles to hear. “I knew that when I kept you.” She rattles, deep inside her thorax. “You were so hideous,” she whispers, and chitters a long laugh into a choking silence.
“I’ll get us off the station,” murmurs Sarya, cradling the hard edges of that beloved head. She strokes the side of a mandible. “Cart,” she says without looking up. “Emergency mode. Take us to Dock A.”
“Now that I’ve been cleared of negligence, I’m happy to provide more details on the current situation,” says Ellie’s voice as the cargo cart rocks through a dark and crowded corridor. “It seems we have a teensy guidance problem with a nearby ice shipment, which will most likely collide with the station. As this shipment is not Networked, there is very little we here on the station can do besides evacuate. So carry on, everyone! You have twenty minutes.”
Sarya strokes her mother’s carapace, her fingers finding damage in new places. Her mother hisses with pain now and then, but the sounds are becoming softer and more widely spaced.
“Mother,” says Sarya, tapping her mother’s face gently. “Mother, talk to me.”
Her mother’s mandibles flutter. “What’s…happening?” she asks.
Sarya strokes the outside of those mandibles, staying away from the razor inner edges. “No idea,” she says. She attempts to smile. “But I’d guess somebody’s getting fired.”
“It is,” her mother murmurs, as if to herself. “Where Humans go, disaster follows. I knew this, and still I—”
“I think that might be a little dramatic,” says Sarya, but there is a weight in her stomach. “Why don’t you tell me a story?” she says as lightly as she can manage.
“I’m…tired, child.”
“Eighteen minutes, everyone,” says Ellie’s voice in her earbuds. “And there’s even a chance of a clean miss! Not much of one, but I thought you’d like to know. Anyway, I want to congratulate everyone on the extremely low number of casualties so far: only three evacuation-related fatalities that I’ve seen! Excellent work, team!”
“A chant, then,” says Sarya, racking her memory for one of her mother’s