somewhere.
While I stood there like an idiot during the wasted seconds while the stupid lift returned to this position, I ran a quick analysis and compared it to the facility’s schematic. I put markers up for Miki, the humans, and the incoming hostile, and shoved it back into Miki’s feed. Miki was already saying, “Don Abene, something is coming toward us. We need to take the outer corridor back to the shuttle.” It forwarded my active schematic to the humans.
I stepped into the lift as the doors opened. As I hit the destination sequence, I compared the ambient audio Miki was still processing with the projection on my schematic. This thing, whatever it was, was moving much faster than my first projection had indicated. I sent to Miki, No time to withdraw, tell client to shelter in place and try to lock down area.
Miki was saying to Abene, “Don Abene, it’s too close, we have to stay here and seal the door.”
But Wilken and Gerth had finally understood what was happening and I heard them shout at the assessment team to fall back down the corridor to the shuttle.
I didn’t need to look at my projections again. They weren’t going to make it to the end of the corridor. This is why humans shouldn’t work security; the situation changes too fast and they can’t keep up.
I had sent the lift to the bio pod, the nearest junction to the team’s position. The door slid open and I stepped into a wall of sound: screaming, energy weapon fire. I ran down the corridor and rounded the corner.
I’m going to describe this as I reconstructed it from my and Miki’s camera feeds later, since at the time even I was mostly thinking, Oh shit oh shit.
Wilken and Gerth had managed to get the group out of the bio hub, up the ramp, and into a junction with three other corridors, which was pretty much the most optimal point for being attacked in this area. I mean, if I was going to attack someone, I couldn’t have picked a better spot.
I didn’t have time to be too sarcastic about it because Wilken and Gerth were discharging their weapons down the corridor curving off to the left. Even the emergency power lights down there were off and I couldn’t immediately see what they were shooting at. Ejiro was against the far wall, just sliding to the floor like something had slammed him aside. The rightward corridor led to the next segment of the bio pod and there was a lock and heavy hatch that was in the process of sliding closed. Miki, trying to follow my instructions, had triggered it via the emergency access on the wall. Brais staggered as if she’d been hit by something, and Abene grabbed her by the arm and steadied her.
It looked like all the humans were intact and Wilken and Gerth were driving off whatever it was they had blundered out here to meet and try to feed their clients to, and I was about to fall back. Then in the closing gap between the hatch and the wall, something moved. It was too fast for me to make it out without rerunning my video and reviewing it. Almost before I could move, it reached past Miki, grabbed Don Abene by the helmet, and yanked her into the gap.
Almost before I could move.
I crossed the junction toward them, ducked past Miki and Brais, hit the wall, used my momentum to go up two meters so I was level with Don Abene’s body. I braced myself in the corner, planted one foot against the closing hatch and pushed. I felt the strain even in my inorganic parts; I couldn’t keep it open for long.
One of Abene’s flailing legs hit Brais and knocked her to the floor. Miki was the only one fast enough to act. It grabbed Don Abene’s torso, and its whole feed was one scream of an urgent assistance code. I got an arm around Abene’s waist, pinning one of her arms. The other was desperately scrabbling to hold onto Miki.
If she hadn’t been wearing the suit, she would have been torn in half. If the hatch hadn’t had a safety sensor that was giving us time to clear the obstruction, she would have been crushed. I wasted three seconds trying to pry at the spidery thing gripping her helmet. It was red and had eight multi-jointed fingers, that was all I could tell at the moment.