to achieve our mission objective. Step one was to get there while the hostile was busy with Wilken.
I stopped far enough down the corridor to get Abene out of range of any stray friendly fire. (Wilken’s weapon was discharging so rapidly I assumed she didn’t have a lot of time to aim.)
Miki arrived a second later. I deposited Abene on her feet and she staggered before Miki caught her. Now this is something else I hate about human security. If Wilken was a SecUnit, my priority would be clear: continue ahead to retrieve Hirune, get her and Abene to safety, then return to retrieve/clean up what was left of Wilken and the hostile. But Wilken was human, so I had to go back and retrieve her stupid ass now.
Miki sent an image into my feed and said, It’s a combat bot!
Yeah, thanks for the newsburst, Miki. I’d managed to get a clear picture of it while it was in mid-leap, when I was crossing the room with Abene. I told Miki, Stay with Don Abene, and ran back down the corridor.
Again, I know in the telling it sounds like I was on top of this situation but really, I was still just thinking, Oh shit oh shit oh shit. Combat bots are faster, stronger, and more heavily armed than me. Even if a SecSystem feed had been available, I couldn’t hack a combat bot without making a direct physical connection, and trying for that would result in me being torn apart. (I’ve been torn apart before, and on my list of things to avoid, it was right up there at the top.)
The only good thing about combat bots is that they aren’t combat SecUnits. Those are worse.
I exited the corridor at close to my top speed and had time to get one clear image of the situation to plot my attack. (I should put “plot” in quotes because it’s really hard to plan under these circumstances.)
Wilken was on the floor and her large weapon had just been knocked out of her hands. The combat bot stooped over her. In shape it was close to a human-form bot. Sort of like Miki if Miki were three meters tall, had multiple weapon ports in its chest and back, four arms with multiple hand mods for cutting, slicing, delivering energy bursts, etc., and a not very endearing personality.
I went up the wall just enough to give myself the right trajectory, then pushed off into a jump and landed on the combat bot’s head. Its cameras and scanners were up there, but the place where it did its actual processing and kept its memory was down in its lower abdomen. (So was Miki’s; it was more protected down there since people always shoot for the head.) (At least, people always shot for my head, so I assumed they did it to bots, too.)
The combat bot knew I was a SecUnit because it sent a pulse through its skin that caused my pain sensors to max out. (I’d anticipated that and already dialed them down, but it didn’t feel good.) The next pulse was meant to fry my armor and my explosive projectile weapon. Since I left both back at Port FreeCommerce, it didn’t do much of anything to me and the mistake gave me the half second I needed to shove the port of the energy weapon in my right arm up against its sensory input collectors. I fired it at full capacity.
I had needed that half second, because just as I fired the bot swept its arm up and slammed me off its head. I hit the floor and slid three meters but the bot staggered sideways, temporarily (and I can’t stress that “temporarily” part enough) blind, deaf, and with no ability to scan for movement or energy, no ability to acquire a target with any of its inbuilt weapons.
Wilken was just rolling over as I shoved upright. I grabbed an explosive pack off her harness and threw myself at the combat bot. From the burst of static in the feed, it had just cleared its sensory inputs, but I’d already hit the spot just above its right hip joint and slammed the explosive pack into place.
It grabbed me by the head and shoulder, big hand gripping me, and I felt the shift in the metal that meant something sharp was about to come out of its hand. I thought, Well, okay, that didn’t work. It could have destroyed me with any one