The armored hostile hesitated. Come on, look down here, you know you want to. There was going to be an orientation change between the ship’s gravity field and the module’s gravity field, and I’d have to take it into account. The humans huddled at the far end of the module, frozen, waiting.
The armored hostile leaned down and cautiously extended a weapon through the lock.
（I already knew it wasn’t another SecUnit inside that suit, but this was another giveaway. A SecUnit would have moved fast, propelling itself into the module. There’s no point in being cautious when your job is to draw fire, right?）
I woke my drones as I grabbed the armored arm and yanked it down. Twisting the hostile’s weapon free and dropping it, I swung myself over to clamp my body around the armor’s helmet and upper body.
I have a file of access codes I could have used to take control of the armor, but that would take time, and this was an expensive brand and might be newer than my code list. Another reason this wasn’t a SecUnit—our armor was never this nice.
With my chest clamped to its helmet, Armored Hostile couldn’t see and events were moving a little too fast for it to take advantage of the armor’s scan, cameras, or defensive functions. I jammed the nozzle of my projectile weapon into the back neck joint where the important parts were, switched it to full power, and fired. The armor spasmed （an explosive projectile in your motor control functions will do that） and went limp.
My drones shot up through the lock and the hold, and straight into the faces of the two hostiles in tactical gear running toward us down the corridor. They screamed and flailed backward.
I climbed around the dead weight of the armored hostile and up into the ship. Then I dragged the body out of the way and yelled, “Clear!”
I took a guard position at the inner hatch and watched my drones zip through the ship. Behind me the humans scrambled to climb up through the hatch, exhausted and struggling, trying to help each other. When the last one collapsed on the deck, gasping at the fresh air, I let the lock close. That was a relief. Now that there was no more danger of everybody getting sucked into space, I checked my other inputs.
I had confirmation from the bag that it had delivered its humans to the colony ship, where the airlock had accepted its safety code and cycled them through. The responder had sent a confirmation code, and, according to the hostile ship’s SecSystem, had just hailed the hostiles and informed them that they were about to be apprehended.
The armored hostile was still alive, just stunned and trapped in the immobile suit. The other hostiles were confused, panicking about the drones, and there was every chance of getting them to surrender, or at least violently encouraging them to surrender without having to kill them. To the humans, I said, “I’m going after the others, just stay here—”
I felt a hard thump from behind. It was low and to one side, where a fairly important part would be, if I was human.
I turned. Human One had the armored hostile’s weapon, the one I had taken away and dropped down into the module. And she had shot me with it.
I reached her before she could fire again, twisted it out of her grip. Then I walked out of the hold and let the hatch shut behind me.
* * *
By the time the responder locked on and its armed intervention team boarded, I had the other hostiles disarmed, restrained with cuffs I’d found in a locker, and sitting on the deck near the main airlock. I’d found their medical unit （it was an off-brand model, and installed in the galley, but whatever） and was letting it seal up the hole in my back. （Just a regular projectile, not an explosive one, so most of my back was still there. I just didn’t feel like walking around leaking in front of humans right now.） I’d gotten Aylen on comm and confirmed she had called in her team for support and was now trying to coax the six refugees out of the colony ship’s airlock corridor. Apparently they weren’t believing the whole “we’re Station Security and we’re here to help” story. Whatever, it wasn’t my problem.
I’d switched my feed ID back to SecUnit.
Senior Indah walked in. I knew from listening to the responder’s comm that she had taken a shuttle out to it, but I hadn’t expected her to come looking for me. She frowned at the galley. The surfaces were smeared with dried food, and it smelled bad, even worse than human food prep areas usually smell. She looked at me and said, “You were hurt?”
I told the MedUnit to stop and pulled my shirt back down. “What gave it away?”
She folded her arms and leaned against the side of the hatch. My drones showed her expression was sour. “The refugees told me they shot you. They realized you were a SecUnit and thought…” She scratched her head, leaving her short hair sticking up unevenly. “I don’t know what they thought, I’m too tired to sort that out. Do you want to make a criminal complaint against them?”