Page 26 of Escape from Nova Nine
While his back was still to the guards, he pointed toward the still running big machines, then made what he hoped were the signs to ask if he should turn them off.
Julke shook her head and made the sign for “wait.”
He sat next to her, soaking in her deliciously complex and subtle emotional flavors while he watched the progress of the first map bot. It rolled in and halted a meter from the toes of Lhap Cho’s boots. Dajoya carried the repair kit bag and stopped behind the bot.
After a few moments of conversation, Lhap Cho threw up his arms in what looked like exasperation and held out his hand. Dajoya gave him the bag. He turned toward Zade and Julke.
“I’m taking Lantham to the medics and bringing back the big scanner.” He pointed a thumb behind him. “The other four map bots took a wrong turn. Dajoya’s going after them.” He let the bag drop to the floor, then used his toe to slide it toward Zade. “Patch Defayensdytr’s suit and stay here with Sutrio. One of us will be back soon.”
Lhap Cho efficiently strapped a harness around Lantham’s torso. Dajoya connected him to Lhap Cho’s mech suit like a human-shaped backpack. Neither guard’s mental shield leaked emotion, which Zade took as a good sign, especially in Dajoya’s case.
Zade counted to thirty after they left and the outer airlock closed, then slid the bag to Julke. “I don’t know how to use this kit, but I’ll help if you need it.”
That was for the benefit of whatever tech was monitoring their comms. He pulled out the purloined tools he’d been collecting in his exosuit’s outer pockets ever since he’d discovered that the guards were slacking on nightly suit scans. He pointed toward himself, then pointed the live tech probe toward the map bot.
Julke shook her head vehemently, but her words were casual. “Don’t touch the bot, by the way. It’ll stun you.”
I’m okay, he told her in sign language, then held up his prize, a white triangular card with a security access key. He used the probe’s pincers to hold the key near the bot’s long side, like he’d seen guards and techs do. The indicators along the oval housing turned from slow-blinking blue to solid orange.
He glanced at his helmet’s display to note the time. Figuring he only had five minutes before someone pinged the bot for status, he scrambled close and rolled it over to expose its tread pods. From there, he found the access points and lifted the bottom base plate to expose the inner mechanism. The first time he’d seen the mine’s map bots, he’d recognized them for what they were — repurposed starship hull survey bots. A clever solution, actually. Hull bots were designed to move along an incalloy surface, like the mine’s gravity plates were made of, and transmit integrity data to the central shipcomp. The mine’s techs added rough-terrain gimbal treads and security, but they were still hull bots.
As such, they required complete reference holomaps to do their job. And he knew where they were stored.
Four minutes left. The enviro unit said the work area’s oxygen was too low for comfort and the humidity was low and dropping.
Pocketing the security card, he used the probe to insert a segment of discarded data filament into the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it hole in the memory module. Now the harder part.
Three minutes fifteen seconds.
He opened his helmet and unsealed his exosuit’s neck yoke. Cold assaulted his naked scalp and exposed ears.
He peeled the front of his suit down to expose the fibre net that handled the onboard comms. The back of his throat felt dry and dusty as he disconnected and pulled off his gloves. Shallow breaths helped control his cough reflex.
One minute fifty seconds.
Carefully, he pried up the bottom of the comms net to reveal his target, the suit’s redundant maintenance records. He forced his icy fingers to press the helpfully well-marked reset control that would flush the memory.
Forty-four seconds.
The fibre filament attached to the bot was too short to reach his suit. Shoving his chest closer, he triggered the sequence that told the bot to upload the data, then hugged the bot tight as a lover so the connection would hold. The hardest part was trusting that it was working. He’d only tested the upload once, with data from a game comp he’d lifted from one of the dining hall staff.
At his self-imposed time limit, he disconnected the filament, sealed up his suit and helmet, put away his tools, and restored the bot’s bottom plate. Lastly, he pulled on his gloves and set the bot upright on its treads.
Standing made him lightheaded. His heart still pounding, he drew in three breaths as slowly as he could tolerate. Wheezing gasps might be heard over the comms and bring unwelcome questions.
Turning, he found Julke holding a long strip of tape and grinning at him. He couldn’t help but grin back.
She pointed to the bot, then gave the “alert” sign, plus two more he didn’t recognize.
Damnit, he wished he’d been more diligent in learning the language. He shook his head.
Sutrio moaned and tried to roll onto her side. “I’m gonna be sick.”
Zade hurried over to help Sutrio turn over onto her knees. Julke helped the woman open her helmet just in time. There was little worse in the universe than a closed exosuit full of noxious stink.
After Sutrio’s heaving subsided, they helped her seal her helmet and lie down again. Her usually warm brown skin had an ashen undertone that he hoped was just temporary. From what he’d heard from the other prisoners, stunner side-effects varied from minder to minder, but the one common denominator was that it disrupted minder talents for minutes, hours, or even days.
“Workgroup 17-C, report status.”
