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Roland snorted and wiped his brow. “I abandoned nothing. I had to get out of here. The place was being overrun.”

“What’s making the bots go crazy?” Heather asked.

“Not a clue. The first I heard about it was when they came scuttling through a hole they smashed in the main door. We held them off, but don’t have lasers in here. It’s too much of a risk around the equipment. I told the crew to abandon the area and went to get weapons.” Roland scraped a hand over his chin.

“I was grabbed by some spider bots,” Heather said. “They dragged me out of my room. That’s the first I knew about the bots going wrong.”

Roland blew out a breath. “I didn’t mean to accuse you of anything. It’s just this place.” He waved a hand at a damaged panel. “It will take weeks to fix this. We’ll have to order a ton of new parts. With the comm system down, we can’t even request assistance.”

“How extensive is the damage?” Loka asked.

“It’s spreading across the station,” Roland said. “It won’t be long before the whole place is crippled. I can’t locate Helga. She must be considering abandoning the station if things continue to get worse.”

Helga Batiste was Prodigy’s station Commander. When she told you to abandon ship, you listened to her.

“We found something that might help.” Heather gestured Roland to the panel. “I’m not sure what this means, but it’s strange code.”

“Coming from an outside source,” Hoan said.

Roland studied the coding. “Bugger me. You’re right. Someone’s reprogramming the whole system. But why?”

“That’s what we were trying to figure out,” Heather said. “If there’s anything we can do to help, we’re happy to stay. There’s not much else we can do, and we’d like to stay out of the way of those angry bots.”

“I’m not sure you can help. I’ve been working on decommissioning the security cyborgs with mixed results,” Roland said. “They are a big cause of concern. They can tear a hole in the space station wall if they have a mind to. We also need to keep an eye on the smaller bots. They can get into panels and do just as much damage.”

“Heather discovered the strange code in your system,” Loka said. “She is valuable. Make use of her.”

Roland eyed Loka. “And you are?”

“Loka’s working on the space station doing the mapping program for our galaxy,” Heather said. “He’s also useful to have on your team. He’s sort of a genius among the Picar. So is Hoan. They’re clever. They can help.”

Roland nodded. “I am interested in the mapping program. I didn’t realize you were involved in that.”

“I’m not,” Heather said.

“But she will be useful to you,” Loka said.

“Maybe you can help.” Roland turned and looked at his crew, who were scurrying from panel to panel checking the damage. “If you can help fix this, then you’re welcome here.”

Vegas appeared in the doorway, Nell by her side. “Heather! I’ve been looking for you.” She ran over and hugged her.

“I’ve been trying to get in touch with you.” Heather shook her wrist. “The communications are down. We came here to see what was going on.”

“Everything is down.” Vegas’s wide eyes took in the damage in the room. “What happened here?”

“The bots,” Heather said.

“Someone’s made them seriously unhappy,” Nell said. “You think this has got something to do with the one that attacked you in our office?”

“I hadn’t thought.”

“What happened?” Loka asked.

“I didn’t tell you. When I was working, a spider bot came into the office and lunged at me. It was acting like it wanted to kill me."

“Diadora crushed it,” Vegas said.

“This must be why it behaved so strangely,” Heather said. “We’re going to lend a hand here getting the main systems back online.”