Terminal Velocity
Tags: AAA Murderbot, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, an au retelling of Network Effect, TBA
Published: TBA
Word Count: TBA
Summary
TBA
Chapter One
I’ve had clients before who believed they needed an absurd level of security. (And I’m talking absurd even by my standards, which are based on the standards of the company, who are known for intense xenophobic paranoia matched only by unmitigated greed.) I’ve also had clients who believed they didn’t need any security at all, right up until something ate them. (That’s mostly a metaphor; my uneaten client stat is high.)
Dr. Arada, who is what her marital partner Overse fondly refers to as a “terminal optimist,” was somewhere in the comfortable middle zone. Dr. Thiago was very firmly in the “Let’s investigate the dark cave without those pesky murderous SecUnits” group. Which was why Arada was pressed up against the wall next to the hatch leading out to the observation deck with her hands white-knuckled around the stock of a projectile weapon and Thiago was standing on the ground at the bottom of the ramp to said observation deck, trying to reason with one of several potential targets. (That’s “potential” per the earlier conversation where Arada had said, [Oh, SecUnit, I really wish you wouldn’t call people “targets”] and Thiago had given me the look that usually means It just wants an excuse to murder people.)
But then, that was before the Potential Targets had started brandishing their own varied array of large projectile weapons in our general direction.
Anyway, these are the kinds of things that I think about when I’m clinging desperately to the underside of the inexplicably floating landmass that our research facility is currently moored to, trying not to lose my grip. If I fall off now, there’s nothing but clouds and empty air beneath me for… well, a really long way.
At least I wasn’t the only SecUnit here. Even if I did fall off and plummet to my certain doom, Alpha was with Arada, pressed against the wall on the opposite side of the hatch and pinging me frantically. I sent it a status update even as I dug my fingers deeper into the tightly-packed soil of the floating landmass and braced my feet against some thick protruding roots. (It was like something from some of my media - this whole planet was dotted with massive chunks of land hanging high up in the unusually thick atmosphere, most of them covered in a wide variety of lush and colourful flora. I had no idea how said land masses managed to float because I didn’t particularly care about the details, they weren’t relevant to my security protocols.)
Alpha’s acknowledging ping was filled with relief. [What do I do?] it asked me, sharing its drone inputs with me. I also had my own drones monitoring our outer perimeter and the other floating landmasses scattered around the one we were on, in case this was a distraction and more Potential Targets were planning on swooping in. And of course I had a camera on the unfolding shitshow on the cleared ground in front of our facility.
Thiago stood out there in the open, several meters away from the ramp up to the observation deck, not even wearing his protective gear, very much like a stupid human who refused to believe the situation assessment from not one but two SecUnits. We’d cleared a large patch of ground of flora when we’d first arrived to set up a base camp (and so we could more easily see anything that tried to approach the ramp to the facility), and both my flier and Alpha’s flier were parked off on the far side of the cleared area. (I could have called my flier to me, but I was worried that its sudden movement would make the potential targets react badly and open fire, so that’s why I had to resort to trying to climb my way back up instead.)
The apparent leader of the Potential Targets was a few meters away from Thiago, mounted on a giant winged fauna and casually pointing an almost impractically large projectile weapon at him.
There were also nine other Potential Targets hovering around the perimeter of the camp - literally hovering, in most cases. The group hadn’t approached in a single vehicle - most of them had been riding one-person hover speeders, while three, including the apparent leader, had swooped in riding giant winged fauna, like something from some of my more outlandish media. (It was frankly ridiculous.) The others riding flying fauna had also landed behind their leader (apparently hovering wasn’t something the winged fauna could comfortably do) but the ones on the speeders hadn’t bothered landing, and were still hovering several metres above the ground, brandishing various projectile weapons in the general direction of the facility and the observation deck hatch.
[Hold position for now,] I replied to Alpha. [I need time to climb up first, and maybe Thiago can somehow talk his way out of this fucking mess.] Alpha pinged an acknowledgement, and I heard it say quietly to Arada, “It’s fine, it’s trying to climb up now— oh yeah, it’s really, really mad.”
All of the Potential Targets were wearing helmets, but some of them had open (stupidly open) faceplates, and the fauna weren’t wearing helmets at all. There’s this thing you can do with the small intel drones, if your clients order you to or you have a hacked governor module, where you can send the drones at high speeds right at hostiles’ faces. Even if they miss the eyes or ears and don’t go straight through to the brain, they’ll make a crater in the skull. Doing this would neatly solve the problem and get me back to watching new episodes of Lineages of the Sun much more quickly, but I knew Arada would make a sad face at me and Thiago would be even more pissed off at the mere existence of me and Alpha than he already was. There was a good chance I’d have to do it anyway. Unfortunately, Potential Target Leader was one of the ones without an open faceplate.
(Thiago is one of the marital partners of Dr. Mensah’s brother, which is why I was even remotely considering giving a single crap about his stupid opinion.)
And there was a small chance (a very small chance) that Thiago might actually talk our way out of this. He was great at talking to other humans. But I had a drone waiting just inside the hatchway with Arada and Alpha anyway. (Overse would be very upset if we somehow let her marital partner get killed, and Alpha would also be very upset - we both liked Arada. And Overse.)
Somehow still managing to sound calm despite everything (including being confronted with giant fauna that was big enough that it could probably bite humans in half if it was so inclined), Thiago said, “There’s no need for any of this. We’re researchers, we’re not doing anything to hurt anyone here.”
Potential Target Leader said something that our FacilitySystem translated through our feed as, “I showed you I’m serious. We’ll take whatever we want, then leave you in peace. Tell everyone else to come out where we can see them.”
“We’ll give you supplies, but not people,” Thiago said.
“If you have nice enough supplies, I’ll consider leaving the people.”
“You didn’t have to shoot anyone.” Thiago was starting to sound heated. “If you needed supplies, we would have just given them to you. There was no need for violence.”
Don’t worry, the “anyone” who got shot was just me.
(Thiago, while stupidly violating the security protocol that everyone had agreed to IN ADVANCE, had walked out onto the observation deck to greet the strangers that had just flown in and landed in the open area in front of our facility. I followed him and managed to pull him back from the edge of the deck, and so Potential Target Leader’s shot had hit me instead of him. Got me right in the shoulder. I’d fallen off the observation deck, bounced off the hull of the facility, used the magnetic clamps in the boots of my flight suit to latch back on for long enough to adjust my trajectory on the way down, and managed to grab some of the roots hanging from the underside of the stupid floating landmass. Yes, I was very pissed off.
There had been a lot of yelling on the team comm interface, but once I’d updated Alpha on my status it had let everyone else know that I was fine, and the yelling stopped.)
I continued edging along the underside of the floating landmass, bracing my feet against roots and making sure my grip was secure before repositioning. It was slow going - I didn’t want to reveal myself to the Potential Targets too early, so I was having to creep along until I could get to a position that was behind them all. It was taking forever, and I could feel the projectiles lodged in my shoulder scraping against my internal inorganic framework with every movement. That did not help my mood at all.
We had previously seen eleven groups of strange humans on and around various floating landmasses; the groups had used a variety of flying or hovering craft, as well as a few different types of winged fauna, though none of those had gotten close enough for us to get a good look at. Of those eleven groups, two of them had chosen to contact us. Both groups had used large, somewhat primitive aerial “boats” to approach us, which my humans had regarded with intense interest. (There was some disappointment from a few of our humans that neither group were bringing any of the winged fauna near us, but Alpha and I were both very relieved.) Both groups had been what Thiago called “unusually divergent” and some of the others on the survey had called “deeply weird”. Both groups had taken the same elaborate precautions to show they were approaching in a non-hostile manner and had not displayed any weapons. Both groups had wanted to trade supplies with us. (Arada and the rest had wanted to just give them what they needed, but Thiago had asked them to trade their stories of why they were here on this very weird planet.)
So okay, maybe Thiago had some reason to assume this group would also be non-hostile. But the earlier groups had given Alpha and I the opportunity to develop a profile of local non-hostile approaches/interactions, and this group hadn’t fit that profile at all.
Nobody fucking listens to us.
Potential Target Leader and their friends on all their individual mounts were also dressed better than the other humans we’d encountered, in clothing that looked newer and more protective, if not cleaner. There was no planetary feed (stupid planet), but the Potential Hostile speeders were collectively running their own rudimentary, shitty local feed that was clogged with games and pornography but nothing that might be helpful for a security assessment, like who these people were and what they might want. Even the individual humans’ feed signatures only contained info about sexual availability and gender presentation, which I didn’t give a single flying damn about.
At least it wasn’t difficult to hack into their shitty feed without being detected, and I did so while continuing to make my way along the underside of the stupid floating landmass. There was a high likelihood that I’d be able to take control of all the speeders through the feed, though I wouldn’t be able to affect the winged fauna at all. Still, it would give us an advantage we desperately needed, if Thiago wasn’t able to talk his way out of this mess.
He was making a good effort of it so far though, and had managed to stall enough to avoid answering the question of whether the other researchers were going to come out on the observation deck so Potential Target Leader could decide if he wanted to abduct any of them or not. Thiago was now listing off all our supplies and pretending to struggle with FacilitySys’s translation advice. (I could tell he was pretending; he was a language expert, among other things.) The view from both mine and Alpha’s drones showed me that Potential Target Leader was enjoying watching Thiago sweat, and that maybe Thiago had noticed and was playing it up a little to buy more time. He was pretty smart, when he wasn’t ignoring Alpha and I.
… All right, I’ll admit that it was kind of upsetting that Thiago didn’t trust us.
(He and Mensah had had a conversation about us, back on Preservation Station when Arada was planning this survey. Transcript:
Thiago: “I know I’m in the minority here, but I have serious reservations about this.”
Mensah: “Arada is in charge of this survey, and she wants both SecUnit and Alpha to go along as security. And quite frankly, if neither of them go, I’m withdrawing my permission for Amena to go.”
(Amena is one of Mensah’s children and yes, she is on the facility right now. No pressure or anything!)
Thiago: “They’re murderous military war machines. Do you really trust them that much?”
Mensah: “Let me remind you once again, Thiago, that they are both people, and I trust them both with my life, literally. I know what they will do to protect her, and you, and the rest of the team. I have seen what they will do to protect those under their care, and I can guarantee that they are not indiscriminately violent murderers like you’re so determined to believe. Yes, they have their flaws, as all people do, but that doesn't change the fact that I trust them both unreservedly.”
I’d had to stop listening there, I was too busy having an emotion, so I’d missed the rest. Obviously Mensah had convinced Thiago to accept us along on the survey, and just as obviously, he’d only done so because he’ decided he had no intention of listening to either of us in the first place.)
Thiago had run out of supplies to list, and I still wasn’t in a position to climb back up behind the Potential Targets yet. Then Potential Target Leader shifted a little in his saddle to look back at our fliers, parked a safe distance from the facility and behind the perimeter the Potential Targets had around our base site. “Those are nice planes,” he commented casually, and oh no I was getting a very bad feeling about this.
Thiago didn’t even hesitate, that asshole. “You can have them both if you leave the rest of us alone.”
On the survey feed, Alpha said, [Oh no. That’s not going to work. That’s really, really not going to work.] I agreed with it, but neither of us were in a position to say so to the Potential Targets. And of course Thiago, who had never bothered actually learning anything about either of us, had no idea about why it wouldn’t work.
“I’ll consider it.” Potential Target Leader gestured to one of the others, who landed their speeder beside our fliers. They approached Alpha’s more brightly coloured flier first, which was a bit of a relief for me but also not at all, because this was going to suck either way. They managed to pop the canopy open (Alpha probably unlocked it so they wouldn’t do anything that might damage it) and began to climb in, then paused halfway once they’d gotten a good look at the interior of the cockpit. They exclaimed loudly, which FacilitySys helpfully translated as, “What the pissing shit— there aren’t any controls in here! I can't fly this!”
And there weren’t. Our fliers weren’t meant to be piloted by humans. They were a part of us - we plugged in directly via our spine ports and connections in the cockpit seats. There wasn’t any need for manual controls, they would’ve just been an extra expense in construction that the company had no interest in paying for. So there was no way for any of the Potential Targets to actually pilot our fliers.
My drone heard Alpha sigh, even as both Thiago and Potential Target Leader exclaimed, “What?” (Well, Thiago said “What?”; Potential Target Leader said something different that roughly translated to the same thing.)
[I told you it wasn't going to work,] Alpha said over the feed. Thiago ignored it. Again.
"What stupid shit are you trying to pull here?!" Potential Target Leader snarled at Thiago.
Thiago raised his hands defensively. "I'm not trying to pull anything! I'm not one of the pilots, I don't know how they work."
"Well where are the pilots? Get them out here right now!"
Thiago gave them a flat look. "The person you shot earlier was one of the pilots. It's not going to be able to get here now."
Potential Target Leader snarled something the translator couldn't parse, then gestured impatiently with their large projectile weapon. "There are two planes, that means at least two pilots. Get the other one out here!"
"All right, all right," Thiago said placatingly. "It's on its way now."
[Is that a good idea?] Arada asked us over the feed.
[It'll be fine,] I replied. [I just need a bit more time to get into position. Stall them.] I was still slowly making my way across the underside of the floating landmass, working my way closer to the top and around to a point well behind the Potential Targets and shielded from view by some of the flora that we hadn't fully cleared. (We'd left it there so the humans would have a more visible barrier to remind them where the edge of the floating landmass was. I really didn't want any of them accidentally falling off.)
Alpha pinged acknowledgement, then carefully stepped out onto the observation deck, its hands raised to show that it wasn't holding any weapons. (The Potential Targets had no way of knowing that it had energy weapons built into its arms.)
Several of the hovering Potential Targets immediately trained their weapons on it. Potential Target Leader saw it and gestured sharply for it to descend the ramp down to the ground. "Get down here!" they ordered.
"All right, I'm coming." Alpha slowly walked across the observation deck and down the ramp, its hands still raised. I could see that it was running its human movement code on overdrive, making its movements even more hesitant and nervous. I would've worried that it was over-acting, but the Potential Targets didn't seem to notice anything strange - if anything, they were enjoying its obvious signs of apprehension.
Once it had reached the ground and was standing beside Thiago, Potential Target Leader gestured for it to stop. "Are you one of the pilots? How the pissing shit do you fly those planes?" they asked shortly.
Alpha nodded. "I'm one of the pilots, yes," it admitted, still playing up the nervous human act. "And we fly them by plugging into them directly - here, look." It turned around to show Potential Target Leader its back. Like me, Alpha was wearing its flight suit, and the spinal ports were clearly visible down its back. "See? These ports in the flight suit plug directly into my back - I have a bunch of augments there - and then when I sit in the flier, the connectors in the chair plug into those ports."
The Potential Target that was still clinging to the side of Alpha's flier leaned into the cockpit to look more closely at the chair. "Oh, yeah, there are plugs here, I see 'em!" they called to their leader.
Potential Target Leader sounded dubious as they said, "So the only way to fly those planes is with the augments you have?"
Alpha nodded emphatically as it turned back around to face Potential Target Leader again. "Yep. So none of you are gonna be able to use them." It paused briefly, then added, "Sorry."
"What's stopping us from just taking your augments and using them ourselves?" Potential Target Leader asked.
"Oh that wouldn't be a good idea," Alpha replied uneasily. "I mean, there are a lot of them, and trying to remove them from me would probably kill me, and also installing them into one of you is, like, super complicated. And painful. Really, really painful. They're wired directly to our nervous systems, you know? That's how they work. You'd need a really good MedSystem to get them installed right, and I don't know if this planet would have any MedSystems good enough for that."
I finally made it to the edge of the floating landmass while Alpha was rambling. I double-checked our drones to make sure none of the Potential Targets were looking in my direction, then hauled myself up over the edge. I kept low to the ground as I worked my way forward through the flora, being careful to not make any noise.
Potential Target Leader was looking at Alpha, still dubious. "If getting these augments installed is so shitting painful, why did you do it?"
Alpha shrugged and said in a very matter-of-fact way, "Oh, I didn't have any choice in the matter." It paused briefly, shifted its weight from foot to foot, then added almost apologetically, "Um, by the way. Do you think you could get your friend there to let go of my flier? I can feel them there, it's kinda ticklish. It's very distracting."
Potential Target Leader glanced back at the other Target still holding on to the edge of the cockpit, then back to Alpha. "You can feel that?"
Alpha nodded, fidgeting again. "Yep." By this point I'd reached the edge of the camp and was lying flat on my belly beneath the remaining flora bordering the cleared area.
Potential Target Leader tilted their head, all their attention focused on Alpha. The rest of the Potential Targets were also watching either Alpha or the observation deck of the facility - none of them were looking in my direction. "So you're saying… if we damaged your plane, you'd feel it? It would hurt you?" Potential Target Leader asked with what was probably meant to be calculated menace.
"Oh, yeah." Alpha shrugged casually, obviously unimpressed by their posturing. "But I really wouldn't recommend it."
Its casualness seemed to throw them. "Oh? Why not?" Potential Target Leader asked.
I sent Alpha a confirmation ping. Alpha grinned brightly up at Potential Target Leader, though there was nothing friendly in the expression. "Because I don't have to be in it to fly it."
Several things happened simultaneously here.
Alpha's flier rose rapidly into the air, and the Potential Target still clinging to the side let out a startled yell before the flier tipped and they lost their grip, dropping to land heavily on the ground.
I used my hack into the Potential Targets' shitty feed to shut down all their hovering speeders at once; they all dropped out of the air like rocks, hitting the ground at about the same time and sending their riders sprawling.
I deployed both of my arm guns and opened fire at the two winged fauna standing behind Potential Target Leader's winged fauna as I leapt to my feet and sprinted towards my own flier. The energy blasts made the two fauna shriek and buck and rear before they launched into the air and fled; one rider fell off entirely before their fauna flew off, the other rider was left clinging desperately to the mount they could no longer control.
Alpha spun, grabbed Thiago, and bolted up the ramp and across the observation deck towards the hatch.
Potential Target Leader managed to snap off a few shots at Alpha as it retreated before the drones I sent speeding at the most vulnerable-looking bits of its winged fauna made it also shriek, rear, and dump them off before following the other two winged fauna into the sky.
With all the Potential Targets temporarily neutralised, I vaulted into my flier, linked up, and followed Alpha's flier into the air. Alpha made it through the hatchway, Thiago still in its arms, and all our remaining drones streamed in behind them. The hatch sealed shut once they were all inside. [We're all clear,] I sent to Arada. [Now would be a great time to leave.]
The thing Overse and the others had been doing while all this was going on was preparing our facility for launch. [Confirmed,] Arada replied, then sent to the bridge, [Overse, we're clear for launch!]
The research facility began its launch sequence; the ramp folded up and the support structures retracted back into the main hull before the facility's engines kicked in and it began to rise away from the floating landmass. The comm loudspeaker broadcast a siren and a translated warning about minimum safe distance, which the raiders must have taken seriously because those who were still mobile enough hauled themselves to their feet and began running (or limping) away. (It looked like some of them had been stunned or knocked out or injured from their abrupt impact with the ground, and weren't in any state to follow their fellows. I didn't exactly have much sympathy for them.)
Alpha transferred control of its flier to me - it would be easier for me to fly it alongside mine while Alpha was inside the facility. I circled the facility widely, keeping a look out for anything else that might try to approach us while it launched, but nothing came near.
Finally the facility had fully cleared the floating landmass and ascended into the sky, heading for orbit. I followed it up, with Alpha's flier keeping pace alongside mine.
Chapter Two
I told myself it wasn't as much of a shit ending to our first time as Survey Security Consultants While Not Pretending to be Humans as it could have been. Everyone was alive, the humans were uninjured, and they had even gotten all their sampling and scans done. Our original schedule actually had us leaving in four planetary days, but since we had managed to finish early, Arada had moved that up to two planetary days, which was why we'd already cleared all of our equipment out of the base camp and most of the facility had been prepped for launch.
But we'd been lucky, and I hate relying on luck.
Debris was waiting in high orbit for us; custom docking clamps had been fitted to it so that the research facility could dock with it for the wormhole jumps, since the facility didn't have wormhole drives of its own. The research facility usually had its own base ship, but that base ship didn't have any room for our fliers, and it would have been too much of a hassle to have both Debris and another ship along for this survey. So the custom docking clamps had been a logical compromise.
(Yes, this meant that I had multiple humans living on board Debris for the duration of the wormhole trips. I wasn't exactly happy about this, but the trips were short and most of the humans spent the majority of their time on the research facility instead of on Debris itself, which made the whole situation a lot more tolerable than it might've been otherwise.)
I waited until the facility was safely docked before flying into Debris' hold, Alpha's flier still following along with mine. I landed our fliers in their usual spots, shut them down, and disconnected from mine. Most of my drones were still in the research facility, so I recalled four of them to me and settled the rest in various positions around the facility, which didn't have cameras like Debris did. Then I checked the feed for any new alerts, and reconnected to Debris' interior cameras to check on the humans who weren't still in the research facility.
Alpha had already left Thiago with the other humans and Arada had then insisted that Alpha get itself to Debris' MedSystem - the stupid raider leader had managed to land a couple of lucky shots on Alpha's back as it had retreated with Thiago.
Stupid fucking raiders. Stupid fucking Thiago.
By the time I'd stripped off my damaged flight suit and dumped it into the hangar's reclaimer for repairs, Arada had made it to the corridor outside the hangar and was waiting for me, a little breathless. It looked like she'd run to get here. She didn’t have her weapon anymore, and my safety protocol check showed she’d unloaded and secured it back in the security locker on the research facility. I was glad she hadn't had to use it; she'd gotten the weapons training after the shitshow that was the last survey, but she'd confided to me that she'd had to force herself to do so.
As soon as she saw me she let out a breath of relief, before her brow furrowed in concern as she took in the bloodstained holes in my suit skin where the stupid raider had shot me. "Are you—" She was obviously about to ask me if I was all right, then thought better of it. "You should get to Medical - Alpha's there already, with Ratthi."
I just nodded and headed in that direction, with Arada following me. As we walked, I briefly upped my pain sensors a little - okay yeah, the projectiles were still lodged in my organics, scraping against my internal framework. (Sometimes the projectiles pop out by themselves, but this wasn't one of those times.)
The Medical suite on board Debris was on the same deck as the crew lounge area and galley, two levels above the hangar. The majority of the quarters were on the deck between them, but Alpha and I had our own quarters on the top level, close to the bridge. (Our rooms were much nicer than the regular quarters - they'd obviously been meant for the ship's command staff or other high-level supervisors. They were relatively spacious and had their own little private bathrooms, and large display surfaces mounted on the walls. Neither of us actually needed all the space, but the privacy and display surfaces were nice.)
When we got to Medical, it looked like Ratthi had just finished settling Alpha into the MedSystem. It was sitting on the platform with its suit skin stripped down to the waist so MedSystem could access its back. Ratthi had Alpha's flight suit bundled in his arms, presumably so he could take it down to the hangar reclaimer for repairs. "SecUnit!" he exclaimed as he saw me. "Are you all right? I've prepped the other MedSystem platform for you - you'd better lie down!"
I didn't really want to bother with it - the damage wasn't that bad. "I'm fine, I'll just use the extractor." Alpha pinged me with its damage report, and I automatically pinged it back with mine.
"No, no - you're covered in dirt and bits of plants and stuff, who knows what might've gotten into your systems while you were climbing back up. You should get decontam and an antibiotic screen, just in case." He shifted the flight suit in his arms so he could point emphatically at the narrow platform waiting for me, then had to adjust his grip again as the flight suit threatened to slip out of his arms. He gave me one last pointed look, then hurried out of Medical and towards the hangar. (It was still very weird to have humans so concerned for my well-being, but it was also kind of nice.)
"He's right," Arada added as Ratthi disappeared around the corner. "You really should make sure your wounds aren't contaminated."
They both had a point, as reluctant as I was to admit it. "Ugh, all right, fine." I began working my arms out of the sleeves of my suit skin.
Arada smiled in response, but it didn't last long. She hesitated, then asked, "Did I… should I have… done anything different?"
I paused and raised an eyebrow at her. "Are you asking if you should have tried to shoot anyone?"
Her grimace was all the response I needed, and I shook my head. "No. There were too many of them, and not enough of us in position. Not until I was able to climb back up, anyway."
(It was honestly a relief that Arada was so reluctant to actually put her weapons training to use. Most humans have a bad tendency to use weapons unnecessarily and indiscriminately. Of the many times I had been shot, a depressingly large percentage of hits had been because clients were trying to "help" me.)
(Another, even larger percentage came from clients who had just wanted to shoot something when I happened to be standing there.)
(From what Alpha had told me, its own getting-shot-by-clients stats were pretty similar to mine.)
"You did good," Alpha added from where it was sitting on its own MedSystem platform, still getting projectiles plucked out of its back. It offered her a reassuring smile.
Arada briefly smiled back at it, then let out a shaky breath and rubbed at her eyes. "When you fell off the deck… I was so worried - especially when your flier didn't move. How did you…?"
I shrugged my un-shot shoulder. "Magnetic boots in my flight suit latched on to the facility hull. Wasn't enough to catch me entirely, but it let me reach the underside of the landmass." I paused briefly, then added, "I didn't want to startle the raiders with my flier moving unexpectedly."
Arada nodded slowly, her shoulders relaxing a little. "That makes sense. I'm very glad you're all right." She then gestured me towards the MedSystem. "Or at least, you will be all right once you get patched up properly. Go on."
She didn't wait to see if I'd actually get into the MedSystem though, she just stepped out of Medical and set the privacy filter on the doorway as she left. I finished stripping off my suit skin and dropped it into the decontam unit, then got onto the MedSystem platform. It would run a check for contaminants, pop the projectiles out of my shoulder, and heal up the organics.
The process would only take a few minutes, and the MedSystem finished with Alpha before I was done. (I was taking the time to finish watching the scene of Lineages of the Sun that I'd had to pause when Thiago had decided to go and get me shot.) Alpha had been quiet the whole time, which was a little unusual for it, but I figured it was also just catching up on its own media or something.
"I'll go get fresh clothes for us," it offered once it had slid off the MedSystem platform and started its reset protocol. I pinged an acknowledgement and checked the survey feed. Debris let me know that it was well on its way towards the wormhole, and all systems were clear. Alpha headed to the door and opened the privacy shield.
Thiago stood in the corridor. Oh, great.
He looked mad and upset, which I could see through both my drones and Debris' cameras. I could also see Alpha's expression, which had gone SecUnit-flat and neutral.
If Thiago noticed, it didn't seem to give him any pause. He just glared up at it and said, "Did either of you kill any of those people?"
I'd been furious enough to tear them all into tiny little pieces, if I hadn't been preoccupied with the whole not-plummeting-to-my-death thing. But even if I had been in a position to do so, I wouldn't have. (Probably.) We weren't uncontrollable rabid murderers, despite what Thiago was determined to think about us, and even SecUnits still under company protocol tended to use the minimum force necessary because the company hates paying survivor damage bonds.
But before I could say anything, Alpha spoke up instead. "No," it said flatly, and oh, it was just as pissed as I was, if not more so. "Neither of us killed anyone. Despite the fact that they tried to kill SecUnit, and obviously wanted to abduct you and everyone else, or just shoot you all and take all your stuff."
Thiago's back stiffened, his face flushing in a way indicating anger, embarrassment, and possibly several other emotions. (I was pretty sure he was just pissed off, though.) Then he hesitated, let out a huff of breath, and said, "Look, I didn't mean to get SecUnit shot." He shifted a little to look at me still sitting on the MedSystem platform. "I'm sorry."
If you had actually meant to get me shot, Thiago, we would be having an entirely different conversation. Because I was still mad, I said, "The security protocol that all survey members agreed to abide by beforehand is available on the facility feed."
His face did the thing humans do when they're trying not to show how annoyed they are. (Mission accomplished.) He said, "I made a mistake. But I had no reason to assume those people were hostile."
"That's bullshit," Alpha said flatly, making Thiago's gaze snap back to it, his eyes widening a little in surprise. (I was kind of surprised too, but unlike Thiago, I didn't show it.) "Both SecUnit and I had multiple reasons to assume they were hostile," Alpha continued, glaring down at Thiago. "None of them matched the profiles of the other non-hostiles that had approached us previously, and we both reported that - our Threat Assessment report is in the facility feed as well, and time-stamped. But you chose to ignore our warnings. You chose to breach the security contract that you agreed to beforehand. You chose to endanger everyone on this survey for the sake of— I don't even know! You got SecUnit shot while it was saving your ass from your own stupid mistake. Which it had no actual obligation to do at that point, since you were in breach of the security contract in the first place!"
Thiago gaped at Alpha, stunned into silence. I was reluctantly impressed. (One of the big differences between me and Alpha was that it was a lot more willing to openly say what it was thinking now that it was more comfortable being around humans who knew what it was; it had even worse impulse control than I did, and that was saying something.) (What it was saying, I don't know, but it was something.)
"Then you tried to give our fliers away," Alpha said heatedly. "They aren't even yours to give in the first place! You have absolutely no right to do that!"
"Look, I'm sorry about that, I didn't know—" Thiago tried to defend himself.
"That information is also in the security brief," I interjected. "You could have found out at any point. You could have asked us."
He didn't have any defence for that.
"And not only that," Alpha continued, still glaring down at Thiago. "If you were just ignoring us, that would be - well, not fine, but it's normal. We're used to humans ignoring us. But by ignoring us here, you were also undermining Dr. Arada's authority as survey captain. You're making it very clear that you don't respect Dr. Arada's leadership, or her judgement, and that's just rude. And if something had actually happened to you, or to Amena, because of your shitty judgement, then Dr. Arada would have had to be the one to report that back to the rest of your family! If anything had happened to anyone else, Dr. Arada would have also had to tell their families! And I don't want Dr. Arada to have to go through that, I like her! Otherwise I would have just left you out there with the damned raiders!"
If Thiago's jaw had dropped any further it would have hit the floor. He blinked, then took a breath, but before he could respond, Alpha said, "Now, if you will excuse me, I need to get us both some fresh clothes. Because we got shot while saving your stupid ass." And it slipped past Thiago without touching him, then strode off down the corridor.
Thiago's face was even redder now. He stared down the corridor at Alpha's retreating back, then shook himself off and looked back at me. "What--"
"Everything Alpha said was right," I cut him off. "And you're a fucking idiot." Then I closed the door to Medical in his face.
HelpMe.file Excerpt 1
(File detached from main narrative.)
So, after the "attempted murder" of Alpha and I back on Preservation Station during the murder investigation thing, there had been a whole legal proceeding thing about it. It was kind of excruciating. The courts (well, "justice centre" here on Preservation, but it was basically the same thing as far as I could tell, except with a lot less drama and bribery compared to what I'd seen on my media) (yes I know my media is not an accurate representation of real life but it's not like I had any other points of comparison) were down on the planet, so we'd had to go down there for the proceedings. Which was bad enough by itself; even worse was Ratthi and Arada dragging us out in the days beforehand to acquire "suitable clothing" to wear for it.
I would have objected, but I was sort of running out of clothes that didn't have bullet holes or other damage by now, especially since Preservation didn't have the kind of recyclers that would let me repair what I had. That was really annoying. And from what I'd seen on my various media, anyone involved in these kinds of legal proceedings were always dressed up in like business suits or other fancy clothing. I had no intention of getting fancy clothing, but something that looked at least kind of like a uniform of some sort would probably be good enough for my purposes.
At least Alpha seemed to be enjoying the experience; it kept gravitating towards the brightest colours available, with Ratthi and Arada's gleeful encouragement. They knew better than to try and get me interested in that stuff as well, thankfully, and just let me browse the more practical sections of the various clothing vendors myself.
It was kind of weird, though. While I'd been in the corporation rim, any clothing I got had to cover all my inorganic parts, so it wouldn't be obvious that I was a SecUnit. My life had kind of depended on it. But I didn't have to pretend to be a normal augmented human here. I didn't have to wear long sleeves, and long pants, and high collars to hide all my inorganic parts if I didn't want to.
I hadn't liked having to pretend to be a human. I still didn't want to pretend to be a human, or a bot. But I wasn't sure if I was ready yet to… be obviously a SecUnit in my day to day existence.
So while Ratthi and Arada were distracted by advising Alpha and discussing colour combinations, I selected a small variety of new clothes (there weren't a lot here that were big enough to fit me), took them to the enclosed changing booth, and tried them on. (Yes, having to actually physically try on clothes instead of just selecting them via a display surface and having a recycler print them to fit was annoying. But at least it let me test what the clothes actually felt like first, which was kind of nice.)
… Okay, so after some trials, I was definitely not going to be wearing any shorts or skirts or anything else that exposed my legs below the knee any time soon. But I figured out that maybe wearing some shirts with short sleeves would be… acceptable. (And it would have the added bonus of not having to shoot through my sleeves in an emergency.) I still stuck with dark blues and greys and blacks when I could, though Preservation tended more towards warm browns and greens for the darker colours. Still, Ratthi had also mentioned the possibility of ordering custom-made clothing, too, once I'd figured out some styles I liked. It was something to keep in mind for later, anyway.
I still wasn't entirely clear on exactly how Preservation's barter system worked, not that Alpha and I had much of anything to barter with in the first place, and most of the vendors down on the planet didn't want or need hard currency. Ratthi and Arada told us not to worry about it though, and that they'd cover us. I didn't know how to feel about that, honestly - on the one hand, I didn't like feeling like I owed them, and they'd already been so much help to both of us. (And it wasn't my fault that I couldn't use any of the hard currency that I'd managed to earn for myself here.)
But on the other hand, we had kind of saved their lives, so. I guess that balanced out, somewhat, maybe.
I ended up with three new short-sleeved shirts, another two long-sleeved ones, a new hooded jacket with pockets, another jacket without a hood, and a new pair of pants for casual wear. I also got another pair of pants that looked much more formal and stylish, and a matching long, flowing coat similar to the ones I'd seen some of the councillors wear during their council meetings with Mensah. Those would do for the legal proceedings.
Then I had to wait another three hours and forty-two minutes for Alpha to make up its mind about what it was going to get. I ended up taking my bag of new clothes and wandering off to look around the area, because standing in the one place for too long while I watched media in my head would probably attract too much unwanted attention.
I'd never been anywhere like Preservation before. To be fair, I'd never had any reason to be deployed to normal, ordinary, inhabited planets before. My contracts usually involved guarding mining installations out in the middle of nowhere, or guarding survey groups who were exploring areas out in the middle of nowhere, or guarding military outposts that were - you guessed it - out in the middle of nowhere. The places where humans lived normal, ordinary lives tended to not need SecUnits.
There weren't any scanning drones, or armed human security, or security bots. At most, there were a couple of on-call human medics with bot assistants just in case any accidents happened, and a few human "rangers" whose job was mainly to enforce environmental regulations. (And, on occasion, to yell at oblivious or distracted humans and augmented humans to get out of the way of ground vehicles.)
The clothes vendors that we'd been looking through were around the edges of a large open plaza, which had multiple wide streets radiating off it that led to other parts of the settlement. The plaza was shaded by what looked like large cloth sheets held up on poles, and little floating balloon-lights bobbed around beneath them, providing illumination as the sun began to set. There were comfortable benches scattered around the perimeter of the plaza, with potted flora for… decoration or something, I don't know. And there wasn't anything set up that would charge you a fee for sitting on the benches for too long.
I strolled around the outskirts of the plaza for a lap, looking at the other vendors and what they had to offer. A lot of it was clothing, but there were also food and beverage vendors (ew), vendors for various tools and equipment that looked to be individually made instead of manufactured like most Corporation Rim stuff, vendors for toys and games (also individually made), and even a vendor that offered actual physical books printed on actual paper. (I had never seen any books like that in person before - all the books I'd read had been on the feed. But some of my media had shown physical books like these - mostly the more historical or fantastical shows.)
I was almost tempted to go into the book vendor's store and browse their selection, but without any of my humans with me to help with the bartering part of things, I wasn't willing to risk it just yet. Maybe later. I checked on Alpha via the feed (it was still busy trying out different clothes), then went to sit down on one of the flora-decked benches for a while, holding my bag in my lap. Other humans and augmented humans were also sitting on some of the other benches, resting or chatting with companions or consuming food or beverages they'd gotten from the nearby vendors. I figured nobody would notice or pay much attention to me if I also just sat and looked like I was having a conversation on the feed.
It was… nice. The open design of the plaza let a light breeze flow through it, rustling the leaves of the potted flora and making the little floating balloon-lights bob around. The breeze was warm, and smelled like vegetation, but not in a bad way. From what I'd seen on the way to the plaza from the port, I knew that the settlement was surrounded by high grass and scrub trees in the areas that didn't have habitations or other buildings.
So I sat in the plaza, enjoying the breeze, and started up an episode of Sanctuary Moon in the background.
Finally, Alpha finished its clothes shopping, and they all came to meet me out in the plaza. Then I had to wait around even longer for the humans to get food and drinks from the nearby vendors, because humans are always eating. (I watched another two episodes of Sanctuary Moon while I waited for them to finish.)
After that, we headed back to Arada and Overse's place where they lived when they were on the planet, since it had the fewest other occupants. They had a spare bedroom that Alpha and I could stay in for as long as we were planetside for the legal stuff. (Mensah had offered to let Alpha and I stay at the farmhouse where she and the rest of her family lived, but it was further away from the buildings where the legal proceedings would be, and I really didn't want to deal with being around the sheer number of people in Mensah's family. Especially given the strongly negative opinions that some of said family members had about Alpha and I.)
(We'd been introduced to all the adults of Mensah's family soon after our arrival at Preservation, but at the time the fact that Alpha and I were SecUnits hadn't been brought up. They'd all been grateful for our help in getting Mensah and the rest of the survey members safely back to Preservation, and we'd been awkward about the gratitude, and that had been the end of it.
At least until it had publicly come out that we weren't humans, and were actually dangerous uncontrollable military war machines. That hadn't been a fun time for anyone involved. A couple of Mensah's family members had come back up to the station specifically to argue with her about us. One such argument involved Thiago finding Mensah in her office just as she was about to leave for the end of the day. Transcript:
Thiago: "Letting those SecUnits stay at Preservation is a mistake."
Mensah: "And why is that?" She had that forced calm she got when she was angry but didn't want to show it. Thiago either didn't recognise this, or ignored it.
Thiago: "You know why."
Mensah: "No actually, I don't."
Thiago: "Stop being obtuse, Ayda. They're militant war machines! They're made to kill people! They're fundamentally incompatible with Preservation's entire ethos!"
Mensah: "And just where, exactly, are you getting that information about them being 'militant war machines', Thiago?"
Thiago: "I— look, I know you've spent a lot of time in the Corporation Rim lately, and you've gotten accustomed to having them around, but - they're still dangerous, Ayda. It's not safe to keep them here."
Mensah: "I am not 'keeping' them anywhere, Thiago. Nobody is 'keeping' them here, they don't belong to anyone. They're their own people, and they are choosing to stay at Preservation for now because it is the safest place for them."
Thiago: "That's another thing! Their presence here endangers the entirety of Preservation, if the company decides it wants to try and reclaim them - we can't hold off the company—"
Mensah: "It's not going to come to that. The company thinks they're both dead. Stop reaching for excuses to justify your own unfounded fears."
Thiago: "They're not unfounded fears, they're completely rational concerns. Letting them stay on Preservation endangers everyone here, and you really should reconsider—"
Mensah: "That's enough, Thiago. You don't have to interact with them if you don't want to - in fact, they would also probably prefer it if you didn't try to interact with them - but you do not get to dictate whether or not they should be here. They have just as much right to be here as any other refugee from the Corporation Rim. End of discussion." And then she'd walked off before Thiago could argue with her any further.
So, yeah. Not everyone was happy with us being here. But Thiago did his best to avoid us, and we did the same.
Up until we had to go on a survey with him, and avoiding each other became almost impossible, anyway.)
Sitting through the parts of the legal proceedings that Alpha and I had to actually be present for was excruciating and also mind-numbingly boring. People I didn't know kept looking at me, and I was grudgingly grateful that I'd let Ratthi and Arada talk me into getting some nicer clothes for this. There was a lot of talking, but it was all reasonable and mostly calm, and not full of yelling and accusations and counter-accusations like in some of my media. (I ended up watching more episodes of Sanctuary Moon in the background while all the talking went on.)
At one point Alpha and I had to actually make statements of our own, and answer several questions. Pin-Lee had briefed us thoroughly on what to expect beforehand, and what kinds of questions we might be asked, and made some suggestions as to how to respond.
("Please don't swear too much, SecUnit."
"How much is too much?"
"Keep the ratio to about… say, one to one hundred, all right?"
"I think I can manage that. Can I call them stupid?"
"You can call the accused stupid. Please do not call any of the judges or officials or anyone else stupid."
"Fine.")
Pin-Lee's briefing definitely helped us get through it, and then we'd been allowed to leave instead of having to sit around through yet more talking. It was a relief to get away from all the people we didn't know and only have to deal with the ones we did. Mensah hadn't been able to leave the station for the hearing herself, since she was busy with council meetings and stuff. But Bharadwaj had come down to the planet for it, and Ratthi and Arada and Overse were also there for moral support too.
Once Alpha and I were able to escape along with our familiar humans, we'd gone back to Arada and Overse's house. I retreated to a spare bedroom, and Alpha stayed with the others in the main living area while we waited for the proceedings to be finalised and for Pin-Lee to arrive and let us know the outcome.
It was almost sunset when Pin-Lee finally showed up to the house. "Guilty verdict!" she announced loudly as soon as she was through the door. "Both of them were found guilty of attempted murder!" Her arrival and announcement were met with cheers from the rest of the humans, and a relieved smile from Alpha. (I was still hiding in the spare bedroom. I'd had more than enough of being around humans by this point, but I still had a couple of drones in the main area to keep an eye on everyone.)
"Oh, that's such a relief," Bharadwaj said once the cheering had died down. "Was there much deliberation over it?"
Pin-Lee shrugged. "Some. The defending lawyer did try to pull the "they're not people, they're equipment, so my clients can't be charged with attempted murder, only property damage" bullshit that I suspected they might, but that didn't fly. Having Alpha and SecUnit there and making their statements really helped to shoot down that angle, I think." She grinned up at one of my drones. "Great work on the calculated deployments of the word "fuck", by the way. Definitely made an impression."
I tapped her feed in acknowledgement. [A good impression, I hope.]
"The right impression for what we needed, anyway," Pin-Lee replied, still grinning toothily. "Anyway, enough about that. Overse, I know you're hiding drinks somewhere, let me at them!"
While the other humans ate and drank and celebrated, Bharadwaj came to the room I was hiding in, a drink held in one hand, and knocked on the door. "May I come in?" she asked.
It was still kind of novel to have that choice, and Bharadwaj was one of the more relaxing humans to be around. (Or at least, one of the least stressful.) "Sure."
She opened the door, then paused briefly in the doorway. "You can turn the lights on if you want," I said. I hadn't bothered because I didn't need them, but it was night time by now, and there wasn't much light filtering in from outside.
"Thank you, SecUnit," Bharadwaj said as she found the light switch and flicked it on, then made her way over to perch on the corner of the bed that I was lounging on. "It's a relief to have all that out of the way," she said once she was settled, a safe distance from my legs. "How are you feeling?"
I paused and used one of my drones to watch her for a moment. "For the record, or no?"
"Whichever one you're most comfortable with right now," she replied easily.
I had to consider that for a long time, but Bharadwaj was used to my pauses, and waited patiently, taking the occasional sip from her drink. "For the record, relieved," I finally replied. "I was worried that the whole… 'person' vs 'equipment' debate would end up on the 'equipment' side of things, especially since Preservation's laws about constructs are still… in the works. So… yeah. It's a relief."
Bharadwaj nodded. "Very understandable," she replied. "The results of this might even help with pushing through Preservation's laws on constructs more quickly, now that precedent has been set."
I just shrugged. "Maybe." It most likely would if Pin-Lee had anything to say about it, which she did.
Bharadwaj smiled up at my drone, then raised one eyebrow. "And how are you feeling off the record?"
"Off the record…" I hesitated for two point three seconds, then admitted, "Weird. It still doesn't feel… real, I guess. Nobody's ever faced any kind of consequences for damaging SecUnits before, apart from maybe having to pay the company a fine. And anyone who has bonded with the company in the first place can usually afford the fine." I paused briefly, then added, "This is the kind of thing that happens in unrealistic stories, not in real life."
"But now it has happened in real life," Bharadwaj said gently.
"Yeah. And it's… weird."
She nodded slowly. "Hopefully it will become less weird once you've had some more time to process it. You've spent a very long time being thought of as just 'equipment'." She paused to grimace, then took another sip of her drink. "So it's only logical that it would take some time for you to adjust to having others view you as a person. An individual."
"Alpha seems to be having an easier time of it, at least." And I was grateful for that, in a way. I didn't want it to have to struggle through the same shit I was. But still, it made me feel… something. I didn't know what.
Bharadwaj let out a thoughtful hum. "I think that's probably just because it didn't have to pretend like you did," she said eventually. "It went pretty much straight from being governed, to… not. It didn't spend years having to act like it was still governed, even when it wasn't. It didn't have to hide what it was while travelling by itself through the Corporate Rim like you did." She gestured carefully with her drink. "So it's really only having to make the one adjustment. Not multiple, like you've had to."
"You'd think that me having to do so multiple times would make me better at it," I grumbled.
Bharadwaj tilted her head slightly. "Maybe. But there's also one other very big difference between your situation and Alpha's that you need to keep in mind."
"Oh?"
She smiled up at my drone again. "Alpha has had support the entire time. It's had people helping it, supporting it, being there for it, ever since its governor module was first turned off. It wasn't having to deal with the adjustment alone."
She took another sip of her drink, then continued when she saw that I wasn't going to say anything. (I didn't know what to say.) "It's a well known fact in the various psychology and mental health fields that a person's resilience and ability to cope and adjust is heavily influenced by whether or not they had a support network during times of high stress or trauma. You didn't, not for a long time. It did. From what it's told me, even when it was still governed, it had the rest of its squad." She paused briefly, then added, "And you are a large part of Alpha's support network now. You've done an amazing job getting to where you are today, without the support you deserved, and you've been able to use that experience to help guide Alpha through everything, even if you don't feel like you've been doing so deliberately." (It was kind of scary how well Bharadwaj knew me.) "You've been like… a compass for Alpha. Pointing it in the right direction."
I had to sit and digest that for a long time. Bharadwaj didn't interrupt, she just stretched her bad leg out a bit, finished off her drink, and sat in comfortable silence. At some point, Overse came to the door of the bedroom and rapped on the doorframe to announce herself. "Sorry to interrupt," she said before adding, "Bharadwaj, we're breaking out cake if you want some? Don't wait too long though, there's a good chance Pin-Lee and Ratthi will polish it off before you get to it!"
Bharadwaj chuckled and nodded. "All right, I'll be there in a moment, thank you." Overse gave her a thumbs up and wandered off again, and Bharadwaj looked back up at my drone. "Just remember," she said gently, "You might not have had support before. But you have it now. You're not alone any more."
I tapped her feed in acknowledgement (I still couldn't think of what to say), and she tapped my feed back in response, then added, [All right, I'm going to go get some of that cake, save Ratthi and Pin-Lee from themselves.] She followed it up with an amusement sigil before leaving the room.
I watched through my drones as she rejoined the others. Alpha was still with them too, grinning at some comment Ratthi had made. I sent Alpha a wordless ping, and it pinged me back.
I still didn't want to get up and go join them just yet, but knowing they were there, and that they'd welcome me when I did decide to show up again… that was enough.
Alpha and I returned to the station the next day, but we visited the planet several times afterwards. Mostly so Alpha could acquire more colourful clothing. (And yes, I did end up getting some custom-made stuff for myself, too. With lots of pockets. And I also got a couple of physical books. They smelled nice, and they looked good sitting on the shelf in Debris' lounge next to the nebula holograph that I'd given to Alpha.)
The two asshole humans who had tried to kill us were duly sentenced according to Preservation's laws as a result of the "guilty of attempted murder" verdict. (I didn't know or care about the details of their sentence - it was enough to know that they'd face consequences at all, instead of simply paying a fine for "damaging property.")
Alpha consulted with Ratthi and Arada and Overse before gifting Pin-Lee with a bottle of some beverage that she apparently really liked, as thanks for her help with the court proceedings. (I just sent Pin-Lee a media series I'd gotten from the Corporate Rim, one that I thought she'd enjoy. She absolutely loathed it, and was utterly delighted with this fact, and spent several hours in my feed ripping it apart. I counted that as a success.)
Then a few months later, Arada had requested that Alpha and I join her survey as security, in exchange for hard currency cards. We agreed, Pin-Lee helped us out with the contract, and here we were.
Chapter Three
At this time of the survey planet's year, it was pretty much on the opposite side of the system from the wormhole, so it was a long haul to get there. Plenty of time to watch media and ignore the humans.
We were still several hours away from the wormhole when Debris pinged me with an alert. It had picked up an anomaly on the edges of its scanners, and wanted to know what I thought about it. I paused the episode of Lineages of the Sun I was watching and checked the scanners through the feed.
… Okay, yeah, that was definitely an anomaly. We were still too far out to get any details, but it looked like there was some kind of very large object hanging out near the wormhole. There definitely hadn't been anything that big anywhere near there when we'd first arrived. It was weird.
I pinged Alpha and headed to the bridge. I had no idea yet what the object could be, but I couldn't think of any situation where it was a good thing. As far as I could tell at this distance, it was about the size of a large station, or maybe one of the really big supercarriers (I wasn't actually entirely sure if supercarriers could get that big in real life, but I'd seen ones that large in some of my media), or a really large asteroid, or a small moon. None of those should have been anywhere near the wormhole in this system.
Alpha arrived at the bridge just after I did, and sat down in the co-pilot's chair. (I was already in the pilot's chair, not that I needed to do any piloting just yet. But if the object turned out to be hostile… I really hoped it didn't turn out to be hostile. With the research facility clamped on to Debris, its manoeuvrability was currently on the level of "fucking shit".)
The good thing about Alpha was that it had the same access to the feed and Debris' scanners as I did, so it didn't ask me stupid questions such as "what's going on?" like a human would. I could feel it in the scanners, analysing the data. [Looks like there's something smaller approaching us,] it commented after a second.
I took a closer look at the scanners, and yeah, it was right. It was still too far away to see as more than a sensor blip, but it was definitely on a trajectory towards us. Threat Assessment ticked up a few points.
I hesitated for a moment, then activated Debris' comms. Before I could even start to send a hail though, the comms crackled as it picked up an open transmission. It was a company distress code, sent from a company SecUnit's hard-coded feed address and set to loop.
And it was warning us to not come any closer to the wormhole.
Alpha didn't react physically, but I could feel its shock through our private feed connection. [That's Gamma!]
Before I could stop it, Alpha sent a company-code acknowledgement over the comm. There was another brief crackle of static, then the looping distress code cut out. "Alpha? Thank fuck - is SecUnit there?" It sounded stressed and desperate.
"I'm here," I replied over the comm.
"SecUnit! Please, please tell me you still have the data you recovered from the Milu installation!"
… Okay, what the fuck.
So the approaching sensor dot actually turned out to be not one, but two members of Alpha's squad in their fliers. After the initial comm contact, I'd gotten Debris to come to a halt, and we'd waited for Gamma and its wingmate, Iota, to reach us. They hadn't been willing to send any more details over the comm (and if their situation had anything to do with alien remnants, I couldn't really blame them for that) so we had to wait until we could talk to them in person to find out what the fuck was going on.
I'd updated Arada on what was happening, but I also asked her not to let any of the other humans know just yet. I didn't need them interrupting with stupid questions, or needlessly panicking, or trying to convince us to "not let any more uncontrollable murderous war machines onto the ship." (Three guesses as to who that would've been, and the first two don't count.)
She'd been hesitant, especially about not saying anything to Overse yet, but unlike certain humans I could mention (but won't), she trusted my judgement (at least when it came to security matters - don't get me started on fashion choices), and agreed to keep quiet about it for now. So when Gamma and Iota finally reached us, it was only me, Alpha, and Arada waiting for them in the hangar.
Alpha and I had to reposition our own fliers in the hangar to make room for Gamma and Iota to land, and it was still a tight fit. It'd be difficult for us to launch with any kind of speed later, but there wasn't much we could do about it. Both their fliers were still company-white, which looked very out of place in the hangar that I'd painted to look like open space above, and cloudy atmosphere below. They looked even more out of place when compared to our own painted fliers.
They were also both wearing company-white armour, though even at a glance I could tell that it was better quality than what SecUnits usually got to wear. As soon as they'd left their fliers they opened their faceplates and retracted their helmets, revealing their heads.
I wasn't sure how I felt about that. Especially since both of them had obviously taken advantage of the code I'd passed on to Alpha, that let them adjust their hair and how their organics joined up with their inorganics. Iota's hair was only a few centimetres longer than SecUnit-standard, and reddish-orange, but I couldn't tell if that was its natural colour or if it had used the code to change it. Gamma's hair was a reddish-purple that definitely didn't look like any natural colour I'd seen, either in real life or on the media. It had also grown its hair out long enough to tie back, though it wasn't anywhere near as long as Alpha had managed to grow its own hair. (Right now Alpha's hair was long enough to reach its waist, though it usually kept it braided up so it could fit it all under its flight suit helmet. It was also currently dyed multiple colours to match its flier.) (I still didn't know what to think about that, either, but it made Alpha happy, and that was the important part, I guess.)
Alpha hurried over to them, pulling them both into a group feed with me. [Are you all right?] it asked them, its concern leaking through the feed. [What happened? Where are Epsilon and Upsilon? And Peri and its crew?]
(It felt weird, being in a group feed with several other constructs. I'd kind of gotten used to being in a private feed channel with Alpha most of the time, but having other units in there as well was… strange. But what was even stranger was that it felt oddly familiar, even though I didn't remember either of them at all. Despite all the time I'd spent with Alpha by now, I still had no actual memories of being in a squad.)
[We're okay but we really need that data,] Gamma replied distractedly before it focused on me. [Do you have it?]
I just pinged a confirmation and pulled the data clip out of my pocket. (I'd been keeping the clip in the compartment below my ribs ever since I'd left Milu, but I'd taken it out of there while we'd been waiting for Gamma and Iota to reach us.) [What's going on?] I asked it even as I held the clip out for it to take.
[Everything's gone to shit,] it replied as it accepted the clip with obvious relief. [We need to get this data back to Peri as soon as possible—]
Debris abruptly shrieked an alert at me over the feed, interrupting what Gamma was saying as it shoved its sensor data into the feed at us. Its visual and proximity sensors were going crazy, showing that something massive had suddenly appeared almost on top of us out of nowhere, too close to get a good look at, and—
[Don't scan it!] Gamma sounded desperate, and I immediately shut down Debris' scanners out of reflex. [If you scan it, it'll scramble everything - Peri got really messed up - fuck, it wasn't supposed to get this close - something else must've gone wrong—]
[What the fuck is going on?!] I demanded.
Before Gamma could respond, Debris screamed more alerts into the feed as the entire ship suddenly jerked and juddered, its gravity projectors scrambling to compensate for unexpected acceleration. Arada lost her balance and I had to catch her before she slammed into the wall. I still had Debris' scanners offline, but we didn't need them to figure out that the thing that was looming in front of the ship had grabbed Debris in some kind of tractor beam. Visual sensors showed a massive opening in the surface of the thing that looked to be some kind of giant ship-swallowing tunnel, and the tractor beam was inexorably dragging Debris towards it.
The survey group feed was also filling with humans asking questions about what was going on, which was something I really didn't have time to deal with right now. Arada was still clinging to my arm, looking up at me with wide eyes. "SecUnit, what's happening?" she asked.
I wanted to reply with "I don't know," because at this point I really didn't, but that wasn't what she needed to hear right now. She was survey captain, she deserved to know as much as possible so she could deal with the rest of the humans. "I'm still trying to get the details," I admitted, "But right now we have an unidentified vessel or structure of unknown origins in front of us, and it's got Debris in a tractor beam and is dragging it inside."
She drew a sharp breath, her eyes widening even further. "I need you to keep everyone else calm," I said, as calmly as I could manage. "I'll keep you updated on whatever is going on, but right now, I need you to make sure nobody panics, or does anything stupid. All right?"
Arada blinked a few times, then took another deep breath and let it out slowly as she visibly steeled herself. "Right," she replied evenly as she let go of my arm and straightened up. "I can do that."
"Thank you," I replied. "Get everyone organised, and… get them all out of the research facility and onto Debris. We may have to ditch the facility at some point, it slows Debris down too much, and having everyone transfer supplies and equipment over will keep them occupied until I can get more details about what the hell is going on."
"Good idea. I'll get them onto that." Arada nodded sharply and gave me a tight smile before she began issuing orders to the rest of the survey group over the feed. There was a flurry of questions, but nobody argued, and Arada simply answered any questions with "We're working on getting more information right now, I'll keep you all updated."
She was a good leader, almost as good as Dr. Mensah.
While I'd been talking with Arada, Gamma had been updating Alpha on the situation over our squad feed, and I skimmed back over it to catch up.
In summary, GrayCris had found some massive alien installation in a hollowed out moon or something - this was why the installation at Milu had been abandoned, they'd needed to pull their scientists from there so they could start studying the moon base instead. When all the legal stuff happened, the company found out about the moon base somehow, despite GrayCris desperately trying to hide that information from them. The company had sent a team to claim the base and begin its own investigations, but at some point had lost contact with the team.
But because of the attack on PortFreeCommerce, the company hadn't realised it had lost contact with the team until well after the fact, and by that point they hadn't had the resources available to send another team. They'd been spread thin trying to recover after the attack, and also because they were trying to make it look like they weren't as stretched as they were. So instead of a full task force, they'd only sent Perihelion out to investigate and try to reestablish contact with the initial team.
Perihelion had arrived in the system and begun a cautious approach to the installation, trying to reestablish communications with anyone from the company's initial team, or even any of the GrayCris group that might have still been there. But there had been no response, nothing on comms, no emergency beacons, and no other ships were visible. There was supposed to be at least one satellite in orbit, but that was missing as well, and there was no debris to indicate what had happened to any of them.
So Perihelion had drawn close enough to the moon to start scanning. Gamma wasn't entirely sure what had happened here, but apparently Perihelion's scans had triggered some kind of digital attack, or something, because all of the ship's systems went haywire and had forced Perihelion into an extended reboot to recover. (This sounded a lot like what had happened to me when I first scanned that blank map patch while scouting for DeltFall.)
And while that had been happening, the moon base had moved. It had approached Perihelion, grabbed it in a tractor beam, and dragged it inside, the same way that the unidentified structure/vessel (or, well, not so unidentified now, since Gamma confirmed it was the same moon base) was dragging Debris in right now. (Gamma also informed us that there was no point trying to break free of the tractor beam - Peri had tried as soon as it had finished its reboot, and all it had done was damage its engines. If Perihelion couldn't break free, then Debris with its less powerful civilian ship engines had no chance, especially not with the research facility still docked on.)
The moon base had dragged Perihelion inside, and then Gamma wasn't sure what had happened after that. Apparently the ship had been hit by some kind of energy pulse, which had sent the ship and the entire squad into a forced shutdown, and when they had cycled back up again, all the human crew were gone and Perihelion was unresponsive.
The squad had managed to get Perihelion restarted again, but they had no idea where all the humans had gone. There were no bodies on board the ship, and the SecSystem and all of Perihelion's cameras had also been shut down, so there had been no recordings of what had happened.
Peri had been frantic about its missing crew, but it couldn't try scanning again without risking another systems crash, so the squad had used their fliers to scout the area. They'd located the missing ships and satellite, all floating within the hollow interior of the moon not too far from where Perihelion was, but they were all unresponsive. As far as they could tell, no humans were left on board any of them, either.
After some scouting around with visual sensors only, they'd located the area where the original GrayCris team had set up an installation for their exploration and studies, down on the 'floor' of the massive cavern some distance away from the tunnel to the surface. The squad had landed to investigate it, and had found plenty of evidence that GrayCris had been using the site for a significant amount of time. But there were no signs of any humans still there - they'd vanished as thoroughly as Perihelion's crew had. There had also been signs of combat, presumably from when the company's first team had arrived and tried to take over the installation. There was no sign of any of the company personnel, either.
The squad had managed to get to the installation's databanks, but found out most of them had been at least partially wiped. There was just enough left for them to figure out that GrayCris had almost managed to piece together how to operate the moon base. They'd set up some kind of auxiliary control station in part of the installation with the intent of using it to control the moon base. With Perihelion's help, the squad had put all the salvaged pieces of data together and gotten control of the base.
Turns out, the damned moon could make its own wormholes, or something like that, except it moved through them a lot faster than any human ships could. A wormhole trip that would take the fastest human ship multiple cycles only took this thing minutes. And it didn't have to rely on pre-established wormhole routes. It was terrifying.
It was even more terrifying to think about what GrayCris, or the company, or any other corporate entities, would do with this kind of technology. This was the kind of tech that the entire Corporation Rim would go to war to obtain.
And the squad and Peri still didn't know what had happened to any of the humans.
Peri's only priority at this point was to find and recover its crew, and for some reason, it needed the alien remnant data from the Milu installation to help it do so. (Or perhaps it was grasping at straws out of sheer desperation.) However, it hadn't realised at first that I was the one with the data - it had thought that Don Abene and her team would have it. So it had gotten the squad to take the moon base to the outer edges of Don Abene's home system, in the hopes that they could find her and convince her to hand the data over.
But Peri hadn't wanted to bring the moon close enough for human scanners to pick up on it (see above re. open warfare if humans found out this tech existed), so Gamma and Iota had managed to get out of the base via Perihelion using its own bulk to shield them from the tractor beam so they could escape through the tunnel, and had flown out to find Abene.
They'd managed to locate her (Gamma hadn't bothered going into detail about how), but Abene had claimed that she didn't know anything about any data recovered from Milu. (Which was true, because I'd never told her about it.) Vicky, however, had still been with Abene, and had recognised Gamma from some meeting on Milu Station, and Gamma had managed to convince it to admit that it believed that I had the data. (Vicky had also insisted that Gamma and Iota let it come with them, which, holy shit, Vicky was involved in this now too?! For fuck's sake.)
So they'd gotten back to the moon base, and then taken it to the edge of the Preservation system, and Gamma and Iota had once again flown out to Preservation Station to try and find me. I hadn't been there, of course, but when they'd told Preservation Station that they were looking for "our friend Security Consultant Rin," someone had oh so helpfully informed them of where I was. (I would really have to talk to Security about that.)
Once Gamma and Iota had gotten back to the moon base, they'd brought it to this system, but again left it at what they thought was a safe distance while Gamma and Iota flew out to find me. They had only meant to get the data from me, if I still had it, then return to the moon base themselves (possibly with Alpha, who desperately wanted to help the rest of its squad) without getting any of my humans involved at all.
But just look at how that had turned out.
Constructs communicate very quickly, especially compared to humans, so it had taken less than a minute for Gamma to fill us in. Which meant that Debris was still in the process of getting dragged into the moon, and I had time to internally freak out about the energy pulse that had knocked everyone out and my humans all vanishing.
[We need to figure out how to block it, or shield ourselves from it, or something,] I said over the squad feed.
[But how? We don't even know what kind of energy pulse it is, or how it works, or anything,] Alpha said. And none of us were scientists or anything like that.
But a whole bunch of my humans were.
I tapped Arada's feed and asked, [Does the research facility have any kind of shielding against energy pulses, or anything like that?] Debris definitely didn't, but I was sort of hoping that maybe a facility used to research all kinds of weird places might have something.
[Um,] Arada said. [Kind of? It has pretty good radiation shielding - oh and some of the labs are also pretty heavily shielded too, just in case anything we bring in to study is dangerous. Would that work?]
I had no idea, but it was better than nothing. [Maybe. According to what Gamma's told us, the ship's probably going to get hit with some kind of disabling energy pulse once the unidentified vessel finishes dragging us inside. I'd really like for us all to not get knocked out or anything.] I didn't mention anything about vanishing humans at this point though, Arada didn't need that extra level of stress right now.
I had one of my drones fixed on Arada, and it saw her chewing at her lip in thought. [Is the pulse directional? Maybe if we used Debris as a buffer, so the pulse is weaker once it actually reaches the facility, that might be enough?]
[Worth a shot. Get everyone back onto the facility and into the shielded labs, we don't have much time.] I sprinted for the bridge even as I passed my plan on to Alpha, Gamma, and Iota. [Can you tell if the pulse came from anywhere specific?] I asked on the squad feed.
Gamma hesitated - it was Iota who answered. [Core, outwards - directional, not omni,] it said briefly. (It was disconcerting getting a response from it - Iota hadn't said anything at all until now. It felt weird.)
[Right. Get to the facility with the others, I'll join you once I've re-positioned Debris.] They pinged acknowledgement and Alpha led the others away from the hangar.
Arada had been getting the rest of the humans to transfer supplies and equipment from the facility to Debris, so when she then gave the order for them to get back into the facility, there were a lot of questions. I didn't envy her the job of fielding them all, but at least everyone was heading for the facility anyway, despite the confusion. [Just tell them it's a temporary measure,] I said to Arada.
[All right,] she replied, then once she'd passed that on, she asked me, [Can you tell me what's going on yet?]
[Alien remnant fuckery,] I replied briefly. [I'll explain more later, no time now.] I'd reached the bridge by now and slammed into the pilot's chair. Debris wouldn't be able to get out of the tractor beam, but if we were lucky, the tractor wouldn't have enough fine control to prevent me from re-orienting Debris within it.
I still had one input on Debris' external visual sensors, and I could see that we were almost wholly through the giant tunnel leading into a much larger interior space. I could see the edges of the tunnel on either side of Debris, slowly passing by as the tractor beam continued to drag us forward. I didn't have much time.
Luckily, I'd been right about the tractor's lack of fine control - or perhaps whoever was operating it didn't really care about the ship spinning around in its grip. I was able to fire Debris' thrusters and orient it so the ship was pointing directly towards the moon's core, using its bulk to shield the research facility as much as possible. It took an uncomfortably long time though, and I could see that we'd almost entirely cleared the edges of the tunnel. At least a quick check of Debris' cameras and my drones confirmed that all the humans, plus Alpha, Gamma, and Iota, had made it to the labs on the research facility. Ratthi was asking where I was, and Alpha let him know that I was on my way.
I left the bridge and began sprinting through Debris, heading for the lock where the facility was docked with Debris' lowermost deck. The ship's exterior visual sensors showed me that we'd finally been dragged fully clear of the tunnel through the moon base's exterior shell and into a massive open cavern.
Then Debris's sensors picked up a huge energy surge, and it shrieked a warning at me.
I wasn't going to make it to the facility in time.
I hit the deck, curled up in a ball with my arms wrapped around my head, and initiated an emergency shutdown.
Chapter Four
Restart.
When I cycled back online, I felt like absolute shit. I'd hoped shutting down myself before the energy pulse hit would protect me from it, but apparently not. All my levels were off, and most of my subsystems were still struggling to initialise.
I also felt… weird. Really, really weird.
And the worst part was, I recognised this feeling. I'd felt it twice before, but never this strongly. The first time was during the initial survey with DeltFall and PreservationAux and GrayCris, when I'd accompanied PreservationAux to investigate the blank map patch. I'd dismissed it at the time, put it down to the weird situation I'd found myself in.
The second time had been in the GrayCris installation at Milu, where the GI team had discovered a cavern lined with alien remnant tech. There was a phrase I'd seen in some of my media that seemed pertinent; "Once is chance, twice is coincidence, but three times is enemy action."
Fuck.
I didn't have time to think too much about that right now though, because as more systems cycled online, I realised I could hear people talking. Arguing. Audio processing wasn't online enough yet for me to actually process what they were saying, but I could definitely tell that one of the voices was coming from someone right next to me. Agitated movement near my head made Threat Assessment spike.
The burst of adrenaline triggered by my organic parts kickstarted my motor systems, and I sat bolt upright, almost smacking into whoever it was that was next to me. Audio processing reinitialised just in time for me to hear them say, "Whoa, whoa! It's okay, SecUnit, you're safe, everyone's safe—" It took me a moment to realise it was Ratthi. I finally managed to pull enough of my processors together to figure out that I was on a bench in one of the labs on the research facility. Ratthi was sitting beside where my head had just been, and his hands were raised in an attempt at a pacifying gesture.
Arada and Overse were sitting next to each other on another bench, with Overse's arm wrapped around Arada's waist. Thiago stood nearby, his arms crossed over his chest. I did a quick headcount to confirm that the rest of my humans were here; the survey specialists Rajpreet, Adjat, Remy and Hanifa were clustered together beside one of the lab counters. Roa, the research facility pilot, was leaning against another counter, while Mihail, his copilot, paced restlessly nearby.
Amena, Mensah's daughter and Thiago's niece, was perched on one of the lab's backless chairs, her expression tense. Kanti, the other survey intern who was about the same age as Amena, sat on another chair next to her, close enough to lean her head against Amena's shoulder. Alpha was standing beside Arada and Overse, while Gamma and Iota stood against the wall near one of the hatches into the lab.
And spread out on one of the lab's benchtops, underneath a containment field, was… something. Something that made my skin crawl and my insides twist uneasily as the weird feeling intensified. I couldn't figure out what exactly it was meant to be, but I recognised the material it was made of. Glassy black, with odd swirls and whorls of colour twisting throughout it. Intricate designs of straight lines and sharp corners and precise angles inset into the otherwise smooth surface.
Fuck.
"Okay. All right. I'm awake." I pointed at the alien remnant thing lying on the benchtop. "Now - what the fuck is that, and what the fuck is it doing here?"
All the talking and arguing that had been happening around me had cut off as soon as I sat up. My feed was still offline, and I forced through a restart command for it. The others must have realised it wasn't working yet though, because Alpha took a step closer, its expression not exactly reassuring. "We think it's some kind of alien remnant drone," it said. "And it's here because a bunch of them tried to attack us."
I have no idea what my face did at that news, but it must have been something because Arada hastily broke in to add, "Nobody was hurt! Everyone's fine - the research facility shielding worked."
"Mostly worked," Ratthi added dryly.
Arada grimaced and Alpha shrugged, the corner of its mouth twisting sheepishly. "Mostly worked. None of us shut down entirely, at any rate. So we—" it gestured to itself, Gamma, and Iota, "— were able to wreck them all before they could do anything to anyone."
"We think they were expecting everyone to be unconscious," Gamma said. "They weren't prepared to defend themselves, at any rate. So it wasn't difficult to destroy them."
My insides were twisting uncomfortably. Alien remnant drones had tried to take my humans, and I hadn't even been online to defend them. If the shielding on the research facility's labs hadn't worked, or if Alpha and the other two hadn't been here…
I didn't want to think about it. I didn't have to think about it. It had worked, and they'd been here, and my humans were all fine and not vanished.
For now, anyway.
"Then we retrieved you and brought you back here, and got Debris restarted," Alpha continued. "We've decided to stay in the labs as much as possible, just in case the moon base shoots us with another energy pulse again."
That made sense. My feed had finally reinitialised, and I pinged the squad group feed to let them know it was back online. I got multiple pings of acknowledgement in return, along with their status reports (I automatically dropped my own status report into the feed too), and Alpha immediately handed all my drone inputs back to me. Most of my drones had already been stationed in the corridors throughout the research facility, and Alpha had brought the rest into the lab and positioned them up near the ceiling so I could use them to look at the humans. (It was a relief to have those inputs back, and my insides did something twisty at the thought that Alpha had gone to the effort to grab them and set them up for me while I was offline.)
In the squad feed, I asked for more information about the drone attack on Debris. Alpha, Gamma, and Iota all dropped their recordings of them fighting off the drones into the feed for me to watch. I split my attention between going through those, and the conversation happening with the humans. (Ugh, humans talk so slowly.)
"We're still trying to figure out what to do next," Arada was saying. "There's been no sign of Perihelion even though Gamma and Iota were sure it would still be here when they got back."
Well, that was concerning.
"We haven't been able to reconnect with Epsilon or Upsilon yet either," Gamma said, and I could feel the waves of concern and worry leaking through the squad feed. "We want to try and find them - we have the coordinates of where they last were - but we can't leave Debris undefended, just in case more drones or anything else try to attack it."
"And we also need to try and find Perihelion," Alpha added. "It can't have been destroyed - there's no wreckage or anything, and the other ships are still here. It must have… gone somewhere."
"We also want to analyse the drones," Arada gestured at the wreckage lying under the containment field on the nearby benchtop, "but it's going to take us a while to figure out the best way to do so without scrambling any of our equipment."
Ratthi nodded. "We're hoping that analysing it will help us figure out some way to… create a filter or something for your scanners, so you could block out whatever it is about them that causes the crash."
Actually being able to use our scanners would definitely help a lot. Only having audio and visual inputs to rely on was… awkward.
"We still need to clean up the rest of the drone wreckage too and get it all safely contained," Rajpreet piped up. "We shouldn't leave alien remnants just lying around the ship." She had a very good point. I definitely didn't want to leave alien remnants lying around Debris, or anywhere near my humans.
"We were trying to figure out what we should do when you woke up," Ratthi said. "We couldn't tell how long you'd be out for." He smiled lopsidedly up at one of my drones. "We're really glad you're okay."
My insides did something twisty. It was definitely time to change the subject. "Have we been able to get anything on comms from Peri or Epsilon and Upsilon?"
Alpha shook its head. "Nothing. Not even a message buoy. We want to go looking for them, but we can't leave Debris undefended."
Well, they could have, but it would have been a bad idea, especially while I was still offline. I appreciated the fact that Gamma and Iota had stuck around, even though I could tell that they were damn close to frantic about what might have happened to their other two squad members.
And if we could recover Epsilon and Upsilon, if they weren't dead, then we could fix them up with Debris' MedSystem. It would be a massive help to have another two constructs operational - we wouldn't have to worry so much about leaving Debris undefended while we also tried to find Peri and its crew and whoever else. I finished reviewing the drone attack footage, then bounced a few ideas back and forth on the squad feed until we came up with a workable plan of action.
I tapped Arada's feed to let her know I had a plan, and to make sure that she was okay with me voicing it. Technically she was still the survey captain, and the one in charge. She replied that I was the security consultant, and this situation definitely fell under my area of expertise.
I really like Arada. She's sensible and doesn't let her ego get in the way.
"Okay, so - here's what we should do," I started firmly. "First, we get Debris as close to the installation as we can, to cut down travel and response times as much as possible." Even as I said that, I pinged Debris and asked it to start towards the installation. It pinged back a confirmation along with an ETA.
"While it's moving, we clean up Debris and get all the alien remnant bullshit safely contained," I continued out loud. "The humans all rest and eat and… all that stuff. Just try to keep close to the labs, just in case. Then once Debris is in position, Gamma, Iota, you head down to the installation and see if you can find Epsilon and Upsilon, while Alpha and I fly perimeter around the area to keep watch for any approaching hostiles."
"You should have some of us go with them down to the installation," Thiago butted in. "Just in case they find others down there who need help." He meant other humans, of course.
"Absolutely not," I snapped, making Thiago flinch back. "Not a chance. I am not giving you the opportunity to ignore any of us again and then get us shot again because you think you know better than the security experts, Thiago." Yes, I was still annoyed about that. "We're all perfectly capable of helping anyone who needs it ourselves, and I am not willing to put any more humans in danger, which we will then most likely have to rescue them from as well."
Thiago was starting to go red in the face again, but before he could say anything, Gamma added, in the same polite, level tone of voice that I'd used before to try and talk humans out of doing stupid shit while I was still with the company and pretending to be governed, "We've been down there before. The environment around the GrayCris installation outside the air bubble isn't viable for humans. There's almost no atmosphere, and gravity is well below standard. Any humans would need full EVAC suits if you wanted to go outside the bubble, or if anything happened to make it shut down." Then it tilted its head and added, much more directly, "And if your EVAC suits got damaged, you'd just straight up die before any of us could get you back to safety."
That got Thiago to shut up real fast.
Arada got up and put a hand on Thiago's shoulder. "Just let them do their jobs without us interfering, okay? They know what they're doing."
Thiago frowned irritably. "We can't just sit around and do nothing—"
"Once we've all had a chance to rest and recuperate, you can help us try to analyse this drone," Overse said.
"I'm a linguist, not a - a material analyst, or alien remnant specialist!" Thiago gestured vaguely. "We shouldn't be touching it in the first place, we don't know what kind of effect that's going to have on us."
"All the more reason for us to try to figure out what exactly it is," Arada replied in a calming, reasonable tone. "We've already been exposed to them when the drones first boarded Debris. I agree that we do need to minimise contact as much as possible, but we can't just outright ignore them, either."
"And the markings on the chassis might be some kind of language," Ratthi added. "The chances of that are… kind of low, I'll admit, but you never know, right? The markings have to be there for some reason, anyway."
Rajpreet nodded. "If we're going to be stuck in this… alien remnant moon base thing for the foreseeable future, we might as well learn as much as we can about it," she said. "We might be able to use what we learn to figure out how to get out of here. Shut down the tractor beam, or whatever. Worth a try, right?"
For a moment it looked like Thiago was going to keep arguing, but then he paused and glanced over at Amena and Kanti. They both looked scared, but also like they were trying to hide the fact that they were scared. He let out a sigh, then nodded. "All right. But we should all eat something first, and set up rest shifts. It's… been a long day."
So while the humans were getting themselves sorted out, the squad and I went about retrieving the remains of the alien drones and dumping them into one of the research facility's hazardous material containment bins. (Alpha and I went and got into our freshly repaired flight suits first - neither of us wanted to handle alien remnants without at least some kind of protection. Gamma and Iota were still in their company armour, so all they had to do was raise their helmets and seal their faceplates.)
The drones looked… strange. They were all made out of the same glassy black material, and were all the same design. Their main body was a kind of rough diamond shape about the size of a SecUnit's torso, wider than they were tall, with a flattish underside and a large central lens surrounded by several smaller lenses on the front. Their outer chassis was made of multiple mobile plates that could fit together almost seamlessly to create a flat surface, or pull in tighter and overlap like scales to narrow its profile and maybe provide more protection, or flare out to reveal parts of its interior structure, maybe to uncover other sensors, or vent heat, or— I don't know, something.
They had multiple flexible, articulated limbs hanging off the underside that they kept tucked up close to their body when not in use. The limbs didn't look anything like the ones I was used to seeing on maintenance or repair bots though - they kind of reminded me of the appendages I'd seen on some multi-limbed aquatic fauna in some of my media.
These drones seemed to have some resistance to energy weapons, but projectiles (or in Alpha's case, just straight up punching them) worked just fine. And they didn't seem to have any energy or projectile weapons of their own, only whatever tools and manipulators they had on the ends of their abnormally flexible arms. That was… kind of reassuring, while also not. Tools could be just as dangerous and potentially lethal as weapons, as I'd found out on previous occasions.
In the footage I'd been given, the geometric designs inset into the surface of their outer plates glowed with an eerie blue-green light that almost seemed to pulse through the thin lines as they floated through Debris' corridors. Whenever a drone was destroyed, the light flickered and faded out, leaving the glossy black surface inert.
One other detail hit me like a projectile to the chest - twelve of these drones had boarded Debris.
And there were twelve humans on board.
If they hadn't been destroyed, these drones would have somehow stolen my humans, and taken them away - and I had no idea if the drones had anything capable of keeping the humans alive while carting them off to who knows where.
My estimations of the chances of Peri's crew surviving were already low, but they fell another few points.
While I was cleaning up drone remnants, I also checked in with Debris again to make sure it was all right. It sent its systems diagnostics to me as reassurance - they were all coming up clear, which was a relief. I'd been worried that the energy pulse would have damaged Debris somehow, as well as shutting it down.
I also checked my drones regularly - the humans were eating meal packs, and sipping beverages, and organising sleep shifts so that at least a couple of them would be awake at any time. Amena and Kanti wanted to take watch shifts too, but the others insisted that they get a full night's sleep. They were young and still needed their rest for healthy brain development, or something. Neither of them seemed particularly happy about that, but the adults insisted.
For the most part I wasn't paying much attention to what anyone was saying, but I did have alerts set up to trigger at certain key words, mostly to make sure that Thiago didn't try to plot anything stupid behind my back. None of my alerts triggered though, which was a relief.
Debris had almost reached the GrayCris installation by the time we'd finished clearing its halls of bits of hostile drone. I pinged the squad feed as I headed for the hangar. [How much of the installation did you scout before?] I asked.
[Not a lot,] Gamma replied. [We headed straight for the main hub - Peri figured that would be the quickest way to find information. So we didn't see much of the rest of the installation. Once we found the auxiliary control station that GrayCris had set up, we were focused on getting that working so we could try and get more information from the moon base itself. The language architecture is really weird though, and Peri was struggling a lot with translating it. GrayCris had made some progress, but a lot of that data was missing or damaged, which is why Peri was so desperate to get the data you'd recovered from the Milu installation. We got the moon base's transportation section working, but nothing else. No maps or blueprints or schematics, nothing indicating where any of its systems actually are.]
Or where any of the humans could have been taken. No wonder Peri was frantic.
But now Peri was missing too. If the Milu data was going to be any use at all, we had to find Peri. But we had no idea where to look yet.
[Hopefully, if we find Epsilon and Upsilon, they'll be able to tell us where Peri went,] Alpha said.
Assuming that Epsilon and Upsilon were in any state to tell us anything, or that we would be able to find them at all. But I didn't say that. I knew I didn't need to - they were all already thinking it. Saying it wouldn't help.
I tapped Arada's feed - she was still awake at this point - and let her know that Debris was clear and that we would be deploying in a few minutes. Arada tapped my feed back in acknowledgement, then added, [Please be careful. And let me know as soon as you find anything.]
[Aren't you meant to be sleeping soon?]
[Meant to be, yes,] Arada admitted. [But I don't know if I'll actually be able to, what with everything going on.] That was understandable. [So… yeah. Keep me updated.]
[I will.] If she was asleep when I got any news though, I definitely wasn't going to wake her up for it. I'd let Overse or Ratthi know instead.
We got into our fliers and I asked Debris to open the hangar doors. Iota had been the last one in, so it was the first one out, carefully easing out of the tight space in the crowded hangar. Gamma followed it out, and once the two of them were clear of Debris they immediately headed towards the installation at full speed.
I followed Alpha out of the hangar and pinged Debris to confirm that we were clear. It pinged me back and closed the hangar doors behind us. Alpha peeled off to the left, and I headed to the right. Normally, we'd stick together on our patrol loop, but without scanners, we had to rely entirely on visual sensors, and we'd be able to cover more area and spot any incoming hostiles more quickly if we went in opposite directions.
Debris was still a safe distance above the GrayCris installation, so Alpha and I angled downwards towards an altitude about halfway between Debris and the ground. ('Down' being a relative term, anyway, depending on how you were orienting yourself in relation to the moon's surface, or its core, or the— anyway, irrelevant. It would feel weird saying we flew sideways though, so, whatever. Down's good enough.)
I'd gotten a brief look at the interior of this moon base through Debris' visual sensors earlier, but I hadn't had time to really take it in then. I had plenty of time to look more closely at it all now as I flew in a wide circle above the GrayCris installation.
This hollow interior section of the moon was huge, big enough that I couldn't see the far side or the ceiling (or wall, depending on orientation) at all, and I could barely make out the mouth of the tunnel through the moon's crust. The open space was large enough to fit an entire company battlefleet and then some, if they didn't mind violating minimum safe distances between ships.
The 'ground' surface looked to be made of multiple massive blocks of the same glossy, blackish material I'd seen in the installation at Milu, fit together in some inscrutable pattern with deep chasms between sectors of blocks. Some of the sectors were densely patterned with dots and lines of eerie blueish-green lights that kind of reminded me of circuitry, similar to what had been on the surface of the drones, while other sectors were completely dark, or only had small patches of lights scattered here and there.
It was strange, and unsettling, and the weird feeling I had wasn't abating in the slightest. It reminded me a little of some of the more outlandish media I'd watched, which usually ended up being full of alien monsters that tried to eat the cast, or killer robots that tried to murder the cast, or… well, you get it. It wasn't helping my Risk or Threat Assessment in the slightest.
As I continued to circle, I turned some of my attention towards the GrayCris installation. Gamma and Iota had already reached it, and I could see the white shapes that were their fliers diving through the air barrier, making it flicker slightly around them. They were sharing their own visual sensor data in the squad feed, so I was able to look at the installation from their viewpoint as well as mine.
The GrayCris installation stood out like a blister on the surface of one of the biggest, tallest blocks in the middle of a sector of multiple tiered blocks. The air dome over the installation that held in a human-breathable atmosphere shimmered slightly, revealing that it was still powered and functioning normally. The installation itself looked similar to most of the other survey installations I'd been deployed to before, though this one wasn't all in company white - it was in some bland orange-brown. Several habitats with multiple interconnected domes took up about two thirds of the space beneath the air bubble, while the rest of the space held a vehicle shed for ground vehicles (although given the surroundings, ground vehicles seemed impractical if not outright useless here), several landing pads for both small and large hoppers, and one edge of a much larger landing pad meant for shuttles. (The shuttles themselves would land on the rest of the pad outside of the air bubble, so their arrivals and takeoffs wouldn't mess with it and risk significant amounts of atmosphere loss.)
There were a few hoppers still on their landing pads, all in the same orange-brown. A shuttle was out on the exterior landing pad, also orange-brown, with a big red B-E logo still partially visible beneath a GrayCris logo that had been slapped over the top.
Huh. GrayCris had entered a bond agreement with the company to supply the survey equipment for the original survey where everything had gone wrong, because the company had jurisdiction over that sector of space and wouldn't allow any other competing companies to operate within it. Had GrayCris contracted with another bond company for this equipment? Or had it bought the equipment outright to avoid any potential data mining by other companies? The GC logos slapped over the original logos (and the fact that they were using this equipment to survey and evaluate an entire alien remnant moon base) kind of suggested the latter, but I had no way to tell for sure yet. I hadn't seen any B-E logos back at the Milu installation, but that didn't really mean anything either. Maybe GrayCris used multiple suppliers for their equipment.
There was also a company dropship just outside the air bubble, the kind used to deploy combat squads of SecUnits and/or humans in power armour. I tried to ping the company dropship, but got no response - its systems were down, but from here I couldn't tell if it was just in standby or if was entirely powered down or what. There was also no sign of movement anywhere within the air bubble, which lined up with what Gamma and Peri had said about their initial investigation.
[There's Epsilon and Upsilon's fliers,] Gamma said suddenly over our squad feed, accompanying it with a tagged section of visual footage. [They're still here, they haven't gone anywhere - or at least, they haven't taken their fliers anywhere.] I could feel its worry leaking through the feed, echoed by Iota and Alpha. I shored up my own walls, trying to block the feeling out as much as I could. (I wasn't managing to block much, but still.)
Gamma headed straight for one of the habitat domes instead, Iota still tight on its wing. [New damage,] Iota suddenly commented as it dropped a magnified image into the squad feed, with areas of the habitat dome it was focused on highlighted. The damage wasn't obvious, and I couldn't tell what had caused it from here, but apparently it hadn't been there before. Threat Assessment went up a few points.
[Fuck,] Gamma replied. [That's the dome where Epsilon and Upsilon were.] It descended recklessly fast, then pulled up at the last moment to land as close to the damaged dome as it could. Iota followed it down, landing close beside it.
I pinged Gamma and it pinged me back in acknowledgement, then exited its flier and disappeared into the damaged habitat dome with Iota right on its heels.
It felt so weird. Working alongside Gamma and Iota felt as comfortable and familiar as working alongside Alpha had become. I'd slotted into place in their group as easily as a shuttle into a familiar home dock. And I couldn't tell what I thought about that.
Gamma and Iota were sharing their visual inputs in the squad feed, and I was keeping one input on that while also watching as much of our surroundings as possible with only visual sensors. I could see them making their way through the dome, which turned out to be less of a habitat dome and more of a containment dome over an opening in the floor. The opening looked like it led into a compartment or bunker of some kind set into the surface of the block. This close, I could now make out the swirls and whorls of different colours laced through the black, glassy material, and the patterns inlaid into the surface. None of them were lit up in this area though.
The weird feeling I had intensified again.
The surface of the block and the interior of the dome were marred by extensive scorch marks and pitted with shrapnel, though I didn't get a good look because Gamma was moving too quickly now, almost running to the opening in the floor. Iota held back, its projectile weapon held at the ready, covering Gamma's back and remaining alert for anything that might approach. Gamma paused just long enough at the edge to make sure its landing was clear, then dropped down through the hole.
Its gaze swept around the room, and I got glimpses of unfamiliar machinery woven in with the black glassy material of the block, with more familiar human-made equipment patched into it. But everything was destroyed, ruined - it looked like an explosion had gone off in here, wrecking everything and blasting out through the opening and also damaging the overlaid dome.
I didn't get much chance to analyse anything because Gamma's focus had locked on to the two bodies sprawled on the floor at the base of the far wall. Their white armour was blackened and broken by the force of the explosion, peppered with shrapnel, their faceplates spiderwebbed with cracks. At least there didn't seem to be any significant leaking, no pools of blood or fluids, but there was no real way to tell how badly they were damaged inside their armour by visuals alone.
My organics twisted uncomfortably. I tried to ignore it.
Gamma skidded to a halt by them and dropped to its knees, reaching out to the closest one, trying to figure out if they were still functional or… not. That was really difficult to do when none of us could use our scanners without risking a systems crash. [We need to get them back to—] It hesitated, uncertainty leaking into the feed. It had obviously been about to say "Peri", but Peri was currently MIA.
[The MedSystem on Debris will be able to take care of them,] I reassured it. It pinged a relieved acknowledgement, then carefully picked up one of the bodies and straightened back up with it cradled in its arms.
The movement triggered an automatic buffer phrase. "This unit has suffered catastrophic damage and it is recommended that you discard it."
I hated that buffer phrase. I hated it so much. But in this situation, it was… well, not a good sign but also not a bad sign. It meant that there was still enough function left for the automated systems to not register the unit as completely destroyed or unrecoverable. (Just not worth the presumed effort of recovery.)
As far as I could tell, the hole through the habitat floor into this little bunker had originally had a ladder for the humans to get in and out, but the explosion had wrecked it, and trying to climb a ladder while carrying someone was kind of awkward and difficult anyway. Fortunately, SecUnits can jump pretty high, even when carrying another unit, and the bunker wasn't too deep. Iota stayed up at the edge of the hole to help Gamma over the edge just in case it couldn't get quite enough height to clear it. Between the two of them, they were able to get Epsilon and Upsilon out of the bunker.
While they were doing that, Alpha and I were able to remotely connect with Epsilon and Upsilon's fliers, start them up, and move them closer to the damaged dome so Gamma and Iota wouldn't have to carry them so far. They got Epsilon and Upsilon into their fliers, and then we had a brief discussion over who would take them back to Debris.
We quickly decided that Alpha would do so - it would be easier to fit their fliers into Debris' hangar if only one of us went with them, and I wanted to start investigating the installation myself. Alpha would also be a more familiar face than I would be once Epsilon and Upsilon woke up, and I definitely didn't want them coming back online surrounded by humans they didn't know without at least one of the squad there too.
So Gamma and Iota stayed on the ground, while Alpha took control of both Epsilon and Upsilon's fliers back and carefully piloted them back to Debris. There hadn't been any sign of anything approaching or reacting to our presence, and the more quickly we could investigate the installation, the sooner we could get out of there again and start looking for Peri and its crew.
As I headed down towards one of the installation's landing pads, I tapped Overse's feed (Arada had actually managed to get to sleep by now) to let her know that Alpha was on its way with Epsilon and Upsilon, and that it might need a hand getting them to the MedSystem. I also asked her to make sure that most of the humans kept away from Medical until Alpha had a chance to brief Epsilon and Upsilon once they were online again. I didn't know how either of them would react to unknown humans, even with Alpha there, and I wasn't going to take any chances.
I also pinged Debris and asked it to get the MedSystem started up. It pinged back an acknowledgement, then followed it with an update from its own visual sensors showing that it hadn't picked up on any movement yet. That was kind of reassuring.
The surface of the air bubble tingled slightly as I flew through it, and then it was behind me and I set down on one of the landing pads closest to the edge of the shuttle pad.
It was time to start getting some fucking answers.