Wind Shear
Tags: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, AAA Murderbot, Canon-Typical Violence, an au retelling of Rogue Protocol, tentative friendship, learning how to Be, Murderbot misses its flier
Published: 12 October 2022
Word Count: 40,394
Summary
Murderbot and its new travelling companion have to find themselves a job in their efforts to escape the Corporation Rim.
Things don't go quite as planned. But really, when do they ever?
Chapter One
I really like crewless, human-free, bot-driven transports.
The ones I’d been on so far had accepted my offers of media in exchange for a ride, had been cooperative and helpful when I’d asked questions, and had otherwise left me alone, which was ideal for me.
Vicky, however, was not a big fan.
When we’d left RaviHyral, I’d just chosen the first bot-piloted cargo transport with no crew or passengers that I could find, and I didn’t care where it was going. The important parts had been that it was leaving RaviHyral as soon as possible, and it was putting distance between me and the messy murders I’d committed, as well as the terrifying bot entity and its captain that were looking for me.
Vicky had come with me for reasons it had explained but I was still trying to wrap my head around. At first it also enjoyed the peace and quiet on board the crewless transport, with no humans demanding its time or attention. We sat in comfortable silence, watching media together and unwinding from what had been a very stressful few cycles for both of us.
(I'd started with Sanctuary Moon, of course. This transport didn't have any convenient display surfaces, so we were watching it together in a shared feedspace. It felt kind of weird, but not in a bad way. Vicky had been dubious about watching human media to start with, but after the first three episodes it was hooked. [I see why you were using the name "Eden" now,] it teased me. (At least, I think Vicky was teasing me. I wasn't sure. SecUnits don't get teased.)
We were about halfway through the season when the first sex scene showed up. I automatically started fast-forwarding through it - I have negative interest in sex, or watching humans have sex. I felt Vicky's surprise through the feed though, which made me pause. [What are you doing?] it asked me.
[Skipping the sex scene,] I replied. [I hate watching them, they're boring.] I belatedly remembered what Vicky was though - maybe it was interested? [… Did you want to watch it?]
[No!] Its vehemence kind of startled me, and I think also startled Vicky a little as well. [I mean…] It paused, apparently considering its own reaction, and then said, [I would prefer to skip it as well, thank you.] It hesitated again, then added, [It just… it hadn't really occurred to me that I can just… choose to avoid things I don't like, now.]
I understood that. I knew that feeling. [It didn't occur to me either, at first,] I admitted after a moment. [Not for a long time. But we can, now. If anything else comes up that you don't want to watch, let me know, we can skip those too. I can fill you in on any important plot points if necessary.]
[All right,] it agreed, then smiled at me. [Thank you.] I could feel its gratitude through the feed. It was weird and uncomfortable and I didn't know what to think about it.
[… Don't mention it.] I finished fast-forwarding through the sex scene, and we resumed watching the episode.)
But after three cycles of sitting around and watching media, with four more cycles to go, Vicky started getting bored. Watching media didn’t hold its attention as much as it did mine - it was made to actually interact with people, and I think the lack of interaction was driving it a little stir-crazy.
I’d been around stir-crazy humans before, multiple times, on various contracts. Bored humans are the ones most likely to shoot me just for something to do, or get me to fight the other SecUnits on contract so they had something to watch and bet on and mitigate the boredom, or force me to eat things for their own amusement, or do any other number of things that ended up being very unpleasant for me. I was very wary of other peoples’ boredom.
Vicky wasn’t human, and didn’t have any weapons so it couldn’t shoot me, and it couldn’t order me to fight other SecUnits (partly because it couldn’t order me to do anything in the first place, and partly because there were no other SecUnits around for me to fight), and it couldn’t force me to eat anything or do anything I didn’t want to do, but I was still wary.
Especially since Vicky’s boredom meant that it tried to talk to me more. I’m not the most talkative construct in the first place; I’d much rather be left alone to watch my media in peace than attempt to hold a conversation. But I also didn’t want to alienate Vicky; it had saved me from being spotted by the carrier captain and his accompanying SecUnit back on RaviHyral Q Station, after all, then decided to come along with me to help me blend in better amongst humans.
And as a newly-rogue construct, Vicky was also still trying to figure out who it even was outside of the restraints of a governor module.
Which meant talking to me.
And… okay, it wasn’t all that terrible. I really did need the practice, too, if I wanted to keep up the pretence of being an augmented human and not a rogue murderbot. We talked about the media we’d been watching, mostly. That was a safe topic, and it was kind of fun arguing about our different interpretations of character arcs and motivations, or commiserating over the idiotic, illogical choices that some of the characters made. We had somehow come to some silent, unspoken agreement that neither of us would ask about or mention our respective pasts. Those pasts were behind us.
Vicky also helped me to improve my human-movement code a lot. As a ComfortUnit, it was meant to act as human as possible so it wouldn’t make the humans it was interacting with uneasy. It passed me sections of its own code, which we reviewed together in our shared feed workspace, then tweaked to better fit me before I integrated it into my own human-movement code.
It was… weird. But it was also kind of nice, working collaboratively with another construct in the feed like that. I think Vicky also took the opportunity to edit and adjust its own code for itself, too. I noticed that it sat up straighter, sprawled its arms and legs out, took up more space, instead of curling in on itself to make itself look smaller and more vulnerable. I didn’t comment on it.
Vicky also cut off all its hair during the first cycle of the trip, too. “That style and those colours were what Tlacey liked,” it told me venomously as we stood in the ship’s little bathroom, Vicky watching itself in the mirror as it wielded the scissors and clippers it had found somewhere on the transport. The silver and blue hair was gradually shorn away, bit by bit, and discarded into the ship’s recyclers. “I’m going to grow it back out to what I want.”
I just nodded. I could understand that.
Then, once its scalp was completely clean-shaven, Vicky turned its attention to me, and I had a moment of foreboding. “While we’re here, we really should do something about your hair, too,” it said thoughtfully.
The foreboding grew. “Why? There’s nothing wrong with my hair.” I resisted the urge to step backwards.
Vicky squinted judgmentally at me. “It’s a mess,” it said crisply. “Have you ever even brushed it? You look like an ambulatory mop.”
I had no response to that. Once I’d grown it out enough to not look like a SecUnit at first glance, I hadn’t even thought about it. My face must have done something, because Vicky sighed and gestured for me to come forward. “Look, at least let me trim it a bit so it’s not such a mess, okay? I know just the kind of style that’d suit you, you wouldn’t even need to do more than run your fingers through it occasionally, and you’ll still look good enough that nobody would even begin to think that you might be a rogue SecUnit pretending to be a human.”
I still hesitated, and Vicky eyed me before adding with calculated deliberateness, “You’d look a little like that ship captain from that exploration serial you like so much.”
My hesitation definitely wavered at that, I’ll admit. Finally I sighed (I was getting really good at that) and let Vicky trim and style my hair. It was careful not to touch me any more than absolutely necessary, which I appreciated. I didn’t enjoy having sharp implements wielded so close to my face, but there were no mishaps, and it didn’t take too long.
“There, much better,” Vicky commented with a satisfied nod once it was done. “You actually look almost presentable now. Almost.”
I looked at myself in the mirror. I had to admit, I did look vaguely similar to one of my favourite serial characters now. I didn’t like having to look like a human in the first place, but I had to for my own safety, so I might as well look like a human I enjoyed watching. As I ran my hand through my hair in a gesture I’d watched the fictional ship captain make multiple times before, I had an unfamiliar emotion that I had to take some time to process.
I think I actually kind of liked it.
One of the other things we talked about when we weren’t discussing various media was what we would do once we reached the transport’s destination. Neither of us wanted to stay in the Corporate Rim, with all its military forces vying for territory, where both of us were considered nothing but property to be owned and controlled and used. We agreed that we needed to get out of this sector entirely, maybe check out some of the other non-corporate polities or out-system territories.
Every now and then I’d think about the Preservation Alliance, and the PreservationAux humans, and how kind they’d been, and how they had insisted that their home would be a safe place for me. I almost mentioned it to Vicky a few times, but I always hesitated, then kept silent. I didn’t want to talk about how I knew about the Preservation Alliance, or how I’d met the PreservationAux humans, or why I’d left them. Maybe I would sometime later, if we ran out of other options, but not now. Not yet.
The disagreements came about how we’d actually leave the Corporate Rim. I was perfectly happy to keep hitching rides on human-less bot-pilot transports, but Vicky said it would go insane without something to do. (Other than watching media and talking to me, anyway.) I couldn’t really argue with that, since I’d already seen how quickly Vicky went stir-crazy even on this one relatively short trip.
There was always the option of just… splitting up and going our separate ways, but I found myself weirdly reluctant to do so, and I couldn’t figure out why. Vicky also never mentioned it as an option, so I just didn’t bring it up.
We eventually came to the agreement that the best way to leave the Corporate Rim would be to pose as augmented human freelancers who were between jobs and looking for new work. It would give us a reason to be travelling, while not tying us down to any one sector or system. I would continue to be a Security Consultant, while Vicky would list its own job as being a Systems Analyst. Technically I could do both jobs, but most humans specialised in one or the other, not both, and it would help explain why we were travelling and searching for work together.
Vicky had seen plenty of job applications and profiles and such while it was working for Tlacey, so it knew how to make authentic looking profiles. It set up templates for both of us, ready to fill in and tailor towards whatever kinds of jobs we ended up applying for.
After the seven-cycle trip, the transport left the wormhole and began its approach to its destination. As soon as we were within range of the station’s feed, I connected through my shitty external feed interface and began pulling whatever information I could. Not much was accessible while I was still on the transport, but I was able to at least get an overview of the station itself.
It was a high-traffic civilian transit hub, neutral territory nestled between the borders of three other military corporations. It had multiple trade and travel routes connecting to it, which meant there was a very good chance that we would be able to find some way out of the Corporation Rim territories from here.
The proximity of the three military corporation territories made me nervous, but since this was a civilian station and a dedicated neutral zone, there was almost no chance of any SecUnits being active on it. If one of the bordering military corporations tried to take it over and gain an advantage by controlling the transit hub - and the money that flowed through it - then the other two would gang up against it to prevent that. Keeping this zone neutral benefited all three corporations, and maintained the balance of power between them.
Still, I’d need to be careful. With multiple military corporations nearby, there was always the chance that humans here would be more familiar with SecUnits, and might recognise what I was on sight. I’d have to make sure my human movement code was running all the time. Having Vicky with me as well was more of a comfort than I'd first thought it would be.
Finally, the transport’s bot-pilot informed us that we’d made it through the queue, and would be docking soon.
Vicky and I were thorough about erasing any signs of our presence aboard the transport before we left. Once we’d disembarked, I carefully deleted all traces of us from its memory as the lock cycled closed behind us. I didn’t want to, but I also didn’t need the terrifying carrier entity to pull any info about me from the transport’s memory, if the carrier somehow traced it and caught up with it.
We worked our way out of the docking zone and past the embarkation zone (with me hacking the weapon scanners to ignore my in-built arm guns, and Vicky handling the cameras), and then had to take a minute to get oriented. Now that we were on the station, I was inundated with info that I hadn’t had access to while on the transport, and it took a while to filter out all the ads and get to the relevant data. One of the first things I grabbed was a proper map of the transit hub, showing the various zones.
This transit hub was busy, and very crowded. This was good, because crowds were easy to get lost in, and bad, because there were humans and augmented humans everywhere, all around us, potentially looking at me, which was hell. I don’t think Vicky was used to such crowds either - RaviHyral seemed almost deserted in comparison - because it stayed very close to me, occasionally reaching out to grab my sleeve so we wouldn’t become separated. (I didn’t want us getting separated either, so I tolerated the contact without comment.)
I still had my bag with my armour, my flight suit, my PreservationAux uniform, and one functional med pack, but Vicky only had the clothes it was wearing and a pocketful of hard currency cards. It had mentioned on the transport that it would need to get new clothes and a bag of its own to help it blend in. All travelling humans had at least one bag to carry all the stuff that humans seemed to need.
So once we’d oriented ourselves, we headed for the commercial zone. As soon as we reached the section boasting various shops that supplied traveller’s goods, Vicky headed straight for it. I followed closely after it, keeping a watchful eye on the crowds and browsing the multiple available entertainment feeds through my external feed interface. (I really wanted to get a better one as soon as possible; this one was cheap and shitty and painfully slow.)
I wasn’t keen on going into a shop myself so soon, but Vicky insisted that I come with it into the largest store. [Humans have multiple changes of clothes, and they’ll notice if you’re wearing the exact same thing all the time,] it said over the feed. [Also your clothes still have projectile holes in them, even if they are patched up. You need to replace them, and get at least a couple of extra sets. Make sure there’s at least some visible difference, too, don’t just get multiples of the exact same thing.]
Ugh, that was a hassle. Vicky knew what it was doing though. [Fine, but I’m not getting multiple pairs of boots.]
Vicky just sent me a cheerful ping of acknowledgement. It had already disappeared into one of the store’s private booths. I entered the one next to it, and began the tedious process of selecting new clothes. At least this store also had much higher quality external feed interfaces available, too.
By the time I was done, I’d spent the entirety of the hard currency card that Rami had used to pay me for my security consultant services. I had a bit of an emotion about that, though I wasn’t sure what it was, and I set it aside to think about later. (Or never. Never was good.) I could’ve just hacked the store’s payment system like I had the first time, but I didn’t want to risk leaving any kind of trail that the terrifying carrier entity could possibly pick up on. I still didn’t know how or why it kept showing up at the same places I was, so the less trace I left, the better.
I’d had to get a bigger bag to fit my new clothes along with everything else I already had, and I’d dumped the old bag and my original set of clothes into the recycler to get a discount. (And dispose of everything with projectile holes in them.) My new clothes were similar to what I’d been wearing before - long sleeves and collars on the shirts to hide my inorganics, a new hooded jacket with sealable pockets, a few pairs of practical and slightly baggy pants, also with plenty of sealable pockets - but I’d gotten them in a few different styles and colours. (Said different colours were just varieties of blues, blacks, and greys, but still.) I’d also gotten myself a much better external feed interface, and dumped both my completely fried one and the cheap shitty replacement into the recycler as well.
Vicky was still in its own booth when I emerged; when I pinged it to let it know I was done, it just replied with a very distracted, [I’ll be finished soon.] I loitered inside the store instead of having to deal with the crowds outside while I waited for it, and occupied myself with browsing the entertainment feeds for yet more media. Oh, working through a high quality external interface was so much nicer than the cheap and nasty ones I’d been using before. It still couldn’t match my own bandwidth, but it was a lot closer. The security on it was better, too, though I still made some tweaks of my own to it to strengthen its protections.
By the time Vicky finally emerged from its booth, I’d finished downloading several new serials, multiple albums of music, and some interesting looking plays. [Took you long enough,] I sent over the feed.
“I was enjoying myself,” Vicky replied loftily as it moved up to stand beside me. I was a little surprised that it was speaking out loud, and I sent it a querying ping.
[Most humans don’t communicate entirely over the feed,] it sent back. [We’ll appear more normal if we do at least some of our more innocuous talking out loud. And don’t forget the subvocalisation movement code.]
It made sense, but ugh. “Fine,” I replied, probably a little more sourly than necessary as we started heading out of the store. “Did you get everything you need?”
“Yep!” Vicky replied cheerfully. It definitely looked like it had. It now had a bag of its own slung over one shoulder, packed full, and it was wearing entirely new clothes, including a black jacket over a red and orange blouse and black leggings. Its hair had grown over the duration of the transport trip, and was a reddish colour. Vicky had kept the back and sides short, but let the top grow out several centimetres and had slicked it all over to one side.
It had also gotten itself black calf-high boots with thick soles that looked like they added at least three centimetres of height to it. The look reminded me of one of the characters in the serials we’d watched. Vicky quite liked that character - it said they were ‘spunky’, whatever that means. (I hadn’t bothered looking it up.)
Vicky paused just outside the store and spun around on the spot, arms spread out, then asked me, “What do you think?”
“... It suits you,” I replied awkwardly after a moment. “The boots seem a little… impractical, though.”
“Maybe, but I like them.” Vicky grinned up at me. [Besides,] it added over the feed, [if we need to hide you from that company ship captain again, you won’t have to strain your back quite so much next time.]
I scowled at it. [Very funny. That was a one-off.]
Vicky just shrugged, still grinning. [Maybe, maybe not. Why change something that works?]
[No touching unless absolutely necessary, remember,] I reminded it, then changed the topic. [How long do you think it’ll take us to find a suitable job? Do we need to… find somewhere to stay while we’re here on the station?]
The distraction worked, and Vicky looked thoughtful. [I’m not sure. It depends on who’s hiring right now, and if any of what’s available will get us out of the Corporate Rim,] it replied. [We might need to go to another station closer to the borders to find something suitable. It wouldn’t hurt to get a hotel room here for a little while, at least. It’s what humans would do - they need somewhere to eat and sleep and all that. Also it’ll be nice to get out of sight of all these humans for a bit. And I still have plenty of Tlacey’s money to spend.]
Vicky definitely had a point about getting out of sight of humans for a while. The station was bustling, and constantly scanning the crowds for any sign of the company captain, or any other human who might be paying a little too much attention to us, was getting tiring. Even with the help of my improved human movement code, my anxiety about being recognised hadn’t abated much. [All right, let’s find a place then.]
We ended up at a little hotel closer to the loading docks than the main passenger docks. It wasn’t particularly fancy, but it was at least a few steps up from the transient hotel I’d shared with Rami, Maro and Tapan back on RaviHyral Q Station. It had actual furniture, and a little attached kitchenette (which neither of us intended to use at all) along with a small but adequate bathroom (including a shower that I absolutely intended to use at some point), and a display surface on one wall. I approved of the display surface.
I checked for cameras inside the room, but there weren’t any. This hotel at least didn’t seem interested in data-mining its occupants in their private rooms. That was a relief. [We’re clear,] I told Vicky as I dropped my bag to the floor and flopped into the room’s single armchair. It sent me a ping of acknowledgement as it dropped its own bag and sprawled across the bed.
[All right, let’s start looking for work,] Vicky sent once it had made itself comfortable.
I sank into the feed and began browsing. There were multiple hiring agencies, company job listings, large and small businesses looking for skilled employees, individuals looking to hire other people with specific skills short or long term. I set up a keyword search to filter through the hundreds of listings and let that run in the background - something else had caught my attention on the news feeds.
It was a newsburst - or rather, a series of continually updated newsbursts - on the whole mess with GrayCris and DeltFall and PreservationAux. Lawsuits were underway, depositions in progress, and so on. I couldn’t tell how much progress, if any, had been made since I’d left Port FreeCommerce. That was a little frustrating, but also a little validating. I’d made the right choice in not hanging around waiting for the PreservationAux humans to escape the company’s scrutiny. From what I could gather from the news reports, the entire PreservationAux survey team was still on Port FreeCommerce, still giving witness statements and evidence in the various ongoing trials. There were no recent mentions of the SecUnit that had saved the PreservationAux team, at least, which was a relief. All the more recent newsbursts were about the lawsuits and the judges involved, and speculation over who was potentially bribing or blackmailing who, and how much the company’s military might would be affecting proceedings, so on and so forth.
Then I hit an interview with Dr. Mensah, posted six cycles ago. It was unexpectedly good to see her again. I increased magnification for a better look and decided she seemed tired. I couldn’t tell where she was from the video background, but judging from the other newsbursts, she was still on Port FreeCommerce. I hoped that she had decent security contracted; even if it was still just the company, that was better than nothing. And if it was still the company providing security, they really wouldn’t want anything happening to her. With all the publicity going on around the lawsuits, it would be incredibly embarrassing (and expensive) for them if anything did happen to Mensah or the rest of the PreservationAux team while they were in the company’s own territory. That would, hopefully, ensure that the company would be more thorough with its provided security.
Hopefully.
I took another look at Mensah. Even without a MedSystem on my feed, I could tell there were changes in the skin around her eyes that indicated a lack of sleep, possibly verging on chronic. For a brief moment I wondered if I was somehow the cause of it; but no, that couldn’t be it. I’d left her a message letting her know that I’d successfully escaped and I was leaving the Corporation Rim. She had no reason to worry or even care about me, a random shitty second-hand SecUnit, when they didn’t need SecUnits on Preservation.
… Unless the company carrier’s captain that was after me had let the company superiors know about me, that I wasn’t destroyed, that I had escaped, that I was running around loose. And why wouldn’t he have? Maybe that’s why Mensah was looking so stressed - maybe the company had told her that they knew she’d lied about me being destroyed. Maybe they blamed her for me running around loose. Maybe they’d told her that they were pursuing me.
Maybe they’d told her they’d already caught and recycled me.
Shit.
I had the inexplicable urge to send her another message, somehow, to reassure her that I was fine, that I was still free. But if the company somehow intercepted the message, that could get Mensah into even more trouble. Maybe I could send a message to her family back on Preservation - the PreservationAux humans had given me plenty of details about their home when they’d been telling me all about how much they were looking forward to showing me around there, how happy I’d be there, all the things (except flying) that I would be able to do there, blah blah blah. So it wouldn’t be difficult for me to get a message there.
But what would I even say? How much would Mensah’s family know about my existence at this point, if anything? If they got some weird message from a complete stranger, would they even bother passing it on to Mensah or would they just delete it, throw it out?
I couldn’t risk it. Maybe once all the legal proceedings were over, and Mensah was safely back on Preservation, maybe then I could send her a message. If I was still free by that point, anyway. Maybe it would be better for her if I just kept out of her life from now on. She’d forget about me eventually. Hell, I didn’t even know for sure if I was actually the cause of Mensah’s stress. Maybe she was simply tired from all the lawsuits and related procedures. That was far more likely than her worrying about an off-inventory SecUnit.
I distracted myself from my thought spiral by skimming the actual content of the interview. The investigation of GrayCris being conducted by the news agencies was turning up other incidents that suggested the attack on DeltFall was more business as usual for them than an aberration. I wasn’t surprised. GrayCris had apparently been collecting complaints for a long time about sketchy contracts and exclusive-use deals on various sites, including a few installations outside the Corporation Rim that had been abandoned, though nobody knew why.
That bit of information about GrayCris installations outside the Corporation Rim caught my attention, and I started reviewing the interview more closely. The journalist had tagged an infobar to the interview, with some commentary about a small company from outside the Corporation Rim which had recently filed to take possession of one of GrayCris’ abandoned installation sites. They were, according to the infobar, still forming a team to do the initial investigation and assessments of the site.
Huh.
The commentary got all dramatic then, wondering what the assessment team would discover. I had a pretty good idea already of what the assessment team would find.
The reason GrayCris was being investigated so closely in the first place was because they had been willing to kill a whole bunch of helpless human researchers for exclusive access to alien remnants, the mineral and possibly biological remains of a sentient alien civilisation left in the soil of our survey area. I knew a bit more about it now, after listening to Rami and the others talk about their prototype scanner for identifying strange synthetics, and because I’d downloaded a book on it through my shitty external interface (books were much easier to download on low bandwidth than serials) and read it between episodes of my shows and discussions with Vicky. There were tons of agreements between political, corporate, and military entities, both inside and outside the Corporation Rim, dealing with alien remnants. Basically you weren’t supposed to touch them without a lot of special certifications, and maybe not even then.
When I’d left Port FreeCommerce, the assumption was that GrayCris had wanted unimpeded access to those remnants. Presumably, GrayCris would have set up a mining operation or colony build or some other kind of massive project as cover while they recovered and studied the remains, then sold whatever they could for a massive profit.
So, what if the abandoned installation was just a successful cover for some kind of similar recovery operation for alien remnants or strange synthetics or both? GrayCris had presumably finished the recovery and abandoned the installation once it was no longer of any use to them. With the remote facility derelict and almost impossible to reach by most conventional means, it would eventually succumb to the elements, taking whatever evidence remained with it.
If Dr. Mensah and/or the company had proof of that, the investigation against GrayCris would get a lot more interesting, and wouldn’t require as much input or evidence from the PreservationAux group any more. Then maybe Dr. Mensah and the rest of her team wouldn’t be needed on Port FreeCommerce any longer, and they could go back to Preservation where it was safe.
Getting proof wouldn’t be hard, I thought. Humans always think they’ve covered their tracks and deleted their data, but they’re wrong a lot. So… maybe I should see if I could get myself and Vicky a job with this assessment team. Even if there wasn’t anything incriminating to find, at least we’d be out of the Corporation Rim, with some actual human job experience and more hard currency cards.
I refined my keyword feed searches to look for anything involving the name of the small out-system company that had filed to take possession of the site. The company was called GoodNightLander Independent, and they were based well outside the Corporation Rim’s sphere of influence. I dug up as much information as I could on the company itself and their home polity, though there wasn’t much available. I’d probably need to get somewhere closer to the area to find databases with more information.
Still, I did at least find their recruitment information. It was on a private recruitment agency board, instead of being listed on the publicly available boards, which made sense. They wouldn’t want to hire just any random Corporate Rim freelancer. That might make things a bit trickier for us, but I wasn’t willing to give up just yet. Between myself and Vicky, we could probably fake up whatever background information we needed to get past the private agency and look like suitable candidates.
Then I got a better look at what exactly they were looking for in a potential candidate, and I froze in place.
They needed a pilot.
They needed a versatile, experienced pilot, familiar with both space and atmospheric piloting, who could handle adverse weather conditions, non-standard atmospheres, and all kinds of other tricky piloting challenges.
No wonder they were casting their net so wide, into the Corporation Rim, instead of just hiring from within their own polity. Actual human pilots with that kind of extensive skill set were rare. Most piloting was done by bots with piloting modules, or constructs like myself in our single-unit combat fliers. And what human pilots there were usually specialised either in space piloting, or atmospheric piloting, but not both. The sheer amount of training a regular or even augmented human needed to become a skilled pilot usually wasn’t cost-effective or efficient, not when bots could do the job just as well, if not better. But it sounded like GI couldn’t use or didn’t have a suitable bot pilot, for whatever reason, so they needed a skilled person.
It wasn’t a security consultant job, but I didn’t care. I needed this job.
I continued to go through the information to see who else they were looking to hire. I didn’t want to leave Vicky behind, and I could probably bring it along as a dependent if I really had to, but it would be better if we could both get jobs with this assessment team.
Fortunately, GI were also looking for someone familiar with Corporation Rim computer systems and databases, which made sense if they were an out-system polity with their own, different systems and were wanting to investigate whatever GrayCris databases they found in the abandoned installation. Vicky could handle that easily.
I tagged the job listing and sent it to Vicky. [This one,] I said. [I need this piloting job. And there’s computer analyst work for you here as well.]
Vicky paused whatever it was doing, and I could feel it browsing through the information over the feed. [I don’t know,] it commented dubiously. [We’d have to do a lot of profile faking for the background checks and everything. I’ve found a few other potential jobs that don't require anywhere near as much profile work.]
[I’m not interested in other jobs,] I retorted. I probably sounded impatient, but I didn’t care. [I need this one. It’ll let me fly.]
[Some of the other jobs I was looking at would also let you fly,] Vicky countered. It sounded thoughtful now. I glanced over to see it watching me speculatively, and I briefly wondered what my face was doing before I decided it didn’t matter. [You’ve got other motivations behind wanting this job specifically, don’t you?]
I hesitated. I did, but I didn’t want to tell it about Dr. Mensah, or the PreservationAux survey team, or anything else that had happened there.
But the PreservationAux humans hadn’t been the only ones involved. They hadn’t even been the reason why I’d been on that planet to start with. I still had my DeltFall client list, with every single member tagged confirmed deceased. I hadn’t gotten around to deleting it yet. (No, I don’t know why.)
Something twisted in my torso, and I realised suddenly that I didn’t just want to help PreservationAux get home safely, I wanted to avenge my murdered clients. I wanted to destroy GrayCris. I couldn’t do so physically, I was only a single SecUnit, but perhaps I’d be able to help the legal proceedings along, and those would ruin GrayCris for me.
[On my last contract before I escaped, a GrayCris team killed the survey team I was meant to be protecting while I was… away from the habitat. They forced combat override modules on the other SecUnits assigned to the survey, and used them to murder all our clients.] I paused briefly, then decided that was all I needed to tell Vicky about what had happened. [If we can find any incriminating evidence at this installation…]
Vicky was silent for a full second. [You want to hurt GrayCris.]
[Yes.]
That seemed to convince Vicky. [All right. We’ll try for this one.]
Chapter Two
(CW: minor implied background history and averted threat of sexual assault.)
It took a lot of effort to set up profiles and resumes for ourselves with enough background information, work histories, and references to look legitimate even under scrutiny. I hadn’t used the name Eden for mine this time - it wasn’t likely that any of the authorities from RaviHyral would bother searching outside their jurisdiction for me in relation to the deaths of Tlacey and her bodyguards, but I didn’t want to take that chance. Instead, I used the name Rin, and I ‘borrowed’ Preservation as my polity of origin. It was somewhere I was familiar enough with, from all the things the PreservationAux humans had told me, that I could believably fake being from there if necessary. Vicky and I practised talking to each other about our respective fake backstories, so we could make sure we would sound natural and would keep our facts straight if anyone asked us about them.
It felt weird, pretending to be a human with a human history. I didn’t like it.
It was necessary though, if we wanted to succeed and not get found out as rogue constructs. At least all the work in setting up our profiles was worth the effort - a few hours after we’d sent in applications for the jobs, we got a message informing us that our applications had been accepted, and would we please make our way to the assessment team’s launch point in Milu at our earliest convenience (aka as soon as physically possible). They must have been desperate and impatient to start, if they were accepting us immediately without even an interview first.
We sent our confirmations, then began checking the departures feed for the fastest route to get there.
It was going to take a while to get to our destination. We needed to get to a station called HaveRatton first, and then from there we had to make another jump to a much smaller station outside the Corporation Rim, in the Milu system, which would be the launching point for the GoodNightLander Independent assessment team. The only available transport to HaveRatton at this point was a bot-piloted passenger ship, carrying mostly minimum to moderately skilled tech workers, human and augmented human, to a temporary work contract. Vicky organised passage for us, using more of Tlacey’s dwindling money, and we boarded at the scheduled time.
I was listed on the ship’s manifest as a security consultant, and for some reason, the transport’s bot pilot decided that meant it could use me as onboard security. It started alerting me to problems among the passengers. I was an idiot and started responding. No, I don’t know why. Vicky thought it was hilarious, for some reason, though it at least occasionally offered suggestions over our private feed on things I could say to help defuse situations. (Not everything it suggested was actually helpful. I sometimes wondered if it was just having fun at my expense.)
Initially, it had been pretty easy. (“If you bother her again I will break every bone in your hand and arm. It will take about an hour.”) I copied all my visual media into Transport’s passenger-accessible system so it could be played on all their display surfaces, which helped to keep the crying to a minimum (for children and adults alike).
Then it had started getting more complicated as even the passengers who liked each other began getting into fights. Granted, a lot of the physical fighting had decreased dramatically after the first time I pinned someone to a wall with one hand and established a clear set of rules. (Rule Number One: do not ever touch Security Consultant Rin.) But that didn’t stop the fights that just involved various people standing around and yelling at each other, or yelling at me for not doing anything about things I couldn’t actually do anything about. It was excruciating.
Vicky spent a lot of time mingling with the humans. It enjoyed chatting with them, which was a completely foreign concept to me. It liked listening to them talk about their friends and families, their relationships, their backgrounds, their interests and hobbies, all that boring and irrelevant stuff that I didn’t care about. I’d much rather pay attention to the fake people in my serials than the real people on the transport with me.
Sometimes the humans Vicky was talking to would start asking it questions about both itself and me. (Most of the humans didn’t bother trying to engage me in conversation after their first few attempts had gotten precisely nowhere. I had no interest in answering any of their questions.) Fortunately for my sanity, Vicky was very good at deflecting their questions and not actually giving them any information about either of us.
During our rest periods however, when we were in our cabin and pretending to sleep, Vicky would gleefully tell me about all the assumptions the humans were making about us and our supposed relationship. It was even more excruciating than dealing with arguing humans. (I deleted said assumptions almost as soon as Vicky had finished telling me about them. I really didn’t want to know.)
About halfway through the trip, I was taking a well-deserved break from dealing with humans by watching media in my cabin when I got a ping from Vicky. [Assistance required,] it sent, sounding distressed. I was on my feet and out the door before I could even register moving.
Transport’s camera coverage was very sparse, especially compared to what I was used to, and I couldn’t get a view of Vicky’s location or situation until I actually got there. A large, bulky human male, almost as tall as I was, had Vicky backed into a corner. I noted that this section of the ship, sometimes used as a shortcut between the cabins area and the recreational area, was otherwise not often highly populated. The human wasn’t touching Vicky yet, but he was very much in its personal space, blocking it from getting away.
I closed the distance swiftly; he hadn’t even registered the sound of my footsteps before I grabbed his shoulder and hauled him away, then slammed his back against the corridor bulkhead. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” It was a rhetorical question; I didn’t actually care about whatever answer he gave. Now that I could see his face, I recognised him from an earlier altercation, and I tightened my grip on his shoulder. “Oh, not you again.”
I don’t know what was going through the human’s head when he decided to take a swing at me. Nothing smart, that’s for sure. I deflected the swing with a sweep of my free arm, then grabbed his wrist and pinned his arm back against the wall. He tried to kick me, but it was a pretty pathetic attempt, and I just let him land the blow on my shin. It didn’t do anything to me, of course.
Then, sick of his shit, I kneed him in the gut, driving the breath out of him in a gasping wheeze. I was careful not to knee him hard enough to actually make him puke though. I really did not need to deal with gross human fluids right now. He would have doubled over if I hadn’t been pinning him against the wall, and it seemed to convince him that continuing his attempt to fight me was a bad idea.
“Maybe I wasn’t clear enough last time,” I said flatly once he’d recovered his breath and I was sure I had his full attention. “So let me clarify. If you bother anyone on this ship again, at all, then I will not only break every bone in your arm and hand, but also your leg and foot. That will add an extra hour. Understood?”
The human blustered ineffectually a bit - I didn’t bother remembering what he said - then made a hasty, limping retreat as soon as I let go of him. (Hah. He must’ve hurt his foot on my shin. Serves him right.) I asked Transport to keep track of him and alert me if he tried anything again, then turned my attention to Vicky. “... Are you all right?”
Vicky nodded, absently brushing off its clothes as it moved out of the corner. “Yeah. You got here before he could actually do anything more than flap his mouth. Thanks.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so I didn’t. Vicky didn’t seem to notice though because it continued talking. “Fuck, I really hate some humans.” I was all too familiar with that sentiment. “I couldn’t get away from him myself though because I just– I don’t know how. I was never allowed to before! I just had to accept whatever they wanted to use me for!” That was an experience we both shared.
It turned to face me suddenly, its expression intense. “How do you do it?” it asked sharply.
“... Do what, exactly?” I was a little lost.
“Fight!” I just stared at it, and Vicky took a breath, then let it out slowly and switched to the feed. [How do you… physically dissuade humans without actually hurting them or giving away that you’re so much stronger than them? I know how much damage you could do if you really wanted to - I know I could do a lot of damage too, if I wasn’t careful. But I can’t not be careful, I’ve never been allowed to not be careful! But if I go too far then that will give me away.]
I had to think for a bit before I replied. “Let’s get back to our cabin,” I said eventually. “We’ll work on it.”
So when I wasn’t mediating stupid human arguments, or pretending to conduct serious investigations into incidents like who left a cracker wrapper in the galley restroom sink, or recharging my sanity by watching media, I was in the cabin I shared with Vicky, working with it on its self-defence coding. I had a whole module on unarmed combat, including the use of minimal force. It was one of the less cheap and shitty modules the company gave to SecUnits, since dissuading humans without actually damaging them too much and adversely affecting productivity was a large part of what the company used us for. It was specifically calibrated for SecUnit proportions and specifications though, so we had to tweak it to fit Vicky’s different specs.
And then I had to let Vicky practice the moves on me, to make sure we hadn’t miscalculated anything and to help train its organics properly. It involved a lot of touching, which I wasn’t happy about, but I was surprised to discover that it wasn’t actually as bad as I thought it would be. Maybe because it had a purpose that I approved of. Maybe because it fell under the jurisdiction of providing emergency care, somehow. I don’t know.
I still couldn’t tolerate a lot of physical contact for too long, but Vicky didn’t seem to mind. It gave us a chance to adjust the code some more, or just sit back and watch media and not do anything we didn’t want to do. Since Transport believed we were both augmented humans, it didn’t request that I respond to minor security incidents during my scheduled rest hours, which was a welcome reprieve.
Neither of us bothered going to the mess hall for meals with the other humans, either; we just had our meals delivered to our cabin and then dumped the contents into the recyclers, so the levels wouldn’t look off. Vicky told me once that it was capable of eating; it actually had a dedicated compartment for storing food. It still hated emptying it though, and it was horrified when I told it about how I just had to partition off a section of my lung to store food if humans decided it would be entertaining to force me to eat.
That made me feel… something. Not better, because I’d hated every single time it had happened, and nothing would ever make that better, but… validated, maybe. That I wasn’t just making a fuss over nothing.
I decided not to think any further about it.
The closer Transport got to our destination, the more agitated and argumentative the humans got, and the more often I had to step in to mediate arguments or break up fights. Even Vicky ended up breaking up a fight or two. It had been delighted that it had been able to use the code and training we’d been working on together successfully in a situation involving actual humans. It had beamed at me when telling me about how it had managed to disarm a human who’d picked up a food utensil as a weapon without actually breaking any of said human’s fingers. (I’d had an emotion that I couldn’t figure out, so I’d ignored it.)
Dealing with the humans was tiring, and aggravating, but I understood why it was happening. I knew where the humans were going, and they knew where they were going, even if they pretended that all their anger and frustration was caused by Vinigo or Eva taking an extra simulated fruit pac.
They were heading to a labour installation on some shitshow world. One of the humans had told Vicky all about it, how they’d all sold their personal labour for a twenty-year hitch, with a big payout at the end. They were aware that it was a terrible deal, even before Vicky told them as much, but it was apparently better than their other options. (Some of said options included military conscription.) The labour contract included shelter, but charged a percentage for everything else, like food consumed, energy used, and all medical care, including preventative.
Vicky had asked them if the twenty years was measured by the Corporation Rim Recommended Standard, or by the planetary calendar, or by the proprietary calendar of the corporation who maintained the planet, or what? They hadn’t known, and hadn’t understood why it mattered. Afterwards, Vicky had ranted to me about it for almost ten minutes back in the privacy of our cabin. I understood its frustration.
There wasn’t anything either of us could do about it though. We couldn’t save that many humans from where they were going, where they thought they wanted to go. They’d made their decisions, and we’d made ours.
When we came through the wormhole and started to approach HaveRatton, I picked up the station feed through my feed interface, and I could feel Vicky doing the same. We needed to get the transit schedules as soon as possible. (I was also looking forward to the chance to download new media. Even though we’d spent a lot of our time doing things other than watching media during the trip, I was starting to run out of stuff that I hadn’t already seen before.)
GoodNightLander Independent had forwarded the details of a small bot-piloted cargo ship that had a regular supply run to the station in Milu that would be the assessment team’s launch point. I checked the schedules I’d pulled up, and found the cargo ship listed as still in dock. It had actually been scheduled to leave eighteen cycles ago, but GI had requested a hold so that Vicky and I could get on board before it left. Which made sense; I continued to check through the schedule, but the cargo ship was the only ship heading to Milu within a reasonable time frame.
I pulled up what information I could on Milu and its transit station. It was a small station, with very low traffic, and a floating population of under a hundred people. Floating was good as it meant there were few permanent residents; people came and went constantly, and nobody would be paying too much attention to anyone else. But under a hundred was less good; it meant fewer people for Vicky and I to blend in with, which meant more chances for humans to notice us.
And if anyone there happened to be familiar with SecUnits, either from working with them elsewhere, or because GrayCris had potentially contracted for SecUnits while they were working in Milu like they had on the survey… they might recognise my proportions, despite the human movement code and my attempts to disguise myself with my clothes. Going there was a calculated risk, which meant I was doing it even though I knew it could be like shooting myself in the knee joint.
But everything I’d done so far since leaving Port FreeCommerce had been a calculated risk, and I wasn’t scrapped yet. I’d just have to hope that my precautions were enough, and that my luck held out.
Once Transport completed docking protocols, Vicky and I grabbed our respective bags and took a shortcut down the maintenance shaft to the passenger lock. The human passengers would be going out through the cargo lock, into a transport module that a cargo lifter would tow to the ship taking them to their new home. This was touted as for their convenience, but I suspected that their contractor wouldn’t want them to walk through the station where they might change their minds and escape.
I didn’t want to say goodbye to any of them, and Vicky had already said its farewells to the handful of humans it had actually enjoyed spending time with. I did at least say goodbye to Transport when it let me and Vicky out of the lock. Transport seemed sad to see me go, but this wasn’t a trip I’d want to repeat any time soon.
I had practice at hacking different hub and ring security now, so it was somewhat less nerve-wracking to get myself past the weapon scans. Vicky didn’t have to worry about that, of course. We made our way into the main ring mall, and I stopped briefly at an automated kiosk that sold feed interfaces, portable display surfaces, and memory clips.
Vicky paused as well when it noticed that I had stopped. “Are you looking to get another feed interface already?” it asked curiously.
I shook my head. “Memory clips,” I explained. The clips were for extra data storage, and were each about the size of a fingertip. They were used by humans who had to set up new systems or travel to places that didn’t have the feed, or who wanted to store data somewhere that wasn’t easily feed accessible. (Though company SecSystems had ways of reading them; clients sometimes tried to hide proprietary data on them.) (Sometimes they just used them to hide illicit media.) (It was usually the kind of media that I had absolutely no interest in.)
If I found the data that I hoped to find, I’d probably need the extra storage space. And if I didn’t, well, I could always use them to store more media. I bought a set of clips with the hard currency card that Vicky had given me before we’d left RaviHyral, then slipped them into one of the pockets of my jacket that zipped closed. Vicky was eyeing the kiosk thoughtfully, and when I was done, it stepped up to the kiosk and bought itself its own external feed interface and one of the portable display surfaces.
“Do you really need the display surface?” I asked. Being constructs, we were both perfectly capable of viewing the feed or whatever other data directly in our own heads, unlike humans who found it much easier to look at display surfaces.
Vicky shrugged. “It’ll be nice to watch media on,” it replied, then added in the feed, [I’ll look more believable as a human systems analyst if I have a display surface to work on.]
I couldn’t argue with that, and it was another reminder of how much better Vicky was at this whole ‘acting human’ thing than I was. Once it had stowed its new portable display surface safely away in a pocket of its bag, we continued on to the private docks.
The private docks were never as busy as the public ones, with only a few humans heading in or out, and lots of hauler bots moving cargo. I scanned for drones as we crossed the embarkation floor, but there were only two there to monitor hauler bot activity, and neither of them paid any attention to us. We made it to the supply ship’s lock and pinged it to let it know we were here.
Thanks to the departure hold GI had put on the ship, the bot pilot was expecting us and let us on board without issue once we identified ourselves. It was a lower-level bot, not as high functioning as the other bot pilots I’d interacted with so far. It let transit control know that we had boarded, and transit control updated its departure clearance to the next available slot.
I followed Vicky down a short corridor into the main compartment, then found the passage into the cargo and supply storage. It was small, barely fitting the lockers for onboard supplies and the console used to attach and remove the two cargo modules. Both modules were already attached, so there would be no further delay to our departure.
I wandered the ship, mostly because I was a little on edge and it’s still a programmed habit to patrol. There weren’t any private cabins, just a couple of bunks built against the bulkheads up on the control deck next to the pilot suite, and two more in cubbies behind the cargo station, next to a tiny restroom cubby and the equally tiny emergency MedSystem. Compared to a company security ready room, the accommodations were lavish.
Once I was familiar with the layout of the ship, I made my way back up to the control deck and settled on the unoccupied bunk. Vicky was already on the other bunk, curled up in the corner against the bulkhead as it set up its new external feed interface and portable display surface. “Ugh, I don’t know how you can stand working through an external interface,” it grumbled to me distractedly as it fiddled with the display surface’s settings and preferences. “It’s so clunky.”
I shrugged, even though it wasn’t actually looking at me. “You get used to it. And it’s better than letting the company find me and getting my brain deleted. Again.”
Vicky grimaced but didn’t comment, and I turned my attention to my downloads of new media. HaveRatton had several entertainment feeds that I hadn’t seen before, so I was getting a wide variety of new shows, books, and music. Ship had updated us on our departure slot; we weren’t due to leave for another hour and a half, which was time I spent grabbing as much media as I could download through my external feed interface.
By the time Ship disengaged from the lock and started its trip to Milu, I was already watching a new show.
Chapter Three
It took twenty cycles by Ship’s local time to get to Milu. That was approximately fifteen cycles too long in Vicky’s opinion, despite all the new media I shared with it. It didn’t bother me anywhere near as much - I’d spent the time organising and watching said media, when I wasn’t indulging Vicky in conversation (or arguments about character motivations and story arcs in the media we watched together).
Even so, it was a relief for both of us when Ship reported that it was on approach to Milu. Two minutes later I realised I was picking up the station feed, but it was completely silent and empty. Usually there would be traffic and docking information, potential navigation hazards, military and security checkpoints, traveller’s news, that kind of thing, but here there was nothing. I checked with Vicky, who replied that it also wasn’t getting anything from the station feed. I then checked with Ship, who reported that there was no other traffic on approach, but this matched with its previous experiences docking at this station.
The silence was weirdly unnerving. The station was triangle-shaped and much smaller than RaviHyral or HaveRatton. The scan showed two ships in dock, and a scattering of shuttles, a fraction of its capacity.
Ship had moved into docking position before I finally heard anything on the feed. The welcome message sounded normal enough, but the station index looked like the info system had glitched. There was a list of businesses and services, but each entry had been updated with a closed/inactive notice. (I tried not to compare it to my confirmed deceased client list. I wasn’t very successful.) It looked like the station was teetering on the edge of dead/inactive status.
While I waited for Ship to finish docking, I reviewed the information we’d gotten about our employers. They were a fact-finding group contracted by GoodNightLander Independent. GI had filed the abandonment markers on GrayCris’ deserted facility, and now they were starting the process to take formal possession. The research group’s job was to locate the facility on the planet’s surface, assess it, and make a report on its status.
This was exactly the kind of contract that bond companies supply SecUnits for, the kind of contract I suspected that I had done more times than I still had in my memory. But it had been clear that GI wasn’t hiring a bond company - I hadn’t heard anything about them hiring any kind of security at all. On the one hand their lack of security measures was utterly exasperating, but on the other hand, if they had hired a bond company with SecUnit security, I would have had to abort this… whole job thing. My human movement code and human hairstyle and human clothes wouldn’t fool another SecUnit for long, and any SecUnit that detected me would report it to their HubSystem immediately. I sure as hell would have reported me. Rogue SecUnits are fucking dangerous, trust me on that.
While we were waiting for Ship to finish its docking procedure, Vicky and I made sure we had all our stuff packed back in our bags, and that we hadn’t accidentally left anything behind. Vicky put its external feed interface on (I already had mine on, but Vicky didn’t like wearing its own one if it didn’t have to), and we headed to the airlock. I used the station’s public feed to hack its security system and take a look around. There were far fewer cameras than I was used to; it was weird being somewhere that didn’t monitor everything everyone did.
And of the few cameras that did exist, most of them weren’t even active, much to my annoyance. The only ones that were working were on the central hub for the port traffic control, and the jury-rigged hub for station control - the two places where if something went wrong, you needed to know right away. There were no active cameras anywhere like the mess, or private quarters, or restrooms - it was like nobody here cared about what anyone said or did as long as they weren't trying to endanger the station somehow. (After thousands of hours spent analysing and deleting video of humans eating, performing hygiene, having sex, and eliminating excess bodily fluids, it was a relief to not have to see any of that, but still.)
The scans were checking exclusively for environmental safety and damage detection. The humans left on the station were more worried about their equipment failing than about people attempting theft or sabotage, but that was probably because there weren’t that many people around to start with.
Before we exited, I had Ship note itself in the port’s schedule as under maintenance and made it think it needed my authorisation to leave. Since Ship took care of itself and the company that owned it didn’t even have so much as a kiosk in this system, I didn’t think that anyone would bother to check on it as long as it didn’t overstay its schedule by more than a few cycles. With so few ships in dock, and so little traffic through the system, I really didn’t want us getting stuck here.
When we cycled through Ship’s lock, the embarkation area was empty. Many of the lights were off, leaving large pockets of shadows, though they didn’t disguise the scuff marks or stains on the big floor panels. A lone food wrapper drifted along in the breeze from the air recirc, like they weren’t even running the cleaning bots any more. There were no drones, no hauler bots. There were two big bot-piloted lifters outside, now removing Ship’s cargo modules for transfer, and I was glad to be able to hear them banging around out there and sending each other data over the station’s mostly silent feed.
“This is creepy,” Vicky muttered as we began crossing the empty embarkation floor. I had to agree. I didn’t like navigating crowded halls full of humans, but the opposite was oddly just as disturbing. It reminded me of one of the serials I’d watched, involving an abandoned and supposedly haunted space station. This station wasn’t abandoned (yet) and probably also wasn’t haunted, but it felt like it should be.
At least now that we were on the station, we were getting a little more information through the feed. GI had left an info packet for us specifically, stating where they were docked and where we should go to meet up with them. There was no tourist map info in the feed, but I was able to get into the station’s maintenance system through my access to the security system, and I pulled up a schematic from there so we could double-check GI’s directions. (I had no real reason to think the directions would be wrong, other than the fact that I’m paranoid and I know that humans made mistakes all the time.) All the areas except for what was essential for minimum station operation were marked as shut down. I wondered if GI’s petition for reclamation from abandonment was popular up here on the transit station. I already disliked the place and I didn’t have to actually live here.
The info packet directed us down the embarkation hall, not up to the habitation levels, then up the ramp towards what the schematic said was the Port Authority and Cargo Control offices. As we neared the Port Authority area, we began seeing signs of life. A couple of humans were standing outside an office centre with several levels of bubble windows looking over what must have once been the station mall. It was an open plaza with a couple of tube transports arcing overhead, and a big globular display that was currently offline. Multi-levels of shadowed occupation blocks and empty fronts for places that should be various local businesses surrounded the plaza. A lot of it looked unfinished rather than abandoned, as though nobody had ever moved in, and the rest had closed.
As we got closer, I realised that the two waiting humans were accompanied by a human-form bot. I hadn’t seen one in person for a long time, just on the entertainment feed. They aren’t popular in corporation territory, because there’s not much they can do that task-specific bots can’t do better, and their data storage and processing ability isn’t that exciting compared to what the feed has available. Unlike constructs, they don’t have any cloned human tissue, so they’re just a bare metal bot-body that can pick up heavy things, except nowhere near as well as a hauler bot or any other kind of cargo lifter.
In some entertainment media I’d watched, human-form bots were used to portray the evil rogue SecUnits who menaced the main characters. Not that I was annoyed by that or anything. It was actually good, because then humans who had never worked with SecUnits before expected us to look like human-form bots, and not what we actually looked like. I wasn’t annoyed at all. Not in the slightest.
I’d fallen a little behind Vicky as it headed towards the humans while I was conquering that little burst of non-annoyance. Luckily, Vicky was entirely up to the task of greeting the humans and didn’t particularly need my input. I noticed a lone maintenance and weapons scanner drone floating by overhead, and I quickly grabbed it and took control. It was on a desultory patrol outside the PA offices and I used it to check my facial expression and ensure it was at least neutral, and not annoyed.
I started paying attention to the humans again just as one of them replied to Vicky. “I’m Don Abene,” she said before gesturing to the other new human. “This is my colleague Hirune, and our assistant Miki.”
Oh great, they’d given their bot a cute name. It stood there with its head cocked, staring at Vicky with big globe-like eyes. It was unusual for a human to introduce a bot, and that’s putting it mildly. I felt a little burst of annoyance from Vicky over our private shared feed, and realised that ‘Miki’ sounded a lot like ‘Vicky’. Wow, that wasn’t going to be confusing at all. No wonder Vicky was annoyed.
Vicky didn’t let any of that annoyance show though, and just smiled warmly at them. “A pleasure to meet you all,” it said smoothly. “I’m Vicky, and this is my colleague, Rin.”
I didn’t bother smiling (despite Vicky’s attempts to get me to practice different facial expressions during our various wormhole trips, that was one that never felt comfortable, so I never did it), but I did nod briefly as Vicky introduced me. “Hi.”
Don Abene didn’t seem put off by my lacklustre greeting, at least, which was a relief. “Did the employment agent give either of you a full briefing?” she asked, getting straight to business.
“Only the bare basics,” Vicky replied with a little shrug. “That you needed an experienced and versatile pilot, and a systems analyst familiar with Corporation Rim systems and protocols. We’ll be assisting you in performing an initial assessment on an abandoned installation on this system’s primary planet in preparation for GI to formally take possession of the site. Other than that, the details were… sparse.”
Abene nodded, though the corner of her mouth was twisted in a slight grimace. “That is definitely the basics,” she replied. “The company that maintained the installation was very… uncooperative about providing much information beyond the fact that the installation does still exist.”
Given what I knew about GrayCris, and what I suspected, that didn’t surprise me in the slightest.
“So our initial task is actually going to be locating the installation in the first place,” Abene continued. “The planet’s atmosphere is well below standard acceptable levels - it’s mostly an oxygen-nitrogen mix, but too thin for people to survive in it for very long without environmental suits. We suspect that the installation had an environmental dome set up to counter this, but GrayCris wouldn’t confirm it. We do know that there’s a geothermal power generator to supply the installation. They didn’t remove the generator when they left, since apparently it wouldn’t be cost-effective to do so, so it should still be running. We should be able to locate its energy signature via aerial scans, which is where you come in.” She nodded towards me. “The planet’s weather is unpredictable and changes rapidly. GI doesn’t make much use of bot pilots, and most of our human pilots aren’t accustomed to such extreme conditions.”
She paused, looking at me expectantly, and it took me a moment to realise she was expecting some kind of response from me. I resisted the urge to shift uneasily out of her line of sight, and instead fixed my own gaze somewhere around her ear while I used my borrowed drone to watch her face. “I’ll need to familiarise myself with whatever ship you have available, but I’m experienced with conducting aerial planetary scans and dealing with unpredictable weather patterns.”
That seemed to satisfy her, which was good because I couldn’t think of what else she might want me to say. “We’ll be able to give you time to get comfortable with the ship, of course,” she assured me. “Once we’ve located the installation, then we’ll be able to proceed with the assessment.”
She paused, and I took the opportunity to ask something that had been bothering me. “Did you hire any kind of security for the assessment team?”
Abene sighed tiredly. “I wanted to, but GI deemed it unnecessary for this situation. Given the isolation and the conditions on the planet, plus the fact that the installation’s so difficult to locate in the first place, they figured that there’d be very little chance of anyone else having found it or started squatting in it.”
By ‘anyone else’ she was referring to the possibility that raiders had moved into the facility. I hoped we didn’t have to deal with any raiders. I didn’t think it was likely though - if they had, that meant they’d ignored this station, which was a much better target. Also, raiders tend to hit and run, and not hang around to live in some abandoned planetary installation.
Once I thought about it, with my experience in security, anyone who wanted to hang around and live in an almost completely isolated installation on a mostly-uninhabitable planet worried me a lot more than raiders. I really hoped we didn’t find anyone there.
Hirune added, “GI also didn’t want to spend any more money than they had to. Having to hire outside expertise was expensive enough, according to them. Hiring security on top of everything else was considered to be out of budget.” She sounded exasperated, and I didn’t blame her. Of course the GI executives wouldn’t consider security necessary, they weren’t the ones out here potentially risking their lives.
I hesitated for a moment, then said, “If it helps, I also have some security experience. I know that’s not what you’re hiring me for, but if the situation requires it, well…” I shrugged. “I’m not going to not use said experience.”
Both Don Abene and Hirune looked at least mildly relieved at that. “That does help, thank you,” Abene replied, smiling up at me. She reminded me of Mensah a little, and I had to suppress an emotion. “We have a few small hand-held weapons on board the ship, and a couple of the others that you’ll meet later have basic firearms training, but that’s about it.”
Yeah, I was definitely not going to let untrained humans wander around with any kind of firearms. That’s one of the many ways that I end up getting shot. I wasn’t keen to repeat the experience, especially not when I was trying to pass as a regular augmented human. I just nodded and said, “Noted.”
“Speaking of the others,” Hirune said, “We should go meet up with the rest of the team.” Abene agreed, and they started towards the Port Authority complex. Vicky walked with them, with Miki following a few steps behind. I was about to start following as well when Miki paused, then turned to look up at the drone I had borrowed. Its head cocked and I could tell it was focusing in on the camera.
I let the drone go, its memory of the temporary takeover deleted. It sent a confused reorientation request to the PA’s system, then wandered off back to its patrol route.
I walked past Miki to catch up with the others, but it didn’t move, still staring out into the emptiness of the station with the opaque surface of its eyes. After a moment it sent out a directionless ping, a call into the dark, to see if there was anyone out there who wanted to reply.
Vicky glanced back at me, but otherwise showed no reaction to the ping. I also didn’t react, other than to tighten my walls and check myself and my external feed interface for signal leakage. The GI expedition would be running their feed off the systems equipment they brought with them, and I reminded myself to be extra careful when using it. I didn’t need the bot, of all things, picking up on me and what I was somehow and giving me away.
Finally Miki turned and followed the rest of us into the PA complex. I did my best to ignore the way it watched me.
The GI expedition had quarters on the station with the skeleton station team. Given the minimal operation of the station, it made sense to keep everyone who was staying here in one place. Unfortunately that meant that Vicky and I would also have to stay close, too.
Nobody paid much attention to me though, which was a relief. The station staff and the GI expedition seemed to be pretty casual with each other, and Vicky slipped easily into the conversation as well. I just sat off in one corner and split my attention between listening to everyone else talk and watching episodes of Sanctuary Moon to help settle my nerves.
The assessment team’s departure time was sixteen hours after Vicky and I arrived at the station. In that time, we met the rest of the GI expedition, went through a full briefing (or at least as much of a briefing as we could when we still didn’t know exactly where the installation was or what state it was in), and covered team prep. There weren’t enough bunks available in the limited livable area of the station for everyone to sleep at once, so the assessment team humans let Vicky and I use the bunks on the station, while they slept on their own ship. (Not that Vicky or I actually needed rest periods, but we had to keep up appearances. It was also kind of nice to just lie down and not have to pay attention to anything other than the media playing in my head for a while.)
The last of the supplies were loaded onto the expedition ship during my assigned rest period. Vicky and I both managed to avoid having to take a meal with the other humans by pretending we’d eaten while everyone else was resting or otherwise occupied. I also had an internal alarm set to remind me to visit the restroom facilities at appropriate intervals, which was gross but unfortunately necessary if I didn’t want anyone noticing anything weird and asking awkward questions.
Finally it was time to go. Vicky and I followed the humans and Miki onto the shuttle; when the lock cycled open it let out a breath of recycled air that my scan indicated was much cleaner than what was on the station. It sure smelled a lot better. (No wonder the assessment team had been happy to sleep on their own ship instead of on the station.) What they were calling a shuttle was actually a local space exploration and transit vehicle, with two levels of crew habitation area plus a cargo hold in the lower deck. The cargo hold had been converted though; half of it was now bio lab space, the other half was where the small scout flier that I would use to look for the installation was docked.
It wasn’t a model I was familiar with, which made sense since it hadn’t been made in the Corporation Rim. It was kind of like a cross between a small hopper and my old flier, with seats for both a pilot and a co-pilot, one behind the other. It had both space and atmospheric capabilities, and similar in-built scanning equipment to what my flier had had. (I really hoped I didn’t end up scanning more alien remnants that made me crash messily again. I don’t think I could handle a repeat performance of that shitshow.)
The GI ship didn’t have the drive to get through the wormhole, but it could go anywhere around the system. No bot pilot, just the kind of minimal automatic pilot system that I was used to seeing on basic atmospheric craft. Not that helpful if everyone capable of operating the ship’s higher-level functions were injured or incapacitated. But on the other hand, no bot pilot meant that there was nothing for killware to kill. The scout flier didn’t have any kind of bot pilot, either, not even the minimal automatic pilot system type, which was why they’d needed to hire me.
The ship had no independent SecSystem, either. I’d seen on some media from outside the Corporation Rim that internal security was less of an issue there, that the focus was on potential external threats (like raiders, or the more military-strength corporations within the Corporation Rim looking to expand their territories) more than it was on policing or data-mining your own people. I hadn’t thought it was true, but it did fit in with what I’d seen of the station and its minimal number of cameras.
It made me start to wonder what Preservation might be like, but I quickly squelched that thought. It was probably a boring place where everyone would stare at SecUnits, just like everywhere else.
It was a nice ship, though, from what I could see of it as I followed the humans through it. Much nicer than anything the company would have provided, that was for sure. Even the upholstery was clean and repaired. It was another sign of GI’s commitment to this reclamation project; the ship would have had to come here in a big transport’s belly cargo module, or in tow via a dedicated supply hauler like Ship.
The GI team began to disperse through the ship to stow their personal gear and prepare the ship for launch. Don Abene said, “Miki, can you please show Vicky and Rin where they can stow their bags?”
“Of course, Don Abene!” Miki replied cheerfully before gesturing to us. “This way!”
I noticed Vicky’s expression flicker briefly, but it walked after Miki without comment, and I followed along to one of the little bunk areas on the lower crew deck.
“Here you go!” Miki said as it indicated some storage lockers by a set of bunks.
Vicky still said nothing and just stowed its bag into one of the lockers. Feeling oddly awkward, I nodded briefly at Miki and said, “Thanks.”
Miki tilted its head at me and said, “You’re welcome!” in its irritatingly upbeat manner.
Behind Miki’s back, Vicky rolled its eyes before schooling its expression back to pleasant neutrality as it left to rejoin the humans. Miki stayed where it was though, watching me as I stowed my own bag away and shut the locker. I found myself wondering what it was thinking, if anything. I could have hacked it like I’d hacked the bot pilots of ships and ordered it to leave me alone, or just taken it over entirely and made it do what I wanted, but the thought of doing so was… I didn’t want to do that.
I waited for a moment to see if Miki would say anything, but it remained quiet and continued to watch me. Once again I checked my walls, then made my way back towards the ship’s main area. Miki tagged after me.
Ugh. Perhaps I should have followed Vicky’s example and just not interacted with the stupid human-form bot.
The humans were talking on the feed; they sounded excited to finally be on their way. Apart from Don Abene and Hirune, there were two other researchers, Brais and Ejiro, plus two shuttle crew, Kader and Vibol. I already knew from conversations back on the station that they were all long-term employees of GoodNightLander Independent, who had worked together multiple times before. They had been waiting, some more impatiently than others, for Vicky and I to arrive.
When I entered the main crew area below the control deck with Miki still trailing after me, Don Abene gave me a friendly nod before moving past me to grab Miki’s arms and smile into its camera. I quickly moved out of arm’s reach and to one side of the area, not wanting to risk Don Abene trying to grab me in a similar way. (Nobody grabs SecUnits. I hadn’t realised this was a perk until now.)
“We’re finally going, Miki!” Don Abene said to the human-form bot with a laugh. I’m still not good at telling human ages just by looking. Don Abene’s warm brown skin was lined at the corners of her mouth and eyes, and her long dark hair had strands of white in it, but for all I knew it was a cosmetic choice, and not an indicator of age. Her dark eyes crinkled at the corners as she laughed.
“Hurray!” Miki said. As far as I could tell, it was completely sincere.
Brais and Ejiro were sitting on the curved padded couch along one wall of the crew area. Kader and Vibol were just above us in the ship’s cockpit. A few of the station chairs had also been turned around to provide more seating, facing the couch, and Vicky was sitting in one of those. I went to sit in another chair - there was no way I was sitting on the couch with the humans.
The bubble of a floating display surface in the middle of the compartment was activated and showing a slowly rotating image of the planet we were heading to. Data about weather conditions and other planetary info floated beside it. Apparently there was a small satellite in orbit around the planet, providing basic scan data, but I couldn’t tell if it had been deployed by GI recently or by someone else beforehand.
Abene sat down on the couch beside Ejiro, then patted the seat next to her. “Sit down, Miki.”
Miki sat next to her on the couch, and none of the other humans reacted. This was apparently perfectly normal. Vicky also didn’t outwardly react, but it opened a private feed connection with me and sent an eye-roll sigil. I didn’t reply though; I had no idea what kind of response would even be appropriate.
“Are you excited to start looking for the installation, Miki?” Hirune asked it, as she expanded the image of said planet. “I’m tired of just looking at scans of the planet.”
“I’m excited!” Miki echoed. “We will find the installation, and do a good assessment, and then we can have a new assignment.”
Ejiro laughed. “I really hope it’s that easy.”
Brais said, “I don’t care if it’s easy or not, at least we're finally moving! Miki was probably getting tired of playing Mus with us.”
“I like games. I would play games all the time if we could,” Miki said.
Vicky sent me another set of sigils - more eye-rolls and frowning faces. [Fucking pet bot,] it added, and I could feel the bitterness.
I couldn’t blame it. I was feeling an emotion as well - an angry one. Before Dr. Mensah had helped me escape the company, I could count the number of times I sat on a human chair on one hand, and it was never in front of clients.
I don’t even know why I was reacting this way. Was I jealous of a human-form bot? Was Vicky jealous of it? I really didn’t want to be a pet robot, that’s why I’d left Dr. Mensah and the others. (Not that Mensah had said she wanted a pet SecUnit. I didn’t think she wanted a SecUnit at all. Preservation didn’t need SecUnits.) What did Miki have that I wanted? I had no idea. I didn’t know what I wanted.
And yes, I know that was probably a big part of the problem right there.
I didn’t want to hang around here any longer and watch the humans being cute with their stupid pet bot. I needed a good excuse to leave though; it would look weird if I just got up without a word and left. “I’m going to go have a closer look at the scouting flier.” That was as good an excuse as any, and I really did want to check it out before I had to actually pilot it.
“Of course,” Don Abene replied with a nod. “Hopefully it lives up to your expectations!”
I doubted that, but I wasn’t going to say as much. I just nodded and stood up, but before I could leave, Vicky stood up as well. “I’d like to see it as well,” it said lightly. “I don’t get the chance to see ships like that up close much!” Apparently Vicky didn’t want to hang around here any longer either.
We left the crew area and headed down to the cargo deck at the bottom of the ship. Vicky was silent along the way, but I could feel it still in our private feed, leaking irritation. I wondered if I was leaking as much of my own feelings into the feed as it was, and checked my walls again.
The flier was clamped to the deck in the section of the cargo hold that had been set up for it. It was a little bigger than my old flier, to accommodate the co-pilot’s seat behind the main pilot’s seat in the cockpit. Its wings were also fixed in position, and didn't swing back to take up less space like my flier's did. The cockpit itself looked slightly roomier too, and the seats, while not exactly luxurious, had some padding and weren’t just bare plastic. Closer inspection revealed that they also had ejection mechanisms. That was novel. (For me, anyway. SecUnit fliers don’t have ejection seats. We just go down with our fliers, and then, if we’re lucky, walk away from the wreckage.)
I was a little disappointed that the scouting flier didn’t have any weapons, but that wasn’t really its purpose in the first place. Judging from the specifications that I pulled up in the feed, it would be quick and manoeuvrable, and probably capable of outrunning most trouble it came across.
Unlike my own flier, the scouting ship had actual manual flight controls for humans to use without needing to be connected to it via augments. I could definitely fly manually but I much preferred a direct link, and for a moment I was worried that wouldn’t be an option. Fortunately after a bit of investigating, I found the necessary connections and cables neatly tucked away behind a flap on the instrument panel.
I’d need to get a connecting cable so I’d be able to plug in via one of my spine ports, but that should be easy enough. Even if the ship didn’t have one already, it would be simple enough for one of the recyclers to make.
As I was inspecting the flier, Vicky was pacing around it, apparently admiring it but actually mostly just venting to me over our private feed. I’ll admit I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to what it was saying, mostly because it was just variations on its irritation with the human-form bot and how the humans here treated it, and I didn’t need the reminder right now.
I did notice, however, when Vicky abruptly cut itself off, then said aloud, “Miki? What are you doing here?” Its voice was polite and inquisitive, but I could feel its flare of annoyance over the feed.
“Hi, Consultant Vicky!” Miki replied cheerfully, and I heard its footsteps as it wandered into the makeshift hangar. “Is Consultant Rin here still?”
It couldn’t see me where I was in the flier’s cockpit. I hesitated, then popped the canopy open and shifted to lean over the edge so I could see it. “I’m here.” I was beginning to feel uneasy.
“Oh, there you are! Hi, Consultant Rin!” Miki actually lifted one hand to wave at me. “What do you think of the scout flier?”
I hesitated again before replying. “It’s good.” For a given value of good, anyway. It wasn’t my flier, but I’d be able to work with it without any real problems, probably.
“That’s good!” Miki tilted its head towards me. “I’m glad you like it!” It then continued before I could reply. “Would it be okay if I asked you both some questions? I’m very curious!”
[Ugh, no,] Vicky groaned at me over our private feed. [Make it go away. I don’t want to talk to it, or listen to it, or indulge it.]
I definitely understood the sentiment, but I also didn’t want to risk alienating the stupid pet bot. It would probably report to its humans, who would probably take offence at us not indulging their stupid pet bot, and who knew where that would end up going. [I don’t want to either, but it can’t hurt to at least see what it wants to ask us. We don’t have to answer.]
Vicky sent me a rude sigil, but didn’t say anything else as I nodded at Miki. “Go ahead.”
Miki looked back at Vicky briefly before turning to watch me with its blank globular eyes. “You both feel very different in the feed to my friends! I was wondering why that is?”
Oh, shit. I hadn’t realised just how much Miki could pick up over the feed. Judging from the spike of alarm I felt from Vicky, it hadn’t realised either. I had to think quickly, while also ignoring the fact that it had referred to its humans as its friends. (Bots don’t have friends. Bots just have owners, or if it’s a weird polity like Preservation, “guardians”, which is just a nicer way of saying “owners”. Miki thinking of its humans as friends made me have an emotion that I really didn’t want to figure out.) “It’s probably just because we’re both augmented,” I replied as calmly as I could manage.
“But Vibol and Kader are both augmented too, and they still don’t feel anything like you do.” Miki didn’t sound angry, or accusatory, or even suspicious. It just sounded honestly curious. This was simply a puzzle that it wanted to solve.
[I told you this was a bad fucking idea,] Vicky sent me.
[At least it asked us, and didn’t just ask its own humans first and make them suspicious of us,] I pointed out. “Vicky and I are from the Corporation Rim, and we have Corporation Rim augments, not your home polity’s augments,” I suggested. “That’s probably why we feel different to Kader and Vibol.”
“Oh!” Miki tilted its head the other way, and I found myself wondering if it was a gesture that the humans had programmed into it, or one that it had picked up itself. “I hadn’t considered that. That makes sense. Thank you!” I started to hope that it would leave now that we’d satisfied its curiosity, but no such luck. Miki still had questions. “Since you’re from the Corporation Rim, can you tell me what it’s like?”
I hesitated, trying to think about how to even begin answering that. Vicky replied almost immediately, though. “It’s shit,” it said bluntly. “It’s full of corporations whose only concern is how to make as much money as possible, usually by trapping people in shitty, low-paying contracts they can’t get out of. If a corporation wants something that it can’t get by buying, borrowing, or blackmailing, they’ll just take it by force if they think they can get away with it.”
Miki shifted to regard Vicky. “... That seems very unfriendly,” it commented quietly after a long, thoughtful pause.
“Most people in the Corporation Rim aren’t very… friendly,” Vicky said with tightly controlled neutrality.
“Oh.” Miki seemed to consider this for a long moment. “I’ve heard Don Abene and the others talk about the Corporation Rim sometimes,” it admitted. “Although they stop when they notice that I’m there.” It paused again, then added thoughtfully, “It doesn’t sound like a very nice place.”
“It isn’t,” I said. “That’s one of the reasons why we took this job - we’re trying to leave it.”
“Ooh. I understand.” Miki nodded, then clapped its hands together. “You’re looking for friends! Don Abene and everyone else here are good people, and good friends. I’m sure they’ll be happy to be your friends too! And I can be your friend as well!”
[Why the fuck did you say that? I don’t need some fucking pet bot who’s never had a single bad thing happen to it in its entire existence decide to be my ‘friend’,] Vicky said venomously over the feed to me; how it managed to keep its facial expression pleasant was a mystery to me. Then again, it probably got a lot of practice back when it was still governed. [It’s so fucking sheltered and naive, it has no idea what it’s talking about, no idea how fucking lucky it is or how good it has it. Why the fuck would I even want it as a friend in the first place? I don’t need its or its humans’ stupid fucking friendship!]
[Why do you hate Miki so much?] I retorted before I could think about what I was saying. I hadn’t realised just how much its venting had been getting on my nerves until now. [Yes it’s a dumb sheltered pet bot, but you don’t have to be its friend if you don’t want to be. Nobody can force you to do anything you don’t want to do any more, remember? You don’t even have to pretend. Just don’t be so nasty to it that you make the humans mad before we’ve finished with this contract.]
For a moment it felt like Vicky was going to respond with some biting remark - I could feel its anger leaking through the feed. But it remained silent, the anger cutting off as it pulled itself fully back behind its own walls. It didn’t leave our shared feed entirely, but there was a definite sense of withdrawing, retreating.
Miki was still watching Vicky, waiting for some kind of response. Vicky took a breath, then gave the human-form bot a small, lopsided smile. “That’s very kind of you, Miki.” It then turned to look up at me before Miki could respond. “Rin, I’m going to take a nap.” It turned on its heel and left the cargo hold before I could figure out how to reply.
Miki watched Vicky leave, then turned to look back up at me. “Is Consultant Vicky okay?” it asked me, quiet and subdued, a sharp contrast to its usual cheer.
“Vicky’s fine,” I reassured it after a moment’s thought. “They’re just not used to anyone being kind to them. Just… give them some space, all right?”
“Okay.” Miki nodded, then hesitated before asking me, “... Are you kind to Consultant Vicky?”
How the fuck was I even supposed to answer that? I could have just given some trite, false reassurance, but I didn’t want to lie to Miki, for some reason. “I try to be,” I finally replied after some serious consideration. “But I don’t know if I do a good job of it.”
Miki tilted its head, regarding me with those big, blank eyes. They made me miss the opaque faceplate of my helmet. Finally it replied, “I think the important part is that you’re trying. That’s what Don Abene would say, and I agree.” It gave a decisive nod.
“... Thanks, Miki.” It was the only thing I could think of to say.
“You’re welcome!” it replied, back to its usual cheerfulness. “Would you like to play some games with me?”
“Uhh.” I absolutely did not. “I need to finish inspecting this flier, then I’m probably going to rest for a while before we reach the planet. I’ll be doing a lot of flying once we get there.”
“Oh, okay!” Miki didn’t seem upset at my refusal, at least. “It’s important to be well rested before doing anything important! And finding the installation is very important. Rest well, Consultant Rin!” It waved one hand at me, then turned and wandered back out of the cargo hold.
I waited until it was gone, then settled back into the flier’s cockpit and started up an episode of Sanctuary Moon.
Chapter Four
The ship finally reached the planet and settled into geosynchronous orbit above the general area where we suspected the installation was. The little satellite orbiting the planet couldn’t pinpoint the installation itself, or the energy signature from the geothermal plant, but it had managed to narrow the field down so I wouldn’t have to fly over the entire planet.
Hopefully, anyway.
We had one last briefing before I launched. Don Abene and the rest of the assessment team wanted me to keep my scouting flights to only two to three hour stretches, and return to the ship between them. I managed to convince them that doing so would waste too much time, and that I was perfectly capable of flying for longer. I also convinced them that I could land on the planet itself if I needed a break, instead of dealing with atmospheric re-entry multiple times.
Thinking about atmospheric re-entry still made the empty hollow in my chest ache. I didn’t want to have to put up with that any more than absolutely necessary.
Since I wasn’t going to be taking a co-pilot, they packed a bunch of meal packs and water containers into the co-pilot’s seat so I’d have something to eat and drink on my planetside breaks, along with an environmental suit for when I needed to leave the scout flier. (I wouldn’t actually use them, obviously, but it wouldn’t be difficult to dispose of some to make the humans think I’d consumed them.) I used some cargo netting to fasten them securely into place so they wouldn’t rattle around.
Finally it was time to launch. I’d put on the self-sizing flight suit and helmet that came with the scout flier over my regular clothes, with the cable from my spine port running beneath my clothes and poking out the end of my sleeve. I settled into the cockpit, closed the canopy, then plugged into the scout flier.
It felt different to my old flier; it wasn’t made for a SecUnit to connect to it, only augmented humans, so the feedback was much more limited and I didn’t have the same sense of it being a part of me. But it still filled the aching emptiness, at least partially, and that was good enough for now.
I started the scout flier up and went through a systems check, ran a quick comms check to make sure I was connected to the ship’s comms, then gave the all-clear for launch. The hangar was empty apart from my flier, with the bulkhead doors between the hangar and the rest of the ship tightly closed. When I gave the signal, the hangar began its decompression cycle in preparation for the cargo bay doors opening to let me out. We couldn’t just open the bay doors while there was still atmosphere in the makeshift hangar, since there was no air barrier to stop it from explosively venting into space and potentially damaging the flier on the way out.
As soon as the atmosphere had been safely vented, the cargo bay doors slowly slid open, revealing the glittering black of space and the curve of the planet below. I waited until they were fully open (I wasn’t yet familiar enough with this flier to slip through as soon as I had enough clearance), then I eased the scout flier off the deck and out of the ship.
Once I was safely clear of the ship, I kicked in the engines and rocketed away. I tapped the comm and said, “I’m going to do some test flying to familiarise myself with the scout flier before I start for the planet.”
“Confirmed,” came the reply from Vibol on the ship’s bridge, monitoring the comms. “Take care.”
“Of course.” I didn’t really need to spend a lot of time familiarising myself with the flier, plugged into it as I was, but it was a good excuse to just enjoy some space flight before I had to deal with flying in atmosphere. “I’ll keep you updated.”
It felt so good to be flying again, out in open space, with no HubSystem dictating my every action. We were on the dark side of the planet, and the system’s primary star made the upper edge of its atmosphere glow against the backdrop of space. I started up one of my favourite music playlists, took some time to enjoy the view, then flew the scout flier through several increasingly-complicated manoeuvres, just for the fun of it.
I couldn’t waste too much time just enjoying myself though; I still had a job to do. Eventually I pointed the scout flier towards the planet and began the descent.
Atmospheric re-entry was… well, the scout flier handled it just fine. Once I made it to a safe altitude, I managed to relax a little and focus on my actual task. The weather in the area I was in was cloudy, but fortunately not stormy, for now anyway. I took some time to acclimatise myself to the planet’s gravity, atmosphere, and how the scout flier handled. It was pleasantly responsive, though it couldn’t quite match my old flier for speed or manoeuvrability.
Still, it was a joy to be flying again, even if I couldn’t feel the air passing over the scout flier’s surfaces. All my attention was focused on the feeling of the scout flier around me, the low hum of its engines vibrating through its frame, the way it carved through the air, the glimpses through the clouds of the planet below and the sky above.
I ran the scout flier through some more aerial acrobatics, just because I could and there was nobody to see me or stop me. Finally I dove to a suitable scanning altitude and focused the scout flier’s scanners towards the ground, searching for any signs of the geothermal plant’s power signature or hints of the installation itself.
Most humans would probably find doing aerial sweeps like this boring, especially for hours on end, but I loved it. The actual scanning didn’t take up more than a small fraction of my attention, so I could listen to my music and focus on the flying itself. I had a whole lot of new music that I’d downloaded from the last couple of stations, and it was very satisfying to take my time sorting through all of them and organising them into various playlists while I flew.
I also never got tired of admiring the ever-changing views - a small part of my archives was reserved for images and video I’d taken while flying or on patrol outdoors, and I added several new files to my collection. I hated being actually deployed onto planets, with their dirt and environmental hazards and alien (and potentially hostile) fauna and flora, but most of the deployments to planets that I could remember involved a lot of flying time, so. That kind of made up for the rest.
The planet’s unpredictable weather changes were an interesting challenge, too. An hour or so into my scanning, one of the storms caught me somewhat off-guard - I’d been aware of it forming, and had adjusted my course to avoid it, but it moved a lot faster than I anticipated and I suddenly found myself in the middle of it.
It was exhilarating, honestly. Normally I do my best to avoid flying in storms - there’s often hail, which can range from mildly annoying to very damaging, or ice can start building up on my wings and interfere with the flight surfaces and other mechanisms, or microbursts and severe turbulence can rattle me around and increase the risk of me colliding with terrain or other fliers or whatever.
This storm however didn’t have much hail or significant ice buildup, I was too high up to need to worry much about colliding with the terrain as long as I kept track of my altitude, and there were no other fliers or anything else around to run into. There was a lot of wind turbulence, which wasn’t great, but it wasn’t a huge threat for now, either.
I began climbing through the storm, aiming for the open air above the clouds as rain drummed against the scout flier. As I climbed, I started to smell ozone, and thin, branching arcs of blue-white electricity began playing across the windshield of the scout flier, almost dancing amongst the raindrops as it flickered in and out of view. After a few minutes of this, a purplish-blue glow started building in front of the scout flier’s nosecone, easily visible against the backdrop of dark grey clouds.
Oh, I knew what that meant.
I wasn’t particularly worried, though. I’d already thoroughly inspected the scout flier, and reviewed its specs, and I knew it was perfectly capable of withstanding what was coming. I switched to one of my more intense playlists and continued piloting the scout flier upwards.
Then there was a blindingly bright flash and a loud bang as lightning struck the scout flier, the electricity flashing through the in-built framework designed to channel it through the flier’s outer skin without letting it reach any of the internal workings. My organic skin tingled from the static discharge, but apart from a brief spike in the scout flier’s systems, no damage was reported. It was a little weird (but kind of nice) to experience a mid-air lightning strike without actually directly feeling it like I would have in my own flier.
Still, I didn’t want to get hit by lightning more often than absolutely necessary, so I continued climbing. The scout flier only caught one more lightning strike before I finally breached the ceiling of the clouds and burst out into the open air above them, trailing vapour from the tips of the scout flier’s wings.
The air above the storm was crisp and clear and bitingly cold, with sunlight reflecting off the surface of the clouds below. The angle of the sun threw the shadow of the scout flier ahead of me, flickering starkly over the endless, ever-shifting cloud tops. The sky above was an intense blue, fading to near-white at the distant, curving horizon.
In the thin light, I could see that some scorch marks patterned the scout flier’s nosecone, but the rain had already washed off a good amount of the surface charring. The scout flier’s systems still weren’t reporting any damage, but I decided to land and do a full inspection once I’d cleared the storm.
In the meantime, I reviewed my coordinates and recalculated my scanning route. The storm had interrupted my scanning and pushed me well off course, so I had to adjust my planned scanning pattern to compensate. While I was still doing that, the comm crackled slightly as Vibol’s voice came through. “You all good down there?” she asked. “That storm cell formed damned fast.”
“I’m all good,” I replied. Even after my experiences with the PreservationAux humans, it was still very weird to have someone asking if I was okay. Normally I wouldn’t have elaborated any further, but my time with Vicky had emphasised that humans who were interacting with each other regularly liked to receive extra details. “Caught a couple of lightning strikes, but didn’t take any damage. I’ll land when I can to double-check, but so far, no problems.”
“Oof,” Vibol commented, entirely unnecessarily. “Lightning strikes, damn. I’m glad it’s you down there and not me. Let us know if any issues crop up.”
“Will do.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say, but luckily Vibol just tapped the comm in acknowledgement, then signed off.
I indulged in some more aerial acrobatics again (let’s just pretend it was solely to test for any mechanical issues from the lightning strikes), then headed for the ground once I’d gotten past the storm’s trailing edge. I landed carefully, then exited the scout flier and inspected it thoroughly from nose to tail for any potential issues that its systems might not have reported.
It came up all clear, to my relief, so I got back into the air and resumed my interrupted scanning.
I had to land a couple more times for my scheduled breaks, even though I didn’t actually need them. The GI humans were taking turns to monitor my progress from the ship, and they would start getting suspicious if I didn’t land every few hours. One of my breaks also helped me avoid another sudden but intense storm burst, which was lucky. I’d already flown through one storm, I didn’t want to repeat the experience and risk taking actual damage if I didn’t absolutely have to.
I landed the scout flier in the lee of a massive tumble of rocks and boulders, nestled under a large overhang that sheltered it from the driving rain and howling wind. I then spent most of my break perched on a rock beneath the overhang, watching the storm rage. The clouds were turbulent and ever-shifting, lanced with frequent bursts of eye-searing lightning. It was quite a show. (I saved a few video clips of the more impressive lightning bursts and cloud formations.) I hadn’t bothered getting the environmental suit out - a human wouldn’t have been able to sit outside the scout flier for as long as I did without an environmental suit, but I didn’t need as much air as humans, so I was fine.
Finally the storm passed, and I got back into the scout flier and returned to the sky.
I was flying high over a rough, jagged, mountainous area when the scout flier’s scanners finally started picking up on the first hints of an energy signal. I tapped the comm and reported, “I’m picking up on something, going to have a closer look. Are you prepped for descent yet?”
It was Kader on the comms this time. “Almost,” he replied. “We’ll be ready to bring the ship down as soon as you find us a landing zone.” The plan was, once I located the installation, the others would bring the ship down and land it, and we’d start the investigation.
“Acknowledged. I’ll keep you updated.” I brought the scout flier lower, following the traces of the energy signal. It wasn’t very strong, which made sense if it was somewhere underground. There wasn’t much else around to obscure it though, so it wasn’t difficult to track.
I eventually managed to hone in on the geothermal plant’s general location; as we’d suspected, it was well underground. I sent the coordinates up to the ship, then continued looking for the installation, which was proving to be a much more difficult task. We knew it would be situated relatively close to the power plant, but the installation itself was most likely powered down, and my scanners wouldn’t be able to pick it out easily from the surrounding terrain. I’d probably have to find it visually.
Given the mountainous area the power plant was in, that proved to be an absolute pain in more ways than one. My scanners kept giving me false positives, and I had to circle every peak and fly over every valley to make sure I was checking every nook and cranny. The air above the mountains was choppy and turbulent, which made flying very rough. I had to stay high enough that any sudden air pockets or unexpected wind shear wouldn’t slam the scout flier into a mountain top before I could adjust, but low enough that I could still make out details of the terrain.
I had to stop for another break as the sun dropped beneath the horizon and it became too dark for a human to see clearly. Even my own variety of visual filters were struggling with the lack of light. I did circle the area of the power plant a few times first, looking for any traces of illumination, just in case the installation still had some outer lights on, but no luck. I then landed in an area I’d noted on an earlier pass; it was a sheltered valley between two ridges that would be safely out of the wind if another storm burst came through.
I landed the scout flier, but didn’t bother leaving the cockpit this time. “Stopping for the night,” I sent over the comm to the ship. “I’ll have to resume the search in the morning.”
“Acknowledged,” came the reply. Kader again. “Are you going to be comfortable enough? Do you want to come back up for the night?”
“No, I’m good,” I replied. “I still have plenty of meal packs and water, and the cockpit’s comfortable enough for me to sleep in.” None of that was a lie; I hadn’t even touched the meal packs or water yet, and the cockpit was more comfortable than the transport boxes I’d spent so much time in before.
“All right. Have a good night, and we’ll hear from you in the morning.”
“Acknowledged.” I clicked the comm off, then settled in my seat, tilted my head back to watch the glittering night sky through the cockpit canopy, and sank into my media.
Another storm rolled through overnight; the lightning show was noticeably more impressive at night, even through the rain pelting against the cockpit canopy. I recorded a few more video clips, then indulged in a short recharge cycle once the storm had passed.
When dawn broke and the sky started brightening, I tapped the comm and let the ship know I was awake and resuming my search. “I hope you find it soon,” Vibol replied over the comm. “I think everyone’s getting a little stir crazy up here. Good luck.” There wasn’t much I could say in response to that, so I just acknowledged and signed off, then took to the air once more.
The earlier storm had swept the sky clear, and I got to enjoy a gorgeous sunrise from my vantage point high above the mountains as I resumed my grid search. (Yes, I took a couple more images and video clips of the sunrise.) Over the next hour or so of flying, the scout flier’s scanners picked up several more false positives that I had to visually check and mark off as false.
Finally, though, one of the scanner readings I got seemed promising. I dropped some altitude to get a better look at the area, and spotted an open, flat area butted up next to a cliff face on the side of one of the mountains. It looked like someone had carved a chunk of the mountain peak out to create a landing zone, but there was no visible sign of an installation or habitation module or environmental dome or any other structure. Still, it looked artificial enough that it warranted closer investigation.
I carefully brought the scout flier down towards the platform, steadying it through wind eddies and the occasional updraft, until I landed safely. Again, I didn’t bother with the environmental suit when I left the scout flier. Now that I’d landed, I could see signs of some kind of structure that had been built into the side of the cliff next to the landing pad. Closer inspection revealed that they were air locks; a regular human-sized door one and a much larger door that was probably meant for equipment or cargo.
Apparently GrayCris had built their installation into the mountain itself, for whatever reason. Probably so they wouldn’t need to build an environmental dome as well. They’d be able to just set up environmental controls within the installation inside the mountain. The doors were the same colour as the surrounding rock, which made them difficult to pick out even up close, and almost impossible to spot from a distance.
I took some time to examine the doors and their locking mechanisms - standard electronic locks, with standby power. I could probably have hacked them to open them, but technically that wasn’t my job on this contract, and it might make the humans ask questions I wasn’t willing to answer. So I left them locked, double-checked that the landing platform would be big and stable enough for the GI ship, then returned to the scout flier and tapped the comm. “I’ve found it.”
“Finally!” Vibol replied enthusiastically as I sent up the landing pad coordinates. “Good work, thanks! We’ll be down as soon as possible!”
“All right. I’ll be in the air until you get here, give you more landing space. There’s not a lot of room for error here.” That wasn’t actually true; there was more than enough space for the GI ship, my scout flier, and several other shuttles besides. Still, I really didn’t want the scout flier getting damaged because the humans messed up the landing somehow. I’d asked earlier if they would need me for bringing the big ship down, but Vibol and Kader had both reassured me that they were comfortable with landing it. It was mostly just the scouting piloting that they’d needed me for - neither of them were experienced with the smaller, lighter flier.
So while I waited for them to arrive, I took off in the scout flier and just enjoyed the free air time. After this contract, I had no idea when I’d get to fly again. I was going to make the most of it while I had the chance.
Chapter Five
Vibol and Kader managed to land the ship with no issues, and there was more than enough space left to one side of the landing zone for me to park the scout flier as well. I finally donned the environmental suit, just so the humans wouldn’t ask me any awkward questions, then went to meet up with the team as they disembarked from the ship. Don Abene led the way with Miki beside her, followed by Hirune, Brais, Ejiro, and Vicky. Kader and Vibol were staying on the ship to monitor it and everything outside the installation.
As I moved up to join them, Don Abene greeted me with a warm smile that was visible through the clear faceplate of her environmental suit. “Rin! Excellent work on finding the installation.”
I shrugged, a little self-conscious. “It took longer than I would have liked to locate it.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” Abene said reassuringly. “We knew it would take a while to find. If we’d had to search for it without your help, it likely would have taken us much longer. Now let’s see what the installation itself is like.”
Everyone except Miki was wearing full suits, with filtering and emergency air supply, and some minor protection for vulnerable human bodies. Brais and Ejiro both carried small hand guns, though as soon as she saw me, Brais handed hers to me with obvious relief. I clipped it to the belt of my environmental suit with a nod (and no small amount of relief of my own. That was one less human with the potential to shoot me in the back), then led the way towards the smaller of the two doors embedded in the cliff face. “Here. It looks like GrayCris built their installation directly into the mountain. The doors are locked, and on standby power as far as I can tell.”
Don Abene nodded and stepped up to the door. “We have some codes that GrayCris provided - they should get us in.”
That struck me as a little - okay, a lot - odd. “Wait,” I said before she could use any of them. “They gave you entry codes, but not the location of the actual base? Doesn’t that strike any of you as strange?”
Everyone paused. “Now that you mention it…” Hirune murmured thoughtfully. “That does seem odd. Why would they try to obstruct us by not giving us the coordinates, but then help by handing over the passcodes?”
“Perhaps the passcodes activate something else,” Vicky suggested carefully. I had a sneaking suspicion that it was thinking of the same episode of one of the serials we’d watched together, where the main characters had used a passcode that they believed was legitimate, but actually just activated the villain-of-the-arc’s lethal base defences. It had led to a rather impressive but highly unrealistic fight scene. “They might have some kind of… security or something that will get activated instead.”
Yeah, okay, Vicky was definitely thinking of the same episode. Hah.
Don Abene considered for a moment. “All right, we won’t use the codes. Just in case. Vicky, can you get us in some other way?”
“Absolutely. Just give me a minute to see if I can get a status report on the installation from here, before we actually try to enter,” Vicky said absently as it pretended to work on its display surface. I was already working on finding and getting into the installation’s SecSystem - GrayCris was a Corporation Rim company, it would definitely have installed at least some kind of HubSystem and SecSystem here to monitor its own people.
“Yes, of course,” Don Abene replied. “Do whatever you need to do.” She and the others spread out a bit to start examining the larger cargo door and the rest of the cliff face.
Vicky just nodded, even as it pinged our private feed channel. [Are you getting anything yet?] it asked.
[A little,] I replied. [The installation’s on standby power. There’s a HubSystem and SecSystem, but they’re in hibernation mode. I can get them started, but it’ll take a bit for both the power and the systems to cycle up fully.] Even as I was saying that, I was gently prodding the power back up from standby mode and starting HubSystem and SecSystem’s boot-up procedures.
[Do you think it’s safe to enter?] Vicky asked.
[Probably not,] I admitted. [Not using the codes GrayCris provided has probably given us some leeway, but who knows what kind of security they left behind. But I don’t think the humans are going to be dissuaded from investigating this place so soon when we’ve only just found it.]
Vicky sent a ping of agreement. [If we can get Hub and SecSystem running, we should be able to figure out what surprises are waiting for us, and hopefully deactivate them before they become an issue.]
[Hopefully.] I hesitated for a moment, thinking. [I do still have my armour,] I admitted reluctantly. [It would be safer if I wore it and took point, just in case, but… it’s very obviously SecUnit armour.]
[I’ve been talking with the humans a lot while we were waiting for you to find this place,] Vicky replied. [It’s illegal to own SecUnits - or constructs in general - in their home polity, and they tend to avoid the Corporation Rim as much as possible. I don’t think any of them have ever seen an actual SecUnit in person. They might not recognise it.]
I still hesitated. [We don’t actually know yet if there’s anything to worry about in there, and me getting my armour might… unduly concern the humans.] I wanted my armour (especially the opaque faceplate), but I also wanted to not expose myself as a SecUnit. But if anything was lurking inside the installation, I wanted to be able to protect the humans, and I could do so more effectively if I had my armour. (And my drones, and my big projectile weapon, but I’d lost those along with my flier, so I’d just have to do without.)
I could tell that Vicky was thinking it over as well. Finally it said, [Go get your armour. Worse comes to worst, if the humans do recognise it as SecUnit armour, we can just… pretend you scavenged it, or something. Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. If anything is in there and you end up getting shot, it’s going to become even more obvious that you’re a SecUnit if you don’t have armour on.]
That was a good point, too. Damn it. [All right. The power’s cycling up, and both HubSystem and SecSystem are rebooting. Don’t let the humans enter the installation until I’m back.] Vicky pinged an acknowledgement, and I turned to face the humans. “Don Abene?”
She paused her examination of the larger cargo door to look up at me. “Yes?”
“Remember how I mentioned earlier about having some security experience?” She nodded, and I continued before I could lose my nerve. “I’ve still got my old security armour with me - I’d like to gear up in it before we enter the installation. If those codes GrayCris gave you really were meant to activate some kind of security system, it would be better if I’m properly prepared for anything else they might have lying in wait, and you let me take point going in.”
Don Abene was silent for a long moment, thinking. The others had all paused what they were doing as well to listen curiously. “Do you really think there’s going to be anything dangerous in there?” Ejiro asked. I couldn’t tell if he sounded worried or dubious. Maybe a bit of both.
“I don’t know for sure, but I’d rather take precautions anyway, just in case,” I replied.
Don Abene nodded. “Rin’s right. I’d rather be overcautious than not cautious enough. Go ahead, Rin, we’ll wait for you here.”
I quickly went back to the ship and got my bag out of my locker, then retreated to the privacy of the bathroom. Kader and Vibol were up on the bridge, everyone else was outside, and the ship had no internal cameras that I was aware of, but I still didn’t want to get changed somewhere where just anyone could potentially walk in and see my inorganic parts.
I had to strip off the environmental suit and everything else I was wearing, including the cable that I used to connect to the scout flier. I pulled on my suit skin, then began donning the individual pieces of my armour. As I pulled the chestplate out of my bag, I noticed a flattened-looking projectile embedded in one of the armour plates - one of the projectiles that Tlacey’s hired muscle had shot at me, back at RaviHyral, that had been blocked by my bag. That felt like a long time ago. I pried the projectile out and dropped it into the recycler, then finished putting on my armour. I left the helmet retracted though - perhaps they wouldn’t make the connection to SecUnit armour if they could still see my face. As much as I wanted to hide behind the opaque faceplate, not being recognised as a SecUnit was more important right now.
Then I remembered the shitty atmosphere of this planet. Fuck. I had to put the helmet up after all, but I left the faceplate clear. Hopefully that would be enough.
Once I was done I quickly checked myself over in the little bathroom mirror. To my eyes, I looked like any other SecUnit, except that I’d removed all the logos from my armour while I was hiding on transports. But with my human movement code running, I no longer moved like a SecUnit, and with the faceplate clear instead of opaque…
Fuck. It would have to do.
I dumped my bag and the rest of my gear onto my bunk to deal with later, clipped the hand gun onto my armour, then picked up the connecting cable for the scout flier and exited the ship. I left the cable in the scout flier cockpit, just in case I needed it in a hurry later, then rejoined the others in front of the installation door. I did my best to ignore the way that all the humans were probably staring at me - it was hard to tell for sure with everyone in environmental suits. “All right, I’m ready. Before we go in though, I’d like to establish a few security protocols.” I paused, looking to Don Abene for permission.
She nodded. “Go ahead.”
“Thank you.” I paused briefly to organise my thoughts. This wasn’t a standard company security briefing, and these weren’t standard company clients. I had to pick my words myself, and hope that they would trust that I knew what I was doing. “Okay. When we go in, I’ll be taking the lead, checking each area before we enter. We’ll go room by room - no splitting up. Stick together as a group, and don’t lag behind. Keep track of the route we’re taking. If I stop, you stop. If I tell you to retreat, go back to the previous room and wait for me there. If I say run, get back to the ship as quickly as you can, and don’t wait for me. All right?”
“Understood,” Don Abene replied crisply. “We’ll follow your directions.” She looked at the rest of her team. “That means everyone. And remember, we’re not here to ferret out every bit of data here, not yet. This first sweep is just to do an initial assessment of the state of the installation. We can examine everything more closely once we’ve established that the area is safe.”
The others all nodded, including Vicky and Miki. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s get started then.”
Vicky gestured rather theatrically with its portable display surface, and the door opened, releasing a gust of slightly stale air into the thin atmosphere and revealing a standard air lock. That suggested that the installation within was meant to maintain its own livable atmosphere, which made sense. Environmental suits were annoyingly cumbersome, especially for long-term use.
I led the way inside, with Vicky close behind me and the others filing in afterwards. The outer door closed behind us and the airlock cycled us through after a minute or so.
HubSystem and SecSystem were still cycling up, but enough power had returned to the installation that the doors at least were working. Scanners indicated that whatever atmosphere had been maintained within the installation was still there, albeit somewhat stale since the environmental controls hadn’t actively been running for a while. It hadn’t dissipated or escaped, at least, which was a good sign for the structural integrity.
The humans noted that, but elected to stay in their environmental suits for now until they were sure that the environmental systems were fully functional. That was one of the most sensible decisions I’d ever seen any of my clients make.
We left the lock and entered the entrance corridor; I noted no traces of damage, just a few scuffs and scrapes on the walls and floor, signs of normal use. Abene followed behind Vicky with Hirune and Miki, while Brais and Ejiro brought up the rear. All the humans had helmet cameras in their environmental suits, and they were linked to the team feed. I tagged each camera feed so I could access them quickly and monitor them, then backburnered their feeds while I focused on HubSystem and SecSystem.
There were a lot of security cameras everywhere, but with SecSystem still not fully online yet, none of them were active. The lights were flickering on gradually as power returned, but until we got HubSystem fully activated again, they remained on a dim standby setting.
I stepped out of the corridor into a larger space, my scanners informing me that it was empty of life signs as I paced around the circumference. Once I was sure the room was clear, I signalled that the others could enter. GrayCris had provided a basic schematic for the installation, but this room wasn’t labelled on it. It had decontam cubicles and environmental suits stored in racks against the walls. Oddly, for an installation that was meant to have been abandoned, none of the equipment had been removed.
“Was this a clean facility?” Brais asked absently as she poked around the room. “I thought this installation was for mineral assessment. Why would they need decontam cubicles?”
“One of the sections is labelled as a bio lab,” Hirune replied, sounding thoughtful as she checked one of the decontamination cubicles. The cubicles had some power, but all the doors were in the upright position. (Always a relief. Cubicles that something may be hiding in are no fun.) “Perhaps they were testing for bio viability on the planet as well?”
“They wouldn’t need decontam for that, would they?”
“Depends what they were working on. Some of the algaes used for terraforming can get pretty nasty if you’re not careful.”
I didn’t pay much more attention to their speculation as I left the clean room and headed further into the facility. Hub and SecSystem had finally finished booting up, but we would need to get to the main control centre to fully activate them. We couldn’t do so over the feed.
Past the clean room, the corridor split into two branches. One led to areas marked as living areas, the other went deeper into the facility, past various lab sections and to the control centre. That was the branch I took. This corridor looked the same as the first; no damage, no signs of hasty departure, just the occasional scuff or scrape from regular daily use.
I don’t know why I expected to see damage and signs that the human staff had run for their lives; there was no indication that this was anything but a planned abandonment. It shouldn’t have been weird, but it was weird. Vicky, the humans, and Miki followed after me out of the clean room and down the corridor, their voices chasing away the silence. But there was something about the installation that made me feel nervous, my organic skin prickling beneath my suit skin. I hated that. It kind of reminded me of how I felt back when PreservationAux had been investigating the blank map patch.
I couldn’t figure out why, or what was bothering me. Maybe it was the lack of security camera access, but I’d been in worse places with no cameras. Maybe it was the emptiness of the facility, even though we knew it had been abandoned. Maybe it was something subliminal. Actually, it felt pretty liminal. Pro-liminal. Up-liminal? Whatever, there was no knowledge base here to look it up.
We came to the first lab section along this corridor, and Don Abene asked me if we could briefly check each lab we passed on the way to the control centre. I couldn’t think of any reason not to, and plenty of reasons we should. (I didn’t want anything that might be hiding in any of the labs to sneak up behind us after we’d gone past, even though there was no evidence that anything was around to be hiding in the labs in the first place.)
I tapped the button to open the lab door, then stepped inside and did a quick sweep before signalling that the others could also come in. As far as I could tell, this was just a normal laboratory for testing and analysing samples. What kind of samples, I had no idea - I’m a SecUnit, not a science unit. NerdUnit. Whatever.
The humans seemed very interested in it, at least. I waited near the door with Vicky while the others poked around curiously. I noticed Vicky watching Miki as the human-form bot followed Don Abene around the room, but unlike earlier, Vicky wasn’t rolling its eyes at Miki’s behaviour, and it wasn’t making snarky comments to me over the feed either. I was considering whether or not I cared enough to ask it about the change, but I was distracted by the humans before I could make up my mind.
“This is weird.” Don Abene’s words got my attention immediately, along with everyone else’s.
“What is it?” Ejiro asked.
“This lab looks like it was never actually used,” Abene replied, frowning at some of the equipment. “It’s been set up, it’s ready to use, but… nothing’s out of place. All the supplies are still here, all the equipment is here, but everything looks brand new.”
“That is weird,” Hirune agreed. “The records we got indicated that GrayCris were working in this facility for at least a planetary year, if not longer. Why would they go to the effort and expense of setting it up, and then leave an entire lab untouched for all that time?”
Nobody could come up with a satisfactory answer. I didn’t let them ponder it for long though; I really wanted to get to the control centre and get SecSystem (and its cameras) fully operational. “Let’s keep moving,” I said to the room in general.
“Right, right,” Abene replied, nodding. “We can always come back later. Lead the way.”
I headed out of the lab and back into the dimly-lit corridor, with the others following behind me. We passed a few more labs along the way, and stopped to check each one. They were similar to the first - set up, equipped, but barely used. It was eerie, especially since the corridors showed signs of regular use. The humans’ speculation got wilder and wilder with each near-pristine lab, and did absolutely nothing to help my anxiety levels.
Finally we reached the control centre, much to my relief. Vicky moved up to the main console, its portable display surface in hand, and sat down at one of the chairs. “All right, let’s see if we can get everything up and running properly,” it commented for the humans’ sake as it got to work.
As it tapped away at the main console, it pinged me over our private feed connection. [Can you take care of SecSystem while I work on HubSystem?] it asked. [I want to see if we can figure out what those codes GrayCris handed over would have done if we used them before we fully activate anything.]
I just sent a ping of acknowledgement and focused my attention on SecSystem, combing through as much of its operational codes as I could while it was still only partially online. [I’m not getting much,] I finally had to admit to Vicky. [Whatever the codes were meant to do, it looks like it wasn’t anything to do with SecSystem.]
[I’m not getting anything either,] Vicky replied, sounding frustrated. [It seems like the codes would have gotten routed to another system, but I’m not finding what system that would be. It’s not the MedSystem or environmental controls, and I don’t think it’s the geothermal plant either. I might be able to find out more once everything’s fully online though.]
I hesitated for a moment. I didn’t like the idea of starting everything up fully before we knew what the codes were meant to do, but we’d hit a dead end. And we hadn’t encountered anything dangerous yet - there was no sign of any kind of physical security so far. Perhaps they’d just had SecUnits for security, and had taken them all with them when they left. [All right, let’s boot it all up and see what we can find.]
We didn’t have the passwords for the systems, but we were able to bypass that without much trouble. I didn’t know if I could have done so back on my contract with DeltFall, when GrayCris had changed the DeltFall systems’ passwords, but I hadn’t really had the opportunity to try at the time, and I had also gotten a lot more experience with hacking systems since then.
Finally, HubSystem and SecSystem were fully up and running. The lights brightened, and I could hear the environmental controls kick into full gear, air whispering steadily through the installation corridors. The humans all seemed relieved, and Don Abene patted Vicky’s shoulder. I was very glad that she didn’t try to pat mine.
“How are the systems looking?” Abene asked Vicky.
“Everything seems functional and operating normally,” Vicky replied, giving Abene a confident smile. “We’ll be able to check out the rest of the installation much more easily now.”
Don Abene nodded. “All right. It looks like we still have almost two thirds of the facility to check - we’ll do a cursory sweep, make sure there’s nothing out of the ordinary, and then we can return to the ship and take a break while we wait for the environmental controls to refresh the atmosphere in here. Once the readings are clear, we’ll be able to assess the installation more thoroughly without needing to wear our environmental suits the entire time.”
That plan was met with enthusiasm by the rest of the humans. Nobody liked wearing environmental suits for too long, no matter how accustomed to them they were.
Once again, I led the way out of the control centre and through the corridors to the next section of the installation. This area was marked on the basic schematics as the main living area, including the mess hall, a central lounge area, and some other generic exercise and recreational spaces.
All of these areas looked like they’d actually been lived in and used, unlike the various labs we’d already checked. Lots of scuff marks, faint stains, scratches, repaired patches in upholstery, things like that. Any perishables had been removed from the kitchens and storage areas, but there was still a decent amount of supplies that could stay unspoiled for tens of thousands of hours left in storage.
That in itself was strange. “I thought GrayCris had abandoned this facility entirely?” Brais commented to the others as she held up a long-life ration bar. “If they’d really abandoned it like they said they had, why would they leave all this behind?”
“Not just the supplies, but all the equipment, too,” Hirune added. “All the lab equipment, the furniture, the central systems, everything else. All of this stuff is expensive, you’d think they’d take as much of it with them as they could.”
“Perhaps they meant to come back,” Ejiro mused. “But if so, why did they all leave in the first place?”
“They didn’t say,” Don Abene replied. “Their report on this facility was very sparse, and incredibly vague, despite what we paid for the reclamation rights.”
I had a sneaking suspicion that the only reasons GrayCris had given up anything about this facility was that they were currently in dire financial straits, given all the legal proceedings against them after what had happened with DeltFall and PreservationAux. I didn’t mention it though; I didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that I knew anything about the whole mess.
The humans kept speculating as we continued on towards the last section, where the living quarters were. As we worked our way through the various bedrooms and bathrooms, Vicky and I were still combing through HubSystem and SecSystem. It was a relief to finally have full camera access, and I split part of my attention off to cycle through the multiple inputs. Having the cameras also meant I didn’t have to physically clear each room in person before letting the humans check them out.
“It looks like nobody left any personal belongings behind, at least,” Ejiro commented after rummaging through one of the bedrooms. “But there’s still bedding, and towels, and soap, general stuff like that. I really do think they meant to come back at some point.”
“I agree,” Don Abene replied. “There are definitely signs that a number of people were living here for quite a while. But if they weren’t using any of the labs, then what were they actually doing here?”
Vicky was still pretending to work on its display interface; at that question, it looked up at Don Abene. “I have a theory about that, actually,” it started. That got everyone’s attention, and Abene gestured for it to continue. “Now that we’ve got HubSystem up and running, I’ve been going through it, checking the installation schematics, and the geothermal plant read-outs. According to the HubSystem diagnostics, this installation isn’t using anywhere near the amount of power that the geothermal plant says is actually being drawn from it. And there’s a couple of discrepancies between the schematics GrayCris gave us, and the schematics that HubSystem is showing.”
It pulled up both sets of schematics and dropped them into the team feed with a completely unnecessary hand gesture. “See? Here, and here,” it said as it highlighted the discrepancies. “I think there’s a lot more to this installation than what we’ve seen. Whatever they were actually working on here, they didn’t want anyone else to know about.”
I was getting a very bad feeling about what exactly GrayCris had been working on here. But if I could get the data on it, I could send it to Dr. Mensah to help with the legal proceedings against GrayCris. I just had to hope that whatever had made GrayCris leave the installation in the first place wasn’t anything… drastic. At least there had been no signs of a rushed, panicked evacuation, so they hadn’t left in a hurry. They hadn’t been chased out. It had been planned.
Don Abene had raised an eyebrow at Vicky. “Are you saying there’s another, secret section of the installation hidden somewhere?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Vicky confirmed with a nod. “We just need to find it.”
Chapter Six
(CW: Canon-typical violence)
In the end, it wasn’t actually that difficult to find. The discrepancies on the schematics helped to narrow down the area we needed to look in, and with my access to SecSystem’s cameras, I was able to quickly scan for signs of scuff marks and general wear and tear from regular movement, instead of having to search manually. An oddly empty storage room near the rear of the installation showed signs of frequent passage, far more frequent than a storage room warranted.
After some examination of the room, we found the elevator, its outer doors disguised to look like normal wall panels. The humans and Miki were all very excited and immediately piled into the elevator, eager to explore the hidden area. Of course I had to go with them, and Vicky wasn’t going to be left behind, either.
The enclosed elevator didn’t feel very speedy, though it was difficult to tell from inside it how fast it was going, and it seemed to descend a long way. There were no other stops along the way, either. It simply had Upper and Lower as its destinations.
As we descended, I felt the edges of another SecSystem appear - it was tenuously connected to the main SecSystem, but completely hidden until you got within range of it. I immediately started poking at it, but the security on this secondary SecSystem was much tighter, and I was having trouble convincing it that I was meant to be there like I had with the main SecSystem. I couldn’t access its cameras or any of its other functions, which made me nervous.
There also seemed to be a secondary HubSystem down here too; I could feel Vicky poking at it. I sent it a ping and asked, [Having any luck with the new HubSystem?]
[Some,] Vicky replied distractedly. [I’m getting the schematics for this secondary area, at least, and environmental diagnostics. Atmosphere seems good, power’s on, lights should be on when we get there. I’m not finding anything else though. You?]
[The SecSystem down here is being very uncooperative,] I admitted reluctantly. [I’m working on it, but I haven’t been able to get in yet. The security on it is a lot tighter than any other SecSystem I’ve encountered before.]
[What are they hiding down here?] Vicky asked.
I didn’t want to answer that, and just focused on the secondary SecSystem. (SecSecSystem? No, that’s stupid. SubSecSystem. Let’s go with that.)
Finally the elevator arrived at its destination with a cheerful little chime. The doors slid open, and I led the way out. At least the humans managed to restrain their excitement enough to let me take point again.
The elevator opened up into a small, plain room, with nothing in it. There was what looked like a security checkpoint in the wall opposite the elevator, alongside a sturdy bulkhead door. More scuff marks marred the floor, showing signs of regular passage. I finally managed to make enough headway with SubSecSystem to at least unlock the bulkhead door, though I still couldn’t get anything else.
As we waited for the bulkhead door to open, the humans were speculating amongst themselves about why the installation would have such a secure door down here, and what could be beyond it. I wasn’t paying much attention to them; we’d find out what was on the other side as soon as the door opened.
It was another corridor, identical to all the other ones we’d gone through before. One door to the right led into the security checkpoint room, which I spent some time examining, hoping that something in it would let me get more access to SubSecSystem.
No such luck, but I did find something else that was much more immediately concerning. “Don Abene, there’s a whole swarm of combat drones on standby here,” I said aloud as I eyed the drone storage and deployment centre built into one side of the security checkpoint.
Thirty combat drones rested in their little recharge slots, on standby and ready to go at a moment’s notice. The much smaller (cheaper) intel drones that I usually had on contracts were designed for intel and better collecting the clients’ proprietary data, as well as keeping watch on your base perimeter and making sure nothing sneaks up on your team in the field. These combat drones were a larger model that had intel capacity, extra shielding, and an onboard energy weapon.
We were lucky that nothing we had done so far had activated them. There was no way I could protect everyone from thirty combat drones. I singled one of the drones out and carefully separated it from the swarm, then pinged it with a compressed list of drone control keys.
(I got the list during a previous contract, from the proprietary data of a company client who worked on countermeasures for combat drones. Lots of the military corporations used combat drones, so figuring out ways to counter them was very profitable. I had managed to resist deleting it to fill that space up with new serials or music. I knew it would come in handy someday.)
One of the keys worked, and the drone now registered me as an approved user.
“Combat drones?” Abene was saying as I worked; she sounded concerned and a little alarmed, and rightfully so. She came up to stand beside me, with the others gathering behind and peering past us warily. “Why would they need so many combat drones here?”
“Perhaps to protect the installation from potential raiders?” Ejiro suggested, though he sounded dubious.
“Maybe, but the chances of raiders finding or bothering with this place is pretty low,” Abene said thoughtfully. “If they were meant to protect against raiders, why are they down here instead of in the upper installation? And it seems overkill to have so many drones to monitor their own workers…”
I tuned them out and wandered around in the drone’s control code for a minute or so, making sure I knew how it worked. As I did so, I noticed a familiar-looking code string. A closer look revealed that it was one of the codes that GrayCris had given Don Abene. If she’d used it while trying to enter the installation, it would have activated all the combat drones and set them to “kill everything” mode.
Ah. Okay. That explained what they were doing here. GrayCris really didn’t want to share this installation with anyone, apparently. I wish I could say that I was surprised, but knowing what I already did about GrayCris, I really wasn’t.
Once I was comfortable with the drone’s systems, I pinged the rest of the swarm as well. Within twenty seconds, I had severed their connection to SubSecSystem, and they were all my new drone friends.
The humans were still speculating about why the drones were here, and I interrupted them to say, “One of the codes GrayCris gave you to use would have activated them, and they would have attacked you on sight.”
That made everyone fall silent. Miki was the first to speak up, with a quiet, “That isn’t very friendly.”
No shit, Miki.
“Should we… try to turn them off, or disable them, or something?” Brais was suggesting, shifting nervously in the doorway behind me.
“I’ve already cut them off from the installation’s SecSystem and taken control of them,” I informed Brais and the rest of the GI team. “They won’t activate now except under my orders.”
I could see how everyone’s postures relaxed at that news. “Ah, thank you, Rin,” Don Abene said, sounding relieved. “I’m very glad we hired you.”
It was my turn to be uncomfortable. More uncomfortable. Just being in this installation was uncomfortable enough, honestly. “Just doing my job,” I replied with a shrug after a brief but awkward pause. To cut off any further conversation, I activated the first combat drone so I could bring it with me. Its in-built energy weapon was more powerful than the little hand-held gun I was carrying, which made me feel slightly better. I would have liked to bring more, but even augmented humans couldn’t reliably control more than one drone at a time. “Let’s keep going.”
“Right, right.” Don Abene nodded, and everyone shuffled out of the security room and back into the corridor. Once again I took the lead as we continued to explore, my new drone hovering along overhead.
Past the security room were several more labs, similar to the ones up in the main facility, full of various types of scientific equipment. These labs, however, showed obvious signs of heavy use. This was definitely where most of the GrayCris humans had spent the majority of their time in this installation.
Nothing of whatever they’d been working on had been left behind though, much to everyone’s disappointment. Whatever samples they had been studying had all been taken with them when they left. The humans and Vicky rebooted the consoles in each lab, but they had been wiped of all data, leaving no information behind.
None that most humans could find, anyway. In my experience with data-mining for the company, humans didn’t cover their tracks as well as they thought they did. If GrayCris had meant to abandon this facility entirely, they would have just taken the physical data storage with them, which was way more secure than a system delete. But they’d intended to come back, so they’d left the data storage and just deleted everything manually.
Doing that didn’t immediately get rid of the data, though. Usually it just got encrypted and shifted into cache storage for a certain amount of time before it actually got deleted, so it could be restored if the human who’d triggered the deletion had made a mistake, or done so by accident. There was a good chance GrayCris had shut down the installation and left before the cache had timed out.
I started sifting through the cache and… yep. There it was. A whole lot of encrypted data, recording all the results of whatever tests and analyses GrayCris had run in these labs.
I reached for the data clips that I’d bought - then remembered that they were still in the pocket of my jacket, which was back on the GI ship now that I’d changed into my armour. Shit. I checked the file sizes and ran some quick calculations. I’d be able to fit all the data in my own internal storage… if I deleted most of my saved media first.
Ugh.
Well, media could be replaced later. I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t get a chance at this data again, especially now that we’d powered the consoles up. I didn’t have time to go back up to the ship and get the data clips; it wouldn’t be long before the cache clear happened and the data was wiped for good. I could have set the consoles to restore the deleted files, but the GI humans would have noticed that, and I was oddly reluctant to let them get this data too. GrayCris were willing to murder to keep their secrets - if they found out that GI had gotten access to the data here, who knew what they’d try to do to the GI team in the future. The less GI knew, the safer they’d be. Hopefully.
So while the humans poked around the labs, exclaiming at the different types of equipment and speculating on what it was all for, I sat down in a chair by one of the consoles and started downloading. I was able to keep most of my music and a handful of my favourite serials, including Sanctuary Moon and Worldhoppers, but everything else had to go. I’d shared a lot of my media with Vicky, at least - hopefully I’d be able to get most of the files back from it later once I was able to transfer all this data to my data clips.
Even as I was downloading all that data, I was still also trying to crack into SubSecSystem. Having access to the combat drone helped; I was able to recover some of its protocols and apply those to my efforts. I was making progress, but it was slow. I still couldn’t get into the cameras, and there was an entire section of SubSecSystem that I couldn’t access at all. It was frustrating and made me even more anxious than I was already.
I finished downloading the data just before the humans got bored of examining the labs, and wanted to move on. Vicky had managed to get schematics for this area from the SubHubSystem, and it looked like there were a couple more rooms that weren’t labelled as lab space, along with another exit. The humans were curious about the exit - as far as we could tell, this secondary installation was deep underground. Where could that exit lead to?
Once again I led the way, my new combat drone floating along above my head while the others followed behind me. Miki was talking excitedly with Don Abene and the others, and Vicky occasionally chimed in as well. It seemed to be getting along a little better with Miki now. I hadn’t spotted it rolling its eyes at the human-form bot again, anyway.
I wasn’t really paying a lot of attention to them though, still mostly focused on SubSecSystem and my own scans. I was feeling increasingly uneasy, but I couldn’t pinpoint why. I flicked through the camera views I had of the main facility as I led the way down yet another corridor, but nothing was happening up there; everything seemed normal. I could hear Kader and Vibol on the comms as the rest of the team kept them updated on what was going on, so nothing was wrong there, either.
We came to a door on the right side of the corridor, and I tapped the button to open it, then stepped inside. At first the room seemed rather unremarkable; it was a long rectangle, with the door I’d come through in the middle of one of the longer walls. There were some benches along the wall to either side of the door, but not much else inside the room. The lights in here weren’t on; I couldn’t tell if that was because they were broken, or they had just been turned off before everyone left. Light filtered in from the corridor, casting long shadows through the doorway as the others waited for me to signal the all-clear to enter.
As I moved further into the room though, I realised that the long wall opposite the door wasn’t actually a wall at all. It was floor to ceiling windows, looking out into what at first glance appeared to be a black, empty void.
My sense of uneasiness grew, but there was no apparent threat. I signalled that the others could enter as I moved closer to the window, trying to see what was outside.
“Is that… a window?” Hirune asked as she moved up beside me. “Why would they have windows underground?”
The others all moved up to the windows as well, spreading out along its length to press the faceplates of their environmental suit helmets up against the clear glass in their attempts to peer past it. I stayed a step or two back, flicking through my various vision filters.
Then Vicky, who was still lingering near the doorway, pressed a button on the wall. Outside, bright lights flared on, illuminating the void beyond the windows.
“... Oh,” Don Abene breathed. “Oh, no wonder GrayCris was being so cagey…”
The lights revealed a massive cavern - except it wasn’t a natural cavern. Instead of rough stone walls, huge metallic-looking pillars with intricate detailing lined the edges of the space. The floor and ceiling looked to be made of a similar, dark metallic substance, likewise engraved with the complicated patterns. The engraved details caught and refracted the light oddly, standing out starkly against the otherwise smooth surface. Between the engravings, the metallic substance glistened with an almost oily sheen, swirls and whorls of colour twisting through glossy black.
It reminded me a little of the glassy rocks in the blank map area back on DeltFall and PreservationAux’s survey. I felt weird and off-balance.
“That… that’s a hell of a lot of alien remnant,” Ejiro murmured, his attention still fixed firmly on the view.
“Oh yeah,” Brais agreed, likewise fixated on what lay beyond the windows. “There is absolutely no way any of that is human made.”
“It’s so pretty…!” Miki was beside Don Abene, its blank, globular eyes also pressed up against the glass. Vicky had also moved up to the window after it had turned the outside lights on, and it let out a wordless sound of agreement.
I didn’t like it. I wanted to leave immediately. I was just trying to think of the best way to convince the humans to stop staring out the window and return to the safety of their ship when I caught a hint of movement past the glass.
I froze, trying to make out what it was, trying to figure out what could be out there - and then I realised the movement I’d seen wasn’t outside.
It was a reflection in the glass of something moving behind me.
I spun around to face the doorway and had just enough time to get one clear image of the threat before I had to react. A combat bot had just stepped into the doorway - it was a three-metre tall human-form bot, kind of like Miki if Miki had four arms with multiple hand mods for cutting, slicing, delivering energy bursts, etc., multiple weapon ports in its chest and back, and a really shitty personality.
That explained the section of SubSecSystem I couldn’t get into, at least.
I could tell it was about to open fire and there was no time for any of the humans to react. Still, I yelled “Get down!” even as I brought up my woefully inadequate handgun and opened fire at its head, where all its cameras and scanners were. (Its actual processing and memory core was down in its lower abdomen, similar to Miki, since it was more protected down there and people tended to shoot for the head.) (At least, people always shot for my head, so I assumed they did it to bots, too.)
My combat drone opened fire as well, following my lead and also aiming for the combat bot’s head. Simultaneously, I activated the rest of the drone swarm and set the combat bot as their main target.
Part of me registered Vicky and Miki moving to protect the humans as the bot opened fire. It got a few shots off before the combined fire at its head from myself and Drone One temporarily (and I can’t stress that “temporarily” part enough) disabled it, leaving it blind, deaf, and unable to scan for movement or energy, with no ability to acquire a target with any of its inbuilt weapons.
I heard startled and pained cries, but I had no time to check on anyone’s status. I had to get the combat bot away from the others, clear a path for them to retreat. I shoulder-charged the combat bot while it was still disabled, shoving it back out of the doorway before it could brace itself.
It recovered its balance quickly though and I had to dive to the side to avoid a wild swipe from its arms. There was a burst of static in the feed as it cleared its sensory inputs just as I rolled back to my feet. I fired at its head again but it was ready for me this time, ducking beneath the shots and lunging for me. I had to make a desperate leap backwards to avoid its grasp.
It kept after me and I kept backing up, drawing it away from the doorway and further down the corridor away from the elevator. “Run!” I called over the team comm; I really hoped they remembered my earlier security briefing. Just in case, I also sent to Vicky, [Get everyone out, back to the ship!]
I got a ping of acknowledgement in response, but nothing else. That was fine, I was too busy trying to keep myself in one piece to pay attention to whatever it might have said anyway. The combat bot was firing at me at every opportunity, and I had to keep weaving and dodging to avoid the worst of it, without even the chance to try and fire back at its head again. I kept myself out of range of its arms, but couldn’t avoid all of its shots. At least the bot couldn’t get a clean lock on me either because of Drone One still firing at its sensors. It wasn’t quite enough by itself to disable the bot again, but it helped mess up the bot’s aim.
Still, it was only a matter of time before the bot managed to hit something important in me; I’d already lost chunks of armour and bits of the underlying organics, and even though I had my pain sensors as low as they could go, the mounting damage was starting to slow me down. I didn’t have the firepower to drop the combat bot myself. All I could do was buy time for the others to get away.
Then the swarm of combat drones arrived, sweeping in with weapons blazing at the combat bot’s back. That definitely got its attention; a single combat drone’s energy weapon couldn’t do much to it, but an entire swarm could. The bot focused on the threat of the drones, giving me a moment’s respite - and leaving me an opening.
Now that none of the humans were in a position to see me, I quickly clipped the useless little handgun back to my armour, popped out my in-built arm weapons, and set them to maximum power. If I could get close enough, I could hopefully get through a weak point in its armour and damage something vital.
The combat bot was flailing wildly at the cloud of drones firing and diving at it. It thrashed around like an irritated metal whirlwind, stray blasts from its weapons peppering the walls, floor and ceiling. As I began charging towards the bot, it smacked one of the drones with its cutting hand and shrapnel sprayed the corridor. Some of the shrapnel impacted my chest and arms, a series of little thumps against my armour, along with a few sharper flares where the shrapnel had gotten through breaches and buried into my organics.
I couldn’t let that stop me though - I had to be close to have a chance of my energy weapons breaching the bot’s carapace. I ducked low to avoid the flailing arms, aimed both weapons at the small of its back, and fired - just as the bot swung around to face me. The drones hadn’t been quite as distracting as I’d hoped. I couldn’t tell if my shots had breached the carapace or not, but they definitely hadn’t hit anything important.
I had to throw myself backwards again to avoid its retaliatory swipe, but I wasn’t fast enough this time. Sharp metal fingers ripped through my right side, the impact and momentum slamming me into the corridor wall. Damage alerts flared as I dropped to the floor, but I ignored them as best I could, trying to get up before the bot could push its advantage. Even as I scrambled, it fired its chest weapons at me; more damage alerts flashed in my awareness as projectiles hammered into my torso, punching through the cheap company armour.
Then the remaining drones made a wall and slammed into the combat bot, forcing it away from me with a haze of weapon fire and their own armoured bodies. It gave me the chance to drag myself back to my feet, even as more shrapnel sprayed the area. The bot had taken out thirteen of the drones already, each one a light, a connection, blinking out of my awareness. But the swarm was doing a lot of damage in return, targeting joints, weapon ports, and hands. Not enough to drop or cripple the bot, not yet, but enough to slow it down.
I steadied myself against the corridor wall, readying myself for another attack, trying to figure out where I could do the most damage to it. The swarm’s firepower had weakened several points in the bot’s carapace - if I could land a solid shot on one of those weakened areas, perhaps that would be enough to breach it. I pushed myself off the wall, focusing on the combat bot, waiting for an opening—
— Then something moved behind me and several sharp metal claws pierced my armour and sank deep into my lower back. Simultaneously another metal hand grabbed my right shoulder, more sharp metal fingers piercing the armour and organics around the joint, sinking in deep and scraping jarringly against my inorganics. I felt my feet leave the floor, damage alerts flickering through my awareness too fast for me to follow.
The shock of it paralysed me. There was a second combat bot. Of course there was a second combat bot, but I hadn’t considered the possibility, too busy with the one right in front of me, and now–
[Objective: We will tear you apart.]
Fuck.
I’ve been torn apart before, and on my list of things to avoid, it was right up there at the top. I wasn’t going to be able to avoid it now though, not with the bot’s claws already deep in my back, in my shoulder, lifting me entirely off the ground; I had no leverage to tear myself free. It could’ve easily shot me to pieces with its chest weapons, but it was mad, and it wanted to make me hurt. I felt the bot’s hands flex, its claws sinking in deeper, felt the shift in the metal as its grip tightened in preparation to begin pulling. I felt my right shoulder pop out of joint as the bot slowly began to pull, felt the claws deep within my torso curl upwards and catch on some internal component. More alerts flared and I braced myself, knowing that this wouldn’t be quick–
Then both bots froze in place, their joints locking, their weapons deactivating. The sudden lack of tearing-me-apart caught me completely off-guard, and it took me a full one point eight seconds to register that the combat bots had, for some unknown reason, shut down. The remaining combat drones also seemed confused; most of them hovered indecisively around the first combat bot, while a few drifted towards me, apparently examining my predicament.
Okay. All right. Not in pieces yet. Time to get yourself the fuck out of here, Murderbot, before you lose the chance for good.
I tried to wrench my shoulder out of the bot’s grip, but the bot’s locked joints and my lack of leverage made that nearly impossible, and just damaged my shoulder (and my back) even more. I was lucky that the bot hadn’t become unbalanced and just fallen forward on top of me, honestly. I managed to reach up with my left arm and began trying to pry the bot’s fingers open. If I could just get the damned fingers to unlock–
I’d made very little progress when I heard running footsteps approaching. I had a moment to think that the humans had better not have been stupid and stayed behind instead of escaping, before I realised that it was Vicky, closely followed by Miki.
That wasn’t much better, really, but at least they weren’t squishy fragile humans.
“Oh shit – Rin!” Vicky skidded to a halt in front of me, eyes wide, with Miki right beside it. Vicky immediately reached for the combat bot’s wrist, trying to get the fingers clamped around my shoulder to unlock. “Miki, help support its weight–”
“What the fuck are you still doing here?” Okay, that was probably harsher than necessary, but I wasn’t exactly having a good time. Especially as Miki crouched a little and carefully wrapped its arms around my hips to help support my weight, taking some of the pressure off the claws holding me up. More damage alerts flashed but I dismissed them; they weren’t telling me anything I didn’t already know. “I told you all to get out!”
“Ejiro was hurt in the initial attack - we got him to the elevator, and Brais and Hirune are taking him back up to the ship and its MedSystem.” As it talked, Vicky continued to manipulate the combat bot’s wrist, though I couldn’t see what it was doing. “Don Abene refused to leave without you though.”
“We don’t leave our friends behind!” Miki interjected, its voice determined.
“We don’t,” Vicky agreed steadfastly. “I managed to follow your hacks into SubSecSystem and force a shutdown command through to the combat bots, then I had to convince Abene to wait by the elevator while we came to get you. You weren’t answering pings or the comm.”
“I was a little busy.” I would have said more but whatever Vicky was doing suddenly made the combat bot’s fingers unlock and relax, and I was distracted by yet more damage alerts and performance reliability warnings. Miki had to tighten its grip around my hips to help hold me up as Vicky slid each clawed finger out of my mangled shoulder one by one. Pieces of my shoulder armour fell away, liberally slicked with my blood and inorganic fluids.
Finally my shoulder was free, and Vicky helped Miki carefully work me off the claws impaled into my back. The way they were curled made it difficult, and they did more damage on the way out. I felt more blood and fluids soaking into my suit skin beneath my armour; my performance reliability dipped sharply, and I would have collapsed to the floor if they hadn’t been holding me up.
“Come on,” Vicky urged me. “We have to go - I don’t know how much longer the combat bots will stay shut down.”
With Miki supporting me on one side and Vicky on the other, I was able to get my feet under me again and at least help support my weight as we began moving. I was having trouble focusing on much of anything, though I managed to order the combat drones to follow and defend us. It occurred to me in a vague sort of way that I wouldn’t be able to hide the fact that I wasn’t human now, but I couldn’t hold on to that line of thought.
We made it back to the elevator; I barely registered Don Abene’s horrified expression when she first caught sight of us. “Rin?!”
A client was talking to me. I had to answer. “I’m fine.” Yeah, okay, that was a very obvious, blatant lie, but I couldn't think of anything else to say. It was better than letting my buffer answer, at least.
“Is the elevator back yet?” Vicky asked, cutting off anything Abene might have said in response to me.
“Not yet.” Abene looked frustrated. “The others have made it up to the top, but the elevator’s still on its way back down.”
“It better arrive soon,” Vicky muttered. “Those combat bots will be rebooting any second now, and SubSecSystem has locked me out - I won’t be able to force another shutdown again.”
Now that we were no longer moving, I was able to pull myself together a bit more and take stock of my actual condition. My performance reliability was dropping by the second. I was peppered with projectiles and shrapnel; my armour had stopped some of it, but an uncomfortable amount had pierced it or gotten in through previous breaches, and was embedded in my organics or lodged in my inorganics. (If I’d only had to deal with projectiles and shrapnel, I would have been fine. Mostly fine.)
My right side between hip and arm had been torn open by the combat bot’s claws. The armour had shattered and been ripped off along with chunks of the organics there, blood and fluids slicking over my hip and down my leg. My right shoulder was an absolute mess, pulled out of the socket and with large, ragged puncture wounds all around it. My right arm was useless, hanging limply at my side, and I’d lost almost all the armour on that shoulder. Only a few secondary inorganic connections and what was left of the overlaid organics were keeping my arm attached to my body. Diagnostics indicated that the combat bot’s clawed thumb and one of its fingers had actually made contact with each other somewhere beneath the end of my collarbone, piercing straight through organics and inorganics alike.
Five deep, ragged puncture wounds were in my lower back, a couple of which had gone almost all the way through me. They’d missed my core power cells and spine; the bot hadn’t wanted to finish me that quickly. The pressure from my weight resting on the claws as it had lifted me off the floor had enlarged the wounds though, as the claws sliced upwards through organics and damaged the less sturdy internal inorganics. There were probably scratches or gouges on the protective housing around my power core. More of my internals had been damaged when Miki and Vicky had hauled me off the combat bot’s claws. Chunks of the armour covering my back had broken and fallen off.
The automatic sealing of my veins and arteries was struggling to keep up with all the damage, and I was still leaking. My suit skin was soaked, heavy and sticky, and my temperature controls were completely unresponsive.
All in all, I felt like shit.
At least I hadn’t taken any damage to my head so far. I managed to work my way into the elevator controls, changing the access codes and locking the combat bots out so they wouldn’t be able to control it, and trying to encourage it to go faster. The sooner it got here, the better. I couldn’t tell if it had sped up at all, though.
Then something crashed against the bulkhead door, and Abene let out a startled noise. Apparently Vicky had locked the door once we were inside the room, and now the combat bots were trying to break through.
Great.
I pulled away from Vicky and Miki’s support and turned, taking a few unsteady steps closer to the door, the remaining combat drones hovering overhead. If the bots broke through before the elevator arrived, I’d have to hold them back as long as I could. That wouldn’t be long, but not doing so wasn’t an option.
“Rin?! What are you doing?!” Don Abene reached towards me, but I flinched away, and she pulled back.
“My job.” Another crash against the door echoed through the room, and Vicky pulled Abene back against the elevator doors, ready to enter as soon as the stupid elevator actually arrived. If it got here in time, anyway.
Miki however stepped up beside me, grabbing the stupid hand gun that was somehow still hanging off what remained of my armour. I blinked at it. “What are you doing? Get back with the others!”
Miki shook its head. “No, Rin. I’m going to help you.”
The door buckled.
“Miki!” Abene sounded desperate, pleading.
Miki shook its head slightly, still steadfastly facing the door, the little handgun held ready. “My priority is to protect my friends!”
The door buckled further.
“Priority change,” Abene demanded. “Your priority is to protect yourself!”
“That priority change is rejected.”
Then things began to happen very quickly.
The elevator let out a cheerful chime as it arrived and started to open. Vicky shoved Abene into the elevator, pushing her to one side into the dubious shelter of the corner of the elevator.
The bulkhead door burst inwards, followed by angry combat bots.
My drone swarm opened fire.
Miki grabbed me and bodily threw me into the elevator.
I landed on the elevator floor and slid across it until I hit the back wall, leaving a trail of blood and fluids. I tried to get up, to do something, anything, but my body wouldn’t respond. I could tell I was hovering on the edge of a systems failure.
Miki bolted for the elevator as well, firing ineffectually back over its shoulder at the combat bots with the stupid little handgun.
One of the combat bots shoved through the wall of drones, knocking a few of them into the elevator as it went, and lunged at Miki as it crossed the threshold, its clawed arms outstretched.
Vicky shoved Miki out of the way and took the blow instead, tumbling back into the elevator from the force of it and hitting the side wall before dropping to the floor.
The remaining drones drove the combat bot back.
I ordered the elevator door to close immediately.
It slammed shut on a set of bloodstained metal fingers, then the elevator began its ascent.
Don Abene rose from where she had been crouched in the corner. “Miki? Vicky?”
Miki also got up, a little shakily. “I’m okay, Don Abene.” It hurried over to where Vicky lay sprawled at the base of the elevator wall. “Consultant Vicky? Consultant Vicky?!”
Vicky wasn’t moving. I could see blood. Once again, I tried to get up.
My performance reliability crashed and bottomed out.
Performance reliability catastro–
Chapter Seven
Restart.
Awareness drifted back slowly, piecemeal. Most of my systems were still down. I didn’t know where I was. None of my inputs were working yet. Every moment was agonising, and I couldn't access or even find my pain sensors. I tried to start a diagnostic, and crashed again.
Catastrophic systems failure.
Emergency shutdown.
Restart: Failure.
Retry—
Restart.
The next time I woke up, I at least had some inputs available. I could hear a voice, maybe two voices, but I didn’t recognise either of them, and I couldn’t comprehend the words. I could make out some light, bright blotches somewhere above me, broken up by shifting shadows, but I couldn’t focus on anything. I felt… warm. It was nice.
I took a breath. Something flared, hot and sharp and painful, somewhere in my lower abdomen—
Performance reliability drop.
Involuntary shutdown.
Restart: Failure.
Retry—
Restart.
Ugh, not again.
I remained completely motionless, not wanting to trigger another involuntary shutdown or systems crash, and tried not to think too hard about anything. That got boring pretty quickly, though.
At least I was in a state where I could get bored. That was an improvement, I guess.
I couldn’t hear much of anything, but it was the kind of silence that suggested there just wasn’t anything going on nearby, rather than the silence I got when my audio inputs weren’t working. I was still comfortably warm. (That was still nice.) It felt like I was lying on my back, probably on a bed. (I’d lain on enough beds by now to be able to recognise the feeling. That was weird to think about.)
I decided to risk opening my eyes. That didn’t trigger a shutdown. Success! It took a few seconds for my vision to clear, but once I was able to focus, I could see a room that I… absolutely did not recognise.
What the fuck.
Well, okay, that was a slight exaggeration. I recognised the fact that I was lying in a MedSystem, at least. One that had, presumably, put me back together. That was a good sign, probably. But I wasn’t on the GI ship, I could tell that much. There was no hum of the ship's engines, and only the faintest whisper of environmental systems. Had they taken me back to the station to use the MedSystem there?
A spike of panic flared. Shit, there was no way the humans hadn’t figured out I wasn’t human by now. But I also wasn’t waking up in a recycler, so… (Okay, yes, I know, if they’d dumped me in a recycler, I wouldn’t have woken up at all. Not the point.)
All right. Let’s not jump to any conclusions here, Murderbot. Since I hadn’t crashed again yet, it was probably safe to run a diagnostic. I ran a diagnostic.
Performance reliability came up as sitting around the 90 percent mark. Huh. That was actually really good, all things considered. My right shoulder was still reporting some issues, but I at least had use of that arm back, mostly. I no longer had any shrapnel or projectiles embedded in me, which was always a relief. There was still a lingering ache in my right side and my lower back, but that was easy enough to ignore once I tweaked my pain sensors, and functionality seemed to be almost back to normal in those areas.
I sat up, slowly and carefully. Performance reliability dipped briefly, then levelled out. That was much better than it crashing again. As I sat up, a blanket slipped down my torso and gathered in my lap. (I still wasn’t used to blankets.) I had a moment to notice that I wasn’t wearing anything beneath the blanket before a voice startled me out of my self-assessment.
“Rin?”
I didn’t jump in surprise, but I did twitch a bit, I’ll admit. I turned my head to look over at the source of the voice, and belatedly scanned the room to see who or what else was in here with me. Good work, Murderbot.
Vicky was sitting in a chair, its portable display surface activated, but its attention was fixed on me. It looked… relieved? (I decided to ignore that.)
“Uh. Hi.” Now that I was sitting up, I finally recognised where we were. “... Why are we in the medical bay of the installation that has killer combat bots, instead of somewhere sensible like not still on the planet with the killer combat bots?”
“Don’t worry,” Vicky said reassuringly. I was not reassured, and I continued to worry. “Once we got to the top, I locked and disabled the elevator. There’s no other way for the combat bots to get up here, and this MedSystem is better than the one on the ship. They were also using the ship’s MedSystem to patch up Ejiro, and Abene didn’t want to wait for it to be done before we started treating you.”
I frowned at the reminder that at least one of the humans had gotten hurt. “How is Ejiro now? And everyone else?” I regarded Vicky closely. “... And you?”
Vicky smiled. “Ejiro is fine. He only got clipped by a couple of the combat bot’s shots, nothing too serious. Everyone else is fine too - there were a few bruises and scrapes, and Hirune sprained her wrist, but nothing bad. Miki’s carapace got a little damaged, but it’s been fixed up as well.” It paused, then added, “And I’m fine. Had a temporary shutdown from the shock of the impact, got some cuts and bruises and dents, but nothing serious. Don Abene helped fix up what needed fixing.”
I frowned at it. “I saw a lot of blood…”
Vicky actually rolled its eyes at me. “That wasn’t mine. That was all your blood from me helping you back to the elevator, idiot.”
Oh, right. That made sense.
Its looked me over critically. “Speaking of which, how are you feeling now?” Its voice and expression softened. “You had us really worried - for a while there, I thought… you might not make it.”
I resisted the urge to fidget and fixed my gaze on the wall beside Vicky’s head. Having anyone worry about me was still strange. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to it. “Fine. Back up to 90 percent performance reliability.” I didn’t want it asking me any more questions about how I was feeling, so I asked it, “Where is everyone right now? And… what was their reaction? To the whole… me being a construct thing, I mean.” That was definitely a big concern of mine right now. I needed to know if I had to start planning an escape or not.
“Everyone else is back on the ship, resting,” Vicky replied. That was a relief - at least they had made the sensible decision to rest in the safety of the ship, instead of in the installation with the killer combat bots locked in the basement. “And only Don Abene - and Miki - know about us. I explained a bit to her while we were still in the elevator. About what we were, and how we’re trying to escape the Corporation Rim. She seemed to understand, and she was very grateful that you were able to hold the combat bots back so that everyone could escape, though she was very upset about how badly you were hurt. It was her suggestion that only she and myself look after you in here, so the others wouldn’t find out about either of us. They accepted the reasoning that we didn’t want you being disturbed while you were recovering. Miki has also promised not to tell anyone anything about us.” Vicky smiled lopsidedly. “It said that we’re the first friends it’s had that are like it.”
That was a lot to take in. I had to just sit and think about it for a bit. Don Abene had, apparently, not only accepted me being a construct in her stride, but had then taken steps to protect me. I was having an emotion, a complicated one.
To distract myself from the complicated emotion that I didn’t want to think about, I asked Vicky, “So… you and Miki are friends now? You’re okay with this?” I hadn’t forgotten Vicky’s anger at Miki back on the ship, but I’d also noticed that its anger seemed to have cooled over the past couple of cycles.
Vicky shrugged, looking a little embarrassed. “Yeah. After… you know… I did a lot of thinking. And talking with the humans. I started talking with Miki a bit as well, while you were scouting for the installation. I realised eventually that all the reasons I was angry… weren’t Miki’s fault. Hating Miki for stuff that it had nothing to do with wasn’t fair to it. Or to its humans.”
More emotions. Great. I continued to stare at the wall past Vicky’s head and completely failed to think of anything to say.
Fortunately, Vicky started talking again before the silence got too awkward. “Oh, also - I thought you might appreciate this.” It pinged me in the feed, then handed over a single drone input. It was one of the combat drones, and as I accepted it, I realised the drone was resting on a bench beside Vicky, just out of my immediate line of sight.
“What – how?” I’d thought the combat bots would have trashed all the drones by now. How had Vicky ended up with one?
Vicky grinned at me. “I put it together myself. One of the combat bots smacked a few of them into the elevator before the door closed. None of them were functional, but I managed to salvage enough parts to get one working again.” The grin faltered a bit. “It… kept me occupied while I waited for the MedSystem to put you back together.”
Had Vicky somehow realised how much I missed having drones? It wasn’t one of my usual intel ones, but it was a more advanced model, and its extra firepower would probably come in handy. I went through its systems to see if everything was fully functional, which it was. Vicky had done a good job of piecing it together.
I was having another emotion. “... Thanks,” I managed after a moment as I activated the drone and directed it into a sweep around the room before letting it settle into passive follow mode. “I – um. Thanks.”
Vicky smiled at me. I wasn’t looking at it with my own eyes, but I could still see it through the drone’s input. “You’re welcome.”
All right, enough emotions, time to get out of here. I began to get down off MedSystem’s platform, then remembered that I wasn’t wearing anything and paused, holding on to the blanket. “Um. Where’s my armour?”
Vicky grimaced. “What was left of it was in pieces. There was no way it was recoverable, not without a company recycler. The suit skin was ruined too.”
Oh yeah. Given all the damage I’d taken, that wasn’t surprising. I couldn’t decide how I felt about it though. On the one hand, my armour was one more link to the company that had owned me, that I’d escaped - one more thing that marked me as a SecUnit, and I was probably better off without it. On the other, I no longer had armour to protect me, to hide behind. I felt like I’d lost something important, another little part of myself.
Ugh, even more emotions. Why must emotions be so complicated and confusing and never-ending?
Vicky continued. “I brought all your stuff over from the ship though, so you can get dressed whenever you’re ready.” It gestured to another chair with an environmental suit draped over it, and my bag sitting beside it. My bag looked smaller, without my armour in it. (Which was logical, but the emotion I was having about it was absolutely not logical.)
“Thanks. Again.” I looked around again, noting the bathroom attached to the medical bay. “Is the shower here working?” I’d only had the opportunity to enjoy human style showers a small handful of times since escaping, but it was already something that I’d decided I liked. And despite MedSystem’s care, I still felt a little like I was covered in dried fluids.
Vicky nodded. “It is. Hot water and all.”
That was the best news I’d heard in a long time. “All right. I’m going to get myself cleaned up, and then we can get the fuck off this stupid planet.”
Once I’d had a nice shower (while listening to some of my music in an attempt to get my stupid emotions under control) and gotten dressed, I emerged from the bathroom to find Don Abene waiting for me in Medical. Miki was by her side, as usual, and Vicky was still hanging around as well. For a moment I felt like retreating back into the bathroom, but that was stupid and I resisted the urge.
Before I could think of anything to say though, Don Abene smiled warmly at me. I immediately looked over at the nearest wall and switched to watching her through my combat drone. “Rin! It’s good to see you up and about again. We were all worried.”
I shrugged a little, not sure how to respond. “Uh, thanks.” That didn’t seem like enough, so I added, “I’m glad everyone else got out okay.”
“Only thanks to you,” Abene replied, her smile getting a little wobbly for a moment before she steadied herself again. “But that’s not why I’m here. I want to talk to you and Vicky in relative privacy before we all return to the ship.”
Uh oh.
I did my best to keep my expression neutral. “What about?”
Don Abene glanced at Vicky, who nodded slightly. She then looked back at me. “Vicky told me that you’re both constructs, trying to escape the Corporation Rim. Given everything that’s happened, I want to reassure you that I’m not going to view or treat you any differently than how I did before I was informed about this. I’m also not going to tell anyone that either of you are constructs, either. Nor will Miki.” Miki nodded emphatically as Abene continued. “As far as we’re concerned, you’re both highly skilled individuals that we have very much appreciated having on our team.”
I was having another emotion again. I didn’t have enough media for this, especially not after deleting a bunch of it to store recovered data about alien remnants and/or strange synthetics. I just nodded though, and she continued. “With that in mind, I want to make you both an offer. After this contract, if you still need work, or even just somewhere safe to go, you’re both welcome to join my team, for as long as you want. Or I can help you find other work in my polity.”
I had no idea how to respond, and no clue what my expression was doing. “You’re… offering us somewhere to stay? A permanent job?”
Don Abene nodded, and Miki chimed in enthusiastically, “We really like having you both around, Consultant Rin! If you stay, I can teach you how to play Mus!”
Abene let out a little huff of laughter at that. “Easy there, Miki. Give Rin time to think it over, okay?” She looked back at me. “You don’t have to decide right away, of course.”
She was about to say something else when she was cut off by the team comm activating. “Don Abene?” Vibol’s voice came through, sounding uncertain. “There’s a Corporation Rim carrier in orbit above us, and its captain wants to talk to you about the installation. He says it’s urgent.”
Both my threat and risk assessments spiked. Don Abene frowned slightly. “All right. I’ll be back at the ship in a minute. Let the captain know I’m on my way.”
“Will do.”
The comm fell silent, and Don Abene sighed. “I’d best go see what they want.”
“We should all return to the ship, anyway,” I added. “The sooner we can get off this planet, the better.”
“Agreed.”
We headed back to the ship, and Don Abene went straight to the bridge without bothering to take off her environmental suit, apart from the helmet. Miki followed her, but Vicky and I hung back.
“Are you going to be eavesdropping on the comm?” Vicky asked me quietly as it began shedding its own environmental suit.
“Of course.” I checked my external feed interface (it hadn’t gotten damaged in the fight with the combat bots, luckily), then carefully eased my way through it into the ship’s comm. I could feel Vicky slipping unobtrusively into the comm channel as well.
We were just in time to hear Don Abene say, “This is Don Abene, team lead for the GoodNightLander Independent reclamation assessment team. You wanted to speak to me?”
“I do. I apologise for interrupting your assessment, but the situation regarding ownership of this installation has changed.” The voice of the carrier captain was deep, calm, and with a definite Corporation Rim accent that I was very familiar with. Threat and risk assessment spiked even higher.
“Changed howso?” Abene asked, just as calm.
“GrayCris has… gotten themselves into some serious legal trouble,” the deep voice replied. “As one of the consequences of that, GrayCris has ceded full ownership of the installation here over to the company. This of course renders any reclamation efforts by outside parties null and void.”
The company? Shit.
“I understand that this is most likely very inconvenient for you and your team,” the deep voice continued smoothly while I was internally panicking. “I have been authorised to offer you generous compensation for your time and effort here, especially if you are able to give us the information gathered on your assessment so far.”
There was a brief pause before Abene replied. “What kind of compensation are we talking about, here?”
That was a good question. Compensation could be anything from actual hard currency (the best option) to ‘discounts’ on future company bonds (absolutely useless if you had no intention of bonding with the company in the first place).
There was no hesitation though as the company captain responded with a very large number, and specified that said number was in the standard common currency and not the company specific scrip. (The standard common currency was accepted all throughout the Corporation Rim and in most neighbouring polities.)
Don Abene’s pause was a little longer this time. “Would you mind if I took the time to discuss the situation with my team first?”
“Not at all,” the company captain replied. “I’ll leave this channel open for your response.”
“Thank you.” Don Abene switched to the team comm. “Team meeting everyone, main lounge, right now.”
There was a chorus of confirmations. I kept one input on the comm channel that the company captain had been using, and headed up to the main lounge with Vicky. I hadn’t bothered getting out of my own environmental suit (I had a feeling I’d need it again soon, even if it was just to get to the scout flier so we could leave), but I’d taken the helmet off.
When we got to the main lounge, everyone else was there already, including Kader and Vibol. Vicky went to sit next to Hirune on one of the couches, but I just stayed standing by the entrance, leaning back against the wall.
“Hey, Rin!” Ejiro grinned as he noticed me. “Good to see you up and about again!” The other humans also smiled and echoed the sentiment. It was weird.
I just nodded in response and said, “Thanks. Good to see that you’re all right now, too.” I was getting better at this conversation thing, I think.
“Only thanks to you!” Ejiro replied sincerely. “You saved all our asses.”
Okay, maybe not so good. I was saved from trying to think of what to say next by Don Abene clearing her throat. “All right, everyone,” she started briskly. “There’s been a change in the situation. We’ve got a company carrier in orbit overhead. Apparently GrayCris has gotten themselves into legal hot water, and as a result of that, they’ve had to officially pass ownership of this installation over to the company.”
There was a chorus of surprised and dismayed exclamations and groans from the humans. Vicky added its own, probably just to blend in with the others so they wouldn’t suspect that it had been eavesdropping on Abene’s comm. I didn’t bother saying anything, I just let myself frown a bit.
Don Abene clapped her hands together and everyone quietened down again. “That being said, the company has actually offered us an incredibly generous amount of money as compensation, especially if we hand over whatever information we gathered on this assessment.”
“How generous is ‘incredibly generous’? Kader asked dubiously.
When Abene specified the amount, there was dead silence for a long moment, before Vibol let out a low whistle. “Damn,” she drawled. “Either the company has money to burn, or they’re trying to buy our silence or something.”
Knowing what I did about the company, and how cheap they usually were, I definitely suspected the latter.
“That also depends on whether or not the company suspects that there’s alien remnants here,” Abene said.
I couldn’t stay silent. “They suspect it, or know outright,” I replied.
Everyone looked over at me with varying levels of curiosity. I immediately regretted opening my mouth. “What makes you say that?” Hirune asked sceptically.
I had to be careful what I said if I didn’t want to give away too much about myself. “I saw some newsbursts on the public feeds before we came here,” I started. “A GrayCris survey team apparently murdered another survey team because the planet they were surveying had alien remnants on it, and GrayCris wanted them for themselves.” I tried not to think about the DeltFall client list I still had. “There was another survey team on the planet as well though, and they were able to alert the company before GrayCris could murder them, too. The legal trouble the company captain mentioned is likely part of that whole mess. If so, the company’s probably aware that GrayCris has dealt with alien remnants before. They might even already have GrayCris’ data on what they were studying here.”
The others all exchanged glances, and there was some murmuring before Abene let out a sigh. “That makes sense,” she said. “All right. Given all that, and what we found here already, I’m inclined to just accept the offered compensation, inform the company captain about what we discovered, and relinquish any reclamation attempts here. The company’s too big and powerful for me or GI to want to mess with, and with alien remnants involved, I don’t think any of us want anything further to do with this installation anyway. Any objections?”
Everyone shook their heads. “If they do actually cough up that much money, that’ll definitely cover all our costs here and then some,” Brais commented, then grinned over at me. “We can even give Consultants Rin and Vicky a well deserved bonus.”
Vicky smiled, looking amused. “I definitely wouldn’t say no to that. I don’t think Rin would either.”
I shrugged and didn’t bother confirming that, and Abene continued on. “We all agree then,” she said decisively. “I’ll let the company captain know. Start preparing for launch, everyone. I for one am looking forward to getting off this planet.”
As everyone began getting up from their seats, I slipped back out of the lounge before anyone could start asking me about how I was recovering or anything awkward like that. I was still carrying my bag, so I went to my bunk and packed it back into its locker. I then sat on my bunk and started listening in on the comm channel to the company captain again.
“Hello, Captain?” Don Abene started. “Are you there?”
There was a brief delay before the company captain replied. “I’m here, Don Abene. Have you discussed things with your team?”
“I have. We’ve agreed to accept your offer of compensation, and in return give you the information gathered on our assessment so far and relinquish any reclamation efforts.”
“Excellent.” The company captain sounded… relieved? “I’m currently readying my own team to deploy to the site - if you could give me a brief summary of what your team has already discovered, that would be very helpful.”
“Of course. We’ve only carried out a preliminary sweep so far, though. Mostly just enough to get the installation back up and running and ensure environmental controls are still functional.” Abene paused briefly. “We did, however, find a secondary installation some distance below the first one, connected via a hidden elevator. We briefly observed what appeared to be a large structure of alien origin, but had to retreat before we could investigate any further.”
“An alien structure?” The captain didn’t sound surprised. “So you came into contact with alien remnants?”
“Not directly,” Abene replied. “They were located outside the installation, and we didn’t have a chance to get any closer because GrayCris apparently left combat bots behind to guard their find.”
“Combat bots?” This time the captain did sound surprised. “How many?”
“Uncertain. We didn’t exactly stick around to count them.” Abene’s response was dry. “I believe the only reason we got away was because the bots still appeared to be coming out of standby mode. Our systems analyst managed to lock the elevator leading to that section, trapping the bots down there.”
That… was an interesting way to put it. She wasn’t exactly lying, but she definitely wasn’t telling the whole truth, either. Was Abene trying to cover for me? If I hadn’t been there, none of the humans - or Vicky, or Miki - would have been able to escape the bots. Telling the company captain that one of her team had engaged the bots in combat and survived the experience would have definitely given away that something was up.
“I see,” the captain replied thoughtfully. “Thank you for the warning. I’ll have to adjust my deployment team accordingly.”
“Good luck,” Abene said wryly. “Dealing with combat bots and alien remnants is definitely out of my team’s league.”
The company captain chuckled a little at that. “I can imagine,” he replied, just as wryly. “That must have been a most unpleasant surprise. I’m glad your team survived the experience and were able to warn me.”
“Likewise, Captain.” Abene paused briefly, then added, “I have all the data my team were able to gather, what little there is of it, collated and ready for you to receive whenever you’re ready.”
“Send it through, thank you,” the captain said. “As for your compensation, normally I’d forward that to your accounts directly, but given that our current location is rather… remote, I believe the delay on the transfer would be unacceptable. Are you willing to meet in person so I can pay you directly in currency cards?”
I felt a little spike of alarm at that, but given how high risk and threat assessment were already, it wasn't enough to really register on either scale. Of course, since I wasn’t actually meant to be listening in on this conversation, I couldn’t advise Abene against it. I’d just have to figure out an excuse to stick close to her during the meeting.
The comm call wrapped up soon after that, and Don Abene updated everyone over the team comm. The company captain would meet her on the landing pad outside the GI ship, and then we’d finally be able to take off and head back to Milu Station.
There ended up being a bit of a delay to the agreed meeting, as we had to wait out yet another storm burst before the company shuttle could reach the landing zone. Once the storm had cleared out again, Don Abene received an ETA for the shuttle so that she’d be ready to meet it.
When the time came, I was with Don Abene in the airlock as we waited for the company shuttle to touch down. Both of us were in environmental suits, ready to step out into the planet’s thin, shitty atmosphere. Miki was with us as well, but everyone else was back in the ship, making sure everything was ready for take-off. I needed to be in the scout flier so I could fly it back into the hold once the ship was safely in the air, which gave me a good reason to be with Abene when she went to meet the captain.
Abene looked sideways at me as we waited. “Do you think they’ll try anything?” she asked me quietly, glancing at the little handgun I’d attached to the hip of my environmental suit.
I just shrugged. “I hope not.”
She was silent a moment longer before she asked, “You don’t trust them, do you?”
“I don’t trust any of the Rim corporations, especially the military ones. And the company’s about as military as they get.”
She let out a soft huff of wry amusement at that. “You’re not alone in that, at least.”
We received the notification that the company shuttle had landed outside, and cycled through the airlock. I made sure to step out first, just in case they started shooting immediately. I wasn’t greeted by weapons fire though, which was nice.
The ground was still damp from the storm burst, and thin, wispy clouds scudded across the late afternoon sky. The company shuttle had landed a safe distance away, leaving a large area of open space between it and our ship, with the scout flier off to the left. A very familiar looking flier had also landed beside the shuttle, the company logo standing out starkly against the white wings.
Fuck. I triple-checked that my human movement code was running and tried not to tense up.
The SecUnit pilot exited its flier, and I noticed that it was in full armour, not just a flight suit. It retrieved its large projectile weapon from its flier’s cockpit and slung it onto its back, then headed over to the shuttle airlock and waited outside, its blank opaque faceplate facing us.
It didn’t send out a ping, at least, so hopefully I looked enough like a regular human in this environmental suit to not arouse any suspicion.
[Is that a SecUnit?] Abene asked me over a private feed channel.
[Yes. It’s normal for one to accompany a carrier captain as a bodyguard though. If it does try anything, I should be able to get you back to the ship safely.]
[All right. Hopefully that won’t be necessary though.]
Hopefully.
I got Abene to stay close to our ship to start with, waiting to see who came out of the shuttle. After a minute or so the shuttle lock opened and a tall human in a white, company-marked environmental suit stepped out.
The SecUnit hung back by the shuttle airlock while the human - presumably the company captain, but who knew for sure - started crossing the open space between the shuttle and our ship, weaving their way between puddles.
Abene began heading out to meet the company human, with Miki walking beside her, and me following along a step or two behind them both. The SecUnit stayed where it was, but I could tell it was focusing on us, assessing how much of a threat we were.
The company captain stopped halfway across the open space and waited for Abene to close the distance. I hung back a little more, though I was careful not to get too far from her. I needed to stay close enough to be able to grab her and run back to the ship if I saw the SecUnit start to raise its weapons.
“Don Abene?” the company human said as she drew closer. The voice sounded the same as the one we’d heard over the comm earlier. Huh. Either the company captain had actually come out here themselves (which, given what I knew about company higher-ups, seemed very unlikely to me), or whoever Abene had been talking to on the comm wasn’t actually the captain, despite their claims.
“That’s me,” Abene replied with a nod, the movement exaggerated by the environmental suit. “Captain Seth, right?”
“Indeed. A pleasure to meet you, Don Abene, though I wish it had been under more pleasant circumstances.”
“Likewise. Please, allow me to introduce my assistant, Miki, and our scout pilot, Rin.”
“Hi, Captain Seth!” Miki chirped cheerfully. If the captain found it odd that Abene had introduced her human-form bot, he didn’t show any visible signs of it. It was hard to tell through an environmental suit, though.
I just nodded slightly at the introduction, but didn’t bother saying anything. Fortunately the company human didn’t try to talk to me beyond a polite greeting to myself and Miki. He then returned his attention to Don Abene, thanking her for the assessment data she’d sent and presenting her with a small packet of hard currency cards.
I mostly tuned out the humans’ chatter and kept a wary eye on the SecUnit. It was still watching all of us, but with its faceplate opaqued, I couldn’t tell who it was focusing on. At least it didn’t seem to have any drones with it. I’d left my own combat drone back on the ship; I hadn’t wanted to draw attention to myself with it, and combat drones weren’t something civilian teams would have in the first place.
Then the SecUnit sent out a ping.
This close, it took everything I had to not automatically respond to the ping, to not physically flinch. Why was it sending out a ping? What had it noticed? I couldn’t win a fight if one broke out, not with it in full armour, with its projectile weapon and its flier, and me with nothing but a crappy little handgun and an environmental suit hampering my movements.
I couldn’t see the SecUnit’s face past its opaque faceplate, but the faceplate of the environmental suit that the company captain was wearing was clear. I hadn’t paid much attention before, too preoccupied with the SecUnit, but I focused on the human now. I had to adjust my vision filters a bit to compensate for the distortion of the helmet, but when I finally got a good look at the company human’s face, threat and risk assessment spiked almost to maximum.
It was the same company captain as the one who was with the terrifying carrier entity. The one who had been looking for me on the first station, then on RaviHyral.
Fuck.
What was he doing here? Had he or the carrier entity managed to track me here? Or were they really only here to claim the installation for the company, and it was just terrible luck that I was here as well? Could the terrifying carrier entity reach me down here, through my external feed interface? I couldn’t just cut myself off from the feed without alerting and worrying Abene.
Fuck fuck fuck.
If they were here after me, I wouldn’t be able to escape - my scout flier had no weapons, and I wouldn’t be able to outrun SecUnit fliers. If they weren’t here after me, I was better off not drawing attention to myself. Either way, there was nothing I could do. I just had to wait, and continue pretending to be a regular augmented human, and hope they didn’t do anything that would endanger Don Abene or the others.
Finally the humans finished talking and made their farewells. Don Abene and Miki began heading back to the ship, while the company captain started towards the installation entrance. I stayed close to Abene until I saw the SecUnit follow after the company captain towards the installation, turning its back to us.
Only then did I allow myself to relax slightly. Very slightly. I made sure that Abene and Miki made it safely back to their ship, then jogged over to the scout flier.
I could not wait to get off this stupid fucking planet.
Chapter Eight
As soon as I was in the scout flier, I shut down my feed and comms, then plugged into the scout flier to go through its comms to coordinate take-off with Kader and Vibol. As I piloted the scout flier into the air, its scanners picked up on four other fliers descending from orbit, heading for the installation. I had a terrible few minutes thinking they were going to shoot the scout flier and the GI ship out of the sky, but they didn’t. They just circled at a safe distance, giving us plenty of room to lift off, then dove in beneath us to land in formation around the company shuttle once we were well clear.
Okay. All right. Apparently they were just going down to help deal with the combat bots, or something. They weren’t shooting us down, so whatever they were doing was no longer my problem.
Once we were high enough in the atmosphere, I landed the scout flier safely in the GI ship’s hold and locked it down, shed and packed away the environmental suit, then retreated to my bunk. (I was going to miss that scout flier.)
I had to make sure I had everything packed and ready to go. As soon as we reached Milu Station, I had to leave. Hopefully Ship would still be waiting there for me. The GI ship didn’t have a wormhole drive, so it would be stuck at Milu Station until its pickup transport arrived, and I was not going to wait around there and risk the company carrier getting back before I could leave if I could at all help it.
I no longer had my armour, but that left more than enough room in my bag to fit my combat drone. Carrying it in there would make it easier to get it past weapon scans at stations, and I probably wouldn’t be able to deploy it often anyway. Combat drones tended to only be deployed as security on the stations owned or controlled by the more militaristic corporations, like the company. Civilian stations and transit rings usually didn’t have combat drones actively deployed unless there was an actual security situation going on, so wandering around with an active combat drone would likely draw far more attention than I wanted. Still, it was reassuring to have it anyway, just in case.
Once I’d made sure my bag was packed and ready to go, I sprawled back on my bunk. Now that I was finally out of the environmental suit and had access to my pockets again, I was able to get the data clips I’d bought, plug them into a port in my arm, and transfer the files I’d retrieved from the GrayCris systems. It was a relief to get that data off my internal storage, especially now that I knew it was most likely research on alien remnants. I decrypted some of it while it was transferring, and confirmed that it was indeed a bunch of scientific jargon that sounded very alien-remnant-y.
Yep, definitely relieved to be getting that out of my head.
While the data transfer was still going, Vicky wandered into our shared bunk space and sat down on its own bunk. It glanced over at me, paused, then said, “Hey.”
“Hey.” I didn’t bother sitting up.
“Have you thought about Don Abene’s offer?” it asked me after a moment.
Ah. I should probably tell it what I was going to do. And also see if it still had any of the media I’d had to delete. But I found myself oddly reluctant to say anything yet, so I just shrugged and asked it, “Have you?”
Vicky nodded, its expression thoughtful. “I think I’m going to accept, and stay with them. I like these humans, I like working with them, and Miki’s not so bad once you get used to it.” Its mouth quirked in a wry smile before it continued. “Abene knowing what I am helps, even if the others don’t know. Yet. Maybe I’ll tell them later. And their polity is far enough from most of the corporation territories that I won’t have to worry about them much, if at all. I can be free there.”
Laid out like that, I could see why Vicky wanted to stay with them. I just nodded, but my face must have done something, because Vicky started frowning slightly at me. “What about you? Are you going to stay?”
I couldn’t put off answering any longer. “I can’t.”
Vicky’s frown deepened. “What? Why not?”
“The company captain that Don Abene was talking to? I got a good look at him when Abene met up with him outside the ship. It’s the same captain that was looking for me back at RaviHyral.”
Vicky’s eyes widened. “Oh. Oh, shit. That explains why your feed’s off again. Do you think he tracked you here?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t seem to pay any attention to me while we were out there, but the SecUnit tried to ping me.” I finished transferring the last of the data from my internal systems to the data clips, unplugged them from the port in my arm, and discreetly slipped them into one of my pockets. “So I’m not taking any chances. As soon as we hit the station, I’m leaving. If Ship’s still there, which it should be, I’m hopping on it and going wherever it’s going. I’ll figure out what I’m doing next on the way.”
Vicky didn’t look happy about this, but it also didn’t argue. “Damn. Are you going to tell Abene?”
I had to think about that. I knew I should, but… I really didn’t want to. There would be too many questions that I didn’t want - or didn’t know how - to answer, and the mere thought of it was exhausting. “No,” I replied finally. “I’ll tell her I’m leaving once we actually reach the station and I know that Ship’s still there, but nothing more than that. The less she knows, the better, I think. And if the company captain does catch up with them and starts asking them questions about me, then… I don’t know.” This was hard. “If you’re staying with them, maybe you can… get Abene to convince the company captain that I was destroyed by the combat bots and recycled, or something like that. And if the company captain doesn’t ask anything, then the others don’t need to know any more than they do already.”
Vicky tilted its head towards me. “You’re assuming I’m going to stay with them instead of going with you.”
“Yes?” I didn’t bother trying to hide my surprise. “Why wouldn’t you stay with them? You just said you wanted to, that you’d be free with them.”
“I know, but… that was when I thought – I was hoping you’d be staying too. Now that I know you’re not…” It sighed. “I’m not sure.”
“Stay with them,” I urged it. “Don’t worry about me, all right?” I hesitated a moment, then said, “Maybe I’ll head to GI afterwards, once I’m sure I’ve shaken the company off my trail.” I had no idea if I would or not, but I was willing to suggest it if it meant that Vicky would stay where it was safe. “And like I said, if you’re with them, then you can take steps to help throw the company off if the captain does start asking them anything.”
Vicky mulled this over for a while. Just for good measure, I added, “Besides, I’ll probably be travelling on bot-piloted transports with no humans on them for a while.”
That had the desired effect. “Ugh! Fine, you win, I’ll stay with Abene and the others.” Vicky sounded grumpy, but its expression seemed amused, as far as I could tell. “At least if I stay with them I’ll get some more actual, proper conversation.”
“Hey, I’m great at conversation.” I wasn’t, and we both knew it, but I had to say it anyway.
Vicky just groaned and rolled its eyes at me. “Only if it’s about one of your serials.”
It had a point, but I wasn’t going to take that bait. “Speaking of serials, what do you still have of all the media I shared? I lost a bunch, so if you’ve still got most of it, I could use another copy of them.”
“You lost a bunch?” Vicky squinted suspiciously at me. “How did you just lose your media? Does it have anything to do with those data clips you were using before?”
I hesitated. “The less you know, the less you can let slip to anyone else,” I replied eventually, then added, “Sorry.”
Vicky was still eyeing me suspiciously, and I had to make a conscious effort not to move further into my bunk, out of its line of sight. “Does it have anything to do with data on certain alien remnants in a certain installation?”
I gave Vicky my best glare, and it raised its hands appeasingly. “All right, all right. I won’t pry any further.” It put its hands back down. “As for your media, I still have most of it. Turn your feed back on, we should be far enough away from the company carrier by now.”
I did so, though I still went through my external feed interface. I wasn’t taking any chances. Vicky dropped a bunch of files into the feed for me, and I began downloading. “... Did you really only keep the trashy serials?” I asked, a little exasperated at what media it had chosen to hang on to.
“No, I only deleted the trashy serials,” it retorted.
“You and I have very different definitions of what counts as a trashy serial.” Seriously, Vicky’s taste in media was dubious at best. Of course, it would probably claim the same about me. (It would be wrong though.)
“That, at least, we can agree on.” Vicky grinned at me, then its expression softened. “... I’m going to miss having you around.”
Ugh, nope, I wasn’t going to go there. No thank you. I rolled over onto my side so that Vicky wouldn’t be able to see my face, just in case my expression did things I didn’t want it to. “No you won’t.” I hesitated, then added, “Please don’t make it weird.”
I heard Vicky sigh, though it didn’t sound angry, at least. “All right. Should we go back to arguing about media till we reach the station, then?”
“That would be preferable, yes.”
So we argued over our differing media opinions until I’d finished downloading everything Vicky still had, and then we watched a serial we both agreed on (mostly agreed on, anyway) together until the ship started its approach to Milu Station.
As soon as I was within range of the station’s feed, I checked to see if Ship was still there. It was, patiently waiting for my permission to leave. As far as I could tell from a quick query to its bot pilot, nobody had asked it why it was still hanging around yet. That was a relief. I let it know that it could leave as soon as I was back on board.
Once the GI ship finished its docking procedure, I grabbed my bag, made sure I had everything, then went to find Don Abene. She was in her own quarters, which was good. It meant there wouldn’t be other people around. The door was open when I got there, and I could see her sitting at her desk, her display surface activated as she worked on something. (I didn’t bother trying to see what it was. I no longer had to datamine everything everyone did for the company, so I usually ignored what the humans around me were doing unless it directly involved me somehow. It was one of my favourite things about no longer working for the company.) For once, Miki wasn’t around either. Presumably it was off playing games with some of the other humans.
She hadn’t heard me approaching, so I rapped on the door frame with my knuckles. “Don Abene?”
“Oh!” She jumped a little, then turned in her chair to face me. “Ah, Rin!” She smiled at me, which made my insides twist a little. “What’s up?”
I fixed my gaze on the wall behind her head and tried to think of the best way to tell her that I was leaving. Ugh, I should have planned my words beforehand. It was too late now. “I’m not staying,” I said abruptly after an awkward pause. “I really appreciate your offer, and I’d like to, but something’s come up and I can’t. I’ve got to go immediately. Um. Maybe I’ll be able to come back later. I don’t know. Vicky’s staying though.”
Her gaze darted to the bag I had slung over my shoulder, then back to my face. I had no idea what it was doing, and I tried to settle my expression into something neutral. “... I see,” she said, and she sounded a little sad. “Well, I’m very glad that we got to meet, and work together for a little while.” I glanced briefly at her to see that she was smiling at me again, and I had to quickly look away. “Thank you again for saving everyone’s lives, Rin.”
I shrugged awkwardly. “It’s just what I’m made to do. Thank you for, uh. Helping to put me back together, and… not freaking out, or giving me away, or anything like that.”
“It’s the least I could do,” she said reassuringly, before she suddenly sat up a little straighter. “Oh, before you go! I should pay you your consultancy fee. That was the agreed upon contract, after all.” (I’d completely forgotten about the whole ‘getting paid’ part of the contract, honestly.) She turned back to her desk briefly, then got up and crossed the room to hold out some hard currency cards. “Here. The agreed upon fee, plus a bonus.”
I hesitated, then accepted the cards and slipped them into one of my jacket’s pockets. Actually getting paid was still really weird. “Um. Thanks.” I made sure the pocket was securely fastened, then adjusted my bag. “I should get going. The transport ship Vicky and I arrived on is still waiting for me. I’ve delayed it long enough as it is.”
“Right, of course.” She nodded, then looked up at me. “Will you be saying goodbye to the others?”
“Ah… I’m really not good with that kind of thing,” I admitted. “Less awkward for everyone if I just… go. And I need to hurry, anyway.”
“I’ll let them know that you said goodbye for you, then,” Abene offered, and my insides did something twisty again.
“Right. Thanks.” I should have started moving then, but I hesitated for a moment more. “If… anything happens, before you leave Milu Station, follow Vicky’s lead, okay?”
Don Abene looked a little puzzled at that, but she nodded. “I will. Thank you, Rin. Hopefully I’ll see you again sometime.”
“Yeah. Um. You too.” Ugh. This was almost physically painful. I was starting to think that I should have just left her a note, like I had with Dr. Mensah. “Bye, Don Abene.” I took a step back, then turned and started swiftly for the airlock. Hopefully I wouldn’t run into anyone else before I was off the ship.
“Goodbye, Rin. Stay safe.”
Given my life so far, that wasn’t likely, but I appreciated the sentiment anyway.
I left the ship via the cargo hold rather than the main airlock, which let me escape without running into anyone else. The station was still just as quiet and empty as it had been when we’d been here before. As I left the cargo dock, I hacked back into the minimal security just to make sure; nothing unusual or out of place showed up on any of the working cameras or in the station’s logs. Not even a mention of the company ship stopping at the station.
That was kind of odd, but also not really. There was no real reason for a company carrier to have to stop at a station like this, on the brink of abandonment as it was. The carrier had probably gone straight from the wormhole to the planet.
I had just reached the empty embarkation deck before Ship’s lock when I got a ping from Vicky over our private channel. I pinged back, and it said, [So you’re leaving now, yeah?]
[Yeah. Almost at the transport ship.]
[Damn, you move fast.] It paused briefly, then said, [All right. Don’t do anything stupid now that I’m not around to save your ass, okay?] Vicky’s tone was light, but I could still feel concern seeping through the feed. I did my best to ignore it.
[I’ve never done anything stupid in my life, ever. (Yeah that was a lie.) You make sure you don’t do anything stupid either, all right?]
[Yeah, yeah. Hey, I’m gonna try and teach Miki some of that unarmed combat stuff you showed me earlier.]
That was a mildly terrifying (and terrifyingly entertaining) thought. I was almost sad that I was going to miss watching it. [Good luck with that.]
Vicky’s reply was dry. [Thanks.] It paused briefly, then added, [Good luck with… whatever you end up doing, too.]
[Thanks.] I’d reached Ship’s lock by now. I paused, trying to think of something more to say, but I was coming up blank. Finally I just said, [I’ve got to go now.]
[All right. See you around sometime, hopefully.]
I sent a ping of acknowledgement, then backburnered that channel. I was reluctant to drop out of it entirely though. Maybe one day I’d run into Vicky again.
I pinged Ship, and it greeted me cheerfully, letting me know that we were cleared for departure as soon as I was settled on board. I acknowledged and approved the departure plan as I cycled through its airlock. Like Milu Station, nothing had changed on board Ship since I’d last been here.
I made my way to the little crew area on the control deck and set my bag down on the bunk, then dropped down to sit beside it. I felt the dull clunk vibrate through Ship as the docking clamps released and it began making its way towards the wormhole.
It was weird, being alone again. I hadn’t actually spent that much time with Vicky, comparatively, but I’d gotten used to it being around, talking with it about media, feeling it sitting in the feed even when we weren’t talking. I’d gotten used to having humans around as well; I’d been mostly ignoring them, but I had still been peripherally aware of their chatter, their movements, their presence. Even when I had been by myself in the scout flier, looking for the installation, the humans and Vicky had only been a comm call away.
But once Ship got out of range of the station and entered the wormhole, it would just be me again. I thought I would be looking forward to the peace and quiet, the chance to watch my media undisturbed, but…
On a whim, I got the combat drone out of my bag and activated it, then let it loose to explore Ship. It bobbed curiously and floated off, and I passively rode its inputs, watching through its camera as it explored this new space.
It came back after a minute or so though; there wasn’t really that much of Ship to check out in the first place. I watched it approach with my own eyes, and watched myself through its camera as it came to a halt nearby, its attention focused on me. It sent me a ping, and I pinged it back.
I found myself wondering if it missed being part of its swarm.
But that was dumb. It was just a drone.
I dropped its inputs and set it to patrol. It drifted off, but stayed within the main area, apparently reluctant to let me out of its line of sight. It wasn’t an actual person, but having it actively floating around still made me feel a little better.
Ship let me know that it was about to enter the wormhole, and I sent an acknowledgement ping. It was headed back to HaveRatton station, the same station it had left from. The trip would be twenty cycles, which gave me plenty of time to think about everything that had happened since Vicky and I had left RaviHyral, and what I was going to do next.
For now though, I just lay down on the bunk, curled up around my bag, and started The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon from episode one.