Chapter Text
Planetary Body 898/8712, PreservationAux Habitat
The humans were too absorbed in their argument to hear the door open (I don't know how, it makes a very distinct sound every time), so they all jumped when I said I had a plan.
I repeated myself when it seemed like they had calmed down, but it had sounded better the first time.
“Fuck,” said Gurathin. I ignored him.
“I’d like to hear it out,” said Bharadwaj.
“I would, too,” said Mensah. They both looked at Gurathin.
Gurathin said, “I already told you I think we’re better off without it.”
“What data are you basing that on?” I asked.
“Hold on,” said Mensah. “We should get the others before we talk about this.”
Oh great. This again. If they tried to make me hold hands I was going to go to the bottom of one of the craters and stomp around until one of the hostile fauna ate me. “I’m not getting in the circle,” I told Mensah.
“That’s alright,” she said gently. She was trying to be reassuring but it put me on edge immediately.
Bharadwaj went over to the stairs and called up to the others to come down and join us.
Upstairs, Ratthi, Pin-Lee, and Arada were also put on edge immediately. They all looked at each other nervously as their heart rates spiked and the source of the extremely uncomfortable emotional tension between them shifted from messy relationship drama to messy post-traumatic stress. Fucking Leebeebee.
“Well, hopefully no one has a gun out this time,” said Ratthi, ever the optimist.
“But what if GrayCris came back?” asked Arada, grabbing Pin-Lee’s hand.
I accessed the habitat’s sound system and said, “Technically my guns are always out, but this is not another hostage situation.”
All of the humans jumped when my voice came over the speaker.
“Oh, no! They thought it was another hostage situation?” said Bharadwaj, horrified. She turned and called up the stairs again, “It’s not a hostage situation, SecUnit’s just come back! Sorry!”
Ratthi made an enthusiastic gesture with his hands, then left the room to come downstairs while Pin-Lee and Arada looked at each other.
“What?” asked Mensah, looking between me and Bharadwaj.
I said, “Dr. Bharadwaj was forced at gunpoint to call the others down when Leebeebee decided to stop pretending to be from DeltFall.”
“How did you know that?” asked Bharadwaj.
Behind her, Ratthi came down the stairs and grinned at me. “Hey, buddy! You’re back!”
I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I just answered Bharadwaj’s question. “As I have attempted to make clear several times, I can see and hear everything that all of you say and do. You are on seven cameras right now, not including mine.”
Pin-Lee and Arada were coming down the stairs together and Pin-Lee said, “Seven?”
“You are on eight,” I said. “All of the footage is sent to me for analysis, or stored to be sent to me for analysis later if I am unreachable in real-time. I reviewed it as soon as we got the hopper back online.”
“There’s no surveillance in Preservation,” said Gurathin. “It’s new to them.”
I thought that sounded ridiculous, but everyone had assembled now so Mensah turned to me and said, “What would you like us to call you?”
“SecUnit,” I said.
“Okay,” said Mensah. She turned to Gurathin. “Gura, SecUnit has asked you why you think we are better off without it. We can talk about this.”
“Fine,” said Gurathin. “We can talk about this.”
This had to be a cult thing.
Gurathin continued, “I don’t understand what it stands to gain from helping us when we know so much damning information about it.”
I scoffed. Perhaps if he thought that knowing things about me was dangerous, then he should not have tried so hard to learn them, especially when they weren’t any of his fucking business.
“SecUnit?” asked Mensah patiently. “You have a response?”
Ugh. I hated this. She was making me say it to her so I wouldn’t be mean. “You know exactly one ‘damning’ piece of information about me, and it doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t?” asked Gurathin skeptically. “It doesn’t matter to you that if we say anything to the company, you’ll be melted down for parts?”
No it didn’t, because I was going to tell them. Or rather, I was going to tell GrayCris in order to save the lives of my stupid ungrateful clients, and GrayCris would almost certainly complain to the company about it immediately. Whatever, the company was going to find out. At least if I survived this next part I could find out what happened to Flight Officer Kogi before I was destroyed.
But Mensah was looking at me and I couldn’t say that to her, so I said, “No, it doesn’t, because I can’t get off this planet without my clients and I didn’t bring enough media to last until my power reserves run out.”
“The Company wouldn’t come to retrieve you if we died?” asked Arada.
“If the Company arrives to find that I’m alive and you aren’t, they’ll hunt me down and kill me,” I said.
“What?” said Mensah. “Without an investigation or anything?”
These people. It was a good thing I hadn't removed my helmet yet. “An investigation would not be required. Only a Rogue SecUnit could survive the loss of all its clients."
“What? Why?” asked Ratthi.
“Because of the proximity limit,” I said.
Ratthi seemed confused and glanced around at the others.
Arada shrugged at him and said, “What does that mean?”
Pin-Lee answered, so at least one of them had read their fucking contract. “SecUnits have to be within a certain distance of at least one client at all times. The company offered us the option to extend or reduce the limit during negotiations, so it can vary but it can’t be less than 100 meters and if it exceeds 1 kilometer it will increase the cost of the bond.”
“What happens to a SecUnit who exceeds the limit?” asked Arada.
“The governor module kills it,” I said.
“But what if it’s not the SecUnit's fault?” asked Arada.
“The governor module cannot be reasoned with,” I said.
They all sat with that for a moment.
“Okay,” said Mensah, with the expression of someone trying to move on briskly from something that had horrified them to the core of their being (I know that sounds niche but I had several other examples to compare it to. Trust me, it’s a thing). She said, “So we need each other. Is that good enough for everyone, for now?”
Gurathin looked like he still wanted to argue, but he said, “Sure, fine.”
Bharadwaj rubbed his shoulder and nodded.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Ratthi told me.
“Me too,” said Arada.
“Yeah,” said Pin-Lee. “Have we talked about what we’re doing? I have an idea.”
“I have a plan,” I said quickly. “Though I will need your help, Pin-Lee.”
Pin-Lee perked up. “Do you need me to fight off another SecUnit?”
“No,” I said. “Please do not get anywhere near a SecUnit that is trying to kill you ever again. I need you to do something more important than that.”
“Do I get a job?” asked Gurathin in a tone that suggested he expected me to say no.
“Yes,” I said.
He scoffed. “Is it to sit here quietly, doing nothing and minding my own business?”
“No,” I said. “You’ll be with Pin-Lee since you’ve finally demonstrated a useful skill.” SecUnits are not easy to hack, even with a hardwired connection.
Mensah pressed her lips together and gestured to Gurathin to drop it.
I explained my plan to them. Then Pin-Lee explained their plan, which had some fundamental and insurmountable flaws, so we went back to discussing my plan. For some reason it took a lot less convincing than I had expected. Mensah seemed to be trying to show me trust, and the others were following that example to varying degrees. It was very weird and it almost made me feel bad about lying to them.
---
Mensah found me a little while later in the hopper repairing the 3D Printer so I could replace the drone we'd lost at the alien remnant site. The others had been gathering supplies for the five days it would take for the Company to arrive and ferrying them over to the hopper’s cargo pods. They had been reluctant about my stipulation that they not return to the habitat after we pulled this off, but GrayCris knew where it was and if this worked we were about to screw them over in a major way. Even if their whole operation here was a bust, they would still want my clients dead just for being such a pain in the ass. The humans thought I was being paranoid (except Gurathin, who knew better), but I had come up with a brilliant plan to make sure they didn’t stupidly return to the habitat even if I wasn’t there to tell them not to.
I was in an oddly good mood when Mensah sat down beside me and watched me reconstructing the printer using spare parts and a few things I had scavenged from the habitat.
“How are you, SecUnit?” she asked.
“Really looking forward to kicking GrayCris in the teeth,” I said.
She made a face at first and then seemed to war with herself internally for a moment.
“You are too,” I said.
“A little bit,” she admitted. “SecUnit, I wanted to apologize to you.”
Wait, what? I didn’t have my helmet on because I wanted them to think of me as their nice friendly SecUnit long enough to get them the fuck off this planet, but I looked up at her face briefly anyway. “Why?”
Mensah said, “When I objected to having you on this survey, it... it was because your situation-”
“It’s fine, I know,” I said quickly, turning back to my work. “I was there.”
It took a beat for her to process that and then she said, “Wait, you mean at Port FreeCommerce? You were awake? ”
“Yes,” I said. “We’re heavy and difficult to move, they only put us in stasis for repairs or shipment.”
“Then why were you slumped in the back like that?” she asked.
“Because they wanted you to pick the more expensive one,” I said. It usually works, too. It had been working that whole day, which had provided me with some quality media download time (network access was better and easier to mask in areas that clients had access to).
Mensah frowned about that for a moment while I consulted the repair manual for the printer. Then she asked, “Why did you lie when I asked you if you knew I had objected to having you?”
“Humans generally prefer it if I don’t know things so that they can tell me whatever they want,” I said.
“You mean lie,” she said, frowning more. “To your face.”
Sure, whatever. I said, “You don’t have to apologize for not wanting me. I wouldn’t have either.” I had meant to make that sound like a joke, but even I could tell I'd missed the mark.
On the hopper’s interior camera Mensah looked sad and angry. Then she said, “That’s not what I was apologizing for. When I told the company that we believe constructs are slaves, I was telling the truth, and I thought that I understood what that meant. When we got here I wanted to treat you like a person, and I wanted you to respond like a person, but I didn’t know how to behave in a way that would soften my authority over you. Requests didn’t seem to register to you as any gentler than orders, you didn’t respond to attempts to ascertain your preferences or opinions, you answered every question like it was specifically a question about Security. I didn’t realize how much trust I was asking for or why you would be so hesitant to give it to me, and after a while it became horrifyingly easy to start thinking that maybe you were just a machine.”
“All humans are more comfortable thinking of us as machines,” I said. “It’s best to encourage it.”
“Why?” asked Mensah.
So many reasons, but I didn't want to get into most of them so I said, “Humans are foolish and reckless. It’s best to keep them away from things that were designed to kill them." Then I added, “Especially the defective ones.”
Mensah winced. “We shouldn’t have let him say that to you. I’m sorry, SecUnit. I think you’ve been reminding Dr. Gurathin of a lot of things he's ashamed of, and he’s been taking it out on you in ways that aren’t acceptable. I spoke to him about it and he’s going to work on it.”
Sure he was.
“Okay,” I said, because I didn’t care. I had gotten the printer to the point where it was semi functional, so I connected to it and had it start printing some of the parts that it needed that I hadn’t been able to scavenge.
Mensah sighed and watched me work for a moment and then said, “What I wanted to apologize for is the way we’ve been trying to make you reassure us. I know you don’t like to be touched or looked at or to make eye contact, and those aren’t particularly difficult things to accommodate. But instead of accommodating you, we keep asking you to just get over it for our comfort.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “You don’t need to accommodate me, I’m your SecUnit.”
“It’s not fine,” said Mensah. “It’s not how we would treat a human.”
“I’m not a human,” I said.
“It’s not how we would treat a person,” she amended.
“I’m not one of those either,” I told her. The printer finished making a component and I set it aside to cool and started printing another.
“Yes you are,” said Mensah firmly, clenching her hands to suppress the impulse to reach for me. “And I’m deeply sorry that we ever made you feel like you weren’t. I’m sure you know already, but I asked the others for consensus. None of us will tell the Company anything about you except that you saved us. I don’t know what’s on the footage they’ll get, but they won’t hear anything from us.”
I did already know that (it had given me my brilliant idea). I wasn’t particularly confident in their ability to avoid getting me in trouble by accident (not that it was going to matter), but it was nice that they cared.
I knew the rest of the team had finished packing the cargo pods. Ratthi was printing extra snacks for everyone while the others were mingling nervously near the habitat entrance.
“Dr. Mensah,” I said. “I would like to request consensus about something else. Can you gather the others?”
She looked surprised and then excited and went to go get them. She thought I was making a gesture of trust.
I finished assembling the printer and set it up to start printing the drone we were going to need, and then I went to join the humans. They all looked up at me and then remembered that Mensah had asked them not to do that and looked at my chest or feet or over my shoulder instead.
I told them, “Launching the beacon will not stop GrayCris from wanting to kill you. They’ll have fewer resources, so they should be easier to avoid, but we absolutely cannot return to this or any other habitat. I am asking for consensus that you will not return to the PreservationAux, DeltFall, or GrayCris habitats for any reason until the Company transport has arrived.”
“You mean like if one of us needs the medsystem again,” said Gurathin, as if he had not also tried to convince the other humans not to bring him back here when he was dying.
“I mean for any reason,” I said. If they stuck to the plan, none of them would ever be near any armed hostiles. But they were brave and stupid, and after the override module incident I worried that they would get themselves killed trying to get me to a repair cubicle, which would defeat the whole purpose of doing any of this.
They all looked at each other and then did their humming and hand-holding. No one tried to make me do it, which was nice. The prospect of my almost certain imminent death probably should have felt worse, but when I weighed it against returning to the deployment center it honestly felt like a bit of a wash. On the one hand, no more contracts. On the other, no more media.
Whatever, it didn’t really matter. They were all so gentle with each other, and they kept trying to be so gentle with me. I had to try.