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I always expected to be abandoned on a hostile planet at some point. It’s what SecUnits are for. Throw the expendable construct at whatever (probably self-inflicted) hazard the humans and augmented humans have discovered so the paying clients can be extracted and the company can avoid those expensive bond payouts.
I’ve seen SecUnits abandoned because they were damaged or separated from the client team. I’ve seen them ordered to stay back with no hope of retrieval to cover a retreat. I've seen them left just because they were somehow inconvenient. And I’ve almost been abandoned plenty of times myself. It was my hacked governor module and my SecSystem access that prevented ‘almost’ from becoming ‘actually.’
Thing is, I thought I’d moved past that when they gave me a place with Preservation. I never expected to be abandoned by Dr. Mensah.
It’s my own dumb fault. At least partially. My drones could have told me they were leaving. (Even though Thiago made a fuss about drones in the house I still keep a few he doesn’t know about. I’d ignore him completely and fill the house with drones on active patrol patterns just to spite him, but then we’d have a ‘conversation’ about it, and that sounds exhausting. Plus I have plenty more on the perimeter of the compound.)
I played back the camera feeds as soon as I realized I was trapped, and there they were, each and every one of them, leaving me behind. But I hadn’t been paying attention at the time. I had been laying on the couch I had designated as ‘mine’ and was scanning a big media dump from a friendly transport recently arrived in orbit while looking as if I was paying attention (I'm good at that).
So I didn’t process what it would mean for me when Farai and Tano made a supply trip into town on their anachronistically rustic (read ‘slow’) ground car, and then Thaigo and his partners decided to go on a last minute outing to a seasonal event at a biopark without thinking to mention it to anyone else.
(I can see advantages to these big family collectives they have here on Preservation, but it has certain drawbacks too. Pertinent to my present situation, it makes parents complacent about security. They think they can just wander off to get some personal time because there's probably still another adult around to watch the kids, right?)
And here it’s my own fault again, because I’m the one who told the automated system to count me as an ‘adult.’ The automated assistant system, the underpowered one the Dr. Mensah begrudgingly allows as part of her job as head of Preservation, has me on file as a ‘responsible adult friend of the family.’ I added that because it was the easiest way to make it leave me alone and stop trying to filter my feed access through the house system. (Preservation parents are extremely permissive, but even they don't give their children unrestricted access to a feed that can reach all the way to the Corporate Rim.)
So when Dr. Mensah finally pried herself away from the feed and the people trying to give her more work to do and left (behind schedule and without notifying me) to have some quiet time in the little meditation house on the far side of the property (a big part of why we came down to the stupid planet in the first place), it didn’t throw an automatic alert that she was the last (human) adult leaving the premises. Because there was me; a certified ‘responsible adult.’
So now it was just me, abandoned, with all of the children.
My efficiency dropped to 94 percent.
"Play shooters with us!"
I considered the directive presented by Subclient Two. My language processor is used to parsing the lisp with an acceptable confidence modifier by now, and while the exact combination of words was unfamiliar, I could reasonably connect it with the raucous activity that had filled the entertainment room for the last 12.7 minutes.
Most of Dr. Mensa’s family, at least the ones not on the original PreservationAux expedition, didn’t know what to make of me and tended to be uncomfortable in my presence. (I wasn’t comfortable in their presence either, but no one asked.) The younger children, however, were curious about the new ‘person’ Mom/Auntie Ayda had brought home. They were too young to have seen the entertainments featuring villainous rogue SecUnits and weren’t socially adept enough to pick up on the discomfort of their elders.
Normally the adults would shoo the children away from me, either because they knew me and knew I didn’t want the attention, or because they didn’t know me and wanted to protect their offspring from the potentially violent construct. No one to rescue me this time, though.
The directive from Subclient Two included an object, held out to me with a posture and oh-so-eager facial expression implying I should take it.
"You need a shooter!" she hooted, enthusiastically.
I had a clear way out of this. All I had to do was send a message to any of the adults, let them know what had happened, and they would turn around immediately. (No sane parent wants their children being nannied by a SecUnit.) But then I would be the SecUnit who called for backup to deal with a handful of juvenile humans.
I have pulled living clients from the gaping jaws of hostile alien fauna. I do not need assistance dealing with infants.
Mostly I don’t need assistance dealing with infants. I’m pretty sure all of them are old enough to be continent. (When are humans old enough to have full control of their bowels? It’s not something my shitty education modules covered and I hadn’t had reason to pick up the information since then.) I tell you what, if there are any body fluids that need to be cleaned up I’m calling someone and damn the consequences.
I reluctantly picked up the ‘shooter.’ The clunky, colorful device bore only a rudimentary resemblance to any projectile weapon I had on file. It fit my hand poorly and its low mass to volume ratio suggested sloppy construction and subpar durability. Stylized characters on the side labeled it a ‘Dart Warrior Special Deluxe’.
As a rule, citizens of Preservation fetishize natural, handmade, and locally sourced items. But the workshop in the family compound does include a small number of limited function printers. The good-enough-for-Preservation version of the much better printers which produced my clothes and bag when I was traveling the Corporate Rim pretending to be an augmented human security consultant.
I had dismissed them as soon as I figured out they couldn't fabricate even the most rudimentary drone. But, having much simpler tastes, the children had taken advantage of this new tool, and the leniency of their parents, to print an endless stream of toys that went beyond the repertoire of the local artisans. The latest fad to sweep through the house had been these simulated toy weapons that shot soft, low mass, low velocity projectiles.
Dr. Mensah had wrinkled her brows, Farai and Tano had multiple private discussions about it, and Thiago had looked grouchy, but ultimately their parental philosophy prevented them from voicing anything other than mild disapproval as their progeny enthusiastically committed simulated violence against each other. (I guess humans are still humans, regardless of age.)
I opened a new profile in my projectile weapons directory and labeled it ‘Dart Warrior Special Deluxe’.
As I examined the ‘weapon’ I heard a loud clack from Subclient One’s position across the toy-cluttered room. Threat Assessment spiked. Too late. An object hit me squarely in my squishy organic ear.
(I don’t technically need this external structure. My hearing is so good it doesn’t benefit much from the miniscule boost offered by a sound collecting dish of vulnerable soft tissue, but it makes clients uncomfortable if you don’t have them.)
I’ve been ripped apart and put back together more times than my memory wipes will allow me to recall, but that dart managed to sting enough, and surprise me enough, I reflexively dialed down my pain sensors.
Even here on Preservation I miss my helmet. Every. Single. Day.
Also, I’ve been shot by my own clients, like, a lot. Apparently this is just a continuation of that theme.
"Now you have to shoot back!" Subclient One called from across the room. As soon as he saw my attention swing his way he dove behind some furniture and I heard that clack again. Charging his Dart Warrior Special Deluxe for another shot.
Reaching down to the padded floor (everything in Preservation is soft) I picked up the projectile that had hit me. It was a cylindrical shape made of a spongy material, and like the associated shooter, it was brightly colored and dubiously constructed.
I appended my profile for the Dart Warrior Special Deluxe with an ammunition subprofile. Lethality Index: null. Physical Hazard Index: low.
Another dart bounced off my jaw.
(My default weapons profile doesn’t include a value for annoyance, but if it did I would rank the Dart Warrior Special Deluxe as ‘high.’)
I considered my current top-level objectives.
1. Facilitate the physical security of Dr. Mensah (ongoing)
The drones I had following her showed she was resting comfortably in the meditation house.
2. Facilitate the physical security of humans and augmented humans associated with Dr. Mensah (ongoing)
2.a Play shooters (under evaluation)
Based on the hazard analysis of 'Dart Warrior Special Deluxe’, Directive 2.a was not in conflict with any higher level directive.
Directive 2.a "Play shooters", Status Update: ongoing.
Subclient One = Non-Lethal Target One. Additional profile tags added: Ranged engagement via 'Dart Warrior Special Deluxe’ only.
Subclient Two = Non-Lethal Target Two. Additional profile tags added: Ranged engagement via 'Dart Warrior Special Deluxe’ only.
I probably could have figured it out on my own, but I scrolled back through recent video input until I found a sequence of Non-Lethal Target Two loading, cocking, and firing the ‘Dart Warrior Special Deluxe’. Several passes through a heuristic routine broke the process into its constituent elements and I added a loading and firing procedure to the rapidly expanding weapons profile.
I ran the steps, successfully loading the weapon and preparing it to fire.
The dart was ejected from the gun with a clang and an agonizingly low muzzle velocity. After barely two meters the dart began to wobble and veer from the intended trajectory, missing Non-Lethal Target One entirely.
“Missed me!” He shouted, dropping down and reloading his own weapon.
Non-Lethal Target One and Non-Lethal Target Two returned fire, scurrying for cover, making all kinds of excited, happy child noises. Most of their shots went wide, but one came within reach and I was able to catch it out of the air and use it to reload my weapon. (I’ve been low on ammo in enough high-threat situations to appreciate the value of a reusable munition.)
I aimed again, compensating for the large drift, and released another brightly colored dart. I struck my moving target squarely in the nose. Non-Lethal Target Two wailed a complaint of pain and, of all things, injustice.
"No noses!" Said Non-Lethal Target One. "And no eyes! Or ears!" (Nevermind that they already shot me in the ear.)
I opened a new file and labeled it “PlayShooters Rules of Engagement.” I moved “Ranged engagement via ‘Dart Warrior Special Deluxe’ only” from the target profile into Rules of Engagement and added “Invalid target zones: Ears, Eyes, Nose.”
Recovering another dart from the floor I spun up a sensor routine and a datastore to track and log the position of fallen ammunition throughout the 'combat zone.' I added a counter for chambered rounds (the Dart Warrior has a woefully inadequate ammunition capacity) and rounds on hand for reloading. (My preferred clothing has a lot of pockets, specifically for things like ammunition, though loose handfuls of brightly colored cylindrical sponges was not what I originally had in mind.)
I moved through the entertainment room/battle space loading up on darts and returning fire whenever the children popped up. (In a combat situation drawing fire has always been an integral part of my job. However, the fact that the incoming fire consisted of projectiles that bounced harmless off my body was strangely amusing. It was like being one of those invincible heroes in my shows, or one of the invincible monsters, depending on which show we're talking about. It also made my Threat Assessment module do a weird high/low flutter thing I'd never seen before.)
For their part the kids took wild shots while plugging the gaps I exploited in their impromptu barricade. Our noise attracted more children and I had to designate Non-Lethal Targets Three and Four. (Apparently no one wants to support the evil SecUnit against the valiant human defenders.)
The expansion of my opposing force also contributed to an expansion in my Rules of Engagement. Apparently invalid targets also include anyone who "isn't ready." Where "isn't ready" is defined as "searching for ammunition," "reloading ammunition once found," or "dissatisfied with my current shooter and getting a new one."
The barricade now consisted of every cushion and mobile piece of furniture in the room and I wasn’t getting as many opportunities to take shots. Non-Lethal Target One in particular had created a narrow opening allowing him to shoot out but deflecting my return fire.
And of course he insisted on letting me know “you missed me!” every time.
Screw you, wobbly darts. If a purpose-built killing machine can't put your projectile on target, you made a bad projectile.
Then something occurred to me. I'm used to high yield weapons. The kind that could fire a round in one side of the house, through its entire length, and out the other side without any appreciable drop in velocity. The Dart Warrior Special Deluxe was not that sort of weapon. But there was something the Dart Warrior Special Deluxe could do that none of those bot-busting, alien fauna-liquifying weapons could have managed: bounce a projectile off a surface and around an obstacle.
I reloaded, calculated where I thought my target was probably located behind the furniture barricade, and did some quick geometry. Aiming at a spot on the ceiling I let off a volley of shots as quickly as I could. They bounced off the ceiling, disappeared behind the furniture, and I was rewarded with a gratifyingly offended shout of “Hey!”
Gotcha, kid. Don't mess with Murderbot. (That sounded darker than I intended.)
Realizing their defensive tactics weren’t viable (or maybe just getting bored) Non-Lethal Target Four broke cover and charged me for a point-blank shot.
My shooter was empty. My pockets were empty. It was right there in my counter when I took a millisecond to check it. I’d gotten careless and distracted by my fancy trick shots. I checked my tracker and found my entire side of the combat zone was free of darts. Apparently one SecUnit can return fire faster than the five children I now had opposing me.
Despite my lack of ammunition, I cocked the empty weapon and fired it at Non-Lethal Target Four as she ran past. She flinched and missed her shot.
That’s a good trick. I’ll have to keep it in mind next time I'm in a real combat situation with humans. File under save-for-later.
Also, get smarter with your ammo usage, Murderbot, or you’re going to lose your audience.
Speaking of which, one of my hidden house drones sent me an alert. The oldest children were starting to realize there were no adults in the house. (I have no idea how accurate they are, but my serials have given me a healthy fear of what adolescent humans can get up to if they know they’re unsupervised.)
An idea had been growing in the back of my mind, and I decided it's time had come. Grabbing the original ‘Dart Warrior Special Deluxe’ file from the printer buffer I started making some changes. Better grip. Smoother trigger. Major improvements to the spring and airflow system. And those darts. I needed to make some changes to those stupid, wobbly darts.
While I worked on my new design in the background, I decided it was time to turn this into a running battle. I scooped up as many darts as I could while moving to the door. Being careful with my ammunition supply I managed to score a few choice hits. Not painful enough to decrease interest in the game, but just enough to provoke thoughts of revenge.
I did a quick scan of my media archive for a taunt. Something to further inspire pursuit. The return was quick and obvious, and the sample set assured me it would be universally effective.
“You can’t get me!” I shouted, and bolted out the door.
It worked like a charm. I ran (well, jogged lazily for me, but ‘ran’ for them) out of the entertainment room with a squad of shouting juvenile humans on my heels and my new shooter design on its way to the printer.
I went straight to the food prep area where I knew I would find Prospective Non-Lethal Target Six. Rounding the entryway I found he had pulled all the saltiest, sugariest, most processed foods he could find onto the counter and was idly stuffing his face.
I took careful aim. The dart arced through the air and bounced off his forehead with an extremely satisfying pok! noise. I got a glimpse of his dumbfounded expression as I dodged past with my pursuers in tow.
This… this wasn't awful. This was the first time I'd ever used my skills without being coerced, scared, angry, or some combination thereof. And this was working. Prospective Non-Lethal Target Six = Non-Lethal Target Six swung in with my pack of pursuers.
My dart counter said 30. My print job said 10 percent.
This part of the house had all the personal sleeping rooms off one main corridor. (If planets have any advantages at all, it’s that everyone can have a lot of space to themselves.) Some rooms were interconnected, some had bathrooms attached. It was the perfect place to stall for time. I ducked sideways into the first room.
Unsure of where I had gone the kids thundered past. I jumped out behind them, launched a few darts into their backs, and slipped into the room across the hall.
27 darts, 18 percent complete.
This room had double doors connecting it to another room with its own access to the hallway. I swung around this circular path and attacked from behind again.
The children bunched up in the hall behind me trying to take shots as I ran to the far end and slipped into a room with an attached bathroom. While they caught up I shut the bathroom door loudly, then hid in an adjacent closet. (Even though Dr. Mensah’s family are among the cleaner humans I’ve dealt with, the confined space still smelled like feet.)
The children were getting wise to my tricks and entered slowly, forming up around the closed door. One of them flung it open and they loosed a volley of darts into the empty bathroom as I jumped out of the closet behind them and back to the hallway.
18 darts, 37 percent complete.
I kept the chase going as the children progressively improved their tactics in an effort to limit my escape options. At one point I had to make several passes through adjacent but disconnected rooms. I took the opportunity to unlock windows in both rooms (Set reminder for ‘relock windows’), and surprised the children, who thought they had finally cornered me, by disappearing out of one dead-end room and reappearing in the other.
5 darts left. 83 percent on the print job.
Where was Non-Lethal Target Six? Threat Assessment did its weird flutter thing again just as a dart smacked into my head from the side. He had gone up one set of stairs, across the second story, and down the other stairs to flank me. Outsmarted by a teenager. Hopefully Dr. Mensah doesn’t hear about it, or she might reevaluate my employment status.
Non-Lethal Target Six had done something else as well. Through the house feed I could see he had reached out to the last and oldest of the subadults, notifying her of the desperate fight, and asking her to join.
The print job hit 96 percent and I spent my last darts making sure everyone saw me duck out the exterior door and toward the outbuilding with the printers.
I timed my run/leisurely stroll to reach the shop just as the children piled out of the house. Entering the dim shop I could smell the volatiles from the warm printer mixed with the odor of agricultural residue. I pulled my build off the tray and slapped in the magazines I printed alongside it; rounds already loaded.
I hefted the confidence-inspiring weight of the thing and pulled the lever to rack a round with a deeply rewarding ka-chunk. No lowest bidder design here.
I positioned myself and my new shooter partially concealed behind a parked farm vehicle. I lined up on the door just as Non-Lethal Target Two jumped in. Her head whipped side to side too fast to actually see anything, then she shouted over her shoulder that I wasn’t there.
The older kids must be sacrificing her as a scout. Punks.
I let her wander in. The others trickled in with exaggerated caution. I dialed in my first shot on Non-Lethal Target Seven. She was fresh to the fight and hadn’t taken any hits yet.
The trigger pull was smooth. The spring had a respectable kick. I’d noticed some of the other darts developed a whistle when their tips got damaged and I incorporated the concept so my dart shrieked as it flew fast and straight. No wobble to be seen. It took Non-Lethal Target Seven square in the sternum with that same satisfying pok. The crumple elements I designed into the dart absorbed the impact and it ricocheted away, leaving her surprised but unharmed.
I let off a full clip as the children exclaimed excitedly, scrambled for cover, and tried to return fire. I loaded in a second clip and started a fighting retreat out the back door of the shop.
Having monitored the printers through a complete build cycle I saw obvious opportunities to improve their efficiency. On my way out I made some code updates to let them print substantially faster and I left my improved shooter design in plain view on the interface terminal.
Risk Assessment protested there was an 87 percent chance of the design being used against me. Here’s hoping.
One of the kids must have taken the bait almost immediately because as I found my next firing position on the grounds around the house I could see through the feed my file being copied and rerun across all of the printers. There would be enough of my improved design to arm my entire opposition very shortly. Which meant every juvenile human in the house, including the oldest ones, were now completely committed to the engagement. A solid win for the Murderbot-industrial complex.
I watched the progress of the new print jobs and took shots on the shop door every time a head poked out to fire an ineffectual round in my direction.
Yep, I’m still here. Better wait for that upgraded firepower.
It took an absurd 6.7 minutes from the time the printers flagged the job ‘complete’ until the newly armed children boiled through the door in a hail of screaming projectiles. I hit them each with a dart in numerical order (I’ve got to make this at least moderately challenging to keep myself engaged.) A dart for Non-Lethal Target One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six. Where’s Seven?
Seven thought she was clever and exited the opposite door, using her siblings as a distraction. I bounced a dart off the top of her head just as she was trying to draw a bead on me.
A barrage of darts peppered my general area. I let them have the position and moved to a new one.
The fight crisscrossed the yard and various outbuildings for the next 24.4 minutes. I managed to keep things going at a steady pace by using Threat Assessment backwards. It’s designed to alert on threatening faces and body language, among other things. If one of the children didn’t register as threatening, I sent a few extra rounds their direction until they focused on me again. However, I eventually saw I was losing the entire group. Their reaction times slowed and their focus was wandering. What they needed was a rest period.
(I’d heard some of the adults complain they could never match the energy of their children. Apparently all you need to outlast children is to be a tireless construct. Well, nearly tireless. I would probably need a recharge after a few days of this.)
New plan. (Really an old plan. It’s what the parents always fall back on.) I began to steer the fight back toward the house and the snacks Non-Lethal Target Six had helpfully laid out. At the same time I checked the tags on my latest media dump.
Previously I filtered out anything labeled ‘preadult’, but the files were still in my buffer. I polled the media history of all seven children for preferences and I filtered the list trying to find a best fit. It wasn’t easy but I found the closest match I could manage and sent it to a display surface in the kitchen.
I queried Risk Assessment to see what it thought of my plan, because, why not? It threw back a null. The equivalent of tossing its hands up in exasperation. It would seem childcare was so far outside its purview it wasn't even going to try.
I retreated through the kitchen door under sporadic fire and left it open behind me. I added a large container of cold, fruit-flavored beverage to the heap of snacks directly under the display surface, which was running the intro sequence to the new show. Then, keeping my shooter close, I dropped into a chair and kicked my feet up.
The choice was clear. Media and snacks, or more simulated combat with the merciless SecUnit.
Non-Lethal Target Six was first inside, weapon up and looking wary. He saw the screen, the snacks, the juice, then me leaning back in my chair. He lowered the shooter and shouted back to his siblings it was time for food. (I don’t know what people have against teenagers. Non-Lethal Target Six has been an extremely useful asset throughout this entire engagement.)
The children straggled in with various exhausted exclamations. Shooters and ammo clips clunked down haphazardly around the room as eyes gravitated toward the screen and hands drifted to bags of crunchy things.
They stayed like that for 73.9 minutes until the noise of Farai and Tano returning in the ground car cut through their media/carbohydrate haze. Non-Lethal Target Two = Subclient Two heard it first, and I could tell he had an idea that excited him. (I’m not great at reading faces, but children are easier to understand than adults.) With lots of unnecessary whispering, gesturing, and big-eyed expressions he picked up his shooter, prodding and cajoling his siblings until he had recruited a full ambush party. Rested and reinvigorated, they loaded and racked their weapons, slipping out of the kitchen to launch their assault.
Settling back into my chair I quietly scrubbed my ID from the printer’s access logs and started the next episode of my newest serial.