Chapter Text
I was still in the Corporation Rim. It was annoyingly large, so it was annoyingly hard to get out of. The first bot-driven transport I had hitched a ride on hadn’t traveled all that far, and neither had the second one.
So here I was, only eleven cycles after leaving Port FreeCommerce, crossing a transit ring for the third time. I wouldn’t say it was easy, but I was getting better at it, and I was feeling pretty good about how well I was doing so far. Nothing to see here, just another anonymous augmented human in the crowd.
The ship I had just left was on the commercial docks, and I pretended to be a worker as I exited, erasing myself from its memory as I did so. Once I was in the more populated area of the station mall, there was nothing to distinguish me from any other traveler. (That’s what I told myself, at any rate.)
Despite the fact that I can process multiple inputs at once, all of my attention was focused on getting through the crowd unnoticed. My clothing made me look like an augmented human, and most of the humans and augmented humans were too busy walking or searching the feed to pay attention to me. My attention was split between navigating around humans, not panicking when anybody accidentally made eye contact with me, trying to find a transport to leave on, and, oh yeah, obsessively scanning both the transit news channels and the Station Security alerts for anything about rogue SecUnits.
At the last station, I had picked up a newsburst about PreservationAux and three other political entities that were fighting with GrayCris. But the story had included a picture of me and a mention of the SecUnit that Dr. Mensah had bought. There was nothing about the SecUnit (me, okay, me) being rogue or no longer being with PreservationAux (in fact, nothing that even identified the image of me as the SecUnit—I was listed in the caption as “bodyguard”), but the story was old, published the cycle after I had left Port FreeCommerce. I had no idea what else about PreservationAux’s survey might have come to light since then, or who might be looking for me.
So I was a little on edge, okay?
It didn’t help that there were no bot-driven transports leaving from the docks that my last ride had unloaded its cargo at. (There were transports there, but none of the bot-driven ones were leaving for at least two cycles, and I needed to get out of here now. In the Corporation Rim I’m classified as both property and a deadly weapon. (That is not a good category to be in.)) Fortunately, there was another cargo dock on the opposite end of the transit ring, and feed searches had turned up two different possible unmanned ships leaving this cycle. Unfortunately, I had to walk through the station mall and all the passenger docks to get there.
It was a long walk, and it seemed like all the more time for something terrible to happen. I considered the possibility of taking a passenger transport for 1.3 seconds before ruling it out.
All the facilities for purchasing tickets would have weapons scanners, and while I can hack them, security protocols suggested there would be a lot of them because of the crowds, and I could only do so many at once. It was enough to keep up with the weapons scanners that were periodically fixed around the ring. Plus, I would have to hack the payment system, and that sounded like way more trouble than it was worth. Plus, (and I really should have put this one at the top of the list) a passenger transport would be full of humans and augmented humans.
So that was definitely out. I really didn’t want to test my ability to act like an augmented human so soon. Passing through the transit ring was one thing, but being stuck sitting next to humans for hours would be so much worse.
Long walk through the station it was, then. By the time I was over halfway to the docks, I was feeling better. I hadn’t received any pings for any of my alerts on the feed or on scans of the SecSystem. I was designed to interface with SecSystems, so it had been easy to slide into the station’s system to monitor it. But there were only the routine pings from the scanners placed throughout the station. Nothing was happening.
Then I got shot.
Well, fuck.
But in the 0.1 seconds after the impact, I realized that a) no one had actually been aiming for me, the rogue SecUnit, and b) I had walked into the middle of some sort of hostile corporate action.
I remembered after an agonizingly long 0.4 seconds that instead of just standing there and taking fire like I was built to, I should drop to the ground like a human. (The small, single projectile that hit me wasn’t even a problem. I had already turned my pain sensors down, and the projectile was lodged against the inorganics of my midsection.)
The nearest cover was the counter of a closed food stall, which was one of several stalls that lined the wall in this area. I moved around it and crouched on the floor. One second later, a human followed me. It wasn’t a bad reaction time for a human, given that they usually completely freeze when something wants to kill them.
I was busy diving deeper into SecSystem, trying to figure out if it knew what the hell was going on, as well as running back my own footage of the crowd before all hell broke loose. Oh fuck. In one of the higher layers of SecSystem for supervisors, there was a lot going on, chatter about the expected first move of a rival corporation that the corporation who controlled the majority of this station was just waiting for, so they would have a legitimate excuse to retaliate. Never mind anyone caught in the crossfire, of course.
Fuck, I had been so focused on someone looking for me that I hadn’t even thought about what else could be going on at this station. No wonder the first layers of SecSystem had been so quiet—the corporates weren’t going to risk their rivals intercepting any alerts and calling things off.
The human who was behind the counter with me made a noise that never means anything good. I’ve heard hurt humans make it a lot, it’s somewhere between a gasp and a whimper.
She’d been shot.
I realized from my footage that she’d been walking ahead of me, and that the projectiles that had hit us had come from the same weapons round. She was half-sitting on the floor, with her back to the counter, and there was a wet red spot in the middle of her shirt. She was staring at it open-mouthed with a look of horror (I’m not great at interpreting human expressions, but horror, I knew).
I moved beside her and applied pressure over the wound. Look, I hate touching, but emergencies are different, and I also hate it when humans die right in front of me—though wow, I was not expecting the grossness of this, usually I have my armor on when I’m hauling around leaking humans, ugh—and it’s not like I didn’t know what to do. Most of my medical knowledge came from watching MedCenter Argala, which was highly inaccurate, but was pretty standard about the basics.
There weren’t any more projectiles being fired, but there was lots of yelling, and lots of crying from the humans who were stuck cowering in this part of the mall. I didn’t see anyone else who looked like they had been shot, but this entire section had turned into a hostage situation. The security cameras showed members of the rival corporation taking up positions around this part of the mall. The updates from SecSystem were going crazy. The corporates whose headquarters were here were mobilizing to have a standoff in the middle of the station mall, and both the feed and the speakers overhead were announcing shelter in place orders.
Not that that did any good for anyone stuck here.
The human gasped at the pressure on her wound, but I could tell she was making an effort not to make any noise. Her jaw moved as she subvocalized to someone on the feed. Then she looked at me.
“I’m Iris,” she whispered.
I found her quickly on the feed and secured a private connection between us. Use the feed, I sent.
She frowned. I knew it was not because of what I’d told her, but because of how I’d contacted her so easily despite the fact that she had her profile’s privacy settings locked down, and because I didn’t have a feed profile at all (I had hacked into the feed). But I didn’t care. She might draw to us attention by talking.
(It wasn’t prohibited not to have any information on the feed while visiting a station, the way it was, say, prohibited to be a rogue SecUnit, but it was highly unusual. If a human or augmented human wanted to interact with station services at all, they would have to put something in their feed profile.)
Iris was augmented, I could tell after pinging her. She was small, with dark brown skin and fluffy hair. And she was breathing in a pained, gasping way.
She stared up at me. I need a MedSystem.
They’re not going to let you just go to one. I met her gaze for all of half a second, because it would have been weird not to. If they didn’t want people hurt, they wouldn’t have started shooting. Then I glanced down, like I was looking at her wound. I was actually searching the station cameras, and yes, reinforcements were on their way. I was so fucked. Whatever happened after this, the station was going to be on lockdown, and everyone was going to have to go through multiple checkpoints, likely staffed with officers asking questions and not just scanners. And even if I could get to a ship, it wouldn’t be cleared to leave, and there would be extra search procedures.
I generally didn’t care what humans were doing to each other as long as I didn’t have to a) stop it or b) clean up after it, but I hated this whole situation. Still, I couldn’t do anything about it unless I wanted to be recycled. Taking out any of the armed corporates that had shot us would show that I was a SecUnit, and even if I wanted to risk hacking the upper-level SecSystem feed where the top human supervisors issued orders, I didn’t think I’d be able to spoof one of their feed profiles for very long.
Like I said, I was fucked.
And so was she.
Iris squeezed her eyes together again. This time, I couldn’t tell if she was clenching her jaw or subvocalizing. My ship has a MedSystem. I just need to get to my ship.
Everyone here wants to get to a ship. Believe me, it’s not happening.
There has to be a back way out or something, she persisted. I’ve been on a lot of stations, I know how they work.
And I know how security works. Even if you could get to your ship, you’ll never be cleared for takeoff.
That won’t be a problem. And I can get you off the station, too.
I looked at her eyes again. (I know, I know.)
Iris gave a pained smile. I’m usually better at this, but it’s hard to be smooth with a gut wound. I don’t know who you are, but I can tell you’re worried, and not just worried about getting shot. You don’t want to be here when the authorities sort all of this out.
I don’t know what my face had been doing this whole time, but apparently it had been doing something besides being grossed out at all the fluids. (I was still pressing on her wound, by the way, and it was still disgusting. She really needed a wound seal pack, but the corporates hadn’t trapped us with one.) I didn’t see the point in pretending that she wasn’t right. No, I don’t want to be here.
You can come with me. I can take you anywhere nearby, or anywhere along the wormhole route you want to go.
It seemed too good to be true. I’m suspicious by design. Hey, I haven’t survived all these hours by not being paranoid. In exchange for what?
For saving my life! She kind of smiled again, but it was more a clenching of teeth than anything. I’m losing too much blood, I know I am, and it really hurts. You only might get caught at the end of this—I’m not going to make it to the end of this like this.
She was probably right about that.
If you can get me to my ship, I’ll get you off the station. Please.
I knew it was decision time (and decisions are awful when you've just barely started making them). I was still keeping tabs on the SecSystem feeds, and while things weren’t getting worse, they also weren’t improving. I could stay here and get caught, or I could get on her ship and take my chances. Risk assessment didn’t like it, but risk assessment didn’t like anything.
The last thing I wanted to do besides be caught by a company was to board a ship I hadn’t checked out. But it’s not like I was getting any better offers. And I had the beginnings of an idea for how to get us out of here.
What corporation do you belong to? I asked her.
No corporation. I’m from Mihira.
A quick background search showed that Mihira was part of the non-corporate polity of Mihira and New Tideland, though it was still situated inside the Corporation Rim. But at least a ride would get me off of this station. How many crew are on the ship?
It’s just me. I only came along for part of a cargo run.
It’s kind of a dumb move to tell a stranger your ship is deserted when you’re about to be incapacitated from blood loss (this is why humans shouldn’t do their own security). For all she knew, I was a wanted raider who would just love to use her to gain access to her ship and then space her at the earliest convenience.
But then, I supposed she wasn’t getting any better offers, either. I thought of my humans, who had helped me just because I had helped them. It seemed statistically unlikely that I would immediately encounter another human who would offer help so easily, but what the hell did I know. (It was probably because she didn’t know I was a terrifying murderbot—only my humans could be that weird.)
Who have you been talking to on the feed?
The bot pilot, she replied. I’ve told it to be ready to go as soon as I’m aboard. Are you going to help me?
I had already decided. Yes.
She sent me the docking registration for her ship. It was on private dock bay adjacent to the cargo bays I had been headed for, and it fit nicely into the idea I had been working on. The ship was registered to The Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland, and it was designated as a long-range research vessel. I could see from a quick historical search for its movements that it often hauled cargo between research trips.
I pinged her in acknowledgment. I have a plan. You’re right, there are back ways around stations. There’s a maintenance corridor that runs behind these food stalls. The one next to us has a door that connects to it. We can get to your ship from there. The cameras had shown me that much, and the non-public station schematics had done the rest. Once we were in the corridors, there was nearly a direct path to the private docks. I’ll pick you up, jump out and into the next stall, and break the door into the maintenance corridor.
Her eyes widened. You’ll get shot doing that!
There was a 93 percent chance I was going to get shot, but it wouldn’t slow me down, and they would only manage to get a few projectiles in before I’d be gone. There was only a 16 percent chance they would chase us down the corridor, not when they were waiting to fight the other corporates on the station (who were getting closer every second).
It will be fine.
How can it possibly be fine? she demanded.
How were you planning to get out of here?
I don’t know, exactly! I was working on some sort of distraction. Not getting right into the line of fire!
You want to get to your ship? I can do that, and this is how. I know what I’m doing. When she didn’t reply, but just continued to minutely shake her head, I countered with, How were you going to get clearance for your ship to leave? Even a bribe isn’t going to work during a fight to put down a takeover.
She didn’t have a good answer, but I wasn’t entirely expecting one. We have special permissions.
Sure you do. And I have special ways of not getting shot.
Fine, she conceded. Let’s just get out of here!
There was something she wasn’t telling me, and I didn’t like it. Going with her was taking a risk, but it beat staying here and being hunted down by corporates. Though I did like that she had accepted my plan without any further explanation or argument. It was still so weird to have humans listen to me.
I knew that getting out of here was likely going to reveal me as a SecUnit. (Maybe not to her, I didn’t know how much she knew about SecUnits, but it would to anyone familiar with SecUnits, like the higher ups with Station Security.) But that was definitely going to happen if I got stuck here. I couldn’t do anything about humans seeing me with their eyes, but I could take care of the evidence. I was still in the camera feeds, and I located the two that had visuals on the stall, took a cut of footage from the last ten seconds, and tagged it for later.
I’m going to pick you up, I told her. As soon as I do, we’re going. I’ll be running and moving fast, and it will probably hurt you.
She nodded in resignation. Just get me to the ship alive.
Here we go.
I slid my arms underneath her and sprang up, jumping over the counter sideways, pivoting in midair so my back was between her and the station mall. I hit the ground with one foot and immediately launched over the counter of the next stall at an angle. It was a move only a SecUnit could have done, and I was three-fourths of the way to completing it when the humans finally realized what was happening and opened fire. By then, I had my foot out to kick in the maintenance door, which I hit not only hard enough to unlock, but hard enough to knock out of its frame.
Three projectiles hit my back, and then we were in the maintenance corridor. It was pitch black with the station on lockdown, which was a nice deterrent to human pursuit. I could see via infrared, and used my scan to create a map. I ran fast, but not at above human speeds, because the corridor was uneven, and there were several sharp turns I was going to have to make. I could tell from SecSystem that the corporate humans probably had too many things to deal with to notice what I just did, but I still cut out my jump with Iris, looping it with the prior ten seconds of footage I’d copied, and stitching it back together. (It was tempting to erase myself from the footage entirely, but if I did that I would be removing footage of when the rival corporates started shooting, and that was the sort of thing that would definitely get noticed upon review.)
Iris had passed out, whether from the blood loss or the pain of being jostled, I didn’t know.
We were the only ones in the corridors. I estimated we were seventeen seconds away from the docks. I kept up my pace, every second that passed putting the worst part of the station farther behind us.
Before I exited the corridor, I found the camera feeds at the dock, and I was glad to see that the area was deserted. That meant that I wouldn’t have to dodge humans while running, or have to try to blend in and act like there was a perfectly good reason for me to be carrying a bloody augmented human out of the maintenance corridors (yeah, there’s not one). I looped this footage as I went so there was no record of us running across the loading zone.
As I neared the dock she had given me, the ship lock slid open, perfectly timed to my speed. I didn’t even have to slow down to enter it.
Once I was inside, the lock closed, which wasn’t surprising. What was surprising was that the actual second the lock finished closing, I felt the rumble and the clunk that meant the ship had just decoupled itself from the ring and started to move.
For a second I was sure that someone else had to be on the ship. But when I connected to the ship feed, there was no one, no crew, nothing but the ship’s automated processes.
A flashing light on the wall caught my attention, and the speakers overhead said, “Please proceed to the MedSystem,” in a neutral voice. The light strip on the wall highlighted the path for me.
I carried Iris where it directed, and put her on the medical platform. The surgical suite dropped over her immediately, cutting her clothes and starting a line for fluids into her arm.
She roused somewhat at the insertion of the line, her eyes fluttering as she mumbled, “Pe...ri...?”
She caught sight of me standing over her, and blearily stared at me for a second. She looked at the front of my jacket, which now had her blood on it, but which also had a noticeable projectile hole.
Her eyes widened. “Oh no, you did get shot!” Looking at the ceiling, she said, “You have to help them, they saved my life. They’re hurt!”
Her gaze went unfocused for a moment, before it landed back on me, something like shock and confusion passing over her features, before she said, “Oh.”
Then her eyes rolled back in her head and she passed out again.
It was weird, but I’m used to severely injured humans saying weird things as I put them into MedSystems. It happens more than you think.
The neutral voice said, “Please leave the MedSystem.”
I didn’t particularly want to stay, so it was easy to comply. Yes, I had projectiles stuck in me (four, to be exact) but a MedSystem would only diagnose me with a terminal case of being a SecUnit. No thanks.
When I was in the corridor, the door to the medical suite slid closed behind me.
Huh. Iris had actually done what she’d said. I was off the station, the ship was empty, and we were steadily making our way to the wormhole. Plus, I had escaped being caught and sold for spare parts. Given the clusterfuck that the situation on the station had been devolving into, I had come out of it pretty well.
I would probably have to talk to her when she woke up, but she would be recovering and would be resting a lot. As much as I would have preferred to be alone on a transport, this would be a good test for me pretending to be an augmented human. I wouldn’t have to interact with her much, and there was only one of her. I could force myself to manage a few conversations if they were the price of getting a ride.
And until Iris left the MedSystem, I had the ship all to myself. At least I could be alone for a little while.