Chapter Text
Murderbot
Our current planetary expedition had turned into an absolute shitshow. Iris had been seriously injured, ART’s drone had been destroyed, and I was having what appeared to be an ill-timed trauma response that was showing no signs of letting up. Oh, and I had lost 1 of my arms and had blown out my audio inputs. The only thing we had going for us was that Seth is a great captain, and he had joined us on this adventure to hell.
“Kaede - you stay with Iris. Tarik and Matteo - get SecUnit strapped in. I’ll get ahold of Peri as soon as we’re in range.”
Tarik steered me towards the passenger area of the shuttle like one of those domestic fauna that shepherds the dumber, fluffier fauna into pens back on Preservation. He was careful not to touch me and made no moves to remove the pieces of ARTdrone that I was carrying in my one remaining arm. Matteo strapped me in and gently slid the remains of the drone onto the seat next to me, then proceeded to strap those in too which made me feel worse somehow.
I don’t remember most of the flight back to ART. I didn’t shutdown, that would have been nice, but my organic neural tissue was clearly out of its depth, and I don’t see any reason to run back my inorganic memories. Anyway, I guess we made it back because the next thing I remember is the rush of the crew getting Iris to medical, and a heavy weight on my feed that was pushing out other processes and taking over the more critical items.
Breathe Murderbot.
I don’t need to breathe as often as a human, but I had turned off my act-like-a-human code and actually wasn’t sure when I last took a breath. ART put on a song I recognized from the movie we watched before the mission and waited patiently (for it anyway) for me to take a few breaths. It tried to hand me its cameras and the audio sensors in the shuttle bay but I pushed it away. I had dropped all my drones after the explosion which I’m sure I would regret soon, but for now the limited visual input from my eyes and ART’s feed presence were about all that I could handle.
Iris? I asked.
She will recover. She has several broken ribs and had a collapsed lung, but I have already treated her for that.
And you?
The drone iteration was not able to be reintegrated, but you were able to salvage a significant portion of the carapace and I expect the explosion should obfuscate any remaining pieces.
I knew the drone was beyond saving so I’m not sure why I asked. I was still in the shuttle and dripping fluids all over the upholstery.
You should proceed to the MedBay. You need repairs.
It was being so nice to me instead of yelling at me like it should have. I had spectacularly failed at protecting both ART and its favorite human. Then I realized that it hadn’t been able to reintegrate its partition, so it might not know how bad I fucked up yet. I packaged up the last few hours of my recordings and sent them over, then blocked ART in the feed.
———()(*)()———
Perihelion
I had already stabilized Iris’s fractures and gotten an incident summary from both Seth and Tarik by the time it thought to throw its memories at me. The events aligned well with what our crew had reported, but with many missing details filled in.
The files showed that my drone had been scanning the area while the humans worked and had spotted an anomaly about 150 meters to the east of the worksite. Despite my halfhearted protests, SecUnit insisted it accompany me to evaluate the scene and Seth agreed. I regularly force it to take a crew “buddy” when it does reconnaissance so it claimed this was simply to repay me for that inconvenience. I could sense its worry though and it appears that my drone joked, or more likely argued with it on the walk over to distract it. For some reason it did not share the specific details of our conversation, but by the time we reached our destination it no longer looked as concerned. It may simply be wishful thinking, but I would say its facial expression best matches what I call “exasperated fondness”.
We investigated the area for some time but did not find anything of interest. Eventually it sat down on a nearby rock and proceeded to tease me about my faulty scans. Not one to allow a good debate to go to waste, my drone engaged enthusiastically and the two of us stayed there for some time. Eventually our crew got concerned and Iris came to find us (I will have to admonish her for not following protocol and bringing along another crew member when she has recovered, though in retrospect it is probably better that there was not another human present).
The three of us reconvened momentarily then set off for the survey area. After only a few seconds there was an unexpected sound under SecUnit’s left foot. It took my drone an embarrassing 0.1 seconds to identify it while SecUnit did it in half the time. Also during that time it looked briefly at me and then at Iris before leaping onto Iris and rolling her away from the explosion. It shielded her extremely well from the blast, but had damaged her ribs and impacted one of her lungs due to the speed at which it needed to reach her. It turns and looks at the blast epicenter, looking for me perhaps, then looks back at Iris with a horrified expression just as the memory cuts off. I want to see more but I will not push for now. I expect Seth’s account of the aftermath was reasonably accurate so I can wait.
Still in my shuttle, it has blocked me in the feed and cannot currently hear my speakers. It knows I can push past its privacy block but I have been trying to respect its space. I watch as it absentmindedly strokes the remains of my drone with its one arm while it continues to leak an alarming amount of fluids from where the other should be. A cleaning drone approaches and bumps into its boot to get its attention. It looks down at my (functional) drone then wordlessly reopens our feed.
Come to medical. Please.