Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sometime after she had flown the hopper high enough in the air they were safe from giant alien worms chewing it apart, sometime after her heart stopped smashing against her ribs, Ayda realized there was an item hovering in her feed.

There had been an alert sent to her from HubSystem, passed from SecSystem, from the SecUnit, recommending ordering Ratthi to return to the hopper. Ratthi hadn't - when the hell had this been sent...?

There was an attached file, which she first opened in confusion and then kept flicking back to in dawning horror. The explanation spooled out with Ratthi's calculated speed and speed carrying equipment, distance, likelihood of successful retrieval. There were numbers about projected losses. Ratthi, under whatever logic the Corporation Rim used, had come up as worth more alive than the possibility of getting the equipment back. There was a gross corporate afternote about how their SecUnit had been unable to retrieve the equipment and perhaps they should consider two for future endeavors rather than the minimum.

Was that what the SecUnit had been doing while it stood overseeing every outing? Calculating everything and everyone's worth and distance from each other so in the event of an emergency, it was ready with recommendations on how to best cut their losses, with people and things various different numbers on the same spreadsheet?

She glanced to the cabin camera again. It was bent around Bharadwaj, holding onto her as the rest of them tried to keep her alive enough for them to reach Medical. One of its shredded hands was in her leg clamping an artery. A massive tooth was still embedded in its side from when it had pulled Bharadwaj free to be swallowed in her place. It was hard to see its wounds even knowing it didn't feel pain like a human would, knowing it only looked like it must be in agony.

In the pit, it hadn't sounded so detached. It couldn't have been.

She wished it was MedSystem doing that somehow, running an emergency module through something that looked enough like a human to mistake for there being more to it, but coaxing Volescu to safety had been far outside MedSystem's capability and besides, she'd silenced everything else by then so the feed was easy to read, empty except for the regular alerts on Bharadwaj's declining condition. There was nothing else until it was inside the hopper, when Ratthi had said he'd go back for their equipment and it sent that horrible report.

There wasn't any similar cost-benefit analysis for Bharadwaj lurking in her feed, calculating if she was still worth the medical supplies. Maybe the numbers had to be closer before it would send them. Or maybe it only sent things when they were about security-related incidents. Maybe it could only send things about security. Ayda hadn't meant to ever use SecUnits for anything, so she hadn't thought the details of how their job worked would matter.

She hadn't thought.

When she looked again it was still in the same position, and she wondered if it had...crashed? Again? It'd frozen in place for a second after being torn up by the alien worm, losing the gun, then somehow staggered back to life to get Bharadwaj. Would any of them notice if it died as it was holding Bharadwaj, or would it stay in its last position?

Minute after minute crawled by until the hopper reached the habitat and they, mostly the SecUnit, could get Bharadwaj onto the gurney Gurathin had waiting for them.

The SecUnit stepped away while the rest of them were rushing her to Medical.

Volescu was still shaking. Oversee got him a blanket and wrapped it around his shoulders. He said he'd stay with Bharadwaj and Ayda tried to set MedSystem to tell them if he got worse. An unhelpful string of alerts regarding how Volescu was in shock were suddenly dumped into the feed. Next to her, Gurathin grimaced and did something to fix it, and Pin-Lee muttered, "For what we paid for this you'd think it could handle a couple people at once better than this..."

A few low priority updates had been added into the feed as well, several security updates that must've gone into effect now that someone had been injured by some planetary fauna. The SecUnit had been marked as off-duty, with a sickening damage report appended and the more sickening thought that it was the one who'd sent that, tallying up its injuries alone by itself and only after everything else was settled and it'd limped away to equipment storage. She'd told herself they were keeping out of its way, she'd told herself they were trying not to impose on it further, but the truth was it was easier to not think about what they'd agreed to when she avoided it.

Well, she could do better now.

Chapter Text

The SecUnit, according to HubSystem, had gone to what Ayda'd been thinking of as its room in the habitat but was more honestly a storage closet. The floor inside was littered with bits of wrecked and bloody armor. It was distressing to picture it left to struggle with that alone, too hurt to do more than drop the pieces onto the floor as they came loose. It'd also opened an emergency medical pack, which she could tell because bits of that were on the floor as well.

It'd always been so meticulous about everything before now.

At least it'd been able to go right into its own sort of Medical, since the trail went into the repair cubicle, and hopefully it wasn't too bad off since there were no further alerts.

Ayda squared her shoulders and knocked on the cubicle door.

"Uh," said the SecUnit's voice, "yes?"

It was awake, at least. She opened the door to find…

It was a little like something out of some historical movie, life before founding Preservation, back when their grandparents had just been cargo, and she felt terrible for the assumption before that this was just like their own Medical. It was propped up in a plastic facsimile of a real bed, shivering, with an emergency blanket it must have gotten mostly covering it. She could see streaks of some kind of fluids dripping at its feet.

"Are you all right?" she said, then apologetically, "I saw your status report."

It pulled at the blanket around its chest with its more intact hand. "Fine."

"Fine?" She frowned. “The report said you lost 20 percent of your body mass."

"It’ll grow back," it said, clutching the blanket over those wounds.

It didn't want her to see them.

She tried to keep her eyes on its face and her own face neutral. "I know, but still."

It didn't think she wanted to see its injuries. It didn't think she wanted to see it at all. And no wonder it was ashamed to be seen after how they'd shown they didn't want to look at it. It'd kept its face hidden until the moment it had to be more than a piece of equipment, and then it'd covered its face back up as soon as Ayda and the others landed. It'd kept itself in its broken armor until it was out of their sight.

They hadn't even had it in the hopper's crew cabin before now. They'd left it with the rest of the equipment in the cargo hold. It'd only asked Ayda to be allowed in with the rest of the team when it was for Bharadwaj's sake.

How do you apologize for all of that? No, what sort of apology could possibly be taken as sincere? She didn't want it to think that she meant she'll tolerate it being around them now that it's saved people. Or still worse, that all she's having was a moment of regret at her actions that comes out in a grand but temporary gesture that'd be rescinded when the feeling faded again.

It was part of the story of Preservation's founding, how it can be so hard to trust sudden kindness. And she was speaking to someone who hadn't even trusted her kindness toward Ratthi was anything beyond his monetary value to her.

Eventually she settled on, "You were very good with Dr. Volescu," like she would have to any person on her team. "I don’t think the others realized… They were very impressed."

"It’s part of the emergency med instructions, calming victims," it said, still nervously tugging the blanket.

"Yes, but the MedSystem was prioritizing Bharadwaj and didn’t check Volescu’s vital signs. It didn’t take into account the shock of the event, and it expected him to be able to leave the scene on his own."

"It’s part of my job…to evaluate based on both the System feeds and the situation at hand." A thread of something had leaked into its voice as it said it. It was the job she hasn't wanted done in the first place, and it knew that, she'd said as much even as she'd had to sign the final contract, but if it resented her, it was masked far better than its desire to hide under the blanket. Maybe it simply wanted her to trust it to do its job now.

"All right," Ayda said. "I’ll see you in eight hours. If you need anything before then, please send me an alert on the feed.” She started to step back when it spoke.

It said, "Your HubSystem and all its component parts are thoroughly tested and vetted to the highest standards. If there is a problem or malfunction, the most likely cause is user error."

Did it mean the MedSystem? That they'd been expecting they could rely on it more than they should've, but it couldn't just say that like Pin-Lee and the rest could? Or perhaps it meant HubSystem or anything else they were sold for the survey shouldn't be expected to always work properly either, since it hadn't even mentioned those things that almost killed them, and they needed to be more careful.

"We should pay closer attention?" she asked, and that seemed to be it because it said, "Yes."

"I'll keep that in mind going forward," she said. "Thank you."

Chapter Text

The rest of them were still sitting around the table in the main room when she returned.

"How'd it go?" Overse asked.

"It's getting fixed up," Ayda said, knowing this was avoiding the question. "It was pretty hurt." She'd left a note for it to contact her when it was better and had extended the lockdown, in case those eight hours weren't enough. That way it wouldn't feel it had to rush. It could report when it was ready.

"I didn't know it could be hurt," Arada said, then more softly, "I didn’t even know it had a face."

Ayda had known it had a face when she had given in and signed the contract including it. It had stared straight past her, eyes unfocused. Like she wasn't there? Like it wasn't there? Maybe it was pretending both things. She certainly hadn't wanted to look either.

They had a mug of hot chocolate ready for her. Actual intoxicants like alcohol weren't available in the habitat. They wouldn't have been able to indulge anyway, so she tried to be grateful for the lack of temptation. She sat and took a sip. It was warm and sweet, and it did make her feel a little better. "I think..." she started. She thought a lot of things, and most of them she shouldn't unburden herself of. Not here and now, not after everything else they'd just been through. "It's somewhat of a cultural difference," she decided. "We made assumptions."

"Why didn't it talk before? If it can talk?" Arada said. "We didn't accidentally tell it not to talk to us, did we?" She glanced at Gurathin. Gurathin had been clear everything he knew was just rumor and not to ask him, but it was only human to prefer rumor over nothing.

Luckily, Pin-Lee spoke up. The documentation must've covered this. "We couldn't have, even on purpose. It'd be a security risk if someone could tell it to be silent. HubSystem automatically cancels all those sort of orders. They claim it's supposed to be idiot-proof."

Ayda wished they could end it at that, but unfortunately, "It seemed able to talk to me without a problem, but we shouldn't assume HubSystem will notice and overrule an accidental order. MedSystem was more limited than we expected. And..." She considered, then shoved the report on Ratthi into the main feed for the rest of them to see. "It sent this in the hopper. I don't know what to make of it."

Most of them make appalled faces, but Gurathin of all people spoke up with, "Ratthi seduced the SecUnit!"

"Excuse me?" Arada sputtered. "It had to think about if he should be worm food."

Ratthi scrolled back through the report, then laughed. "No, it decided I would be worm food, and that's why you were supposed to drag me back inside. It does like me! The table's only huge because it used ridiculously tiny increments. The lowest it gets is a 99.92 percent chance I'd get eaten before I brought the stuff back before it decides it's run enough calculations." It hadn't occurred to Ayda that it was possible for those numbers to look even worse.

"Really?" Arada asked.

Gurathin shook his head. "It was damaged. It must've aborted when it was taking too long."

"I wonder if it knew it was having problems, then," Overse said. "If it'd started at 0 percent when it tried to calculate this, wouldn't we have a report telling us to toss him out the door and not let him back in until he got everything? So it really did like him."

"If only it'd swept me off my feet instead of making a bad spreadsheet," Ratthi said.

"It was a joke," Gurathin said, shrinking in a little. "SecUnits don't... Ratthi, it's a construct, it doesn't actually like you."

"It's a person like any other person. We all saw that video, that was a person. It saved Bharadwaj, it saved Volescu, and it even tried to save Ratthi, even if it wasn't necessary and in a weird way," Arada said.

"It didn't have a choice," Gurathin insisted. "Because it's a construct." He looked to Ayda for backup. "We all knew what we were getting."

"Someone enslaved," Ayda filled in, because it was uncomfortable to let it linger ambiguously. In its place, where would she have started? She didn't think she could ever say, not really. Not without being that person. But here and with this person, "But it did want Ratthi to stay in the hopper and not be eaten."

They all knew everything was recorded, but even still Gurathin dropped into a furtive near-whisper when he said, "Or it sent that rather than saying anything hoping you'd miss it and he'd get eaten. Or it wanted to distract you so the hopper would crash and you'd all die."

"Gurathin. We're not in a murder mystery," Pin-Lee said, putting an arm over his shoulder. "We're going to be okay."

"I'm not saying that, I'm saying don't think you know what it wants."

"It's not free," Overse agreed. "We shouldn't forget that. But if it was trying to kill us through malicious compliance, I'm sure it's had better opportunities. What were the odds Mensah would even have noticed it at the time? Maybe it's just a reflex to report any time we're doing something stupid."

Ayda gave Gurathin an apologetic smile before she said, "Yes, so I'm going to invite it into the main habitat areas with us."

"It wasn't allowed?" said Arada. "It hasn't been around because it couldn't be?"

"I don't think so. But we've been avoiding it, and it's been avoiding us," she explained.

"Yeah, fair point," Ratthi said, and the others agreed. Even Gurathin said, "Maybe it'll enjoy staring at us in person instead over the cameras."

"Moreover," she said, "It's more familiar with planetary surveys and its company's particular equipment than we are, and we should have been including its input. Before I left, it warned me we needed to pay closer attention to how we handle HubSystem."

Overse snorted. "Even it can say that's a piece of trash?"

Ayda shook her head. "It was a lot more diplomatic. It said problems were user error."

"Shiteatingcocks," Pin-Lee replied, pointing her fist at the camera overhead and slapping her arm. Ayda doubted whatever data-mining technician would end up getting Pin-Lee's suggestion they stick a beam up their ass had much more say in how their company was run than the SecUnit did, but the cameras were what was there.

"It's not fair, but we can't change the quality of our equipment, only how we handle it," Ratthi said, nodding. "The SecUnit has a good philosophy. What exactly did it say?"

She tried to remember the details. "That HubSystem and all its components were tested and of the highest standards, so if we run into problems or malfunctions, assume user error."

"Malfunctions," Pin-Lee repeated. Her face lit up suddenly. "It's a component of HubSystem." She picked up her interface again. "It got hurt so bad it crashed or something there. It could've been injured in a way that's not repairable, or that'd take too long to fix, or is just more expensive doing it here, so those cheap-asses make the SecUnits falsify their reports to say they're running fine instead, and it wants our help-"

"Oh," Gurathin groaned. "No. Look."

He sent a file to the general feed and Pin-Lee's face transformed into a grimace as she saw it through the interface. "The fucking HubSystem?!" She still didn't throw anything, but it looked like it was a close thing. "After the SecUnit shot the creature, HubSystem told it to stand down until it got further orders. Must've flagged all the shooting as dangerous. If control hadn't switched to MedSystem, they'd all have been down here until the giant worms finished them off. 'User error'. We could've overridden it, so it's 'user error'."

Gurathin muttered, "Now it really hates us."

"They could have all died and the HafeiteslAx lawyers would be in court arguing it was our fault for not paying enough attention," Pin-Lee said, seething.

"It's not like it'd actually be stuck down there," Arada said. "We wouldn't have gotten mad if it disobeyed that order."

"HubSystem can freeze it," Pin-Lee pointed out. "If it tried to run out it'd probably just lock up for real. Great security for our security. Great idiot-proofing, you fucking idiots!"

"It wanted us to know," Ayda said. She put aside, for the moment, the question of if they'd even gotten what it wanted them to know right. What was most important was it was trying to work with them. "It understands how the system works better than we do, and pitfalls like this. Maybe we can avoid anything else like this happening."

Arada said, "And we could really use advice. We have a major danger not mentioned in the planet's report, and now HubSystem glitching. One is happenstance, twice coincidence..."

"Do we include the number of times the satellite's gone down?" Ratthi asked. "I know it's just frustrating and not as serious as the rest of it, but why is something that's just in orbit having so many problems?"

"It might be simpler," Overse suggested. "If HubSystem didn't know there's dangerous creatures in the craters, a SecUnit opening fire doesn't make sense. All it can shoot is rocks and us. So HubSystem figured something was weird and it should tell it to stop until a human could check what was going on. The survey packet could have been damaged by our satellite going down trying to sync or update it, or the equipment they used during the initial survey was as shoddy as the stuff we're using now."

Arada nodded. "All of their stuff's been unreliable. Even the SecUnit got made unreliable by having to listen to HubSystem. It could all be the one happenstance of picking HafeiteslAx. And if the SecUnit knows this, then maybe it wasn't talking about what just happened or anything in particular after all. Maybe it's just seen stuff crap out enough it wanted to warn us about the risk."

"We didn't even go for the cheapest option," Pin-Lee complained. "We contracted mid-range because we didn't want to be dealing with exactly this kind of shit. Maybe the worst companies keep their prices high enough they look legitimate."

"Well, once the SecUnit's better, we can ask if forgetting to mention the giant hopper-eating monsters is their employer's usual quality of work, at least," Ratthi said. "So that'll be one mystery down."

Chapter Text

Precisely eight hours after the SecUnit went off-duty, HubSystem sent her a notice that it was again on-duty. Which Ayda hoped meant it had actually been fixed within those eight hours, but, she reminded herself, she certainly couldn't assume.

A few minutes later, Ratthi said suddenly, "Who is this?" and she heard, "I'm your contracted SecUnit," in the SecUnit's voice. This was not going as smoothly as she hoped. She lowered the interface she was using and turned.

It was in regular clothing rather than its armor and, especially, helmet. Maybe the conversation with it had gone better than she'd thought and it was already feeling more comfortable with the team. "We were checking the hazard report for this region to try to learn why that thing wasn't listed under hazardous fauna. Can you examine the report for us?" she said.

"Yes, Dr. Mensah," it said, seeming to slightly relax. Its expression changed to something much like an augmented human switching focus to something big in the feed. After a moment it said, "There's a formatting discrepancy in the main report in the General Warnings section. It could indicate a connection to one of the subreports is broken."

"Just one?" said Pin-Lee.

"I don't have that information. Please wait while I search through the subreports. There are no additional subreports in the database. There is a formatting discrepancy consistent with a missing connection to a subreport in both the General Warnings and Fauna sections of the main report."

For once, Overse's cursing was worse than Pin-Lee's. Pin-Lee had been on the side of a deletion, while Overse had hoped that HafeiteslAx had missed them in the first place because they were underground and rare and the initial survey had just been done badly. Incompetence from the initial team they were relying on hadn't been a particularly comforting idea, but it could've meant the survey report was still broadly right about what they were likely to encounter.

Ratthi threw his arms into the air in frustration. "So we have no way to know if that creature was an aberration or if they live at the bottom of all those craters?"

Arada said, "You know, I bet they do. If those big avians we saw on the scans land on those barrier islands frequently, that creature might be preying on them.”

"It would explain what the craters are doing there," Ayda said. The reason they'd picked the location to investigate more closely had been because the craters had seemed so strange geologically. "That would be one anomaly out of the way, at least."

“But who removed that subreport?” Pin-Lee said, turning to the SecUnit. “Can the HubSystem be hacked?”

"I don't have that information. Your HafeiteslAx HubSystem, like your HafeiteslAx survey package, is of the highest quality," it added, so un-sarcastically it almost looped back around. It still had something close to its earlier staring off into space look, but tenser. Faking it now, though there were too many reasons it might choose to do that for her to guess why it would do so.

Pin-Lee said, "We're pissed off at HafeiteslAx regardless of how it happened. If it helps, assume at the moment we will never be doing business with them again, and anything you say can only improve the situation. In that case, can you guess?"

It was silent for perhaps half a minute. "If it is necessary for you to pick one option on a preliminary basis, HubSystem agrees it is safest to proceed on the assumption that your survey package was altered afterward and intentionally."

"You think that's most likely? Then who?"

Another half minute. "No," it said. "I would judge it is slightly more likely the original survey was missing the subreport connection and that is why the piece was not included during transfer. But HafeiteslAx prides itself on the quality of the robust HubSystem it provides all its bond clients because a malfunctioning or subverted HubSystem would present a significant danger to its clients." Maybe the SecUnit preferred to think about the kinds of threats it could shoot. It'd be very human of it. "Regarding who could be behind this, it is possible that the other survey team could be engaged in sabotage."

"I don't think DeltFall is sabotaging us," Ratthi said. "They seemed nice enough." Ayda agreed. They'd agreed about mutual aid in emergencies, which you couldn't take for granted when in Corporation Rim space, and otherwise had seemed like decent distant neighbors.

"HubSystem is not aware of any other humans on this planet."

Gurathin said, "If HubSystem gets subverted, you are too, right?"

Which struck Ayda as rude, but the SecUnit said calmly, "Yes. Unlike MedSystem, SecSystem is a subordinate component of HubSystem." So it'd be the first victim, she realized. Was it so concerned about the possibility because it had more to be afraid of?

It'd told her the point of it being an intelligent being was that it was able to make better decisions than the Systems. It'd proven that during MedSystem's brief tenure running things, yet it'd obeyed HubSystem right before that when HubSystem gave a worse order. Even if it had only been temporary, even if HubSystem would listen to it in turn… It would be incapacitated by something as simple as a program making HubSystem send a stream of abort commands faster than it could dispute them. And that was if it was temporary. Pin-Lee had sounded confident the suicidal order would've stood until one of them intervened.

"Gurathin, Pin-Lee, can you check the logs? See if anything strange ever happened when we were in contact with DeltFall, or if they tried to connect to our HubSystem without talking to us." Neither of them were experts at this, but it was worth checking just in case, and confirming for everyone that there at least wasn't any noticeable sign of tampering by the other survey team had its own value. The last thing she wanted was for her own team to get paranoid. Then she looked to the SecUnit. "Should they have the same survey package we did?"

"HubSystem predicts that is likely," it said.

"While Gurathin and Pin-Lee verify that DeltFall isn't involved, I want the rest of you to check the individual sections of the survey package for your specialties. See if anything seems to be missing. With more examples, we might tell if there's a pattern or if it's random file damage. Then once we're sure DeltFall isn't involved, we'll contact them and ask about their own set of files."

As everyone settled down to do that, she turned back to the SecUnit, still standing there near the door. Time to invite it into the group properly. "You know, you can stay here in the crew area if you want. Would you like that?"

Its face contorted in fear. "I don't have that information," it said, its neutral voice a horrible contrast to its expression, which was now growing ever more panicked as she saw it realizing she'd seen that terror.

She stammered out, “Or not, you know, whatever you like.”

This, if anything, made it worse. "I don't have that information." It'd broken out into a cold sweat. A human, she thought, would've been shaking, but it was as if it was frozen, or had been frozen, in place, except for its darting eyes.

"Is there anything else you should do," Ayda tried.

It said, "Yes, Dr. Mensah," with what she hoped was some degree of relief. It spun on its heel and marched away with the same confident gait it always had.

Ratthi was the first to speak. "What have we been doing to it?" he asked, aghast.

"We're not the first people it's met," Ayda said. "I was caught up in how we'd been treating it, but we're only the latest in a long line."

"You don't think…" Overse said. "Has no one ever asked it if it wanted to be somewhere or not? Or is it not allowed to say? Is that what it means?"

Pin-Lee said, "If it was told to lie, it'd have to lie if we ask it again. Better not to push."

"It was so scared," Arada said. "I wonder how many people even talked to it before."

Ayda thought of it back in the cubicle. It had looked so vulnerable then, injured and lying under a blanket, and seeing Bharadwaj like that just minutes ago had only highlighted the comparison. But just hours later it was back on its feet like it was any other day. Physical injury hadn't fazed it.

She'd almost put it together. You had to be able to think like a human to converse with other humans like that, had to have feelings to act like it did. But she'd missed the final piece, that being a social creature opened up other ways you could be hurt.

Ratthi started to get up as he said, "I'm going to go apologize -"

"No!" Ayda said at the same time as Arada.

"Not right now," Overse agreed, "but we do need to talk to it. We've been making it uncomfortable this whole time."

"Babe, no. It couldn't handle staying in the room with us, it's definitely not up to talking with us."

"One person probably wouldn't be so bad. It's not scared about going out on surveys with us when it's not everyone."

"We don't know that," Arada pointed out sadly. "We haven't seen its face before now."

"But we did just now, and it wasn't scared when it came here," Ratthi said. Or, Ayda thought, it was very good at faking that when it knew what to expect. "It looked totally normal, like anybody else. It's not just being in the room with us but the invitation to hang out with everyone. It's probably because it doesn't really know us yet."

Pin-Lee rolled her eyes. "It's been watching us for twenty-two days straight. It knows us. We're like its own personal serial."

"That it has to watch," Gurathin said.

"I'm sure it loves your character almost as much as it does mine," Ratthi told him.

"It hasn't interacted with us outside of its job," Ayda cut in, before Ratthi got Gurathin upset. "When it accompanies us on excursions outside, it has a defined role. It can't have had much experience with people beyond that."

"So we'll talk to it then where it's more comfortable," Ratthi said.

"Ratthi, no," Pin-Lee told him. "Ambushing it about how it feels is not going to help."

Overse said, "But we're just guessing here. What if there's something else we're doing, and it can't tell us if we don't ask?"

"I know. But either it didn't think we'd allow it to leave the room without permission, or the idea of doing that was more terrifying than we were. Asking is just going to scare it too," Arada pointed out. "If you're scared of people, you're probably scared of telling them that too."

Ayda said firmly, "If it's not comfortable interacting outside of our jobs, we need to accept that." How comfortable it was being around them at all was unfortunately moot. After what had happened, they didn't dare go out without it, and she didn't think leaving it confined in the storage closet for the next few weeks would've been kinder either.

Arada added, "It knows we don't hate it now! That's a big step forward. We shouldn't push it further than it wants to go. It's on us to be nice and show it can trust us, including letting it go at its own pace."

But after everyone agreed and then turned to their tasks, Ayda composed a message to the SecUnit.

We didn't notice HubSystem had told you to stand down after the creature attacked, she began. She assumed it would figure that out; it was looking at all the footage after all. But she had no idea when it would find out, or, for that matter, if it was allowed to say anything that would admit that it had. It seems we're rather inexperienced with your company's products. If anything more happens that you think that we might not know and should, or if there's any issues with the System feeds, please bring it up. I trust your evaluation of the situation.

She sent it off. Almost instantaneously, there was a tap in the feed acknowledging it. Ayda supposed that was a good sign.

Chapter Text

"And it is human enough it's got a functional autonomic nervous system," Arada continued.

"Exactly. Not really very 'imitative' of it," Ratthi agreed, putting up both hands for air quotes. "Looked more like actual."

"It can't be sweating like we do, though," Overse said. "You can smell stress. There'd be no hiding how miserable it is. So they left in everything except they tweaked the sweat itself?"

"Maybe it has to sweat, to be able to regulate skin temperature?" Arada said. "And some sweat helps with gripping. Maybe they didn't bother making two kinds of skin? But that's such an edge case, especially when it wears gloves…"

Ratthi said, "It could consciously wet its hands when and how much it needed if it was about helping it hold things better. If you design a bot, why choose a stress response instead of a spigot? Unless, of course…"

Pin-Lee said, "It would hardly be the first fucking time the Corporation Rim mislabeled what they were selling." She threw herself backward in the chair. "HubSystem's attempt to pass the blame off HafeiteslAx is shit too, DeltFall's done nothing, weird or not, I can find and the survey package was probably in pieces when they gave it to us. Back me up, Gurathin."

Gurathin hesitated, and he hunched down a little. "I didn't find anything," he said. "But we don't know what we're looking for."

"Anything!" Pin-Lee said. "If they were sneaking in one thing as another thing, there'd still be something in here. They haven't been. It's the report we should be looking at. That's the problem."

And she was right. It was Volescu who found it in the end that night, picking away at his seat beside Bharadwaj. He loaded up the map and then sent it into the main feed.

It's damaged. There's six missing pieces out of the planet's map.

The missing subreport had been subtle enough to think someone might've tried to hide things, but here there'd been no attempt to paste over the holes in the map.

That didn't fully rule out sabotage. Their HubSystem didn't understand that it was impossible for the shape the pieces of the planet map formed to match with a physical planet, only that the information on each piece it did have looked right. If they'd stuck to asking HubSystem about what the map said, they never would've noticed. But it did seem less suspicious and more in line with the paradoxical Corporation Rim standard of minimum effort rush jobs.

She sent the map data and a message to the SecUnit over the feed, asking it what it thought. It said its security advice was it was safer to believe they were being hacked but its calculations were that it was more likely HafeiteslAx's robust protections would have stopped an outside attempt to delete pieces of their map.

What do you recommend?

Check one of the missing sections, it sent back. Upon confirmation of a hack, trigger the emergency beacon.

What if it's an error?

HafeiteslAx's provided survey packages are carefully monitored for quality. Should a singular error be found post purchase, clients should rest assured that such a mistake is a rare anomaly and the rest of the package remains trustworthy. HafeiteslAx takes the safety of its clients seriously.

Understood, she said.

She interrupted the argument everyone was having to say, "SecUnit can't say from looking at the map data. It agrees we'd have to look ourselves to figure out why the pieces are missing."

It wasn't much of a question, really. Shown a map with parts they couldn't see, they all wanted to take a look. It might've been safer to wait to get files from DeltFall, but if they really were being sabotaged, it'd be safer to find out as soon as they could that they needed to trigger the beacon.

They'd go tomorrow. The team would be herself, Pin-Lee, Ratthi, Arada, and the SecUnit. She told the SecUnit the decision to investigate over the feed, both because it seemed more polite and because they had no way of knowing if it was actually watching at any given time, and got a tap acknowledging it'd received the message.

It was there the next morning to help load the hopper, back in full armor and with its expression hidden behind the opaque faceplate of its helmet.

"SecUnit," she said, hoping this was the right choice, "I'd like you up front as copilot for the trip."

It climbed into the crew side of the hopper without any visible trepidation. She was relieved to see everyone else seemed aware of how little that meant, as unnatural as she knew it felt not to say so much as hello. Ratthi even made a point to pretend to stare at the wall as it went past him.

Things went normally enough after that. Bharadwaj was doing better but still in Medical, so she was on the comms. Everything still felt fragile enough that there was something particularly reassuring about hearing her voice joking with the others as they traveled.

They made it a decent way before the autopilot failed, which Ayda couldn't help but make an annoyed noise in the back of her throat about as she tapped the controls to keep them stable. Right by a mountain range, too.

It wasn't like HafeiteslAx had claimed the autopilot was reliable. Quite the opposite, actually, and after listening to the SecUnit have to talk about how well the rest of their catalogue supposedly worked, she would even feel grateful for their honesty if she didn't suspect it was more about liability than morals.

Even if the odds were low enough most survey groups would make it the whole survey without an incident, you could always be the unlucky minority that did have a failure. It didn't mean much. And it wasn't more than a mild annoyance so long as someone was at the controls, and even with a good, reliable autopilot, there should always be someone at the controls just in case.

But it rankled coming after all the other problems, all the supposed one in a millions coming up one after another. Overse's guess it all came back to the one commonality that HafeiteslAx products were terrible was looking more and more right, and without the fear of something sinister behind it all, all that was left as she rebooted the autopilot was irritation.

The SecUnit didn't say anything, but it did send her a portion of the hopper's log showing it had cut out due to a HubSystem glitch. Another one, again at the worst time. "Fucking HafeiteslAx," she muttered under her breath. The SecUnit had even tagged the glitch with possible user error so that confirmed it wasn't allowed to say anything more direct about its company's equipment failing. It certainly would've been a potentially huge user error for any of them to have left the controls unattended.

The autopilot and HubSystem managed the rest of the flight without another incident, and Ayda told everyone, "We’re coming up on it." At the moment, it was thick forest, same as the map said. It stayed forest for a bit, and then the forest stopped abruptly as the ground turned to what looked to be a volcanic plain.

Volcanic activity wouldn't have stopped an area from being scanned, and there was enough plant life here that there couldn't have been an eruption recently enough to happen during the preliminary survey.

The hopper began to scan the area.

"I don’t see anything that would prevent the satellite from mapping this region," Pin-Lee said. "No strange readings. It’s weird."

"Unless this rock has some sort of stealth property that prevented the satellites from imaging it,” Arada said. "The scanners are acting a little funny."

"Because the scanners suck corporation balls." Pin-Lee was at the end of her rope. Ayda could sympathize. She wanted a clear answer too.

“Should we land?” she asked the SecUnit.

It said, "There is no way to know what hostile fauna may be below the surface."

Arada said, "But we don't have enough information if we stay here."

The SecUnit sent her a map that had a small ring around the hopper. After a moment, she realized it was indicating how far away from them it could go if the hopper hovered four meters in the air.

As Ratthi and Pin-Lee agreed they thought the risk of landing was worth it, Ayda told it quietly, "It's more dangerous to have a single person down there there longer than if we all go." Then to all of them, "We’ll land and take samples."

Over the comm, Bharadwaj added, "Please be careful."

Ayda guided the hopper down. The SecUnit left the safety of the chair and went to the hatch before they'd even landed, which stuck her as another poor move in terms of its own security. She set them down as gently as she could, wincing at the faint thump. The SecUnit had the ramp down a moment later, and it jumped out before anyone else had even unbuckled. If it was that anxious, she wished it'd asked them to wait for it to check the area instead of feeling like it had to rush.

It started to pace around as if it wanted something to attack.

She hoped it could process the hopper's scans on its own and already knew which areas it should avoid. Still, she kept half an eye on it as she set up the perimeter and made sure everyone's interfaces were synced properly. It ended up a ways away, past several ponds, which at least according to the limited scan by the hopper, was stable ground. It seemed content to stay there.

Ayda had just settled in to work when the SecUnit sent her an alert about disobedient subordinates. The SecUnit itself launched past Ayda in the direction of Ratthi and Arada, and just as she was opening her mouth to ask it to stop and tell her what was going on, she saw the ground give way under Arada.

Chapter Text

Arada clawed at the crumbling edge of the dirt while Ratthi fell to his knees and grabbed her, trying to pull her out of the sinkhole.

A moment later, the SecUnit had reached them. It threw itself onto the ground, grabbed Arada under her arms, and pulled her up. Her boots were covered in thick mud, but she was otherwise fine.

Arada said something, Ratthi said something, and the SecUnit toppled off the edge. Unlike Arada, it made no attempt to catch itself, and though they both reached out for it, neither of them reacted in time to grab it.

By the time Ayda got there, there was no sign of it beneath the steaming mud. Its suit should keep it from suffocating for a few minutes, but how well could it handle the high temperatures of being buried in that?

She threw down one end of the emergency rope. She messaged the SecUnit that she'd done so and to try to grab it. There was nothing but the surface of the mud slowly smoothing out around the sinking rope, and no response from the SecUnit in the feed either. As Ratthi, Arada and Pin-Lee tried to secure the rope further back, where the ground should be solid, she tied the other end around her waist and sent not to panic, she'd be down once the anchor was in. But right then, the rope went taut. The SecUnit had finally managed to find it in the mud and grab it.

They pulled. It was heavy, and the mud clung to it, so they didn't accomplish much but keep the rope in place, but that was enough for the SecUnit to climb out under its own power.

It released the rope and stood, covered completely in steaming mud. "Are you okay," she asked.

It was a foolish thing to say, because nothing seemed right about it now. It was standing with its usual still posture, without taking a single further away from the sinkhole first. The thick mud coated its faceplate and it didn't move to wipe it off either. It couldn't possibly be able to see anything like that.

"Performance reliability is within acceptable margins," it said, which did not sound like it was unscathed.

"That was too close. We should go back to the hopper." After a moment, she heard Ratthi say, "SecUnit, she means you too," and she looked back to see it start to move.

It still didn't do anything about the mud as it started to march toward the hopper. For a moment she wondered if she'd misunderstood something and it didn't rely on eyesight, and then one foot went into a shallow hole and it staggered.

Arada and Ratthi had realized the same thing. Ratthi wiped the arm of his suit across the faceplate to clean it off until they could see the original material beneath. "Do you want to hold my hand?" Arada asked.

"That is not recommended safety protocol." Arada reached out to get her hand under its, and after a moment it took her hand. Maybe it helped a little, because it walked more steadily.

A pair of messages popped into her feed, both from Gurathin.

Are you alive?

What did it do?

She sent back, We're all okay. The SecUnit fell into some mud rescuing Arada.

The SecUnit just tried to kill someone, Gurathin replied. Four minutes ago. HubSystem logged it.

That must be another error. But had that been why it had fallen? Did the HubSystem tell it to stand down again?

No. But the governor module triggered, Gurathin sent.

It didn't do anything, she reassured him. It's probably another glitch. And if it wasn't, then we know its governor module is working properly. We're safe.

The others had gotten the SecUnit to the hopper without any further mishaps, at which point it'd walked to the cargo doors and stood like it was hoping it could hide with the equipment again.

Well. She thought of Ratthi suggesting they chat with it on the job. Maybe he wasn't entirely wrong.

"Stay by the hopper for now," she told the rest of them.

She went to the cargo entrance and opened it. The SecUnit went in without an order, and, hoping this wouldn't be taken as invading its space, she went in as well. It was facing away from her, into the wall. "I just got a message," she said. "Did something go wrong with the HubSystem again?"

It turned around to face in her general direction. There was still something off about how it was moving. It was slightly stiff, slightly slow. "I am not aware of any malfunctions within HubSystem at this time," it said, its voice dead. "Your HafeitexlAx-"

"Did something happen, just now?" she pressed.

"HafeiteslAx apologizes if any equipment has performed inadequately. It won't happen again."

Because it had fallen in? Or because it hadn't been able to keep Arada from falling? "You've been far more than adequate," she said.

"You stated earlier you were unfamiliar with HafeiteslAx products," it said, and sent her a file in the feed. It must know she couldn't tell what that was without using an interface. Was it trying to end the conversation, or did it have to send whatever that was and didn't care if she looked at it?

She realized there was a mechanical whine, faint and almost too high in pitch to hear. She looked away from it, ending up with her back to the perpendicular wall, and said, "Has the mud clogged the filter?"

"Yes," it said.

Did it need permission to take its helmet off, or was it choosing to suffocate?

Or was it even thinking that clearly right now? It had felt like the SecUnit had been spared from the constant failures of everything else, but it was made by the same people. Maybe it was simply better at compensating for it and sparing them from dealing with another problem.

Maybe that was the real point of the SecUnits. They could be adaptable in ways actual equipment wasn't, and they would try in ways actual equipment wouldn't bother.

"How about," she said, "you take it off to see if you can fix it in here. We'll all stay close to the hopper for now."

In her peripheral vision, she saw it remove the helmet. It said, "HubSystem does not have repair directions."

She could smell something like cooked meat now. How hot had the mud pool been beneath the surface? And how deep had it sunk? Perhaps worse, had something mechanical inside it overheated and then burnt out?

"You're injured?" she asked. Even not looking at it directly, it looked awful.

"Performance reliability is within acceptable margins," it said.

So that was what it said if it was hurt.

"SecUnit, what happened? Did HubSystem malfunction again?"

"No," it said. "I malfunctioned." Some life had come back into its voice, if sounding like it wanted to cry could be called that. "It won't happen again."

"Do you mean something went wrong with the governor module?"

"No. I malfunctioned. HubSystem was made aware. Performance reliability is within acceptable margins. It won't happen again."

"I don't understand," she said. "Why?"

"I don't have that information."

She remembered Pin-Lee's advice. If it had to lie, what good was pressing it on the subject?

No, that wasn't right, was it. Errors and malfunctions had logs. It could send her that and tell her it was all the information available, just like it'd done with the glitch earlier. It was deflecting. It didn't want to tell her anything more.

If the governor module had warned HubSystem it'd wanted to kill someone, and the SecUnit said HubSystem wasn't malfunctioning, but it hadn't actually done anything… Would she bet the team hadn't once had a violent thought about HafeiteslAx when something went wrong? And how terrifying it must have felt sinking into the mud. It could have died down there.

But she couldn't leave it be entirely either, not on the heels of another accident.

"Okay. About before that, though," she said. "You knew something was wrong before Arada fell."

"Dr. Arada stood on a hazard marker." She hadn't ordered people not to walk on those, but it must have been taken as implied. And it must not have messaged Arada or Ratthi, since they hadn't reacted. It could message her about someone else, but it couldn't just tell them to stop, it seemed, just like it'd tried to convince her to order Ratthi back into the hopper rather than trying to convince him to stay put. That struck her as perhaps the most glaring security flaw yet. User error again.

"From now on, if someone is doing something risky," she told it, "warn them not to, stop them any way you can. You don't need my-" she started to say, then corrected herself to, "You have my permission in advance."

She took out the interface and called up the map on it. She didn't see anything even close to where they'd been. She sent it to the SecUnit. "Is this different from yours?"

"Yes, Dr. Mensah," it said. Based on its version, Arada and Ratthi hadn't just walked right on top of a hazard marker, they'd walked out of the perimeter itself in the process. Everything was offset and dozens more markers were gone.

The hopper hadn't even managed to copy over its own just gathered map data correctly. The SecUnit had downloaded one version and she'd downloaded another.

It was terrifying and it was infuriating. No grand conspiracy to kill them, just equipment that couldn't communicate even right next to each other.

"Shit," she said, then sighed. "User error."

It made a confused sound.

"Not people sabotaging us, I mean," she said. "We're here, and now that we know the problem with the map, it shouldn't be hard to avoid another incident. And at least by falling right into one of them, we've confirmed the hazard scan worked." She sighed. "I want to finish taking samples. If Arada's right and the scanners are having more trouble with area's minerals than others, this might let us make a predictive model of where we'll run into difficulties. What do you think?"

It took a while to answer. Eventually, it said, "This could reduce future risk. But surveys always contain a high number of unknowns. Known dangers can be compensated for. It is safer to launch the emergency beacon. The human-planned assassination attempts you deal with in your home system are likely less dangerous than the unpredictability of hostile planetary fauna."

She'd never been more glad she didn't live in the Corporation Rim. "There aren't assassination attempts on Preservation," she told it, and it actually turned to look directly at her with a poleaxed expression. After a minute or two of silence, it managed a strangled, "You have chosen to take part in a planetary survey and the client is always right."

"It has been more dangerous than I expected. We'll try not to cause you any more trouble. Please use one of the backup suits. I know it's not as good as having armor, but it's better than one clogged by mud."

"Yes, Dr. Mensah," it said, and she stepped out to let it change.