Chapter Text
I've been back on Preservation Station two times since I've started travelling with ART. The first time ART's whole crew came with us because lawyers from the university wanted to discuss the whole Adamantine colony thing with lawyers from Preservation (yes, again), and everyone else took the opportunity to 'go on a vacation and see some friends', as Turi had explained to me when I'd questioned why they all wanted to come. The second time I went alone, or as alone as I could be with a giant sentient asshole of a research transport constantly riding my feed (which was not alone at all, but the human's weren't there, is what I mean). ART and I had just finished a cargo run, and made it just in time for Amena's graduation that she'd invited me to for some reason. It was on the planet, which I hated, but I got to see Amena and Mensah and Ratthi and some of the other humans, which was nice.
Both times, someone had been waiting for me at the docks. I hadn't send a message ahead, but apparently all my humans had alerts set up that notified them when ART appeared on the list of vessels scheduled to dock. The first time Ratthi and Arada had been there, and the second time it had been Mensah, who 'd been on the station for some council business, and Gurathin (ugh), who actually lived there instead of on the planet.
Which was why I stopped dead in my tracks when I stepped off ART this time, and there was no one waving their arms at me and looking like they wanted to hug me (or give me a nod and a bit of a smile, in Gurathin's case). I frowned at the empty hall. It had always been awkward to see my humans again after I'd been gone for a while, but not seeing them immediately was actually worse. My performance reliability dropped a whole percent.
Did you not follow the docking protocol, I asked ART, irritated.
Of course I followed the docking protocol, ART shot back, sounding offended. I transmitted the docking request form to Port Authority 1.6 seconds after exiting the wormhole. They knew we were coming. Through the offence, I could feel its confusion. I guess it had been excited to see my humans as well.
Still frowning, I pulled up the list of vessels currently docking at the station that Port Authority provided on the public feed. Yeah, ART was listed on there. So where were my humans?
Plunging into the feed, I ran a search on their IDs. Mensah, Ratthi and Pin-Lee immediately popped up. The others were—presumably—down on the planet, too far to pick up the station feed.
Mensah, Ratthi and Pin-Lee all had their feed status set to DO NOT DISTURB. They also all had the same unnamed appointment in their calendars that Mensah had set up, taking place in her private office in the admin blocks. It was a smaller office now that she wasn't planetary leader anymore, but it was still nice. She'd kept the couch, and the security system I'd set up. Which was why I could access the video and audio in the room, even without breaking my promise not to hack any station systems, and caught Ratthi saying, "… want to know when Gurathin's in trouble."
What's wrong with Gurathin, I immediately said on a private feed connection. They all flinched. Pin-Lee spilled liquid all over her lap and cursed. Then they all looked at each other with various expressions of guilt and exasperation.
"SecUnit," Mensah finally said, smiling softly at the camera in the corner even though I could see the tension around her eyes. "Welcome back."
"We have the privacy marker up for a reason, asshole." Pin-Lee scowled and dabbed at her pants with a napkin Ratthi had handed her.
I'd seen the marker, but I hadn't thought it would apply to me. Usually my humans tell me directly if they don't want me to listen, and when they do they usually talk about emotions or relationships or other gross human things, not about one of my humans being in trouble. Dealing with my humans being in trouble was kind of my job, so they didn't shut me out of these conversations. Usually. That they did now made my organic parts twitch in a way I really didn't like.
Where's Gurathin, I said. I searched for his feed ID again just in case, but came up empty. Now that I thought about it, it didn't seem very probable that he was on the planet. Gurathin didn't have any friends he could visit there, except for the people who were currently in Mensah's office looking very uncomfortable that I'd caught them talking about this.
"Why don't you come join us," Mensah offered gently instead of answering the question while Ratthi ran a hand down his face and sighed.
I forced myself not to run to the office, but only because that always makes the humans around me panic and I didn't want to deal with Station Security right now. And I figured if Gurathin was in the kind of trouble that was life-threatening and/or time-sensitive, the other humans wouldn't be so damn cagey about it. I walked at a pace just slightly too fast for a relaxed human out of the port and towards the admin buildings while ART played the Sanctuary Moon theme for me in the background.
I can access the surveillance footage of the port to find out if and when Dr. Gurathin left the station, ART offered and I winced.
I promised Senior Officer Indah not to hack any station systems, I reminded ART. It knew that. We had an argument about it the first time we came to the station.
I made no such promise.
They think you're a low-level transport. Who do you think are they going to blame for this?
Are you implying that I'll to get caught?
Probably, I lied, only to annoy ART. It was too good to be caught by Port Authority, who had once refused my offer to upgrade their security and were therefore still running subpar systems (yes, this still annoyed me).
ART sulked, a heavy presence in my feed, and I rolled my eyes and said, at least wait until we know what's going on.
Placated by this, ART was quiet as I reached the admin block and made my way to Mensah's office. Her staff at the front desk startled as I barged in (to be fair, it's been a while since I did that), but immediately waved me through.
My chest felt weird in an uncomfortable way as I approached the office, but then I burst in and everyone smiled at the space above my shoulder (even Pin-Lee, who can do this impressive thing where she's smiling and glaring at the same time) and I felt better. I guess I had been worried that they didn't want to see me, after no one came to meet me and they had a secret meeting without me instead.
"Hi," I said. "What's going on? You're being weird."
"Hi! We'll explain. Won't we?" Ratthi said, giving everyone else a pointed look.
"Yes. Of course." Mensah let out a breath. "It's good to see you, SecUnit."
Is it? I asked Mensah on a private feed connection with just the two of us. Because even though they were smiling now, they hadn't acted like it when I'd crashed their meeting a moment ago. Which I guess had been rude or whatever, but still.
Always, Mensah said immediately, with such a conviction that it gave me an emotion that made my chest hurt. Before I could deal with it she continued, ushering me to the couch. "Let's sit. Is Perihelion with you?"
She knew ART was physically here, sitting in the port, but what she meant was was ART riding my feed and listening in to the conversation. As if I could stop it from doing that.
I am here. It is a pleasure to see you again, Dr. Mensah, ART said, in that weird polite tone it always used when talking to Mensah. It didn't even sound sarcastic. And you too, Drs Ratthi and Pin-Lee.
There was more general exclaiming from the humans about how nice it was to see everyone, which always gets on my nerves even under normal circumstances. Something must have shown on my face, because Ratthi took one look at me and immediately stopped stalling. Before I could brace myself he said, "Gurathin left for the Corporation Rim five cycles ago."
My performance reliability immediately dipped, and I suddenly understood what the humans meant when they say someone should sit down for something. I froze for 0.8 seconds, long enough for ART to nudge me in the feed.
"Why the fuck would he do that," I said. I knew it couldn't be for a survey. I kept track of those, even when I wasn't planning to join, and the next one wasn't scheduled for another two months.
Mensah let out a soft sigh and sat down next to me. "We believe he's visiting family. His sister recently got back into contact with him."
Wait, what? I jerked back, surprised. "Gurathin has family in the Corporation Rim?"
Ratthi's lips twitched. "You really didn't read the info packet for our first survey, did you? I'm pretty sure they put that in there. He's originally from a station called RhoPhar."
"No. And then he never told me." That asshole. Him being from the Corporation Rim explained some things about him, though. Why he was such an asshole, for example.
"You know how Gurathin is," Ratthi said with a shrug. "He's kind of a private person. He doesn't mind talking about it, but you'd have to ask him to get this kind of information."
He didn't need to say that I only didn't know because I never asked. I never cared enough. If this was coming from anyone except Ratthi it would have sounded like an accusation, but he said it like he was just stating a fact.
"Did he follow the security protocol?" I asked, jaw clenched, even though I could already guess the answer. There wouldn't be such a commotion if he did. Still, I sent the relevant documents to everyone's feeds again, highlighting things like 'threat assessment' and 'hired security' and 'fucking send a message to Murderbot before you leave, idiots' (yes, I'm paraphrasing). I'd come up with the protocol on my last visit to Preservation, when Arada and Overse were preparing to leave for a conference I couldn't join because I already had a mission with ART's crew scheduled.
Pin-Lee snorted. "Of course he fucking didn't."
Ratthi made a helpless gesture that mainly consisted of waving his arms around. "We all offered to help or come with him, but then he just… he just left. Without telling us."
That startled me again. Yes, Gurathin was an idiot, but usually not that much of an idiot.
"There are some complicating factors," Mensah said. She was still calm and collected, as she always is in a crisis, but her mouth twitched in a way that told me that she was actually kind of pissed off. And worried, probably. "Gurathin's sister contacted him to inform him that his father is very sick and can't afford the medication in the Corporation Rim. He refused to come to Preservation for treatment. And two cycles after Gurathin left, Senior Officer Indah shared this report with me."
She sent me a file in the feed. ART immediately leaned closer, examining it as well while I read through it. It was a report of a possible security incident filed by Station Medical. There were logs of large quantities of medication being synthesized that no one had requested, and that was currently unaccounted for. The logs had been deleted, but they'd been able to recover them once someone had found traces of the medication in the system.
2.3 seconds later ART dumped a data packet in my feed as well. It had gathered information about the illness the medication was used to treat (I don't know much about human biology because it's mostly just gross, but it looked bad even to me), what the Corporation Rim charged for it (those fuckers) and, most unhelpfully, a summary of Corporation Rim law pointing out that bringing the medication from Preservation into the Rim would definitely count as smuggling and was therefore illegal.
No wonder Gurathin didn't want to do this as an official Preservation-sanctioned trip.
I sat back with a sinking feeling in my organic parts. My drone caught everyone exchanging a look. The kind of look that told me that somehow, this still wasn't the worst part. "You didn't want to tell me," I said. My voice sounded strange, kind of flat and cracking at the same time. "Why didn't you want to tell me?"
Ratthi squeezed his eyes shut, a pained expression on his face. Pin-Lee looked even angrier than she had a second ago. And Mensah, carefully watching the space above my shoulder, said gently, "RhoPhar is mainly under control of the company."
Oh, fuck. Fuck this, and fuck me, and fuck everything.
I left. My face was doing something that seemed to alarm the humans enough that they forgot not to look at me directly. I couldn't stop my face from doing it, because Gurathin was going to the company, alone and without security and doing shit that could get him arrested, but I also couldn't stand everyone looking at me like that, so I just got up and walked out of the room.
I wanted to stand in a corner and stare at the wall, or put my fist through it instead of staring, but in the end I settled on finding a different empty office with a different empty couch and collapsed face-down onto it. It wasn't as comfortable as Mensah's, but it was fine. I backburnered the footage from Mensah's office and instead focused on the episode of Sanctuary Moon that ART started playing for me.
After about ten minutes, Mensah sent me a ping. I responded with a ping of my own, which she took as permission to come find me. She hesitated in the doorway for just a second before she sat down on the arm of the couch right by my head. I still had my face buried in the cushion and had no intention to stop.
"I'm sorry," Mensah finally said, looking down at me with a sad expression on her face. "We didn't mean to shut you out, but it simply felt too early to involve you as long as we're not sure if Gurathin is in acute danger. We knew this would be upsetting, and wanted to keep you as far away from anything involving the company as we could. We were just… trying to protect you, I suppose, in a perhaps slightly misguided way."
She let out a long breath, hand twitching in her lap as if she wanted to reach out and touch me. "We should have told you anyway," she continued, voice steadier as it had been. "I know you care about him—"
"I don't," I said automatically, then winced as my drone captured Mensah's raised eyebrow. "Maybe a little. That doesn't mean I like him."
"Of course not," Mensah said patiently, in the kind of tone she usually used to humour one of her many children. "Still, I understand you still want to know these things, even though you are now a part of Perihelion's crew."
"I do." I pushed myself up, scowling, and switched to the feed so I could tell Ratthi and Pin-Lee as well. I want you to tell me stuff. I don't fucking care if you think it shouldn't be my responsibility anymore.
We will, Pin-Lee said immediately. I'm sorry.
Yeah, Ratthi agreed. And then, on a private connection with just the two of us, Do you want to review the security protocols for my upcoming survey? The survey lead shared the draft just yesterday.
Yes.
He sent them over and I marked them to read for later. My performance reliability actually crept up a percent. I turned back to Mensah, still frowning. "What are you doing about Gurathin?"
Mensah sighed. She looked kind of lost. It was an expression I really didn't like on her face. "There isn't much we can do. For the moment we're monitoring the official channels. If he ends up needing legal or otherwise administrative support, we'll be ready to intervene."
"That's it?"
"It was Gurathin's choice to leave on his own, and we have to respect that. A large part of his plan counts on not drawing unnecessary attention."
"The company will be monitoring him the second he arrives." Unless Gurathin used a fake ID and was able to hack the face scanners at the port, they would immediately know about his links to Preservation, and Mensah, and me. There was no way the company would just let him wander around the station without trying to extricate some kind of information.
"I know," Mensah said, sounding unhappy about it. "But Gurathin travelling alone to visit a family member will still be a lot less obtrusive than any of us rushing after him. This might be the best way to keep him safe."
There wasn't anything safe about the company, but Mensah knew that. I still understood her point. I could see why no one had boarded a transport to drag Gurathin back home, whether he liked it or not.
ART pushed a document into my feed. It was the paperwork for our upcoming cargo run. I'd previously only glanced at the travel and docking permits because I honestly didn't care enough about our destination (I mainly just cared about the 23 seasons of Whispers Of Truth ART and I were planning to watch), but I was pretty sure it hadn't said RhoPhar before.
I understand if you do not want to go, ART said on our private feed. And I know your humans would as well. But if you do, I'm ready to depart within the hour. We will be able to circumvent the company's attention in a way a human from Preservation can't.
I didn't want to go. I really, really didn't want to. I still said, "We'll go."
Mensah looked sad, but it wasn't the surprised kind of sad. She'd known I would say that. I'd bet all my hard currency cards that this was the exact reason why she didn't want to tell me in the first place.