Exit Strategy

Mensah leaned against the railing next to me and said, “I was afraid you’d left.”

She kept her gaze on the plaza, so I could look at the side of her face. “I thought about it.”

She was quiet for twenty seconds, watching the movement in the plaza below. “Have you thought much about what you want to do?”

“Watch media.”

She did the lifted eyebrow look which I had on file as meaning: I know you’re trying to be funny but you’re not funny. It was most often aimed at Ratthi and Gurathin. “I think if that was all you wanted to do, you’d be off somewhere doing it, and you’d never have gone to Milu.”

“I watched a lot of media on the way to Milu.” It wasn’t exactly a counterargument, but I thought it was important data.

“You’ll have to wait to discuss it,” Pin-Lee told them. “It can’t enter into any contractual agreements until it completes its memory rebuild.”

“Why?” I asked her. “Because my owner says so?”

“No, asshole,” Pin-Lee said. “Because I’m your legal counsel.”

The one good thing about having emotions was that it accelerated the repair process for my memory storage. (The bad thing about having emotions is, you know, OH SHIT WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO ME.)

(“I don’t want to be a pet robot.”

“I don’t think anyone wants that.”

That was Gurathin. I don’t like him. “I don’t like you.”

“I know.”

He sounded like he thought it was funny. “That is not funny.”

“I’m going to mark your cognition level at fifty-five percent.”

“Fuck you.”

“Let’s make that sixty percent.”)

So this was a place you put humans, not bots or SecUnits. Did they think I was a human? That was just stressful, I didn’t want to pretend to be human right now. But I was missing my jacket and my boots. I don’t have any organic parts on my feet and they don’t look like medical augments for an injured human. And, oh right, I was in a MedSystem, which would have immediately diagnosed that I had a terminal case of being a SecUnit.

I slipped all the way into the ship, into the pilot bot’s hardware. I’d seen ART do it.

(Yes, ART’s processing capacity is much larger than mine. I’ll address that issue when it comes up, which is real soon now.)

“You stayed behind to get yourself killed.”

Okay, aside from the fact that that was actually my intention at the time, that was not my fault. “They wouldn’t have let me through. I told PortSec if they let you through to the shuttle, I’d stay behind.”

That stopped her. Her brow furrowed. “Is that why you stayed?”

I could have lied. I didn’t want to. “Mostly,” I said. I looked at her with my actual eyes again. “I wanted to win.”

Ratthi, Gurathin, and Pin-Lee all watched me. The company crew incompetently pretended not to try to eavesdrop. Dr. Mensah’s expression softened, just around the edges. Ratthi said, “Why did you come through, then, when Gurathin got the barrier open?”

“Because that last one was a Combat SecUnit and it was going to tear me apart. That’s not winning.” I wish I knew what winning was. And once I started telling the truth, it was hard to stop. “I don’t want to be here.”

Pin-Lee sat down beside Ratthi. “We won’t be here for long. We’re going to rendezvous with a Preservation ship after this wormhole jump and get off this flying vending machine.” She glared toward the crew. “It’s like everything I hate about the corporates wrapped up in one heavily armed package.”

You could say that about me, too. I asked Dr. Mensah, “Then what?”

“That’s what you and I need to talk about,” she said. She glanced at the company crew. “Though let’s wait until we’re not being recorded—”

Mensah finished glaring at me and turned around. The crew who had just watched her face down a rogue SecUnit, in person and via the powered armor’s helmet cam, stared wide-eyed. She said, “Since we are bonded clients, may we come aboard while we settle our bill?”

There was a hesitation, then the comm said, “Please come aboard, Dr. Mensah.”

* * *

I told you the thing about SecUnits not being allowed to sit on human furniture while on or off duty. So the first thing I did when the crew led us through the lock and down the corridor to a passenger seating area was to sit down on the padded bench.

(I’m not sure it made any impression on the humans. Humans don’t notice these things. But it felt good to me.)

Then the comm activated and a voice said, “Dr. Mensah, this is the ship’s combat supervisor. I’ve been asked to secure a bond to guarantee safety aboard this ship.”

Ratthi objected, “What? We already have a bond.”

The comm clarified, “This bond is required when bringing an unsecured deadly weapon aboard an armed company transport.”

Yes, that’s me they’re talking about. It would have been more funny if I hadn’t been leaking onto the deck.

Pin-Lee’s voice was somewhere between furious and incredulous. “Are they serious? Right, never mind, that was a stupid question, of course they’re serious.” She turned as Gurathin handed her their bag. She muttered, “How much do these fuckers want now?”

She was right, they were fuckers. Not that I hadn’t known that before, but it was just harder to take now. I tapped my private feed connection to Mensah and said, I can take over this ship.

Mensah replied, No, there’s no need, we can pay them.

We shouldn’t have to. We don’t have to. The bot pilot was curious and friendly, but it was no ART, it couldn’t stop me. I could take over the ship’s SecSystem before this human with the temptingly large familiar projectile weapon could blink. I could get that weapon before that human could blink. I wanted to do it, and it bled through into the feed.

Mensah turned, gripped the collar of my jacket with both hands, and said, “No.”

Everyone got quiet. Ratthi and Gurathin, Pin-Lee still fishing in the bag for hard currency cards, the crew outside the hatch, the voice on the comm. I suddenly needed to see Mensah’s face and I dropped the shuttleSec camera views and looked down at her.

She looked mad and exhausted, which was exactly the way I felt. I sent, You have no idea what I am.

She tilted her head and looked more mad. I know exactly what you are. You’re afraid, you’re hurt, and you need to calm the fuck down so we can get through this situation alive.

I said, I am calm. You need to be calm, to take over a gunship.

Mensah’s eyes narrowed. Security consultants don’t get their clients into unnecessary pitched battles for control of their rescue ship. She added, Because that would be stupid.

She wasn’t afraid of me. And it hit me that I didn’t want that to change. She had just been through a traumatic experience, and I was making it worse. Something was overwhelming me, and it wasn’t the familiar wave of not-caring.

Fine, I sent. I sounded sulky, because I was sulky.

I hate emotions.

Somebody else, probably GrayCrisSec or Palisade, deployed killware. StationSecAdmin alerted to it and, probably terrified it was aimed at SafetyLockSys, deployed a killware countermeasure. It would have been hilarious if I wasn’t about to die.

It was still a little hilarious.