I could leave them to cope on their own, I guess. I pictured doing that, pictured Arada or Ratthi trapped by rogue SecUnits, and felt my insides twist. I hate having emotions about reality; I’d much rather have them about Sanctuary Moon.
And what was I supposed to do? Go off on this empty planet and just live until my power cells died? If I was going to do that I should have planned better and downloaded more entertainment media. I don’t think I could store enough to last until my power cells wore out. My specs told me that would be hundreds of thousands of hours from now.
And even to me, that sounded like a stupid thing to do.
*
Overse had set up some remote sensing equipment that would help warn us if anything tried to scan the area. As the humans climbed back into the two hoppers, I did a quick headcount on the feed, making sure they were all still there. Mensah waited on the ramp, indicating she wanted to talk to me in private.
I muted my feed and the comm, and she said, “I know you’re more comfortable with keeping your helmet opaque, but the situation has changed. We need to see you.”
I didn’t want to do it. Now more than ever. They knew too much about me. But I needed them to trust me so I could keep them alive and keep doing my job. The good version of my job, not the half-assed version of my job that I’d been doing before things started trying to kill my clients. I still didn’t want to do it. “It’s usually better if humans think of me as a robot,” I said.
“Maybe, under normal circumstances.” She was looking a little off to one side, not trying to make eye contact, which I appreciated. “But this situation is different. It would be better if they could think of you as a person who is trying to help. Because that’s how I think of you.”
My insides melted. That’s the only way I could describe it. After a minute, when I had my expression under control, I cleared the face plate and had it and the helmet fold back into my armor.
She said, “Thank you,” and I followed her up into the hopper.
The others were stowing the equipment and supplies that had gotten tossed in right before takeoff. “—If they restore the satellite function,” Ratthi was saying.
“They won’t chance that until—unless they get us,” Arada said.
Over the comm, Pin-Lee sighed, angry and frustrated. “If only we knew who these assholes were.”
“We need to talk about our next move.” Mensah cut through all the chatter and took a seat in the back where she could see the whole compartment. The others sat down to face her, Ratthi turning one of the mobile seats around. I sat down on the bench against the starboard wall. The feed gave us a view of the little hopper’s compartment, with the rest of the team sitting there, checking in to show they were listening. Mensah continued, “There’s another question I’d like the answer to.”
Gurathin looked at me expectantly. She isn’t talking about me, idiot.
Ratthi nodded glumly. “Why? Why are these people doing this? What is worth this to them?”
“It has to have something to do with those blanked-out sections on the map,” Overse said. She was calling up the stored images on her feed. “There’s obviously something there they want, that they didn’t want us or DeltFall to find.”
Mensah got up to pace. “Did you turn up anything in the analysis?”
In the feed, Arada did a quick consult with Bharadwaj and Volescu. “Not yet, but we hadn’t finished running all the tests. We hadn’t turned up anything interesting so far.”
“Do they really expect to get away with this?” Ratthi turned to me, like he was expecting an answer. “Obviously, they can hack the company systems and the satellite, and they intend to put the blame on the SecUnits, but . . . The investigation will surely be thorough. They must know this.”
There were too many factors in play, and too many things we didn’t know, but I’m supposed to answer direct questions and even without the governor module, old habits die hard. “They may believe the company and whoever your beneficiaries are won’t look any further than the rogue SecUnits. But they can’t make two whole survey teams disappear unless their corporate or political entity doesn’t care about them. Does DeltFall’s care? Does yours?”
That made them all stare at me, for some reason. I had to turn and look out the port. I wanted to seal my helmet so badly my organic parts started to sweat, but I replayed the conversation with Mensah and managed not to.
Volescu said, “You don’t know who we are? They didn’t tell you?”
“There was an info packet in my initial download.” I was still staring out at the heavy green tangle just past the rocks. I really didn’t want to get into how little I paid attention to my job. “I didn’t read it.”
Arada said, gently, “Why not?”
With all of them staring at me, I couldn’t come up with a good lie. “I didn’t care.”
Gurathin said, “You expect us to believe that.”
I felt my face move, my jaw harden. Physical reactions I couldn’t suppress. “I’ll try to be more accurate. I was indifferent, and vaguely annoyed. Do you believe that?”
He said, “Why don’t you want us to look at you?”
My jaw was so tight it triggered a performance reliability alert in my feed. I said, “You don’t need to look at me. I’m not a sexbot.”
Ratthi made a noise, half sigh, half snort of exasperation. It wasn’t directed at me. He said, “Gurathin, I told you. It’s shy.”
Overse added, “It doesn’t want to interact with humans. And why should it? You know how constructs are treated, especially in corporate-political environments.”
Gurathin turned to me. “So you don’t have a governor module, but we could punish you by looking at you.”
I looked at him. “Probably, right up until I remember I have guns built into my arms.”
With an ironic edge to her voice, Mensah said, “There, Gurathin. It’s threatened you, but it didn’t resort to violence. Are you satisfied now?”
He sat back. “For now.” So he had been testing me. Wow, that was brave. And very, very stupid. To me, he said, “I want to make certain you’re not under any outside compulsion.”
“That’s enough.” Arada got up and sat down next to me. I didn’t want to push past her so this pinned me in the corner. She said, “You need to give it time. It’s never interacted with humans as an openly free agent before now. This is a learning experience for all of us.”
The others nodded, like this made sense.
Mensah sent me a private message through the feed: I hope you’re all right.