Mensah’s family, including her siblings, their partners and kids, were all gathered at her house. It was a lot.
I distracted myself by checking the perimeter. (Not that there was any need for it at her Preservation home.)
My drone caught the actual incident. One of the small kids—I don't know whose—fell down. Ciren went to help the child up, acting on instinct. When the child saw Ciren's face it wailed and Ciren recoiled with the force of an invisible blow. It stepped away rapidly as the kid cried harder in reaction.
Here's the thing: the younger kids didn't have any context for what I am. Outwardly I'm no different to them than any other augmented human adult. Except for the strong aversion to their dirty little human hands touching me.
But Ciren? Ciren had the look of a heartless killing machine. Its face was permanently stuck in a scowl that made full grown adults nervous.
You can imagine how little humans react. Well, pretty much like that.
A parent came over to console the crying kid and Mensah went to put a reassuring hand on Ciren's shoulder. Ciren had given them permission to touch it as long as it saw the motion coming. Weird.
“Ciren, it's alright.”
I could practically feel Ciren's distress through the drone’s feed; it had to be much worse in person.
Ciren hadn't taken its eyes off the crying child. It kept its voice suspiciously neutral. “I acted impulsively. Forgive me, Dr. Mensah.”
“No, it's really alright. You didn't do anything wrong.”
Ciren's face did something funny then it nodded in response and walked away. Once out of sight, it broke into a sprint, hopping into the upper branches of a huge tree.
Ciren liked to be high up. It was a holdover from when it didn't have drones but needed to survey a large area at once for hostile fauna. (The planet we found it on had so much hostile fauna. So much.)
I didn't want to care about this. I'd prefer going back to monitoring the perimeter while watching an episode of Sanctuary Moon.
A minute later my perimeter check took me to the bottom of the tree.
I started a show about adolescent humans traveling through an uninhabited system, trying to find their way back to their home system and gave Ciren access.
(It wasn't terrible but I preferred watching shows with adult humans.)
Two episodes in, Ciren silently dropped to a lower branch.
Can we watch an episode of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon?
You don't like it. I put as much judgement as I could into the feed.
You do.
I don't really understand Ciren sometimes. (Okay, most times.) But whatever, I wasn't going to pass a chance to watch my favorite show.
5.6 minutes into episode 132, Ratthi showed on approach through one of my drones. In the same second, Ciren vanished back up into the tree. I mean it barely moved any of the foliage on the branch it went so quick and quiet.
In the feed I said, Really?
Do you feel qualified to judge others on avoidant behavior?
Well, now you just sound like ART. Also fuck you.
Ratthi arrived at the tree after that. “Secunit.” He looked around. “Is Ciren with you? Mensah figured it would be.”
I pointed up.
Thank you. Ciren really sounded like ART this time, only less mean and menacing and more dry sass.
(Was sass the right word? The recent episodes of To the End of the Stars used it frequently and it was invading my vocabulary. It didn’t sound right to call Ciren “sassy”.)
“Ah.” Ratthi sat under the tree, a close distance from where I stood leaning against the trunk but not too close. Ratthi did that often. “What were you doing? Talking?”
Ciren cut right to the chase. “Dr. Ratthi, I understand you mean to comfort me but I am fine.”
Ratthi was thrown for a second, as he usually was when Ciren just came right out and addressed the problem. (I’m sure that’s completely unrelated to his previous interactions with former corporate murder machines.) He recovered quickly, tilting his head back to speak to the obscuring foliage above us. “You know that happens to humans too. Scaring little kids, I mean.”
No response.
“They can be upset by an unfamiliar face. Or their little minds don’t understand something and that translates to ‘scary, cry for parents’.”
Ciren sent an Acknowledge but nothing else. I didn’t know if Ratthi was making things better or worse; Ciren had a tendency to go non-verbal when it had strong emotions. It wouldn’t even use the feed to communicate.
Ratthi took it as encouragement. “What I’m trying to say is, that wasn’t your fault. You—”
Ciren interrupted him by sending an All clear signal in the feed. Then it connected Ratthi into the feed we were watching media on and poked me to continue.
Fine by me.
Because Ratthi is one of my favorite humans, he settled in at the base of the tree and asked, “Oh okay, what are we watching?”
“The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. Episode 132.”
“The one where the solicitor's bodyguard’s nephew learns he’s the product of a genetic marketing scheme by—”
“We hadn’t gotten that far yet.”
“Sorry.”
On the feed, Ciren pulled up a synopsis of the entire series marked as “read”.
Ratthi made an astonished noise. “You read the entire plot synopsis? For Sanctuary Moon?”
For a series you don’t like?
Ciren, still in the grips of “I either can’t or won’t communicate” mode, poked me. I somehow understood it was referring to what it said earlier: I did it because you like it so much.
I restarted the episode without responding. It was my turn to have an emotion in silence.
here's a wip for an actual fic I'll be working on. it takes place a few years after system collapse and a year after mb meets ciren. basic premise: what happens when ciren is pushed to its limits after being separated from its friends
Ciren was missing for two cycles.
On the third cycle, the drone I’d left with it pinged us.
Me and Three followed the signal until we reached a steep hill, a group of young humans on the other side. The tallest young human at the front pointed frantically at my drone circling over my head.
She turned to the others, shouting, “It has to be them!”
The others agreed, setting down the bundle of tied together jackets and shirts they were carefully dragging across the plain, their path through the blue-ish grass clear.
Inside the bundle was Ciren.
Three ran-slid down the hill, passed the tall young human struggling up it to reach me.
I didn't know what my face was doing but the young human hesitated a few steps away from me. She pointed at the drone again.
“It told us to follow the drone. That we could trust whoever owned it.” She was out of breath, showing signs of exhaustion. The climb up the hill took the last of her strength. She fell to her knees but pointed emphatically at what I thought was the other adolescent humans.
Breathless and desperate, she cried, “You have to help Ciren! Please, it saved us, you can't let it die!”
My drone shot over to Three lifting Ciren out of the makeshift gurney. There were visible projectile wounds on its body, nothing a SecUnit couldn't handle, and it was covered in blood. Not its blood.
Secunit, Three said on the feed the same moment my drone showed me the projectile wound through its head.
I'd been shot by an adolescent human before. They could have done this and were lying to get our help.
But the exhausted human in front of me had her face in her hands, sobbing. It didn't feel fake.
I hate to admit this but I locked up. My attention was split on Three climbing the hill, much slower this time, Ciren’s inert body looking small in its arms, and the young human in front of me, begging incoherently.
Performance reliability dropped five percent. My knees didn't buckle under me, I felt stuck, my body unresponsive.
This was what SecUnits were supposed to do, right? Get ourselves blown up so the humans could get away.
But this wasn't just any SecUnit.
21.3 seconds had gone by (which for a SecUnit was a disturbingly long time to be standing there not saying or doing anything) when Three nudged me gently on the feed.
I sent one of my drones scanning the perimeter to leave the blackout zone and inform ART. Turned my back on the crying human and Three (and Ciren in its arms), I said, “Follow me.”
And I walked away.
My med system is without fault.
Fifty percent? That's the highest probability it can give for—
Even in the feed I couldn't say it. ART finished for me. For reconstruction without impairing function or memory, yes.
That left a fifty percent chance that it would.
To my silence, ART said, It's better than zero percent. When you returned you said Ciren was dead.
I snapped, I know what I said.
Then you're aware this estimate objectively improves its situation.
Yeah, obviously it was better than knowing for certain Ciren was… non-functional. We had only reached as high as fifty percent success rate because of the way Ciren’s parts were cobbled together by a human who sort of, kind of knew what he was doing. And that the trajectory of the projectile had missed most of the essential inorganic components and neural tissue. And that the adolescent humans had found us so quickly.
The fact that Ciren had any chance of functioning again at all came down to pure dumb luck and I fucking hate luck.
I didn't want to stand here waiting for the end result. I left Three standing by the enclosed med platform; it hadn't let go of Ciren the whole ride back. It held Ciren like humans hold other injured humans until it placed Ciren there on the med platform. If I was better at this kind of thing I'd say something to it. But I didn't know what to say to myself.
After all this time together, I didn't view Three and Ciren with the same mistrust and wariness I did other SecUnits. They'd saved me multiple times, they'd saved my humans—our humans—more times than that.
Those same humans that tried to talk to me as I walked briskly down the corridor, shutting myself up in my cabin. I knew media watching was out of the question right now and I think, for once, ART knew I didn't want to talk about this either.
Fifty percent. It could go either way. Ciren could be restored to full functionality without any permanent damage to memory or it could boot up a completely different unit.
Fifty/fifty odds I could lose my friend.
I pulled the video from the drone I'd sent with Ciren before we were separated. This probably wasn't going to help but I had to know. I had to know what happened.
okay this one's 1k of shit going wrong on a space dock. you're dropped in mid-action. (I write these as stress relief so no real planning goes into them. maybe I'll expand on it later)
The bot threw a piece of construction piping and pinned Ciren to the wall through the abdomen.
Amena stifled a scream, her distress bleeding into the feed.
All at once me, Three, and Ciren sent her a message through the feed.
Three: SecUnits don't share the same physiology as humans.
Me: You've seen me take worse, don't worry.
Ciren: I'm fine, Amena.
Ciren was more than fine—the bot had just given it a weapon.
Planting its feet on the wall, Ciren launched forward with the pipe still embedded in its guts. On impact, it braced itself with its feet on the bot’s torso, letting the pipe impale it back.
The bot swung wildly at Ciren but Ciren had shoved off and out of striking distance. Ciren freed itself and swung off the end of the pipe, using its own momentum to slam back down, shoving it deeper into the bot. At the apex of the third swing, it let go and sailed over the bot’s head, just in time for the second bot to punch where Ciren had been. That was enough force to pierce through the first bot’s processor and send it crashing inertly to the floor.
That gave Ciren the time it needed to throw Amena over its shoulder and sprint back towards us in the main corridor junction.
The bots were fast but not as fast as Ciren with a good headstart.
In the main corridor junction, Ciren signaled us on approach and we acknowledged. The timing on this had to be perfect. I lifted the hatch seal right as Ciren arrived; it immediately hit the floor, sliding in with its boy wrapped protectively around Amena. Simultaneously Three and I focused our energy weapons on the second bot’s weak spot Ciren highlighted in the feed.
It crashed into the wall and rolled to a stop right outside the junction.
Oh shit I didn't think that would actually work.
Ciren was tearing off parts of its jacket to carefully pin Amena’s injured arm to her chest, keeping it from jostling further.
“Perihelion’s ETA is less than two minutes. Those were the last two bots. You're fine, I'm fine. Please don't cry.”
Amena threw her good arm around Ciren's neck, holding it tight. “I'm not crying,” she insisted in a very obviously teary voice.
Ciren patted her back and said to us, “Other than the injured arm, she's alright. The adrenaline is just wearing off.”
“Yeah, it's been a great day for all of us,” I said. Through my last surviving drone camera I took in Ciren's leaking new gut window, Three’s back gash that showed off part of its internal structure, and the chunk missing from my side.
There was probably enough of our remaining body masses to make two full SecUnits. All things considered, we were lucky to still be standing.
I never want to fight a space dock infested with that many murderous bots again. Or any, really. All that while keeping one adolescent humans alive.
A shudder went through the space dock. What now? Was it an impact? Nothing came up on my scans or the dock’s systems. It shuddered again, more violently this time, and started to list to one side.
This can't be fucking happening.
“Get to the enviro-suits!”
Ciren scooped up Amena and started for the closest airlock. We made it out of the junction then the dock shook the worst yet, lurching in the other direction. Ciren shielded Amena from it but the rest of us slammed into the hatchway.
Alarms blared, on the feed and in the dock itself, warning us if the dock’s obvious catastrophic failure.
We were in our feet and moving again fast. Three sent in the feed, Perihelion, we need an accelerated pick up from the space dock.
I broke in, ART get here right now!
I'm getting there as fast as I can.
The corridors under our feet grew steeper and steeper, our side of the dock getting closer to parallel with the planet’s surface every second. It was a struggle not to pitch forward. Faster and lighter than us, even carrying Amena, Ciren led the way.
Because all the fun things happen to us at once, the destroyed bot came chasing after us. The exploded shards of metal on its torso screamed as gravity dragged it down the incline.
Ciren sent one word through the feed, Hatch, but I understood. At the next junction, I cut through the dock systems’ flailing panic to order an emergency seal of the hatch.
It impact left a huge dent but the hatch held.
One less thing to worry about. Now we could focus on the space dock careening out of control towards the planet.
If we didn't get clear of it soon, we'd be pulled into the planet’s atmosphere and not even ART could save us.
We reached the airlock, Ciren gripping the locker with one arm, the other holding Amena tight. “Secunit, Three. Help me get Amena's suit on first.”
“I can do it.” Amena sounded terrified, exhausted, but trying desperately to be brave.
“This is a terrible time to argue,” Ciren said in a “you better listen to me or we're all going to die” voice. Yeah, it was that serious if Ciren was playing the bad guy.
Amena kept quiet and let herself be helped into the suit by me. Three grabbed another suit, working around me and Amena to pull it on Ciren. A very complicated process but we managed to end up with three SecUnits and one human in four functional enviro-suits in record time.
I checked our angle of exit from this airlock. Oh no. We were too far down. There was no way ART could rescue us from here. I sent the info, and a new idea I just had, to Ciren and Three.
They acknowledged—no time for talking.
Using the enviro-suits inbuilt propulsion system, with Amena’s suit in tow behind mine, we raced back up—previously across—the space dock. Our clever trick with the hatch became an obstacle that cost us precious time we didn't have to lose.
