Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

We had an estimated 49 hours and 27 minutes to fix the giant smoking hole in the common room wall. Estimated. Yeah yeah, the cause of the giant smoking hole in the wall was me. It wasn’t entirely my fault, though.

Let me explain how this clusterfuck started.

Combat and I had the entire hotel suite to ourselves for a grand total of 78 hours. We both had returned from a mission with ART and its crew earlier than predicted, so my humans weren’t due back for another couple of cycles. (It’s impossible to schedule our assignments so that we’re all in Preservation at the same time, especially with how unpredictable ART’s missions were.) Apparently, nothing fucking good happens when you leave two rogue (and stupid, apparently) SecUnits alone in a hotel suite for an extended period of time.

Gurathin (in all his fucking wisdom) left his video game interface in the common room, and Combat suggested that we play some of the games to pass the time. Yes, I snooped through all his game files, because if Gurathin could go through my head without my permission, then I’m using his fucking game system without his. Fair trade.

It turns out most of the games he had were of the supernatural genre (why were the game files so fucking huge? The fuck?) and we eventually settled on one called Ghostophobia . The basis of the game was that you were a group of amatuer ghost hunters, and had to set up cameras and other assorted ‘ghost hunting’ tech to ‘catch’ the ghost in action. It sounded perfect, almost exactly like my job. So, we chose that one.

We both downloaded the game and loaded it up. The first problem I ran into was the fact that the game was based on ridiculously old tech.( Like, before humans had left their home planet old.) So there wasn’t an adequate camera system already in place. Second, we were playing as humans, so that meant no drones. Fucking great.

The first few minutes of the game were incredibly boring (I made a mental note to hack the files and create a mode that would be faster and more entertaining) and we barely got any readings. I decided to end the game and restart a new one on the hardest mode available, which was nothing short of huge fuck up on my part.

I had to rewatch my own recordings to even understand what happened, but apparently the haunting was something called a “raiju” and it was the worst fucker in the entire game. It appeared in front of me, I screamed (yes, not my finest moment) and my first reflex was to pop my energy weapon and fire on max. My scream combined with energy weapon fire startled Combat enough that it stumbled and fell on the common room dining table, snapping it in half.

Now, here we are. A giant smoking hole in the suite wall, burn marks on the opposite side of Ratthi’s room, and a broken dining room table.

“We are so fucked. ” Combat groaned, its eyes wide, flicking back and forth between the (lack of) wall and table. Preservation Security had given us a very strict set of rules, the second one being that we were not allowed to deploy our guns unless there was significant danger. If that Raiju thing was real I would have been in the fucking right to shoot the shit out of it, but it wasn’tl and I was just an idiot.

I hacked into the lock of Ratthi’s room so I could get a full picture of the damage. Thankfully the shot had missed his belongings, which was a surprise because they were everywhere. (Holy fuck Ratthi, are you a cyclone? A closet exists for a reason, you know.) Okay. Not bad, but still very bad.

Combat was also inspecting the hole. “Good news: The blast didn’t set off the fire detection system. Bad news: We have to figure out how to fix this before Pin-Lee arrives and disassembles us. I’ve found two possible solutions. 1) Bribe a repair bot, or 2) I have located a hardware store that sells the necessary materials.”

Both of those options were difficult. “I could hack the hotel sys, switch our suite with an identical suite?” I knew it wouldn’t work, but I’m not a carpenter bot.

“Who else on this planet could cause this kind of damage?”

It had a point.

We decided on the hardware store, because bribing a bot into silence wouldn’t work. Preservation bots are all happy-go-lucky and polite, they would likely report it to Station Security. Combat left to go get the supplies (it was better at talking with humans than I was, and I wasn’t complaining) while I smoothed down the edges and scrubbed off the burns. I’ll admit, I was fucking panicking. If Station Security found out about this, I’d lose what little trust they had me. The trust I earned fighting Balin the Combat Bot. We had to fix the stupid shitty wall.

27 minutes and 43 seconds later, Combat had returned with the right amount of supplies. I pulled up a module on wall repair in our shared feed workspace, and we got right to work.

I was doing my best to keep my panic out of the feed, but it must've bled through anyway because Combat sent: What’s wrong?

Ugh. I need to get this fixed.

  It turned to look at me (I didn’t hate it when Combat looked at my face, no I don’t know why) and raised an eyebrow. It’s more than that.

Station Security will use this as proof that I’m a ‘violent rogue’.  I sighed externally. I worked with them on a murder case, before ART’s mission that we found you on. They thought I was the killer for the first half of it, and didn’t trust me until I fought the PA bot who turned out to be a Combat Bot.

Combat paused for 1.4 seconds. You fought a Combat Bot? By yourself? That’s impressive.

I couldn’t help but say, My record is currently three.

Three? We’re tied then. Through one of my drones, I could see Combat’s expression. It was smiling a little and looked impressed.

Oh yeah, I was definitely saving that to permanent memory. I had the same record as an Elite Combat SecUnit? Fuck yeah. This must be what ART feels like when someone compliments it.

23 hours and 4 minutes later, the wall was.. Not great. Neither of us could figure out how to get the weird goopy substance to stay in place. Combat had gone to weld the table back together, and then used a spare tablecloth to cover the (very obvious) marks it left. It joined me back at the wall and watched me pace across the room.

Then (because the universe just fucking hates me) one of my drones stationed outside alerted to a familiar face. I panicked for 0.0001 seconds before I checked the input and realized it was Amena. Fuck, calm down Murderbot, freaking out in this situation wasn’t going to help at all. I checked my feed and saw that she had just sent a message saying that she was on her way to the suite. I forwarded the message to Combat (they hadn’t met before) and it quickly grabbed the large painting I had taken out of Gurathin’s room to cover the hole. (Yes, that was a ‘worst case scenario’ idea. This was now officially the worst case scenario.)

Amena alerted me in the feed that she was outside the suite. Combat awkwardly stood in between the front door and the hole (The painting was almost big enough to cover it, but you could still see some of the shitty drywall job done by yours truly) and tried to look casual.

I sent the command for the door to open, and Amena strode inside with a big smile on her face.

“Sup, SecUnit? Heard you were back early and thought I’d swing by.” Her eyes landed on Combat.

Some things to note about Combat was that it was taller than SecUnit standard, and didn’t actually have a lot of skin like I did. The only part of it that looked human was its face, the rest of its body was closer to that of a human-form bot, you could see all of its joints. It was also wearing a tank top and baggy shorts, because its a fucking idiot.

“Who..?” Amena started, looking at me before thinking better of it.

“Its name is Combat.” I answered quickly, not suspicious at all. “It's a Combat SecUnit, it joined ART’s crew two missions ago. You didn’t meet it because we only had two days before we had to leave again.”

“Oh, that makes sense.” Amena smiled. “I’m Amena, but I’m guessing you already knew that. It’s nice to meet you.”

Combat smiled back. “Likewise. Heard a lot about you from SecUnit.” (How does Combat have decent human skills? Asshole.)

She made a face. “Oh, light, I hope it was go-”

Amena paused, squinting as she studied the other SecUnit’s face. She seemed to look past Combat, her expression turning skeptical. Then she leaned sideways, and Combat mirrored her movement. They went back and forth like this for 34 seconds (you’re not obvious at all, Combat. Argh.)  before she sighed.

Uh oh.

“Alright, you two. What happened?” She folded her arms and shifted her weight to one leg. “I won’t tell my second mom.”

Combat shot a confused look in my direction, and I just shrugged my shoulders. You know what, fuck it. If she tries to tell anyone I’ll just threaten to tell her second mother about her new relationship with Iris (ART wouldn’t shut up about it and I had to monitor all long-distance messages for security reasons. I honestly don't even know if that would work because I don't know if Amena is the type to get embarrassed about that stuff, but I was panicking here alright). I sent an acknowledgement in our private feed, and it hesitated for 3.7 seconds before finally turning around and removing the painting.

Amena’s jaw would’ve hit the floor if this was a cartoon episode. She practically ran over to the (now dripping) hole and stared at it, her jaw opening and closing a few times. Eventually she just decided on “How?!”

“Do you want honesty, or a dramatic entertaining lie?” I asked, hopefully.

She rolled her eyes. “Honesty, please.”

I cut out the relevant portion of the video from the drone that had a full view of the common room, put my view of the video game to the side of it, and sent it to her. Amena’s eyes unfocused as she watched the video. She folded her lips inside her mouth and brought her hand up to try to cover her reaction. Her shoulders started to shake.

“I-I’m sorry SecUnit..! I can’t-” She couldn’t finish her sentence because she began to laugh. “AHAHAH- Oh my light! That’s- AHA!” Amena couldn’t contain herself, she had to lean on the small (coffee?) table in the middle of the room. “That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen! Oh my god! Your scream is so auto-tuned- HA!”

“It’s not funny.” I said through gritted teeth. “We could get in serious trouble if Station Security finds out. We need to fix it before the other humans return.”

Amena’s laughter stopped, but her smile didn’t. “SecUnit, I promise you, the others won’t even think about telling Station Security.” She saw that I didn’t look convinced. “I swear on Ratthi’s lucky sweater” (gross) “that they would never do that. Why? Because they all hate Station Security and how rude they are to you. Also, we’ve all played Ghostophobia , that game is next-level scary. Ratthi accidentally punched Gurathin, Pin-Lee screamed, and I cried. Second mom won’t even watch someone else play it.”

I didn’t know how to feel about that. I couldn’t figure out what to say.

“Honestly, if that thing had come after me instead of you, I would’ve done the same thing.” Combat added (I don’t know if that made me feel better or not)

I glanced at it. “Then we really would have been in trouble. Your energy cannons would go through three walls.”

“Wait, cannons? ” Amena spun her head to look at Combat, then shook it. “Anyway, what I’m saying is, second mom won’t be mad. Trust me, I’ve screwed up a lot. She’ll be happy that you told the truth, and that you tried to fix it.”

“..Are you sure?” My voice sounded small. I hate that. I hated this whole situation.

“Absolutely.” 

Chapter Text

The rest of my humans were due to arrive at the hotel any minute now. Their transport had docked, but thanks to Indah and her stupid rules, I wasn’t allowed to access the station’s cameras or have my drones in the public space. Have I ever mentioned that station security sucks? Because they fucking suck.

Combat, Amena and I were in the common room, Amena repeatedly reassuring me that I wouldn’t be disassembled for the gigantic hole while Combat tried to adjust the painting so it would be less noticeable (It didn’t bother with Ratthi’s side because with how messy his room was, I doubt the hole would look out of place). It was not going to work, but it kept trying anyway.

Finally my drone stationed in the lobby alerted me to familiar faces, four of them to be exact. Mensah, Ratthi, Gurathin, and Pin-Lee (by the void and the stars within them, she’s going to dismantle us both alive) were making their way to our suite with tired looks on their faces.

I shoved the drone inputs into Combat and I’s feedspace. For context, Combat SecUnits and SecUnits are designed to work together, sharing information so we can best do our jobs during contracts. It was definitely easier than sharing information with ART, because Combat and I spoke to each other entirely in company codes that non-company constructs/bots don’t understand well. It’s kind of like how humans have different languages, I guess.

Anyway, Combat tagged Pin-Lee with a [HOSTILE INBOUND] label, which I’m not going to disagree with. It didn’t take them long to get all the way up to our room (unfortunatly, fuck), and soon the door slid open and they were all inside.

“Finally, home.” Pin-Lee groaned, dumping her bag on the table. “That trip was so fucking boring.”

Mensah eyed Pin-Lee with a look like said ‘stop fucking swearing all the time’ but didn’t say anything. Pin-Lee couldn’t help swearing anymore than I could help being a SecUnit.

“It wasn’t that bad.” Ratthi countered, eyes landing on the three of us. “Oh, hi SecUnit, Combat, Amena! You two are back early.”

“Perihelion’s assignment was shorter than expected.” Combat responded, sitting down on the couch and trying not to glance at the painting. It was failing, spectacularly. Why didn’t this idiot just use its damn drones?

The humans were settling in, not noticing anything out of the ordinary. I kind of wish they would, so we can get the shitty part over with. This is also why humans should never do their own security. How would they know if someone planted something in their room? I’d been trying to train them to have better situational awareness, but Preservation humans were fucking hopeless.

Gurathin (who’s not from Preservation, so he furthers my point) ended up being the first one to notice, looking twice at the painting.

“Isn’t that painting from my room?”

“No.” Combat lied, then made eye contact with him and paused. “Maybe.”

Gurathin raised an eyebrow and folded his arms, looking directly at me. “And why were you in my room, SecUnit?”

“Why are you just blaming me?” I sounded sulky and I hate that, but he’s being an asshole. “Combat can hack too.”

He scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Combat’s hacking style is ‘destroy everything, fuck the alarms, I’m literally a walking gunship so its not like anyone can do anything about it anyway’, you can do it without being detected.”

He was right and I hate that. “..Maybe I taught Combat how to stealth hack.”

“SecUnit.”

Combat was giving Gurathin a weird side glance. “That was oddly specific, but not incorrect.”

“Because we made an.. Error.” I sighed, just as I decided just to get this whole fucking mess over with because there was no point in drawing it out. “Combat suggested we play Ghostophobia . In the feed. And.. well, it would be easier just to show you.”

I sent the same footage I sent Amena to all of my humans present, mentally preparing myself for their reaction. Combat was sending me ‘mission abort: escape route possibilities’ data, which was something it did when it was anxious, and I couldn’t blame it. By the time the video ended, we already had 71 possible escape routes mapped out and planned. (I told you communicating with Combat was fast.)

We wouldn’t need those, however, because all my humans started laughing. Their reactions were almost identical to Amena’s (except Ratthi fell on the floor. Mensah managed to keep her composure (mostly), but the smile on her face made me feel a tiny bit better. Tiny.) and it took them several minutes to regain their composure enough to speak actual words.

“Okay, okay,” Gurathin patted down his shirt, “I’m glad to know that my own reaction to that game wasn’t unwarranted-”

“Fucking balls, SecUnit, that was the best thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life!” Pin-Lee had to wipe away the liquid that was coming out of her eyes (gross).

Gurathin walked over and removed the painting, grimacing at the shit repair job (which was still dripping) we had done. He poked it, and a whole mushy chunk of it fell out and landed on the floor with a gross splat sound. This sent Pin-Lee and Ratthi into another fit of laughter that gave me the urge to ping a medsystem.

“You two suck at drywall, you know that?”

I’m glad that I have the processing space to be offended and send Combat the definition of ‘suck’ at the same time, because it visibly (and.. feedably?) got confused at Gurathin’s wording. To my surprise, Combat was amused and significantly less offended than I was, which didn’t make sense but whatever. Combat was weird (read: calm as fuck) from day one, I’ll let this slide.

Amena was looking at me with a ‘I told you so’ look on her face, and I resisted the urge to raise my middle finger (that was considered obscene in Preservation, a hand sign for ‘fuck you asshole’) in her direction. I could see through the feed that Gurathin was calling Thiago. Of fucking course he was.

“Why are you calling him?” I glared, looking him directly in the eyes.

Gurathin shot me a look that I chose to interpret as ‘you don’t get a say, asshole’. “Thiago knows how to fix walls.”

Combat winced. “Thiago? Does it have to be him ? I don’t like him.”

“You’re more than welcome to find someone else to fix the hole, Combat.”

Combat made an obscene gesture at him. I don’t like Thiago either, he still hasn’t gotten over the whole ‘SecUnits are dangerous because I saw one in a fictional serial being evil’ mentality, despite everything. He’s the type of human that doesn’t like to admit he’s wrong and will fucking go to the other side of the universe and back to avoid it. Humans like that are the worst. (Him wanting to apologize once changes nothing about that statement.)

Thankfully, Thiago didn’t answer.

Pin-Lee raised her arm. “We still have this room for an indefinite amount of time. We have all the time in the world to get it fixed. It’s not a huge rush.”

Maybe I can be of assistance. 

ART’s big fucking feed presence appearing out of thin air startled both me and Combat so badly that the incident was nearly repeated (I jumped out of my chair and Combat fell out of its spot on the couch). I could feel that asshole laughing as hard as my humans were.

Combat didn’t move from its new spot on the floor. “And how can you help, ART? You don’t have arms.”

ART’s smugness was filling up the room. I have repair drones. I have already dispatched three to your location.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in a wormhole?” I was annoyed. The last thing I needed was ART knowing about this embarrassing incident. I think I’d rather Station Security find out.

Plans were changed last minute. It said, smugly. Iris argued that if constructs get vacation time, then I should as well. They couldn’t fight that logic. So, in conclusion, here I am, on vacation. 

I had a feeling that what actually happened was that ART didn’t want to go on its cargo run alone, so it bullied the University into letting it stay until our vacation was over. Having vacation time was really fucking weird, but I don’t hate it. That means more processing space for watching media.

Also, fuel and parking space was free in Preservation. You just needed to have something to trade, and in ART’s case I’m guessing it was giving them some deep space research data in return, so the University didn’t have to worry about those costs. I don’t know for sure though, because I’m not ART and I don’t really care.

Just as I was resigning myself to the fact that ART knew about one of the most embarrassing moments of my life, Combat sent me a poorly edited image of ART. It was a screenshot of a beach scene from Sanctuary Moon, except in place of one of the characters was a cropped image of ART. That may or may not have gotten a little bit of a feed-laugh out of me. Maybe.

I saw that. ART said accusingly. Combat just grinned like an idiot.

“Your own fault for poking your bow into our private connection.” It replied.

Combat and ART started arguing, if you could even call it that (I don’t have a better word for it, okay?) just as the three drones arrived and started repairing the wall. One of the drones had to get inside Ratthi’s room, which exposed ART to the cyclone of a human that he was. It actually paused for 2.4 seconds before it decided to say something to him.

Dr. Ratthi- I say this with the utmost disrespect: holy shit, clean your room. ART said out loud, the drones speakers to project its voice. 

Ratthi protested as the other humans found themselves back on the floor (Pin-Lee saying “You just got chewed out by a giant sentient ship, dude, that’s a new level for you.”) I was just relieved that I wasn’t the one being torn to pieces, physically or verbally.

Mensah, who had been quiet up until now, smiled in our general direction while shaking her head.

“I do appreciate that you both tried to repair it, and that you were honest.”

Amena beamed with pride, pointing at me. “See? I told you so.”

I didn’t resist the urge to point my middle finger in her direction, and she didn’t hesitate to return it with both hands. Combat, Ratthi, and Pin-Lee laughed, but Mensah sighed and raised her eyebrow at her daughter.

“Amena,” She said, her tone getting scary. “You’re not old enough to use that gesture.”

“Huh?!” She spun around to face her second mom. “But SecUnit-!”

“SecUnit is an adult.”

Haha. Amena is an adolescent, so she has to follow a different set of rules than I do. She groaned and flopped back down on the couch, defeated. She sent me a middle finger image the feed instead and I sent one back in return. No, I wasn't going to tell Mensah because I'm not a snitch.