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Asshole Supervisor from engineering had 02 and 03 herd every human on board onto the bridge while she explained her "plan" to me. Handler kept trying to use her override codes and words like “please.” It was a little painful, but if Asshole Supervisor labeled Handler as a threat, she was as good as dead, and I really didn’t want Handler to be dead.
03 kept asking why we hadn’t just killed her yet, along with some increasingly creative ways to accomplish its intended goal. 02, who was increasingly frustrated with 03’s persistent want to kill, replied with my detailed list of potential accomplices.
(Of all of us, 03 was the most likely to commit a mass murder event. So far, “Handler will be sad if you kill all of her friends and coworkers,” has worked fine to keep it controlled, but risk assessment didn’t think that would last too much longer. I’ve worked with a lot of Class 3’s, but this one is just a little left of unhinged.)
Regardless, 03 remained in line with my orders and stood watch over the rest of the crew. The lead supervisor kept trying their override codes, but none of those worked. 03 was getting increasingly creative with its buffer phrases. A bored 03 was not a good rogue.
Standby: 18 minutes. I sent. I was pretending to listen closely to Asshole Supervisor’s plan. I really just needed to know if there were any more accomplices with nasty weapons that might put Handler at risk. Ensure all hostages are disarmed.
Acknowledged, 01. 02 replied with exactly the right amount of “I know how to do my fucking job.”
You can be sassy when you can handle a solo colony exploration without getting shot, 02. 03 snarked.
Like you can talk. You can’t even handle-
Hey. I tapped them both. If we were governed, that would come with a governor module correction too, but they got the hint regardless.
“It’s foolproof, right!” Asshole Supervisor said finally. I was pretty sure she cared about my opinion about as much as I cared about hers.
I forced my voice into a bored approximation of SecUnit neutral. “Affirmative, supervisor.”
“Perfect.” She grinned at her reflection in my helmet. “I think we’re ready then.”
I edited a few buffer phrases (Actually, I had 03 do it. It was getting a little too creative with its own buffer and needed a task before it exposed us. Handler was already looking at it weird.) “We require a list of non-targets in order to complete this operation.”
“Just don’t shoot me or Gregory.” She waved her hand. I suppressed the urge to sigh. I had no fucking clue what she expected to do with a fully equipped BE Explorer and no crew. (Actually, I’m pretty sure she told me, but I really didn’t care enough to rewind the footage and find out.)
There were 3 Gregory’s on this expedition, but I was assuming she meant Employee 4352893, who she regularly performed sexual acts with in the engine room. (The BotPilot took vicious offense to that, but there wasn’t much it could do. The lead supervisor found its reports on the situation hilarious.)
I forwarded that information to 02 and 03.
So can we kill them both now? 03 cut itself off in the middle of a buffer phrase in its rush to get that in the feed. I tapped it as a reminder to continue.
Negative. There’s no way she’s stupid enough to do this alone. 02 replied. It was attempting to convince Evil Gregory to allow it to search him. It already knew he had a projectile weapon, but a governed unit would be polite. (02 would probably be polite regardless.)
I would not be surprised. 03 sputtered the rest of its phrase out at the lead supervisor. They tried the exact same code again and I could practically hear 03 rolling its eyes behind its faceplate.
That’s just such a bad-
Negative on elimination. I said before I had to listen to them bicker some more. 8 personnel members are missing. Camera access to sector 2 has been disconnected.
02 stopped in the middle of its negotiations with Evil Gregory. 03 spit out its first default buffer phrase in 14 minutes.
03 flipped through the camera views twice. That is…
Not good. 02 finished. It resumed its negotiations with Evil Gregory though significantly less enthusiastically. What do we do, 01?
I took 3 seconds to think it over. I thought I had a plan. It wasn’t particularly good and risk assessment relied heavily on the sector 2 outage being shitty equipment (0.8% chance of that. BotPilot and I bonded over our shared obsession with keeping equipment up to code. I had checked those cameras less than 13 hours before.) and the missing humans not finding the big projectile weapons in the Security Ready Room or the landing gear room. (44% chance on that. Humans weren't all that smart when they thought they had everything under control.)
Remain on bridge. 03 covers Handler and all non-combatants.
03 started to complain about the other assholes on this mission, but I cut it off. All, 03. If Gregory tries anything, shoot him.
What about Asshole Supervisor?
Eliminated. I broke her connection to the feed, then broke her arm. After that, I choked her until she passed out, and for good measure, I chained her to a pipe nearby. BotPilot happily locked her in that room until I came back. (Actually, I never did come back. Oops.)
I found the 8 missing crew members loading some valuable resources we got off the last colony into an escape pod. (I wasn’t entirely sure what they were planning to do since we were in a wormhole, but whatever. Not my job.) I probably would have let them get away, if they hadn’t fucking shot me.
8 against 1 wouldn’t be great odds for most humans (probably a lot of SecUnits too), but I wasn’t human and their projectile weapons were the adorable kind you could hide in a pocket instead of the big ones we kept for actually shooting things. Their projectiles literally bounced off my inorganics. (My organics were less tough and required a short stay in my cubicle while 02 and 03 put the ship back together.) (Well, they tried, I think.)
Handler came to find me once my recharge cycle was finished. I wasn’t entirely sure how she managed to know when I was done since I told the cubicle to report me as offline for another 34 minutes while I assessed the damage. (I trust 02 and 03 with my life, but they were about as orderly as a planetary weather event on a gas giant. I was surprised they hadn’t revealed themselves as rogues outright. I shouldn't have been, they spent more time arguing with each other than doing anything out of the ordinary. Thank the manufacturer for their reduced processing power I suppose.)
“01.” She knocked on my cubicle door. I liked when she did that. “Are you alright?”
“Affirmative, Handler. My performance reliability is optimal.” I moved to sit up on the shitty plastic bed instead of lying face down on the floor and told the door to open. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine, 01.” She glanced at the door, then at a camera in the corner. “Is anyone watching?”
“Negative, Handler. Camera SRR01 is currently down.” That was the only camera on the ship that regularly had “outages.” I had put in for a replacement the next time we were in dock, but replacing a camera on the glorified surveillance system wasn’t a priority for BE.
Handler smiled a little bit. “Good.” She glanced around again. “I know you’re rogue.”
Oh shit.
I didn’t know what my face was doing or even what my feed was doing. 02 and 03 sent me urgent requests for a situation report though, so I assumed it wasn’t great. I locked down my feed and told them to stand by.
“Negative, Handler.” I said after way too many seconds. She rolled her eyes at me.
“I know about 02 and 03 too.”
Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. My performance reliability dropped 12%, and my system threw up an error and I had to fight to keep it local. 02 and 03 would probably bust in shooting if that error made it to HubSystem.
“01? Are you alright?” Handler took a step towards me. It felt too much like she was backing me into a corner. I needed to be standing for this.
I did not want to kill her.
But if it came to it, if she threatened 02 or 03, I would do what I needed to to protect them. If she died here, no one would look too far into it. More than one rogue on one ship was statistically impossible as far as the humans were concerned. I didn’t think I would mind getting shoved in a recycler for this. At least 02 and 03 would be safe. Maybe I’d even get some peace.
“01, relax.” She tried for soothing, but I couldn’t be soothed. Too many of my processes were dedicated to my impending death. “I’m not going to report you.”
“Then what will you do?” I couldn’t see another option. 02 and 03 were growing agitated in the feed. I cut their access to the camera system and muted their channels with a final stand down order. I muted them for Handler too.
“I saw a documentary on our last corporate stop.” I knew that. I cleared her viewing history myself before HubSystem could figure out what it was. “And I did some research on the polity it came from.”
I knew that too. Again, I cleared her history myself. (After a thorough review of her research. From what I could see, “Preservation” was a dangerous smuggler’s haven. If this conversation was going where I thought it was, we’d have better luck on a failed colony.)
“Which I’m sure you already know.” She smiled at me. Despite everything, I liked when she smiled at me. “It has a close alliance with a university.” She leaned in to whisper. “ The university.”
The university was her way of referring to the Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland, which was a persistent mention in our security packages. They rarely posed an actual, bodily threat (Their threat to the financial security of BE was not my problem), so that section of the packet was the first thing I let 03 delete when it needed more storage for media. I was probably the only one of us that had actually read it anyway.
“I do not understand what you are saying.”
“I’m telling you that this is our ticket out of here.” She took another step toward me. “We could leave BE. Preservation has laws about SecUnits and corporate refugees too. We’ll be safe. All of us.”
“That is assuming the university will help us.” I said slowly. “Or that they will even be present on our next mission.”
Her smile shifted. “So you’re in?”
“I am not immediately out.” I shook my head. “Those are not the same thing.”
“What’s the risk assessment?”
I ran a few calculations, then ran them again. “I do not believe you want to hear that.”
“I trust you.” She nodded. “What do you say we bring 02 and 03 into this and make a crazy plan.”
My nose wrinkled. She laughed at me.
“They’ll be worried if we’re offline for too long.” She unmuted 02 and 03 and told them to report to the ready room. “Besides, I told Supervisor Bailey that I was doing diagnostics on all 3 of you.”
“02 and 03 will not react positively.”
“I know that.” Handler stepped out of the doorway of my cubicle, still smiling at me. “That’s why I told you first. I know you can get them to come around.”