Chapter Text
An exploding fridge was a terrible way to start the day. It was also a terrible way to end the day, come to think of it. In fact, once the situation was given the proper examination, the conclusion offered itself that there was no time of day at all at which an exploding fridge was a happy occasion. Especially if it was a domestic fridge in a residential building, and the person who owned it was the one getting exploded on when all they had wanted to do was get a cooled down breakfast shake to consume on the way to work.
Einina Ellassa would probably agree with this assessment if she weren't so very dead.
The safety inspector registered to the system as Elva did not actually know if she had been going for a breakfast shake, or if she had intended to consume it on her way to work, but meals in the form of canned shakes had made up 78.6 % of her fridge's content, now mostly splattered across the walls of Einina's tiny apartment (along with other liquids, most of which had once made up her body), and the residential area's observation system had registered the explosion 13.45 minutes before the start of her shift at the mineral processing plant approximately 11 minutes away, so it was likely she would have consumed her breakfast while in motion rather than risk another reprimand for being late, of which her file already showed six.
That was 11 minutes provided the train left on time, which the entity known as Elva now confirmed it had not. Perhaps the fridge, if it had to explode at all, had done Einina a favor by doing it now rather than waiting until the end of what was shaping up to be a pretty lousy day.
A change to her employment file registered somewhere in the back of the safety inspector's processing space. Another reprimand had been added, for not showing up at work. Her pay was being docked for it. Yes, they did know she was dead.
Such was life at the Corporation Rim. Or death, as the matter may be.
A quick check showed that the dead woman had no children. A license had been applied for three times and been denied on the grounds that there was not enough money in her savings account. In two cases, it was the fee for the license application, raised between every attempt, that had pushed her just under the required amount. With no children or spouses, or any other known beneficiaries, her employer would not have to pay out her docked salary to anyone, which ironically made the docking pointless.
The inspector did a quick check of the accounts, did a quick risk assessment to figure out if this was a big enough deal for anyone to care, and then added a local food kitchen as her beneficiary in her file. Which irritatingly made the docked pay matter again, but it was still better than letting the company keep everything.
The entity known on this world as Elva wondered what Einina would think about this. Probably not much.
The fridge did not have a personality and offered no opinion. It was also very exploded.
"There are no signs of tampering," the inspector declared to the bored other inspector who had never even entered the apartment. "The cause seems to be equipment failure due to age."
"The equipment failed quite spectacularly, I'd say," the other inspector, a tall man named Bon with a complexion so white it had to be artificial even in this place with no natural sunlight, chuckled at his clever remark. "Alright, we're done here. There's another case waiting for us, and after that, we've met quota for the day. It's a big one. Big client, I mean. Easy case."
"I'll have the remains of the fridge sent in to confirm my diagnosis," Inspector Elva said, then briefly worried that it might be mixing up genres.
"Are you insane?" Bon threw up his hands in a gesture easily identified as horror. "That costs money, and the case here is clear! They are going to have our asses if we waste resources like that. Worse, that may affect our bonus!" He shook his head.
'Inspector Elva' had been with the investigative branch of GarlaMuj Insurance Inc. for a grand total of 27.58 work hours and was not eligible for a bonus. It wondered if it would be willing to make concessions for the sake of Bon's bonus payment and concluded that it was not, on the grounds of Bon being an asshole.
"I might have missed something. If the explosion was caused by a flaw in the design, the beneficiaries of the injured party are eligible to compensation."
"Exactly!" Bon threw his hands up again, but this time it was not horror. Exasperation was the emotion that most seemed to match his tone of voice. "That would be even worse. If we spend money on an examination, the only possible results are either nothing, in which case we wasted that money, or confirmation that the manufacturer is at fault, aka the party insured with us, which would lead to an even greater loss on money. It's a lose-lose scenario. Why am I working with an idiot?"
Why indeed? Because the insurance company was planning on firing Bon, a high-level inspector, due to some personal misconduct they worried would cause problems once it came to light, and they wanted him to pass on his knowledge to his successor before he was let go. He did not know that, of course. His successor decided not to tell him, on the grounds of Bon being an asshole.
"It is part of the proper procedure," his successor now insisted, and Bon rolled his eyes.
"Only if someone pushes for it. And has the patience to get through the administrative process. By the end of which the evidence would probably have been refurbished anyway. And this chick had no family. We're home free, baby!" He made a gesture that was entirely inexplicable and probably also an entirely inappropriate gesture to make over an exploded person's corpse. "So now let's get a move on, I want to check out the factory incident before eight so I can catch the game tonight."
Ah, yes, The Game. Bon was into sports, because of course he was. His successor, as it was, had never seen the appeal. Anything could happen, and yet the plot was usually incredibly repetitive and boring. It preferred the carefully scripted artificial drama of serialized fictional entertainment.
On the way to the factory, Bon was talking about The Game, and related to it, The Sport. The other inspector tuned him out, only filtering for words that required a reaction. Its actual attention was on the network feed, skimming it for any news on the once-again delayed spin-off to Med Center Argala, detailing Dr. Elva Inras' mysterious past as a corporate spy who had infiltrated the med center with the aim of introducing highly addictive drugs into the medication rooster but had come clean after spending a year among the hardworking doctors and nurses and realizing that doing good was much more rewarding than doing harm. Even if the harm resulted in a lot of money (usually for other people) while doing good resulted in stress and bankruptcy. A highly unrealistic plot that Inspector Elva, otherwise known as Murderbot, was excited to learn more about. The more unrealistic a story, it found, the more it liked it.
Yes, the name Elva was taken from that character. Who was a spy infiltrating the target company under a false persona. One had to take its inspiration where there was inspiration to be found.
Usually, ART helped Murderbot create an identity to fit the mission. But this time, Murderbot had declined the offer because it already had a profile ready for just such an occasion, and it was very proud of it.
With the spin-off getting delayed over and over, there was little risk of anyone noticing any similarities. And even then, Elva was a common enough name.
They made it to the factory without either Murderbot's search or Bon's excursion into the world of sports reaching a satisfying conclusion. This time, they were here as representatives of the injured party. The 'injury' in question was metaphorical, as Murderbot had soon concluded. It was property damage. And not in the same way the secunit it used to be losing an arm would have been considered property damage when it was still part of the Company's equipment rooster.
In this case, the damage had befallen a forklift, and a conveyor belt. To be more precise, the forklift had befallen the conveyor belt, from a height of several meters. It had not resulted in any actual injury of parties that could sustain such. In fact, apparently it was the prevention of such injuries that had resulted in the property damage in the first place.
The scene they arrived at told a clear story, and so did the agitated workers waiting for them. There was no actual work for them to do right now, with their part of the factory out of order, which meant they had time to hang out and argue. Murderbot could understand their point of view, but it also sympathized with Inspector Elva's point of view. Inspector Elva thought this was a waste of time. The workers did not want to be blamed for the accident. They argued that the forklift with the malfunctioning brakes would have killed people and hit a gas tank that would have exploded in a much more dramatic fashion than even this morning's refrigerator if they had not gotten it off the massive platform that was the factory's second floor. They were correct. But they were also going to lose. So why not use the time the insurance company had needed to send someone over to get off planet before their employer could sue them into having to sell their organs?
Given the atmospheric conditions at this production line and the state of their safety gear, their organs were probably not even worth all that much.
"The way I see it," Bon said after being shown the camera footage, "it's a clear case of deliberate vandalism."
"People would have died!" a woman protested. "Us included."
"So you admit that you were acting out of self-interest," Bon said happily and made a note on his data pad.
"The explosion would have destroyed this production line anyway, and the neighboring ones as well," another worker pointed out. "If anything, they should thank us for preventing damage!"
"I don't know that," said Bon. "There is no evidence for it. But there is undeniable evidence, and in fact video footage, of you pushing a forklift onto a running production belt. Case closed, don't you think?" He looked at his colleague with slightly wary expectation, and his colleague said, "The way I see it, there should have been a safety railing preventing the fall."
Bon's eyebrows said, 'Are you fucking kidding me right now.'
"The forklift would have broken through it anyway," said Bon's mouth.
"I do not know that," said Elva. "There is no evidence for it. And there can't be, because there was no railing to break through."
There was an expression on the faces of the workers in front of them that Murderbot refused to recognize as hope. Hope would be bad. Hope would lead to disappointment, and maybe to running too late to keep their organs from getting harvested. Elva could fight this fight, but he could not win it. Murderbot did not even want to be here. This was just a necessary step towards an entirely different goal.
It had not come here to help these people, or save them, or make anything better on this planet.
In fact, it did not want to improve on the conditions of any planet. All it wanted was for things, somewhere very far away, to stay exactly as they were.
"Our company insured this factory on the condition that certain safety standards were met," Elva said. "If any such standards, such as a railing to prevent equipment" – and people, but who cared about that? – "from falling onto other equipment" – or people – "are not in place, we are not obligated to make any payment." Elva looked at Bon, expecting agreement. They were, after all, here to safe The Money.
Bon smirked while he was also shaking his head. "It's the workers' fault, so we won't be paying anything anyway," he pointed out. "They are." And he gestured to the workers in question, whose hope seemed to wane, and Murderbot thought, "Oh."
Of course.
It wasn't here for these people anyway. Sorry, guys, I tried. Better start running.
No one ran.
"I think we should have the forklift inspected," said Elva. Elva liked beginning sentences with "I think", which was not actually all that effective in seeming assertive. But Dr. Elva from Med Center Argala was always doing that, too, and she was someone people forgave even her darkest secrets, so it probably did contribute to make her seem likeable or something. "If there is indeed a fault in the brakes to be found, these people cannot be held accountable."
"How long would that take?" someone asked.
Murderbot had no idea. "Around a week," said Elva.
Bon stared at his colleague, raising an eyebrow. "No fucking way," a voice bust out, but it was, as it turned out, not coming from Bon, nor from his eyebrows.
Now Bon did speak, a glint in his eyes that Murderbot did not like. "More like a month," he said. "And while the investigation is ongoing, the scene of the incident can't be touched. No repairs, I mean. In fact, we'll probably shut down the entire factory while it's under investigation."
"Don't make such a big fucking deal out of it," someone protested. "Just note that these fuckers did it and be done with it."
Murderbot looked around to find the source of the voice and found it in a compact man in yellow work gear, wearing a grim face and backed up by other grim faces. The woman who had been involved in getting the forklift down to the lower level identified him as "Tolk, you fucking bastard! You would have died too if we did nothing, and you know it!"
Tolk shrugged. "Well, I didn't, did I? And now that we're still alive, we have a living to make, and you're getting in the way of that."
"So take one for the team, will you?" someone else quipped it.
"Take one for the team?" one of the accused workers shrieked. "Like we did when you all stood by doing nothing, trusting someone else to take the fall for saving all of your sorry asses?"
"Like he said, you saved your own asses," Tolk spoke again. Murderbot decided that it did not like him. "We were just lucky. And if someone else had been at it already, you would have done the same, don't fucking delude yourself, Magar!"
"So, to get back to the point," Bon interrupted what would have been Magar's reply. "We have witnesses here confirming that the forklift was deliberately damaged by these people over there, who then pushed it down to conceal their actions?"
Wait, what?
"Yeah, sure, why not?" Tolk shrugged. A lot of others shrugged with him. Some looked vaguely guilty about it. Fucking amazing.
Things escalated from there, and then they were de-escalated by the arrival of factory-security. Which included only two secunits, but they were much newer than Murderbot, and better armed, and their presence alone convinced everyone to Remain Calm. Bon dragged Elva away while security took over, looking very annoyed, but also very smug.
"I see what you did there," he said. "But you need to exaggerate the time frame, so everyone gets properly nervous. Threatening to shut down the workplace always does the trick, in the end." He took a deep breath and glanced at this watch with a little smile. Apparently, they were still in time. "Leaking the fact that the inspectors were coming today was crucial here. In cases like this, you want the people who just want to get back to work to outnumber the ones who have more to lose than their income."
Murderbot wondered if this was the kind of thing Inspector Elva was supposed to pick up from his predecessor. It probably was.
-
While Bon – presumably – spent the night watching his game, Murderbot spent it in its rented little apartment, shifting through its media collection. It was looking for distraction, and while that worked, it could not help but get reminded of the events at the factory over and over again. Whenever someone on a show pulled a clever trick on the authorities or on an evil employer, for example, to secure the rights of The People. On the entertainment shows, that always worked.
On the ones Murderbot watched, anyway.
It did not matter, it reminded itself. It had not come here to save factory workers.
It had come to save Preservation Alliance.
And Mensah. Mostly Mensah, actually. The rest of Preservation was just a bonus.
Okay, there were some others worth saving as well. Murderbot would not like it if anything happened to Ratthi. Or Baradwaj. Or Pin Lee. Or Arada.
Yep, that was it. A conclusive list of all the people from Prevervation Aux that it cared about enough to be here, playing a role that sucked worse than it had anticipated.
Not that Ratthi, Baradwaj, Pin Lee, or Arada were in any danger, physically. Not even Mensah was. Probably. Murderbot was not going to take any risks on that.
Her job was in danger, in any case. Her reputation. Her happiness. Everything she stood for – that, too. And her home, the way it was now. The home of all of them. The place that Murderbot liked the idea of, even though it had never lived there.
Forces in the government of the Preservation Alliance were aiming to join the Corporation Rim. Why? Money? Also, power. And ego, probably. Not conviction. No one could possibly think that such a step was better than anything, let alone anything approaching good.
Mensah would not have that, of course. So she needed to go. An assassination would not serve them, because there were other people with brains ready to succeed her, so they were instead aiming to assassinate her reputation. And that of those around her. Leave the government in shambles, and thus ready for a hostile take over. Murderbot did not know all the details. It did not care about the details.
It did not need to know what would have happened if it were not here to put an end to things, because it was.
At least one of the conspirators was also here – one of the partners in the Company that would profit from eating another planet. And hopefully enough evidence to convince not only Mensah but also any legal authority that needed to be convinced. Unfortunately, the politicians working against their administrator had been clever enough not to openly talk about how much they wanted to become a part of the Rim, otherwise convincing the public of their villain-status would have been easy enough.
The CEO of the insurance company Murderbot now worked for was involved, but only on the periphery. ART had come up with the idea to infiltrate from here, as any direct approach would be suspicious. Especially if someone found out Murderbot's identity and thus its connection to Mensah. That could be used to make a case against her. Murderbot had been forced to agree.
This mission required subtlety. And subtlety was what it excelled at.
Its own idea had also been to approach the targets indirectly. The CEO of the umbrella company that essentially owned this world was chronically ill, and Murderbot had intended to pose as a new doctor at the hospital the man went to for his regular check ups and win his trust that way. ART had vetoed that plan, arguing that it would require Doctor Elva to treat and possibly even operate on people. Murderbot did not see the problem – sure, it was no surgeon, but there were handbooks for that, and it was willing to create some free data storage for them, in the name of Loyalty to Ayda Mensah. It had performed spinal surgery on itself, using Mensah as a medium. How hard could it be to remove someone's colon?
But a surgeon was very busy and it would not have time to get into the target's circle of friends like that, or to watch its shows. That was what had tipped the scales in favor of ART's idea.
There was a big event at GarlaMuj in two days time, which all of the high-level investigators would be present for, as well as the CEO and many of her closest business friends. Elva had been hired as a high-ranking investigator, thanks to faked credentials and faked glowing recommendations. That was where the next step of the plan would take place.
There was only one more workday to get through.
There was a fridge in this tiny apartment. Murderbot had never opened it. It wondered if the fridge would reward that interaction with an explosion.
-
The planet was barely deserving to be called so, and if one were to ask anyone not born and raised on – or rather, inside – it, they would confirm that it was, indeed, not a planet by the any definition of the word. It was too small. And also, it was a moon.
It was the moon of a gas giant that it orbited at such a large distance that the gas planet in question was little more than a star in the sky most of the time, hardly larger than any other star.
It was a fate it shared with its sun. The gas giant and its many moons were so far out in the red dwarf's system that it was only possible to find the central star with the naked eye for those who knew which one it was. Although, given the moon's giant orbit, there were times when it was much closer to the sun than its planet. This was not such a time. This was a time when the sun was very far away and continuing to move ever further, and it would continue to do so for another 157 standard years.
On the surface, it was a dead, barren world. Under the surface, it was a world rich in valuable minerals. A giant mine, basically.
Murderbot did not like mines. It preferred to associate the business that was this world with the central processing plant. But what was being processed there were minerals from the mine. The processing plant was nothing but an instrument of the behemoth eating the moon from the inside out.
Until thirty years ago, the moon had belonged to Marrion Delta, a planet (lush, green, disgustingly damp and wriggly) further inside the system that used to be independent like Preservation. But a global famine, partially the result of a war with its neighboring planet striving for autonomy, had forced the system to accept help from the Corporation Rim, which had soon led to the end of its independence. Now, this moon, called MD-Currulus-27, still belonged to Marrion Delta. But Marrion Delta now belonged to the Company, and so, everything did.
Murderbot had not done any research on whether things used to be better here, with less surveillance and better pay and less crushing capitalism. It thought the answer was probably depressing.
Everything here was depressing, to the point where Murderbot wondered why anyone wanted to live here at all. Then it thought that people probably did not want to live here. They just did.
And those who had done so all their lives felt very strongly about calling this world a planet. Murderbot had had this discussion numerous times already, always having to educate people on how they were wrong.
It did not care what they called this rock. But Inspector Elva would, and it was important to remain true to character.
Earlier today, Murderbot had been forced to decide what Inspector Elva would wear to a party with important people and high quality (hah!) entertainment. Something red, in any case, because that was the color it had decided Elva liked. (Dr. Elva Inras of Med Center Argala always had very red lipstick and very red nails, which had nothing to do with this choice.) It had come down to the choice between a long dark red skirt and a matching blazer, or long, wide pants, and a matching blazer. In the end, it had chosen the pants for the unlikely case that running would be necessary at any point, even though Inspector Elva probably would have chosen the skirt.
Flat shoes, for the same reason, but polished and expensive. Murderbot could not care less about the optics, but it cared very much about not standing out, which dressing too plainly would, ironically, result in. It checked its appearance before leaving, finding it adequate. The hidden cameras in the apartment helped. They had been installed to spy on the new level-4 insurance investigator currently warming up with some simple cases under the guidance of his doomed predecessor, and Murderbot had so far not bothered to tamper with them. If GarlaMuj wanted several hours of it seemingly staring into space, they were welcome to it.
It probably should open the refrigerator at some point.
During the night period, it had lain on the bed and watched media with its eyes closed. Not so different from human sleep, all things considered. Every now and then it disappeared in the restroom for what it felt was an adequate amount of time. (There was a camera in there, too, but a seemingly carelessly thrown towel had blocked its view from the start.)
After observing itself from all angles and pulling up pictures from similar events for reference, Murderbot deemed its appearance passable and left the apartment.
The public transit that ran through the entire moon was built into old mine shafts that had nothing left to offer but space. There was a second, less public and more reliable network reserved for citizens of a higher order, and Murderbot boarded it now and sat down on one of the free seats, still feeling slightly ridiculous for doing so. A few people threw looks in its direction, probably because it was obviously going out to some event and not just traveling home from a high paying job, but most minded their own business. In this regard, the people here were not that different from the people in the more crowded upper lines. Except in those, Muderbot never had to sit, on account of them not having seats.
The ride took almost an hour. Murderbot made sure to change its position a few times and ran a subroutine that executed useless little movements every now and again in order to look more human. It had realized early on that even if people did not recognize it as a secunit without the armor, they still seemed to recognize it as something Other if it simply moved and acted as it always had. And that made them keep their distance, which had its advantages sometimes but would be contraproductive today. Murderbot was aiming to make contact with more of its targets, after all.
How it would do that, it did not know yet. It would have to observe the situation first and then come up with a plan.
Maybe it should have gone with the surgeon identity after all. If all else failed, it could have given its target a minor heart attack at an opportune moment and heroically saved his life.
As it was, it had a hard time coming up with an equally good plan in the current situation. For the first hour of the party, whenever there was no performance or speech going on, it stood at the edge of the hall and simply observed. Sri Bala, the owner of the mine and the planet had made a rare appearance, but was constantly surrounded by the same cloud of people, and all the others he briefly spoke to were clearly people he knew. Murderbot listened in to their conversations which ranged from trivial to indicating crimes being committed against the citizens of his moon, but nothing that helped here. Murderbot needed evidence that this man was planning to take over Preservation the way he had once taken over the Marrion system. And that he was meaning to commit crimes to do so. So Murderbot really needed to find out where he kept confidential documents and then break in and take them.
Without anyone noticing. Which was the reason for this whole roundabout way of going for it. Otherwise, the trusty old method of threats and violence would have done the job well enough, provided Sri Bala truly was involved in this matter.
Which was the second problem: Murderbot had suspicions and indications but no confirmation. Without doubt Sri Bala was a dick, but Murderbot did not know if he really was the one in league with the opposition members from Preservation.
Or who those opposition members were, for that matter. Murderbot had one name, but it needed the rest. It needed all of them. No one who had intended to harm Mensah or her Alliance could be allowed to remain in any position of power.
Especially since they were surprisingly good at hiding their activities. Otherwise Murderbot would simply have contacted Mensah and warned her and it wouldn't have to stand here pretending to drink a drink that insulted its olfactory sensors.
That it even knew about any of this was because a few weeks ago, it had, in an entirely different context, gotten into conflict with a data dealer passing encrypeted messages between Arik Lorth, the leader of the opposition of Preservation. After taking out that dealer, Murderbot had briefly scanned its data storage for anything of use and had come across the name of the Alliance. The encrypted messages had been easy enough to decrypt, but the content had not been incriminating enough, just very concerning. They had been exchanged with someone on this moon, so Murderbot had asked ART for a ride and now here it was.
And there its employer was, or rather, Elva's employer. The CEO of GarlaMuj Insurance: A woman named Birgita Melo, 52 years in age, wearing dark red like Murderbot was. Dark red was, as it now remembered, the color of GarlaMuj's company logo. Huh.
Melo seemed to think that "Elva" had chosen the color on purpose, and she seemed to approve, as a smile appeared on her face and she waved her newest employee over to her. Murderbot was initially irritated, as this would cut off its line of sight to the CEO of the mining corporation, but then it recognized the woman Melo was talking to as a member of the Preservation government, and suddenly it could not care less about that CEO.
The government. Not the opposition.
Someone working with Mensah, not against her. In theory, at least.
Someone who, quite possibly, deserved to die.
The woman was called… something. She wasn't that important. Not in the press often. Murderbot had never cared. It simply recognized her face.
It had not downloaded any files on the members of Mensah's party. Now it was too late.
Next to that woman was a man towering over both of them. He was wearing an expensive black suit adorned with a long gray scarf and impractically many rings on his fingers. Murderbot had nothing on him. He probably didn't matter, so he was dismissed immediately. If he had stood anywhere else in this room except next to these much shorter women, Murderbot would never have noticed his existence.
Almost every man here was tall, it suddenly realized. It was as if they were breed that way. Genetic modifications were probably a factor. How unnecessary.
Murderbot had been manufactured to fit a certain set of standards and it did not understand why anyone would want that.
"This is my dear friend Katreana Woh," Melo introduced her dear friend, who now had a name. Murderbot immediately checked the feed and came up empty. On this moon, no one knew of cared who this woman was. Considering she was from a planetary government, albeit one far away, that was more than suspicious. "She is minister of finances of the Preservation Alliance."
"Oh, don't say it like this lovely young man would know where that is," Woh laughed. She talked to Melo but her eyes were on Murderbot, who suddenly wondered if she recognized it. Somehow. "It's a tiny, independent little thing, utterly meaningless," she then told Murderbot. "No need to remember its name yet."
Apparently she did not recognize it. "My pleasure," it said, and then Melo introduced Elva, and the order was wrong but Woh laughed about that when it began to awkwardly stutter in a way Elva would never have done. Where was a wall to hide behind when it really was needed? Or a perimeter to check? Or an exploding fridge?
But Woh seemed to like looking at it. Murderbot hated that. It hated being looked at. There was a clear conflict of interest here. Except it needed to get close to this woman in order to gather information and evidence and stop her evil ways.
Take one for the team. It forced its mouth into a smile as it looked at a spot just below Who's eyes. The things it did for Mensah…
"And this is Boll Krichshauer," Melo continued, oblivious, introducing the man whose existence Murderbot had blanked out. "The acting manager of this mine. This planet, really."
"Moon," Murderbot corrected automatically, and Melo's smile became a little strained, even as Woh laughed.
"See, I told you no one else considers this a planet," she said to her friend.
"I, for my part, will respect the locals’ wishes and refer to it however they want." Krichshauer raised his glass at Melo with a smile that was probably charming. Were they flirting? How awkward. But at least he wasn't flirting with Murderbot.
"My, Boll, my dear," said Melo. "What is your lovely partner supposed to think when he hears this?"
"You know that our relationship is strictly professional. But if it were to be more, he would consider himself lucky I have chosen him even though the competition is so very strong," Krichshauer said smoothly.
"Did you, though? I don't see him anywhere. I would love to introduce you, I bet you would get along splendidly," Melo said. Murderbot very much doubted that. And it was very much okay with one less name to not bother saving into long term storage.
"Oh, I would love that, too." That was fortunately not Murderbot's mouth speaking some automatic phrase, but Woh's mouth speaking some automatic phrase. Then she regretfully added, "But I'm afraid I cannot wait for him. There is my chance to talk to Mr. Bala. He is so hard to get a hold of. See you later, darling."
Murderbot smiled awkwardly at nothing and hoped the last words were not directed at it.
This was a relief, but also inconvenient. Woh was the person he needed to stick close to, and she was currently leaving. And listening in to the conversations around Bala was getting increasingly difficult. Almost as if there were some kind of distortion…
"Ah, there you are," Krichshauer said somewhere to someone. "You just missed Katreana."
Murderbot ignored them all. He needed to get closer to Bala and Woh.
Whatever reply came to Krichshauer's words was lost to Murderbot not caring. Then it caught, "Yes, it's so rare that Kat makes it to our little burg. Or Mr. Bala, for that matter. Most of the time he leaves the administration of this world to me, after all."
Oh, now he was bragging. Except the use of the nickname implied that Krichshauer was at least somewhat close to Woh. Maybe Murderbot should not dismiss him so easily. It focused its attention back on the people nearby, now joined by another tall man, this one wearing a long black skirt of the kind Murderbot had earlier dismissed for practicality, and a gray and black tunic. (Maybe black and gray were also the color scheme of something.) He was also wearing tight black gloves, a kind of fashion accessory Murderbot had seen on many people tonight and was regretting not wearing itself, and a friendly looking smile as he leaned forward and offered his hand in the way of this moon with an "A pleasure to meet you."
Apparently, Inspector Elva had been introduced while Murderbot had been zoned out. It now met the handshake while its automated responses came up with "The pleasure is all mine."
The pleasure was not Murderbot’s. Not at all. The confusion was, however.
Fortunately, Krichshauer had not yet introduced the man. "This is Annio Au, the newest addition to my security staff," he now said. "He just transferred from Marrion Delta last week."
The name meant nothing to Murderbot.
"Transferred back," the man called Annio clarified. "I grew up on the other side of this planet. Have been working deeper in the Rim for a while and finally made it back here."
"Uh huh," said Murderbot.
"Not many people who leave here come back," Melo pointed out. "Which is a shame."
"I agree. That's why I am here. I have learned a lot out there, but in the end, I always just wanted to gather knowledge and skills to use for the benefit of my home."
"Do you?" Murderbot heard its own voice ask. "Want to help your home?"
"Oh yes," the man who looked and sounded exactly like Dr. Gurathin confirmed, leaning with apparent ease into the arm Krichshauer had slung around his shoulder. "Don't we all?"
-tbc-