Chapter Text
I did not want to be here.
Being with ART, traveling to the next mission as the crew’s security consultant, edging into and out of corporate space? That was fine.
Being aboard this weird, likely human made, otherwise radio silent ship sending out a distress beacon? Yeah. That I did not want to do.
Thankfully ART was also apprehensive of the ship, but ART was also trigger happy and had suggested blowing it up before communication, and the humans and I agreed on that being a bad idea.
The other idea the humans had? Go with a small crew. That was an “absolutely not,” from ART and me.
So here I am, sitting grumpily in our shuttle as it seals to the ship's airlock. This was not a mission where I needed human help (are any of them?) and ART would be pissed if I got one if its humans hurt. So I came alone, grateful for my suit and its opaque face plate.
Dr. Bharadwaj would classify this as more evidence for her file “MurderBot likes to sacrifice itself for others,” which she often pulls out when I argue that I do not care about the humans I work with. We’ve had the discussion multiple times, yes, and every single time I got annoyed enough to shut up.
(Emotion check: Oh fuck off you’d be annoyed too)
Back to the current situation: boarding mystery in distress ship.
The airlock cycled, and the shuttle door opened to their… Jesus, is that the command room? It's a mess. Clear paneled habitats intersperse the entire ancient human architecture of screens and buttons everywhere. And the whole place smells like the stale human socks that every human space has mixed with… Ammonia? Yeah, that’s definitely ammonia. I really hope that whatever humans are here (or let's be honest, more likely alien life forms trying to feed on more humans via distress beacons) are not trying to kill me with ammonia. Because it will not be nearly as effective as they hope.
I sent my drones out to survey the space and… Oh. There’s the alien lifeform. A rock looking creature about the size and shape of ARTdrone was moving quickly through the clear habitats towards me. It was… singing? Is that what it was doing? Maybe that was its language, I don’t know, it was loud and high pitched and the thing seemed excited that I was here.
When it reached me, it bounced around a little, trying to explain whatever it was doing. Likely Hello, I’m going to need you to get inside these clear things so I can properly digest you and eat you! Yeah, no thank you. ART was riding my feed, and saw the whole thing. Right as I felt it bristle to request I leave so it could blow the ship to bits, my drones found a human. A barely alive human, currently in a rudimentary med bay with a multi-armed robot looking after it. Well shit. So there was a human. The many armed rock ran back down its habitat, stopping at the hatchway to wave me further. So the two knew each other, great. Just great.
I followed (what else was I supposed to do) and passed through a lab space ART seemed intrigued by before ending up in the crew area. This smelled the strongest of ammonia and socks, and the robot alerted on me. No ping, which felt odd, but if this ship really was so old it would make sense. It waved itself excitedly, the same way the rock had, and gestured to the human.
It was a male looking human, light colored hair and beard, red jumpsuit with some kind of logo on the shoulder and chest, and glasses most definitely not helping him see where they sat. Great. He reacted only a little, stirring to groan and blink at me before muttering a thanks which seemed directed at the rock creature. Rocky? Is that seriously what he called it? Wow, humans sucked at naming, even more than I did.
ART drone had allowed my feed to be shared with its human crew now (probably for the best to wait and delay it considering the amount of murdering or other related death I see, so good job ART), who were all adamantly discussing what could be done and what was even happening. They’d decided the human wasn’t sick (thank you, I really do not want another Hell Plague Planet situation, this really helped my performance reliability) just starving.
(Emotion check: No, it was not a false memory, stupid organic neural tissue, that is what the human infected looked like at first)
(Emotion check: Seriously? Okay fuck off.)
In the 2.5 seconds it took for me to respond to my mental health module, the humans had somehow agreed we needed to take the human and its ship to help treat him. Huh. I guess they can act fast in the face of danger, just not when it affects them. I’ll file that to review later. Right now I had a bitter machine intelligence in my head trying to get me to help convince the humans to not adopt another one.
Sorry ART, I’m with the humans on this.
—
So we’ve adopted two life forms.
After about three days of him sitting in ART’s medical bay with the rock creature in a weird paneled ball, he was responsive again, and was allowed back onto his ship (which obviously we had sterilized and quarantine in an empty module space) to collect his belongings to stay aboard until we figured out what the hell we were doing with him. Unbeknownst to literally all of us (even ART), the human had a computer that could translate the little rock. And yes, he had named it Rocky, which was worse than me calling myself MurderBot. I mean, it is literally a rock-like creature. Named Rocky. That’s just stupid.
So now we have a human and a Rocky (he (don’t ask me how the human decided that it was a he) is apparently something called an Eridian, but that is boring) who both very much want nothing to do with joining the university, and do not understand why my (technically ART’s) humans keep asking what corporate they were escaping from. The Rocky thing was excitied to meet everyone, though, and very curious about me in particular. He does not get the whole “organic parts surrounding a largely synthetic core to function better than an augmented human and technically be controlled by an overall system.” Grace, the human, does, thankfully, and asked no further questions.
The biggest issue, though, is that they are insisting they need to get back to Rocky’s home planet Erid (see, that’s why calling him an Eridian is boring) to save it from some star-eating bacteria. ART immediately got upset at the thought they could have brought it with them, but the two were quick to explain that all of the bacteria thing was contained and they had a way to fight it. Great, so that's one crisis solved. And before it even started, which is a first.
ART had a map for the system they needed, and it wouldn’t put us too far off our original plan. The only thing was that Grace and Rocky did not want our help. (I don’t know why, probably something to do with the fact that they would be traveling with an overly hostile ART and me, the SecUnit). ART, ever the negotiator, explained almost smugly that the human was likely going to die if the two left. This went as you would expect. The human dug in its heels, ART argued that it had more information than the human could process, of course it knew better, and then Rocky got in on it and it was a mess. I stepped in, purely to avoid the building headache that the overlapping voices was causing in my organic neural tissue, and offered to share my media with the two.
I expected the human to be excited. It was Rocky. Apparently he loves human media, and immediately changed argument sides to convince Grace to stay so he could watch the media.
So now we have a human, an Eridian, and an ancient human ship that ART is currently sending drones into for archival purposes it neglected to explain.
Which, all things considered, was perfectly fine with me.