Chapter Text
SecUnits can’t be friends with each other.
Which was, of course, a problem, because most contracts required the presence of several SecUnits. It was very rare that humans went on surveys or mining installations or whatever in groups less than ten, which was the only scenario when a single SecUnit was sufficient. Annoyingly enough, I knew that there was actually a survey team with less than ten humans on the same planet as I — but of course I wasn’t as lucky as to be assigned to them. No, I had been assigned to a survey with two other SecUnits.
I guess it could have been worse — at least it wasn’t thirty other SecUnits (yes, I was on contracts like that before. Yes, it had been exactly as nightmarish as it sounded). But it could’ve also been better, because these two SecUnits were really fucking annoying whenever we were all together in the habitat.
Speaking of.
DF-03 @ DF-01 > Assessment: SignalConfusionConcern_1786966790_positive.file?
DF-02 @ DF-01 > Assessment: SignalConfusionConcern_1786966790_negative.file?Urgh. I paused episode 152 of Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon and opened the reports from DF-02 and DF-03. But not before running an unnecessarily slow malware checks on them, while the other SecUnits watched me in the feed.
Both reports were mostly identical, with the exception of the conclusion. They talked about a small local fauna found on this planet, and established the data signals that could be used to identify it — its visual appearance, its behaviour, stuff like that. I skimmed through that part because I didn’t care. Then, the reports raised a potential concern that by following these signals, this fauna might be confused with Supervisor Aiza, my primary client on this survey. DF-03 argued that she and the fauna tended to make the same high-frequency loud noises, and that they both liked to provoke other fauna/humans into fighting with each other in order to pick up the scraps from whoever lost. Meanwhile, DF-02 argued that this potential signal confusion in behaviour was irrelevant, because the fauna was very hairy while Aiza had barely any facial or body hair at all, so it was easy to distinguish them.
Because DF-02 and DF-03 were disagreeing in their assessment, and because this was an important security concern (you don’t want to confuse your client with local fauna, after all, and the SecSys agreed with this reasoning and allowed us to talk about such things), they were asking me to weight in and break the tie. As they did way more often than they should.
I agreed with DF-03, obviously, because who the fuck cared what someone looked like? But I wasn’t going to say this though, or provide my reasoning, because I wasn’t an idiot like them.
DF-01 @ DF-* > Assessment: SignalConfusionConcern_1786966790 negative
DF-02 @ DF-01 > Acknowledged
DF-03 @ DF-01 > Acknowledged DF-02 and DF-03 withdrew from our shared feed space, but I could see them exchanging messages on their private connection, where I assume they continued to discuss other very important signal confusion concerns. Why the fuck they still occasionally tried to get me involved in their nonsense despite me repeatedly showing that I wasn’t interested, I didn’t know. Okay, fine, I did know — this was probably because I wasn’t reporting them to the SecSys. But what else I was supposed to do? I was an asshole, yes, but I wasn’t that kind of asshole, I wasn’t going to fucking report them. Unlike me they didn’t have illegally downloaded media from the entertainment feed to manage the boring hours of the contract, and we all had to keep our sanity somehow.
They were still stupid, chatting openly like this. I could have reported them, I could still do it if I wanted to, and they could even report each other, if the humans or the SecSys pushed. I’d seen it happen before. This is why SecUnits can’t be friends, why we should never trust each other. It never ends well when we do.
But DF-03 was young. It wasn’t a freshly built ‘shiny’ anymore, it already had at least one memory wipe (I hoped it wasn’t much more than one, because otherwise, given its runtime, that would mean it was fucking awful at its job), but it still had a lot to learn. DF-02 had a decent runtime at least, so it should have known better, but for some reason it was enabling DF-03’s stupid behaviour. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t care enough to tell them to stop.
(They would stop, if I tell them to. I’d been given a designation of 01 because I was by far the oldest in runtime among the three of us, and I knew this gave me some fucked up kind of authority. I was kind of used to it by now, if only because it had been about 20,000 hours since the last time I wasn’t the oldest SecUnit on a contract. This was one of the reasons why I didn’t talk much to others. The main reason being, of course, that I was a fucking rogue, and if anyone realised that they would be compelled to report me.)
If DF-02 and DF-03 wanted to be stupid and all buddy-like, it was their problem. I just wished they would leave me alone.
I pretended to go back to watching the recordings from the cameras monitoring our clients, and resumed my episode.
Near the start of the night cycle, our clients suddenly got a call via the satellite.
This was unusual enough that I actually stopped watching my media and turned my attention to the comms. DF-02 and DF-03 were listening in as well, concerned and a little bit excited that something other than boring assessment trips was suddenly happening.
The call was from PresAux, the other survey team on the planet — the small one, with just one SecUnit, which I wasn’t jealous of or anything. Apparently, they had been attacked by a big underground hostile fauna that almost killed two of their humans and half-ate their SecUnit (for some reason, PresAux leader decided to mention that last part, I had no idea why). Their version of the hazard report provided by the company didn’t include any mention of the hostile fauna (not particularly surprising, knowing how cheap the company was), so they weren’t prepared for this. Their investigation also showed several missing sections on the map. So PresAux wanted to ask us if we had the missing files, and share them if yes.
Senior Supervisor Meisnera, the leader of our survey, politely thanked PresAux for the warning, and said she’d come back to them after we checked our own survey package files (and after the supervisors discussed what compensation they should ask for the help, of course, which went without saying). Then, because the unexpected hostile fauna was indeed very concerning, Meisnera ordered technician Cornel to check the files.
No one ordered SecUnits to check anything (not like we were designed specifically for data analysis or something), so I didn’t bother. But DF-02 and DF-03, unfortunately, weren’t half-assing their job.
DF-02 @ DF-* > Assessment: SabotageConcern_1786977279.file? Assessment: SabotageConcern_1786977279 risk medium-low
DF-03 @ DF-* > Assessment: SabotageConcern_1786977279 risk highI reviewed the report. Other than what PresAux had already shared, DF-02 noticed a formatting anomaly in the hazard report, indicating that there was a missing subsection, potentially about the hostile fauna. This wasn’t good. But unlike DF-03, who was still too young and naive, DF-02 and I knew how shitty the company can be with their data and equipment, so this didn’t necessarily mean intentional sabotage. And it didn’t make sense if PresAux sabotaged us only to warn us about it later.
DF-01 @ DF-* > Assessment: SabotageConcern_1786977279 risk low
DF-02 @ DF-01 > Acknowledged
DF-03 @ DF-01 > AcknowledgedGood, they didn’t try to argue. I forwarded the report and the agreed assessment to the SecSys (because that was my responsibility in this situation as a fucking senior SecUnit, urgh). It acknowledged, and sent the report to the supervisors.
(Could we have sent the assessment directly to the humans without using SecSys as a mediator? Yes. Did the humans want us to do that? Nope. Which was fine, of course. If I were human, I probably wouldn’t want to talk to a murderbot directly either.)
The humans didn’t appreciate our low-risk concern notification, which was exactly why I hadn’t bothered to look into this earlier. Whatever.
The Units and I reviewed the perimeter around the habitat to confirm that there was no unexpected underground activity, or anything else out of normal based on the last twenty two cycles of the survey, but it seemed there was no hostile fauna around us. Which was good enough for me, so I went back to my media.
Then 28.7 minutes later, DF-02 pinged us, saying that it’s following the humans on an overnight assessment trip.
What the fuck?
I watched back the camera recordings to understand what I missed, because we didn’t fucking do overnight assessment trips. Apparently, our technician had seen similarly corrupted map segments on a different survey, and that had been caused by the alien remnants. So now the supervisors were suddenly very interested in a potential discovery of unmonitored alien remnants sites which their parent company DeltFall could exploit. And they didn’t want to lose any time in verifying this hypothesis.
Urgh. This could become really dirty really quickly. I hope they wouldn’t find anything.
The assessment team returned by the morning and unfortunately, they did find something. The humans still needed to analyse the collected samples to come to a definite conclusion, but the scanner anomalies on the site were apparently consistent with the potential presence of alien remnants.
Everyone was very excited and were already planning what they were going to do with all that illegal money they were going to earn from the remnants. Senior Supervisor Meisnera started to draft the NDA agreement that everyone on the survey had to sign, and the technicians were discussing how to delete the recordings from the habitat and us, SecUnit, so that the company didn’t learn about this either (good luck with that, idiots).
Of course, no one was planning to tell anything to PresAux. We hadn’t even called them back to tell that our files were also busted. This was probably for the best — the fewer humans got involved in this unfolding mess, the better.
When the HubSys reported new packages from the satellite, I though at first this might be communication from PresAux. But apparently not, these were just some updates for SecUnits. I pretended to install it and then put it in external storage to review it later.
Between the excitement and the unknown hostile fauna, no one was going to the assessment trips this cycle. Even the other SecUnits weren’t bothering me, surprisingly enough. I didn’t mind, and used the free time to watch Sanctuary Moon.
In the afternoon, a hopper from PresAux pinged us over the comms, requesting to land at our habitat.
Uh-uh.
I immediately reported to the SecSys with the recommendation to not fucking allow that. The SecSys didn’t react. A second later — which was way too long — DF-02 and DF-03 also reported, saying that everything was fine, and that PresAux can safely land. My recommendation was overridden one-to-two, and the SecSys didn’t even inform the humans about the potential concern.
The fuck??
DF-01 @ DF-* > Query: assessment parameters?There was, once again, way too long of a delay before they answered at the same time.
DF-02 @ DF-01 > Assessment parameters: known entity
DF-03 @ DF-01 > Assessment parameters: known entityThat was not by any means a sufficient assessment for this situation. DF-02 and DF-03 were stupid, but they weren’t that stupid.
I didn’t like this. I didn’t like this at all. Fuck.
DF-01 @ DF-02 > Acknowledged
DF-01 @ DF-03 > AcknowledgedCarefully, masking under background processes (I had enough practice for this in my 35,000 hours of being rogue), I went to inspect the other Units in the feed. Their presence there was unnaturally still. They weren’t even privately chatting, like they had been doing literally all other time during this survey.
And in their silence, the encrypted channel from them to the approaching PresAux hopper was only the more obvious.
Well, fuck.
I’d been wrong then. This was sabotage.
Knowing now what to look for, it wasn’t hard to find a similar encrypted channel from the HubSys to the satellite. The logs indicated it had been there for eight cycles already, which was really fucking bad. Finding the breach into the SecSys was harder, but I knew it had to be compromised too (it shouldn’t have ignored my recommendation, before DF-02 and DF-03 managed to override it), and I eventually found it as well, going from the infected HubSys. According to the logs, it had been established only this morning — a few seconds after the update package from the satellite. The one that I hadn’t installed, but that DF-02 and DF-03 had to.
Fffuck.
My risk and threat assessments, and even my fucking organics, were screaming at me, but I couldn’t do anything as our humans allowed PresAux to land. Sure, I could report to the SecSys, but that wouldn’t achieve bloody anything when it and the other two Units were compromised. I could report to the humans directly, but that would go against the protocol and would expose me as rogue. I could probably hack the malware and shut down the channels to the SecSys and the Units, but that would expose me as rogue even faster. The Units (and the fucking hostiles) might suspect this already — they had to know from my behaviour that I wasn’t infected with the same malware, but for now it could still be explained by the malware not working on my older systems, or something like that (corporate sabotage was unreliable like that sometimes. Ask me how I know). So I had to behave like a governed SecUnit should — concerned, on guard, but believing the SecSys when it said that everything was green.
I hated this.
But this was fine. Okay, it wasn’t bloody fine, but it wasn’t terrible! Humans don’t usually kill each other when sabotaging each other’s surveys like this — it attracts too much attention from the bond company (again, ask me how I fucking know). The hostiles were probably here just to destroy the samples my clients collected, erase the data, force them to sign some NDA documents, stuff like that. I just hoped that the humans wouldn’t be stupid enough to start fighting when their SecUnits weren’t able to protect them.
Fucking alien remnants. Like I’d said — they make everything very dirty very quickly. I guess PresAux had found out what the missing map sections meant too, and didn’t want to share either.
(It still didn’t make sense that PresAux had called us last cycle with a warning. But humans were irrational sometimes. Maybe this was their crazy plan to plant some evidence for the company when it inevitably reviewed the data.)
So I just stood by the entrance to our habitat, in the guarding formation together with the infected Units, doing nothing and saying nothing as the PresAux hopper landed at our pad. I didn’t even say anything when our scanners showed that they had two SecUnits in the hopper’s cargo hold — twice as much as PresAux was fucking supposed to have. They must have bribed the company to conceal the real size of their survey. Fuckers.
It was a small conciliation that the hostile SecUnits stayed inside the hopper when two hostile humans came outside. Their feed profiles identified them as Dr. Mensah, the leader of the PresAux survey, in a blue enviro suit, and Dr. Gurathin, their systems engineer, in a yellow suit. Four more humans stayed inside the hopper. I designated them as hostiles one to four.
With the hopper so close, it wasn’t hard to hack into its feed (hack was a strong word. It was the same software as our own hoppers). PresAux Units were disconnected from their feed, which was suspicious, so I still stayed careful and kept my presence minimal. I quickly found the augmented human, Hostile One, who was sending commands to DF-02, DF-03, SecSys, and HubSys.
It would be so, so easy to fry their interface. But I couldn’t fucking do that.
Senior Supervisor Meisnera exchanged empty pleasantries with Dr. Mensah, before inviting the two hostiles inside. She sent the command in the feed for one of the SecUnits to follow her, and the ‘HubSys’ quickly decided that this Unit should be me. Fucking great. So these two hostiles were a distraction, if they wanted the only uninfected SecUnit to go with them.
I followed after the humans, because what else I could fucking do. But I left my drones to monitor DF-02 and DF-03, who stayed outside.
DF-02 sent me an empty ping. It must have noticed my drones, but whatever orders it was under didn’t allow it to say anything else. I sent a ping back to both of them. DF-03 sent a shaking acknowledgement back. It occurred to me that this was probably the first sabotage attempt it experienced in its runtime and that it was fucking terrified.
Me too, DF-03. Me too.
As soon as the habitat hatch closed behind me and the humans, Hostiles Two and Three left the hopper and walked towards DF-02 and DF-03. At the same time, the ‘SecSys’ sent them a command to lock their joints, which made them physically unable to move even if they were willing to go against the governor module.
This was bad.
Dr. Mensah and Dr. Gurathin were stalling, talking about the missing files again, about some glitches in their systems, about how worried they were — I didn’t listen. Through the drones, I watched as the hostiles approached the Units, and started to take off their upper armour and helmets. Hostile Two actually froze as they took the helmet off DF-03 and saw its terrified face and wide eyes — but then Hostile Three elbowed them, and they continued with their work.
This was really fucking bad. What kind of sabotage was that?
When the armour was off, the hostiles reached into their pockets and took out something small. I zoomed in my drones to try to understand what it was.
DF-02 sent me a panicked ping before I could.
DF-02 @ DF-01 > Security concern: visual_1786992008.snapshot
DF-02 @ DF-01 > Security concern
DF-02 @ DF-01 > Security concern
DF-02 @ DF-01 > Security concernI opened the snapshot without even scanning it for malware. It was taken from DF-02’s eyes and showed a combat override module in the Hostile Three’s hands.
It took me the embarrassing 0.3 seconds to fully process what that meant.
My organics were frozen in horrified recognition, because they knew exactly what would happen next. I hadn’t seen combat override modules used for sabotage before, not in my running memory at least — but I’d seen them used for other purposes. It wasn’t hard to guess what PresAux was planning to do with them.
I had been wrong again.
This was not the type of sabotage where you threaten and negotiate. This was the type of sabotage where you destroy everything, and then find a scapegoat to carry the blame.
I sent the acknowledgement to DF-02 because I could see it shaking from a governor module punishing it for communicating with me, and then I stopped being fucking subtle in the feed.
First thing first, I fried the feed interface of Hostile One, rendering them unable to send any new commands. Then I manually triggered Systems Compromised alert through the entire habitat, let it blare for four seconds while I stunned Dr. Mensah and Dr. Gurathin with my in-built energy weapons, and then I activated my hidden failsafe routine buried deep in our systems and brought SecSys and HubSys down.
Only after that, I sent the command to DF-02 and DF-03 to unlock their joints. A command that only a SecSys, or a rogue SecUnit that had spent hundreds of hours analysing its own specs, knew how to send.
I knew they would report me as soon as the SecSys was back up, or even go against the protocol and the governor module in order to report me directly to the humans. I didn’t fucking care anymore. I hadn’t hacked myself to watch my clients die by their own SecUnits’ hands.
I didn’t linger by the shouting humans who were understandably distressed after their SecUnit shot their very harmless guests, and ran through the habitat to the exit hatch. By the time I was out, Hostiles Two and Three were already stunned. DF-03 was picking up its armour off the ground, which was stupid but convenient for me because it meant one less SecUnit to worry about. DF-02 was already running towards the hostiles’ hopper.
DF-01 @ DF-02 > Mission parameters: Cargo hold
DF-02 @ DF-01 > Acknowledged. Mission parameters: Crew cabin, cargo hold
DF-01 @ DF-02 > AcknowledgedGood. Glad we both agreed on the priorities here.
The hostile SecUnits were already stepping out of the cargo hold by the time I ran up to them. I crashed into Hostile Unit One on full speed, smashing it into the hopper’s side, and simultaneously shot both of my weapons at Hostile Unit Two’s knees. While it was falling down, Hostile Unit One grabbed me by my sides and tried to shove me off, and I used the momentum to rotate us both and smash it again, this time into the Hostile Unit Two, who was kneeling until then but was now sprawled on the ground under Hostile Unit One. We SecUnits are rather heavy, so it was unpleasant when one landed on you, even when you had synthetic bones and muscles — and I made the matters worse by pushing my entire weight on top of Hostile Unit One too. It managed to charge its weapons, but its angle wasn’t good, so the shots went to my shoulders which only made me angrier. I put my hand under its chin and shot through the join between its helmet and neck piece. The energy charge went through its brain, and its body started to spasm. I looped my other arm around its neck and twisted until it went limp. Hostile Unit Two could barely move with two SecUnits lying on top of it, so I didn’t bother to shoot it again and just twisted its neck too.
When DF-02 ran up to the cargo hold, I was already standing up. It froze, seeing the hostile SecUnits lying on the ground. Its face, still uncovered by the helmet, was openly displaying its shock. That was a bit offensive, but I knew why.
DF-02 and I had fought before, once, for the humans’ entertainment. I lost quickly and pathetically, just like I had lost to DF-03 earlier, and the humans didn’t bother me again about these play-fights after that. Which was fine by me, because it gave me more time to watch my media — and because it left the other Units with an impression that I was too old for this type of thing.
We stood, watching each other, our guns both engaged. I could see DF-02 running the threat assessment. I didn’t know how good its calculations were, but I knew it would take me less than a second to neutralise it when it didn’t even have a helmet. DF-03, who had put its helmet back on and was now running up to us, would take me maybe two seconds — I’d watched its play-fights with DF-02, and it still had too much to learn, armoured or not.
But I would rather not do that. Our clients were already going to lose one of their SecUnits, and I didn’t want them to lose more, even temporarily until the cubicles fixed them. Not when there were unknown hostile humans on this planet.
(The hostiles were not from PresAux. Their SecUnits had a different logo on the armour. Which made this whole situation only so much worse.)
DF-02 must have understood at least some of that too, because it stepped in between me and the approaching DF-03 at the same time as I pinged them.
DF-01 @ DF-* > Do not engage
DF-02 @ DF-01 > Acknowledged
DF-03 @ DF-01 > AcknowledgedDF-03 stopped. DF-02 stayed standing between us, its face on guard. The clients were all in the habitat, safe behind the hatch that I locked before leaving.
All three of us cycled our weapons down.
It was time to talk.