While the humans made their slowass way toward Cy and me, I reflected on what a piece of shit I was. Saying mean things came so easily and saying nice things required so much forethought and effort that I needed creepy running documents to keep track of it all. The fake version was the only version of me that anybody could stand.

My mind raced. Cyan's clients were untrustworthy and Cy would end up dead, sooner or later, if it stayed.

Then again, if it didn't want to be rescued, then I would need to keep myself as an option for Cyan if it ever decided to leave. I'd need to show up, cycle after cycle, and show Cyan that I was there for it. It sounded like a lot of work. I'm lazy and I hate working. But Cyan was worth it.

Beneath my feet I felt a jolt, a slight grinding sensation. I tapped the bot pilot, which cheerfully let me know that we were underway and I would have to wait if I wanted to disembark.

Then I thought about our duty to prevent dumbass humans from dying. If we were going to fight our way out (or worse, talk our way out), then I didn't want any human workers in my way.

My opportunity to break in without incident had passed, then.

Now my objective was to prevent dumbass humans from dying, then. I probably should have just exited, but I was angry at the company and I was angry at Cyan and I didn't want to relive leaving GiDeon again.

I used my camera access to find SecSystem. From there, I sank into HubSystem and noticed the environmental early alarm system had been manually switched off, just as it had been for the preceding 1,146 active transport cycles.

~~~

[Footnote 8: Why would a human manually switch off the alarm that was expressly there to protect them? One possibility is that the operators viewed the alarm as a nuisance because it kept sounding and they perceived it as a false alarm.

The reality was that the alarm kept sounding because the atmosphere was toxic because the company had decided that shipping chems fast and cheap was more important than the deckhands who might die on the job. But what would I know? It wasn't like that kind of thing happened all the time.

/End of Foonote 8.]

~~~

I switched the alarm system back on and the klaxons began to blare. Just like old times.

~~~

[Footnote 9: I'm a big fan of alarm systems. Sometimes I listen to them for fun. There's a huge variety; I recognized this as a klaxon from Kistro. The sound was designed to roll along grassy terrain to maximize the distance that the alarm could be heard. It was maybe a Matker3 or Matker4, originally used to warn about severe inclement weather.

Companies later adapted the Matker series for other purposes because it was cheap, scary, and loud.

(I'm glad that my brain is full of useless trivia like this but it doesn't know how to have a normal conversation).

/End of Foonote 9.]

~~~

Workers began to file out into their designated zones. Some of them were confused, like they'd never heard an emergency evac alarm.

The alarm said, This is an emergency evacuation. This is not a drill. Leave all your belongings behind. Gather in designated emergency areas.

As a rule, I didn't talk to humans much when I was supposed to be a machine. Human interaction mostly resulted in me being ignored anyway.

This was no exception. The humans ignored the sensible machine-based advice in favor of doing fuck-all.

I set the message to replay twice every minute. Maybe repeating the message a lot would make them understand that the words carried meaning that they were meant to follow.

I scanned for humans and identified three dumbest ass humans in the process of creating a safety incident. They were below the catwalk, underneath the grated floor.

They fought to manually turn off the klaxon. They must have thought it was another false alarm.

(Typically I would agree with the humans' desire to switch off the thing making loud noises but not if it put them in harm's way.)

The humans were annoying. I would have to save them.

I put the past ten minutes of security footage on loop. I ran down the stairs to the cargo hold floor.

The dumbasses were three humans who were all alive, but who'd managed to put themselves in harm's way despite the constant warnings to evacuate. Also, they were not wearing the correct safety gear, which was unfortunately in a locker three meters away from the hole in the floor and not on their bodies where it belonged (annoying).

The humans noticed that I only had one arm, and that the other was slung over my shoulder. They probably also noticed my injuries. Thankfully they were tacful enough not to mention any of it.

"Hey!" I said with authority. "You need to evacuate. It's not safe here."

"No, this always happens," the human mechanic, Bahati, said over the klaxon. Ze waved around a tertiary wrencher in hir hand. "We're shutting it off so we can go back to work. The lifter bot that hit you was supposed to be putting Inhalation Hazard back in the desiccation room. That's what ruined your clothes, right?"

Oh. So they had seen that.

I said, "You should evacuate. The klaxon can be switched off manually once all personnel are secure."

This would sound more convincing if I worked Security.

Pritha said, "Well, I should be allowed to be here. I'm the safety specialist."

And what a good job you've done, is something that I did not say.

(Pritha had five mononyms, none of which corresponded to the naming conventions I was familiar with, but as an alleged temporary co-worker, she'd marked "Pritha" as the acceptable name for me to use. She had logged eight name changes, one change about every five standard years, which included adding new names as her role in life changed. She came from a non-corporate political entity where names were not affixed to a person forever, but also where contract slavery was illegal. I'm not saying there's a connection.)

I said, "The chem concentration is high enough to be flammable."

"Then you should evacuate," Husni, a human with an internal feed interface, said. They were a manual laborer who handled cargo. "That way you can monitor the superstructure of the ship."

Maintenance technicians were supposed to handle the drones that monitored the deck, hull, and superstructure of Moiety. It was a not-so-subtle way of telling me to mind my own business.

"The air itself is toxic," I said. "Doesn't the acidic burning smell bother you?"

"What smell?" Husni said.

At first I thought they were joking.

I looked closer and realized that Pritha and Bahati had constricted pupils. That might be a bad thing, I didn't know. Pritha was gripping her abdomen like it hurt and Husni made gestures like they had a splitting headache. But if the humans had just accepted pain as part of their job, like the thing with the alarms...

"You need to get out of here. The air is flammable," I said. "All of you. Now."

Husni said, "The longer we sit here and argue the longer this will take."

Pritha said, "We'll be okay. Just give us a few minutes."

It only took a few minutes to suffocate or burn to death, but I didn't feel like managing humans who had no sense of self-preservation. Being heard was impossible when humans didn't care to listen.

I could keep them safe indirectly by dealing with the Hostiles directly.

"Fine," I said. I walked toward the catwalk that I'd come from.

The slow Hostiles who had responded to me poked around by the dead lifter bot, where the security footage showed my current location. Hostiles Two and Three were busy yelling at each other about the destruction of the lifter bot and waste of chems. Hostile One stood by the stairs and watched them.

I set the drones to the lowest setting so that if the pulses hit the humans or the bags of powder nobody would die, probably.

While the Hostiles yelled at each other, I snuck up the stairs. I was visible and had minimal cover but the klaxons covered the sound of my approach. It would have been better to ambush them at the lift. Whatever, I could keep that in mind for next time.

I could kill or incapacitate these humans easily if I threw myself at them like a SecUnit. I decided to fight like a human, sort of, just in case I could recover from the Anghen story. There were three witnesses, after all.

My drones flanked Hostiles Two and Three. All three Hostiles turned away from me to look at the drones.

I ambushed them.

I tackled Hostile One from behind. Both of us hit the ground. I grabbed the pistol from their holster.

The drones peppered Hostiles Two and Three with low-grade pulses. Hostile Two tried to fire at the drones to ill effect.

I rolled off Hostile One and shoved to my feet. I wobbled because my detached arm threw off my balance. I'd put myself between Hostile One and Hostiles Two and Three.

I wasn't as good at weapons with my left hand, but that still made me better than most humans. I fired incapacitating rounds at the armed Hostiles. I struck Hostile Two's weapon and her torso. I hit Hostile Three's chest. Hostiles Two and Three went down but Two was still conscious.

Behind me, Hostile One shoved to their feet and stabbed my back with something sharp. Hostile One had narrowly missed the arm.

I turned around with the sharp object still lodged in my back. I used Hostile One's stabbing arm as leverage to flip them over my shoulder. They tumbled down the stairs.

No leaking from the wound. No critical parts had been affected. I decided to leave the sharp object in my organic tissue because it would cause less damage that way. (Unless it was poisoned. If the whole point of the cargo area was to transport poison, then it wouldn't be difficult to slowly leach toxins into my system.)

The drones focused on Hostiles One and Two.

I recovered the dropped weapon and upped the power setting by one more level. The power setting was dicey; at close range, it might kill an unarmored human. I suspected the humans were wearing low-grade body armor underneath their plainclothes. It would explain how they hadn't been incapacitated by the drones.

Hostile Two shoved to her feet and tried her weapon, but it was disabled from when I'd hit it.

Hostile One charged back up the stairs and grabbed me from behind. The object lodged deeper in my organic tissue and scraped the non-organics.

I leaked but luckily my fluids spilled through the grated floor and into a reservoir so no one would need to clean up after me.

I aimed the energy weapon at Hostile Two's knees, but Hostile One pulled me as soon as I shot. I missed Hostile Two.

I hit the bottom of the water waste barrel. At a high energy setting. The barrel burst open and water splashed over the spilled powder. Oh no.

A column of white foam filled my vision.

I jumped over the railing to get away from the chemical reaction. I fell to the floor, a story below. The foam was hot.

I felt the connection to three of my drones drop.

I stumbled to my feet with a throbbing sensation in my head and burning across my whole body, especially around my eyes, mouth, and nose. My lungs burned. I was drenched in foam.

From the cameras, I saw the foam explosion had hit the ceiling. Now the foam fell from the ventilation system, hit the rest of the powder, and formed secondary jets of foam on the catwalk. Hostile Two pulled Hostile Three away from the mess.

I ran for MedSystem.

I ripped the decontamination fluid hose from its housing. I doused myself in emergency decontamination fluid. The sharp object moved inside my back and became uncomfortable. I tore it out, shoved it into a storage compartment near my ankle, and continued to douse myself.

Hostile Two ran for the emergency showers, but they were water-based. They'd probably come out with severe burns.

I looked up the powder-water reaction. The mixture produced strong acid and flammable gas. Internal documentation didn't specify what kind of acid or gas.

It was proprietary, I guess, and they didn't keep the data in places that were accessible on a cargo ship.

(High priority proprietary data, like the real names of chems used to make Nervous Breakdown, were kept in secure vaults that couldn't be hacked. I envied their privacy.)

I kept dousing myself in decontam fluid, determined to take the "large volume" recommendation to heart.

I felt my short-range connection to the drones drop. It didn't necessarily mean that they had been hacked. It happened randomly sometimes.

(The drones have half-assed, slapdash software that breaks in creative, unpredictable situations that I never could have imagined.) (GiDeon management saw internal criticisms with the core functionality of their product and prioritized other things.)

Still, I ran for cover on the other side of a Bonemelter tank.

The armed drones fired at me and sent chunks of shrapnel into the air. The pulse weapons hit my left arm, torso, and leg. Okay, definitely a hack.

I fought for control over two different channels.

The drones flew directly at my head for a killshot. I hit the ground. The drones couldn't change directions in midair quickly enough, so the first drones missed but three more dove toward me.

I spotted the hack.

I shoved to my feet and hit my maximum speed.

I'd been trying to keep track of the drones via the cameras and my scan, but a drone that I hadn't paid attention to whipped around the corner from behind a pile of boxes and cracked me in the head. I fell backward.

I was dizzy and my ears rang. The blunt force could have killed a human. The drones hit me with their onboard weapons while I was down.

Hostiles Two and Three—both free of foam and conscious, apparently—fired energy weapons at me and hit me in the torso again.

I squeezed myself between a gap in two piles of boxes. My organic vision went white again.

I found the correct frequency, secured it, and took control of the drones again. My organic vision began to return, mostly in the middle. The outside looked white still. Uh, I hoped I hadn't suffered too much brain damage. I'd already had enough of it at the corporation.

The code that I had used to secure the drones came from the next key I'd generated, so if the Hostiles knew the seed I'd used, the drones were vulnerable to being hacked again.

The drones flew in a new attack pattern around Hostiles Two and Three. I ordered knee shots.

I ordered one drone to break off from the main group and fire its pulse weapons against the weak point of the tank. The drone hit its maximum speed and struck the tank. I expected the tank to rupture but nothing happened, so I used the portal device to put a tiny hole in the side of the tank. The tank burst open. The secondary containment unit filled with Bonemelter. My drone died.

I was soaked in decontam fluid, my ruined clothes stuck to my disgusting body, and my boots were full of liquid. I had a gash in my back, burns from energy blasts, and only one arm, not even the one with Code Breaker. I'd wedged myself between two stacks of boxes full of toxins. The closest thing I had to a friend had rejected me. I felt terrible.

Why did humans create constructs that experience a stress response in situations that required clear thinking? If my brain wasn't in crisis mode, I would be a lot better at my stupid job.

At least the emergency evac alarm had turned off. I hadn't noticed when, exactly. I'd been busy.

I put on an obscure piece of music that was so pretentious that no human would be able to stand it. I loved it.

I had already listened to it 127 times in a row, but I enjoyed the repetition. It must have been my slapshot neural wiring. I mean my slipshod neural wiring. Gah, I'll fix that later.

(It was Igoygab's Xuěfēi Electronic Suite No. 825 in F locrian XCS+1044 IV. Gigue from the EmblemHyral corpus, performed by Lei Fan.) (Due to the nature of my work under GiDeon, I have occasionally encountered humans who say that they have listened to EmblemHyral. According to the feed's listener data, though, there are literally only two listeners who have heard Movement IV. (I mean, excluding Lei Fan.) Me, who's replayed it more than 127 times, and one other person who got three minutes in and then gave up. It might be the person who threw their copy into a dumping ground behind a debt collections facility, fifty corporate years ago. I picked it up six cycles ago while I was jury-rigging the vehicle's nav system.)

I allowed myself several seconds to appreciate the music. It was nice to have a constant companion through my tumultuous and isolated life.

Once I was calm, I tried to come up with a plan.

Since Moiety was a giant torus, and since the portals preserved absolute orientation, I had the opportunity to get rid of all the Hostiles at once. I just had to do the math.

I started running calculations as a background process.

I squeezed my way out from the boxes and moved toward a tank of acid where I would have a visual of Hostile Two. She was in a tactically superior position above, on the catwalk.

Hostile One had been responsible for the drone hack, which disturbed me. If they were an augmented human who was able to rip my drones from me, they might be able to use that information to work out the codes that protected my mind.

As I flipped through surveillance cameras I didn't locate them. They must have survived the foam incident, but I wasn't sure where they had gone. I spotted them with my organic vision, though, scoping out the spilled Bonemelter.

I shoved the portal device in my bag. It was hot.

I ran toward the hostile from behind. Hostile One had enough time to turn before I body-slammed them into the secondary containment unit at speed. Hostile One fell into Bonemelter. I caught myself on the edge of the platform. I did not fall in. I watched Hostile One sink into steaming liquid. I hauled myself back up.

I checked in on the three dumbasses who had tried to switch off the klaxon. When the fighting started, they'd hunkered down with a mixture of fear and confusion.

I'd dumped a lot of flammable liquids. My risk assessment warned me if the fumes found an ignition source, the air could ignite. I didn't have the bandwidth to parse the level of danger. The ventilation drew up most of the fumes, away from the ground, so I backburnered the warning.

My threat assessment module spiked.

Hostile One stood up in the Bonemelter, the liquid in the containment unit at chest height. The hostile shot me in the face.

I fell backward. As I almost died, I reflected on how Bonemelter's reputation for melting bones might only have applied to normal humans' bones. If so, that pretty much confirmed my hunch that Hostile One might not be a normal human.

~~~

A/N: Thank you for reading! Votes and comments are appreciated.