Chapter Text
Dr. Ratthi left alive. Two weeks later, we received a communication buoy from Preservation. I'd read it as soon as we received it. Brig frowned at the message projected on the display surface he had in the cubby in the dining room.
Gefford and Chama were finishing up breakfast at the main table. For different reasons, they both knew I was a construct. The other hands, who were generally wrong about me, had already left for the field. I was in the living room, skulking.
Brig spoke in that raised tone he used when he wanted me to hear him. I heard him just fine without the tone, but it told me he wanted my feedback. "We got the contract from Preservation. They also said constructs were legal citizens in their territory and if a construct was owned, the owner would be treated as the construct's guardian by Preservation law. Anyone know what that means?"
I did not, so I said nothing. Chama shrugged. Gefford didn't react. Brig grimaced. "Well, they included an attachment of their laws. It's long. Skulk, can you read this? I know you do better when things are written."
"I have read it," I answered from the other room, "but I don't understand it." It was just a bunch of words in sequence, like when Sang tried to tell me about soil structure or Brig about topline breeding or Chama about how to make biscuits. There were some things I couldn't hang onto in my head and although it was getting better now that Brig had switched a lot of things to combat metaphors, that only went so far.
It was frustrating that humans learned things so quickly. Even Cookie learned things easier than I did, although admittedly the things she had to learn were very simple. (As far as that went, most humans were decades old; I was a few months. It was still frustrating.) Brig had walked me through how to train her in so many patient, repeated steps that I'd wondered if he was training me instead of her. I'd never seen him show anyone else how to do things, so maybe he was always like that.
"Yeah, I don't either," Brig said. "I just don't want to get there and find out they're going to try to confiscate you or something."
Chama said, "He could stay here."
Brig said, "He could."
"I want to go with you," I said petulantly, still lurking in the other room. I knew Chama wanted me to stay to keep Bravara safe, but this whole Preservation thing agitated me. Couldn't we just find other customers, ones that didn't know what I was? Ones that, when Brig bragged to them about me being a Combat SecUnit, had the usual Plestead reaction of 'Oh, that sounds cool, what is it?' instead of 'Which model? Where did you rent it? What about this discrepancy that indicates the governor module isn't working?'
There was no way I was letting Brig go there alone where they might talk to him about me. I might not understand the legalese, but I could and did comprehend the meaning behind calling out the construct bit specifically. The issue was a target, but I couldn't figure out how to shoot it down.
"Alright," Brig said agreeably. "Settles that. I'd rather have him with me so you guys can handle things here, anyway."
Chama stood and began to gather up the last of the dishes with brusque movements. Her lips were tight. I felt bad because she didn't want me to go. If there was a fight here and I missed it, I'd feel really bad. Partly because I'd missed a fight, but mostly because she'd be disappointed or dead and I didn't want either of those things to happen. But if Brig went alone and they told him about me, then I'd have to leave forever, which was worse.
Brig said, "I'll get Jemma to take a look at this legal stuff before we go. Just in case."
We didn't need to go the space station that belonged to the Preservation Alliance (uncreatively named Preservation Station) so we didn't. We took the twenty-four head of bison that had been paid for down to the (equally uncreatively named) planet of Preservation, to the coordinates we'd been directed to. We were asked to list our crew complement, so we did: Brig, me. I didn't know enough about Preservation's (or any place's) standard practices to know if any of this was discrepant. I was nervous anyway.
We were supposed to be met by Dr. Ratthi and his two SecUnits (or maybe they were someone else's SecUnits). Jemma had explained to Brig and I that on Preservation, constructs were considered citizens, but they still had a guardian. I'd been unable to understand the difference between an owned person and a citizen, much less that between a guardian and an owner.
For example, on Plestead (or Eudeka), I was owned, which meant someone was supposedly in charge of me as much as any AdminSystem. On Preservation, what Jemma described sounded like the guardian served the same function. Now technically in my case it wasn't like they could actually control me, but no one knew that so what did it matter?
Brig was doing a lot of frowning as we closed on the coordinates. (So was I.) "Are they only going to have three people meet us?"
"Two of them are SecUnits."
"Can SecUnits manage cattle?"
"Not as default." I suppose they could if someone downloaded the right modules into them. Cattle management was a fringe activity. There were very few operations for it, which was why the people on Plestead found it profitable. But since no one on Plestead (other than maybe Brig, depending on how you looked at it) was using SecUnits to run cattle, the chances of someone having created a program for a SecUnit to do it seemed astronomically low. As I knew from personal experience, trying to learn things directly (without a module) was a tedious, slow, and error-prone process. No one would do that unless they absolutely had to.
"Well, then that's going to make three people who don't know their ass from a hole in the ground, and then there's us."
I'd been learning a lot of local euphemisms and interesting curse phrases while on Bravara, especially once I started talking to people. They were easy for me to learn, because they functioned like code: when X, use Y. I didn't need to understand a conceptual framework behind it. Most of them were nonsensical intensifiers, anyway. Many of them gave me a feeling of humor, either to use them or just to hear them. This one was funny, but mainly because SecUnits didn't have anal orifices and I didn't think Brig knew that. I smiled and made a quiet huffing sound that passed as laughter.
Brig asked, "Why are they being so strange about this?"
I decided to pretend that was rhetorical. I shrugged.
Brig directed the bot pilot to circle the site so he could see the layout of the pens and put us down in the best spot. We could see Ratthi and the two units waiting for us, tracking our flight path. There were several buildings where other people could be hiding, not to mention screening devices and other methods of hiding. The freighter didn't have shit for scanners (that was why I'd wanted to steal them from the raider ship, among other reasons; excuse me, 'take them from the raider ship'), so there could have been a whole army down there from what I could tell.
Brig grumbled, "If the payment hadn't already cleared, I'd think they were ripping us off." Then he looked over at me. He clearly had the same wonky risk assessment going on that I was getting. "Do you think they want to steal you or something?"
"Am I worth that much?" As far as I could tell, he'd bought me for somewhere around 10-20% of the value of his bison breeding stock. He had a lot of bison, though, and I was only seeing the herds after he'd sold off somewhere around 40% of them. Plus no one ever thought Combat SecUnits would need wealth management skills. I was operating on the principles 'money is valuable' and 'more money is more valuable'. That was the extent of it.
Brig pressed his lips together. "Well, you are to me, but I don't know that you would be to them."
Usually my strategic planning modules default to imagining the enemy is intelligent and well-informed. Brig's comment prompted me to change that setting and rerun a few scenarios. I offered, "There is a device called a combat override module that can be inserted into the neck of a standard SecUnit. It allows immediate interruption of SecSystem oversight and turns control of the unit over to whoever is designated in the module. It does not work on combat units. But this is a freehold world and Dr. Ratthi's experience was with standard SecUnits. He might be mis-informed and believe this is a way he could take control of me."
"Huh. They could want Lil Sis, too," he said as we came in for a landing at the place he'd marked for the bot pilot. "But there's nothing fancy about this ship. Maybe they want both. Can you take out two SecUnits and some guy?"
"Yes." Duh. I was still going to be cautious, but I knew my abilities. I was not some freshie straight out of the box. Because of which, I pointed out, "If there is foul play, then they will not face us with 'two SecUnits and some guy'. They will have lied about how many are meeting us and come with a force they think is sufficient to overwhelm us. They will also target you first, thinking I will surrender if you're threatened."
And the SecUnits could turn out to be combat-rated or modded, they could have air cover and a bunch of other factors that ran through my head but didn't seem worth mentioning. (I might not have financial modules, but I'm loaded with combat stuff.) It would only agitate him, and anyway, the motivation didn't hold up. Why would they bring that many assets to bear for one CSU? If they wanted me dead, they could just bomb us from orbit, but I hadn't seen anything in orbit that looked capable of that.
Brig snorted and got up from his seat. "If that happens, you fight them like hell and let me take care of myself. If I'm alive at the end of it, good. If not … been nice knowing you." He patted me as he went by. "And know that I've died after seeing Bekka's killers left to rot in the sun."
One good thing about Brig not knowing how Combat SecUnits worked is that he didn't realize what a glaring target he was as my owner. The bad thing was, anyone fighting us who did know how CSUs worked would go straight after him. If they got him, they really would need to bomb me from orbit, because it would take a while for me to calm down after that. Maybe threatening Cookie might snap me out of it. The whole thing angered me just thinking about it.
Anyway, useless thoughts. I turned them off and followed him. We'd landed, the artificial gravity had eased off to be replaced with natural, the engines had spun down, and the bison in the cargo area were shifting around uneasily at the change. Time to walk into the trap.
The ramp extended from the hatch. The second the hatch was open even a centimeter, I got a ping from one of the SecUnits. I ignored it. I was a combat unit. Under normal operation, I would only respond to pings from allied units and AdminSystem (and any clients who had been authorized). I wasn't a conversational buddy for random SecUnits on backwater worlds. Or anywhere.
There were signals flying around though, which I'd expected, but I still had to brace myself for it. Bravara had nothing, except every now and then I'd get signal leakage from someone's device or the MedSystem or the occasional bot talking into the ether. There was no feed network there the way I'd been accustomed to on my assignments. Brig had a little short-range thing in the main house, but it depended on how many walls were between you and the transmitter, and if there was lightning or other ionic activities within a certain distance. Meaning most times I couldn't hear it anywhere but the house.
There had been a network on Eudeka, but Parts had it throttled and partly jammed in her shop for reasons I never asked about and she never explained. That was back before I was in the habit of talking to people. I'd been able to access public sector stuff and that was it, even with my impressive hacking abilities.
Here and now, there was no throttling. I was catching clear, strong signals of a private feed channel between the two SecUnits and Dr. Ratthi, who was wearing an interface. It was encrypted. I immediately targeted the human's interface since that was far easier to break and eavesdrop on than the SecUnits themselves. Also, I'd had the unpleasant experience before of attempted counter-hacking through the head of a hostile construct. That was when my throat, lower face, and ears were torn off in a clever but unsuccessful attempt to separate my head from my torso while I was almost fatally distracted. No thank you. Not again.
In the meantime, Brig marched down the ramp. I stayed where I was and waited to see if he was interesting bait. If the SecUnits snatched him, I could go to the control panel and tell Lil Sis to fly away, thus proving he had no hold over me and increasing the chance they would let him go unharmed. My biggest fear was that Ratthi would talk to him.
The encryption broke. On the feed, Ratthi was saying, It was a very low-tech world. I don't think so. I couldn't scroll back up and see what he was answering, but I probably didn't need to.
Crap. That was the one with a feed name of SecUnit. Could SecUnits curse? We probably all had the same language module. I'd been doing it from the beginning, but I'd never heard a SecUnit do it. Then again, I'd only heard Combat SecUnits do it when we were cut off from AdminSystem and had no other way to communicate than talking. Maybe it was something we all thought but none of us said, which still begged the question of why it was cursing on a feed channel to a human.
Why 'crap'? Ratthi asked, but Brig was off the ramp now, interrupting any reply. Ratthi moved forward with a hand extended in greeting. The SecUnits, who were the ones I was watching, weren't moving forward to take him hostage. They weren't moving at all.
Brig gripped Ratthi's hand and clapped him on the shoulder a few times. I could tell from his voice that he had a big smile on his face. He didn't smile that big for strangers unless it was for show. "Good to see you again, Dr. Ratthi!"
He's attacking you, SecUnit observed neutrally on the feed. If the SecUnit thought Brig was attacking, then why did it do nothing? If it did not believe that, then why would it say anything? My module that flags things as discrepant was waffling around trying to make up its mind about this SecUnit, after picking up a grand total of four words from it. That was discrepant all by itself.
It's okay, Ratthi responded. "Yes, it's good to see you, too. Let me introduce you to my companions. This is SecUnit and this is Three." Brig took a half step forward, hand moving out, before Ratthi intercepted him. "No. Excuse me. They don't- They don't shake hands."
"Right. Okay." Brig was used to being the one in charge, who set the social conventions. Now he was on the back foot, so he looked between the two of them awkwardly.
Skulk? SecUnit said into the feed. You're really living up to your name, aren't you?
Chance that it knew I was monitoring their encrypted, private channel: 85% Which meant there was a not insignificant 15% chance it hadn't detected me and was just saying that to try to get me to reveal myself. Like the ping. Which they knew I was here physically. I was in the corridor on the ship, just inside the hatch. The human couldn't see me, but unless the SecUnits were blind, they could. There was also a fucking surveillance drone about four meters above the hatch with a clear line of sight to me. I couldn't tell whose it was without battling for control of it, which was hostile engagement. I wasn't going to do that with Brig in the line of fire.
Regardless of what my discrepancy module was saying about this SecUnit, I told my strategic planner it was either not a standard SecUnit or it was being puppeted by someone else who was successfully shielding their signal from me (or it could be both). Response time would clarify that, as humans were slow enough for me to notice the lag right away. Also, whatever was going on with the one unit was likely echoed by the other.
During this, Ratthi said brightly, "How was the trip?"
Useless chit-chat. I could ignore that. The planning module was telling me to gather more information now, while the situation was still more or less in my favor ('in my favor' meaning nothing bad had happened yet). Into the feed, I said in my best official voice, This contact is unauthorized.
The response was immediate, meaning it was coming from the SecUnit, not a puppeteer. We know you're rogue, asshole. So are we.
Brig reoriented to Ratthi. "Fine, fine. The bison are still mildly sedated, but they're all on their feet and ready to go. It will take most of a day to shake that off. They should stay confined for their own safety during that."
Why are you calling it an asshole? Ratthi hissed in the feed. Don't provoke it. And somehow, the human managed to say to Brig, "Yes, you mentioned that before."
It's true, SecUnit said.
That was fair. I didn't argue it. I also did not feel provoked. They hadn't touched Brig or taken so much as a step toward him. The drone dropped a meter. If I had both eyes, I could jump out and grab it faster than it could fly away. With only one and the helmet cameras being what they were, if it took evasive maneuvers, I'd likely miss it.
They (probably) didn't know I only had one eye, though. The one that was busted was cosmetically repaired. You had to be pretty close and I had to have my face visible for anyone to tell it didn't work. Which meant they were putting the drone in range on purpose, either to test my irritability, to show they trusted me, or both.
Can you prove it? I asked.
That you're an asshole? That was SecUnit, still with the lightning-fast response time. You ignored the ping and hacked our feed instead. That's an asshole move, asshole.
Meanwhile, Brig was saying, "I'd like to get them unloaded as quickly as possible. Do you have any hands here?" He looked around, past the enclosures and farm buildings. There was no one else in sight. From my point of view, that was great. I could understand how Brig found it to be inconvenient. He was an older human. Moving fences and driving cattle were beyond his abilities.
"No," Ratthi said, "but we have a holding pasture over here." He gestured distractedly, probably having trouble keeping up with the feed and the verbal conversation at the same time.
Given the hostility from the unit, I canceled the direction of inquiry from informationally asking if they could prove if I was rogue and redirected it to something equally hostile from my point of view: No, I told SecUnit, that you're rogue.
Ha. No. I am not letting some asshole Combat SecUnit poke around in my head to check my settings. Fuck that. You're going to have to trust me on this one.
Yeah, well, I expected that. If it was rogue, I should be tearing it apart already – if I weren't rogue myself or didn't have conflicting orders that superseded standard protocol. If they really were rogue, then, What is your motivation here? I couldn't imagine they cared about bovine genetic diversity or whatever reason Preservation had for buying our bison. The possibility that they were both heavily-modded and/or combat-rated was hovering around in the background of my strategic plan, making me tense.
My priority is for all my humans to survive, SecUnit said.
Dr. Ratthi is your client? I responded. Rogues don't have real clients. We just had pretend clients, people we'd set up as clients but weren't really.
What is Brig to you?
A peculiar thing about the feed is that it conveys emotion pretty well. I was getting theirs – SecUnit was tense, a little fear, a lot of irritation, very elevated background processing. Ratthi was exasperated. Three was giving me nothing, which was impressive but I was keeping my attention on the one that was talking. I don't know what they were getting from me before (cool, professional detachment, I hope, but more likely the same tension and irritation as they were giving off), but when it mentioned Brig, my emotions surged.
I hadn't expected that. For a moment, I was hugely and irrationally angry to have my snarky dig about SecUnit's fake client turned around on me. I read SecUnit's question as a double-bind threat. Either Brig was my real client, I was faking being rogue for strategic reasons, and I was fucked because they would take Brig hostage after all, or Brig was only a pretend client, I was a rogue protecting him for personal reasons, and they could still take him hostage to get to me. I felt too strongly to imagine any other option. All I saw was threats.
"Whoa." That was from Ratthi. He was staring up at the hatch like he expected me to come lunging out of it.
Brig, the only one oblivious to the feed conversation, turned and looked up the ramp. "Yep, Skulk's up there. He can help us with unloading."
What? Oh yeah, the last thing Brig knew, he and Ratthi were talking about getting the bison out of the ship. I took one measured step forward, into the hatch and the light.
Ratthi cleared his throat nervously. He could see me now. The two SecUnits were suspiciously silent. A quick scan showed they'd hopped to another frequency and were talking on a different encrypted channel. This one didn't include Ratthi. (As an aside, no non-rogue unit would ditch communication with its client like that.) No way I was going to try to hack a couple obviously non-standard units directly, by reason of previous experiences already mentioned. It didn't matter anyway, they knew where my weakness was.
I knew where theirs was, too. I started down the ramp. That turned out to be a trigger.
SecUnit stepped forward, grabbed Dr. Ratthi and yanked him behind it. In a few quick steps, Three moved up parallel to SecUnit. To get to Ratthi, I'd have to go through both of them. (But seriously – if I wanted their human, I'd just shoot him from here, or jump over them, or destroy them both and then kill the human. It didn't matter. We were here to deliver bison to their human. He was not an active target. I was just trying to force them back into communication, coming closer to talk to them with my mouth if I had to.)
But seeing all this motion, Brig backpedaled fast. He didn't have a weapon on him, which was for the best because the situation was teetering dangerously close to escalation. I kept my arms down and gunports closed. I moved until I'd mirrored the other units – client behind me, real or not. He was on the base of the ramp. I was on the ground. "Return to the ship, Brig."
Ratthi had regained his footing. He was holding both hands up, palms toward us. "Please! This doesn't have to go this way. We just wanted to talk. To let you know you had options." Ratthi was looking at me, not Brig. That was confusing. Why the fuck was he talking to me?
Brig might not have known. "Options?" he asked in an outraged tone, like he wanted to stay and argue. I'd heard him move a few steps and then stop. Go ON, Brig! I thought it so fiercely Ratthi flinched from whatever went through the feed. I hadn't bothered to close it with him in case his units rejoined it. SecUnit tilted its head a few degrees, like it was curious about something.
Ratthi looked past me and said, "We know the governor module has been deactivated. We're fine with that. Really, we are! Here's proof." He waved at the two SecUnits in front of him.
And with that, Ratthi had said the magic words. In my resulting moment of rage, one of my gunports clicked open. I should have killed this human on Plestead when I had the chance and just taken the fallout. I frantically started running scenarios for how to get out of this situation as fast as possible while minimizing failure modes. The best thing seemed to be to turn around, grab Brig, carry him into the ship, then fly back to Bravara and somehow pretend none of this happened. Like that was ever going to work.
Besides, my gunport opening caused both SecUnits to raise their arms and level their weapons. Of the two weapons each had, one was pointed at me, one was pointed past me. At Brig. I was less than unintimidated by the guns at me. Not so about the ones pointing at my old, frail, fragile human owner. If I'd had any sense of fair play, I would have thought that was a low blow, but I didn't so it just came off as a logical strategic tactic to stand me down.
With an effort of will, I shut my gunport. I don't think I am properly describing how hard it is for a Combat SecUnit to decide not to fight, especially in this situation, with weapons pointed at me, with a mission objective in danger, with my emotions so haywire I could barely see. If you've read everything that came before, you know I have been in some situations. I have never been so jangled up inside. It was hard, but I did it. All I could think was if I fought, Brig died.
Behind me, Brig asked, "What the hell's a governor module?"
Fuck me sideways. Fuck me under the great god's bed. Fuck me in a new hole. Fuck me underground. Fuck me on my mother's grave. Fuck me with a rusty spanner. Every collected fornication-related failure mode euphemism from the last few months came spilling through my head. Running away wouldn't do a damn bit of good. He'd heard. He'd understood. He was asking the question.
Dr. Ratthi did a double-take. "Wh-What's a … You don't know what a governor module is?"
I decided to try words, because nothing else was working and I was all kinds of upset and desperate by now. As always, communication was my last resort. "No, he doesn't! Now shut the fuck up!" My gunports opened again involuntarily (both of them this time), but my arms were still down. SecUnit flinched. Three did not. No one fired, because we all had nerves of steel. We also all knew the cost of one definite wrong move. Humans were so squishy.
Ratthi shut the fuck up. (Every now and then, humans show surprising levels of intelligence.) Over the feed, he asked his units, How is this possible? He has a Combat SecUnit working for him and he's not even aware governor modules exist? SecUnit?
SecUnit responded slowly. I … I got nothing.
I yelled onto the feed, He's stupid, alright? He's my stupid human owner who doesn't know any better and thinks I'm totally under his control and I don't want him to know and he can't know or he'll get rid of me and I can't let that happen! Ever!
The SecUnit that hadn't said anything yet posed a reasonable question: If he doesn't know what a governor module is, what mechanism does he think he has for keeping you under his control?
I don't know! It's not like I can ask him! I didn't want to ever see a fake smile on Brig's face, like I had on Parts', when the human figured out I wasn't what they wanted me to be. For Parts, I wasn't going to be some tame, peaceable repair-bot. For Brig, I wasn't going to be some obedient attack-beast under his control.
Sure, I did what he told me to anyway, but that was because I wanted to. Just like I'd been fine with fixing things in Parts' shop and not killing her customers. But like I've said from the beginning, if I was fanatical about anything (even more than killing people), it was protecting my ability to make these decisions for myself. If Brig knew he wasn't really in control, then he wasn't my owner or my client and we weren't anything to each other.
I was so upset I ignored Brig's footsteps down the ramp and this time it was me that nearly jumped out of my skin when he touched me on the elbow. (I actually made a startled noise. That was embarrassing.) Once I settled, he ran his hand down my armored forearm, over the pop-up plate for the gunport, over the place where I'd etched 'You are more than the sum of your parts' when the sticker had worn off. I felt like I understood a little more of that saying than I had when she'd applied the sticker – not all of it yet, but more. His touch was gentle like Parts' had been. He didn't have the leverage to push it closed with a single hand, but I didn't require it. I shut it. I shut the other one, too.
He looked over at the two units and their human. His look must have been pointed, or maybe there was some conversation still going on between the units on their encrypted channel. They both lowered their arms at the same time. Gunports clicked shut.
Brig reached up and took hold of the edge of my deflection plate and shook it lightly. I sagged. It was all falling apart. He was going to ask questions. He was going to find out. I didn't even have the energy to run some more strategic scenarios to guide me on what to do. I was fucked.
"I don't know what's going on here," Brig said kindly, "but I do know that something is going on. What is it, ya big lunk?"
I wished I was programmed for deception. I could lie, of course I could lie and in a way I'd been lying since he bought me, but it wasn't easy and I didn't want to. He was going to find out, from them if not from me. At least from me … I don't know. It felt better to be the one telling. "I don't have to follow your orders. I never have."
He looked at me blankly. His hand dropped away from my shoulder. "Okay."
I turned my head, cleared my face plate, and focused on him with my one good eye. "You knew?" Parts must have told him in the other room. If he'd known this whole time, then he wouldn't send me away. He was okay with it!
"Nope."
Oh. Guess not. My emotions dived again. Fuck it, I was just going to confess everything. "I enjoy killing. I don't do it just because you ask. I do it because I want to. I accepted your offer because I wanted to kill the people you told me about. And there's nothing, no governor module, no mission directive, no protocol that can stop me from doing whatever I want to do, whenever I want to do it." My brows were pulling together. My lips felt quivery. Something was happening to my face, like I was about to or already having one of those crying breakdowns. But units don't weep.
"Yeah, okay," he said reassuringly. He still wasn't getting it. "That doesn't explain why you're upset. What are you afraid of happening right now?"
"I'm afraid you're going to tell me to leave and never come back!" There, I'd said it! It was out there. It would happen now. It was over.
Brig's voice got emotional, too. He shook his head. "No. Oh, no, Skulk. You did a big thing for me, such a big thing. Maybe it wasn't big for you, but it was for me. I couldn't get a whole planet full of people to do anything about what happened to my wife, my dog, my people. But you did. And I owe you, forever, because of that. I owe you anything I have, Skulk. Anything."
He was quiet for a moment as something dawned on him. "You're saying all this time, you've stayed because you wanted to?" His eyes watered and he smiled. "I was doing everything I could to see you were happy. I guess it was working."
"I was happy," I said brokenly. "I am happy." I didn't sound happy. I sounded wretched. Whatever. Maybe I needed a new vocal emulator.
"I am not turning you out, whether you've got a deactivated whatsit or not. And if you're over there getting your jollies off a … killing raiders, you know?" He jogged my shoulder and spoke as though it were an aside just between the two of us, "I know how frustrated you were you didn't get to kill every single one of 'em."
Brig grinned and laughed softly at that. I'd given him a full after-action briefing like he was AdminSystem. It was both to practice talking and make sure he knew the information, because we were part of the same System now. Even if he was human. "I know!" he said. "And if that's what you want, well, we'll find you some cattle thieves and raiders and whatnot every now and then to keep you happy. Galaxy's full of villains and people better off dead. We'll find you some."
It was going to be okay. I was safe now.