#finally. secunit strap

[doomcunt]

wanna go for a walk? ❤️

[ineedlelittlespace]

21, 23, and 26 for writer asks?

Hello, friend! Thank you for asking! 🥰

21. Share your favorite piece of dialogue

“Ironic,” Murderbot repeated in a mutter. That was another one of those nebulous terms that appeared a lot in media, but which it hadn’t quite bothered to fully integrate into its vocabulary. It folded its arms, happy to pick at something that was not its own emotions. “Are you sure that means what you think it means?” “Yes. I looked it up,” Three said pointedly, its lips tipping upwards as it left the walkway to wade through the grass. 

From "The Tree That Owns Itself". Writing MB and Three at a later point in their lives where they're comfortable enough to bicker gives me great joy.

23. Share the final version of a sentence or paragraph you struggled with. What about it was challenging? Are you happy with how it turned out?

As the spotlight shifts off of it, Secunit relaxes a little further. Gurathin watches as it hesitates in the doorway, its bag still hitched over its shoulder with both hands white-knucking the straps. It purses its lips as it considers.  Finally, it hangs it carefully on one of the hooks by the doorway and turns away, putting its back to the escape wrapped up in that little satchel and its face to its…friends? Clients? Whatever it’ll claim them as, Gurathin supposes. Secunit catches him observing, then, and its hand lifts in an insulting gesture. A fairly mild one, but insulting nonetheless. Gurathin offers it a smirk in return. Some things, at least, seem to be consistent regardless of Secunit’s mental state. That shouldn’t be comforting, but somehow, it is. This is good. This is…progress. 

From "Enough." To be honest, I struggled with most of this fic since the narrative I had in mind was a series of little moments, not necessarily a smooth one-shot. Knitting them all together, then finding a way to end it (e.g. with this paragraph) took a lot longer than I planned, but I'm happy with it now!

26. If you had to choose one, what was THE most satisfying writing moment of your year?

Probably finishing "Trust Returned." It isn't the longest or the most complicated of the fics I've written this year, but it is my favorite since it gave me an excuse to ramble about the Murderbot & Mensah relationship in fic form. It's the fic I was ultimately the happiest with for this year.

Writer Asks

[torpidgilliver]

reclaimers’ rights (or, the law of salvage)

first chapter of a murderbot fic i probably wont continue under the cut. written for whumptober (originally the idea came for day 20: prisoner exchange, but it sort of wound up not fitting that or anything. im calling it day 25: lost voice just so i can offload it)

It was a treasure buried in a trash heap. More scrap than salvage, but not completely FUBAR—well worth saving. The crew had brought it aboard, all that they could find of the original structure, and stored it with as much care as they took with all of their big finds.

"D'you think Scrappy'd mind if I gave the SecUnit one of its arms?" The question has to fight through an oversized bite of half-thawed soy dumpling to escape Ramirez's mouth. He swallows and adds, "Just as a loaner, obviously. Even Scrappy's shortest arm is going to unbalance it a bit, but it's not super helpful with just the one."

Hawthorne shrugs. "Scrappy doesn't much mind anything, but the SecUnit might."

On cue, the polite tone flows through the feed: Your contract prohibits modification or vandalism of your SecUnit. Violations will be punished by a fine of or equivalent to—

"We don't have a contract," Hawthrone interrupts mildly, not bothering to look up from their meal.

"And we don't have any fucking money, either." Maida punctuates her statement by letting her tray clatter onto the table, then thumping heavily into her seat. "Thanks to you, Myles."

Ramirez's thoughtful pout becomes a petulant one. "Hey, it's not like I dumped all our cash for no reason. Mooney needed new stabilizers! Or would you rather sleep strapped to your bunk, and take a shit into a—"

“Not at the table.” Hawthorne doesn’t have to raise their voice to command the attention of their crewmates. “It’s too early, and my caffeine hasn’t kicked in yet.”

The two have the good sense to look abashed, for nearly two full seconds. Then Ramirez spears another dumpling on his chopsticks, shovels it into his mouth, and barely chews before swallowing. "Anyway," he continues, "we got a good haul on 'B2. Once we offload it, we’ll be back in the red again.”

Maida snorts derisively. “That’s ‘in the black,’ dumbass.”

Hawthorne raises their cup of burnt coffee with a sigh. “I can’t believe your parents didn’t murder you both in childhood.”

“Not for lack of trying!” 

While the spirited breakfast conversation continues in the galley, elsewhere the mood is more mellow. In the spare bunkroom designated for overflow storage, Scrappy is singing. It wasn’t originally constructed with musicality in mind—or, at least, no significant portion of it was. It’s a chimeric assemblage of functional bits rescued from otherwise nonfunctional bots, and it’s not common practice to bestow personality upon product. Nevertheless, sometime between Maida installing the heatsink taken from the home maintenance drone and Ramirez attaching the fifth arm, Scrappy found a song in itself. The tune is sharp, as with no vocal speakers it makes due with the catalog of beeps, clicks, hums, and whistles that its parts can produce. It also hasn’t yet gotten the hang of the concept of varying verse. The result is seven distinct notes, composed into a sixteen measure-long chorus. Repetitive and a little grating for listeners with organic ears, but still undeniably cheerful. 

It sings as it works, its cluster of arms sorting salvaged junk neatly into crates. The concept of taking pride in a task is a bit too abstract for Scrappy to process, but it feels an analog of satisfaction as it seals up the final box. It announces task complete into the general feed, and is treated to an acknowledged:standby from Hawthorne. 

This is the point where Scrappy would ordinarily begin making rounds of the ship, picking up loose objects and sorting them into the appropriate receptacles, (Its crew disagrees with it sometimes on which receptacles are appropriate. Maida has tried to ban it from her bunkroom on multiple occasions, as it holds the unshakeable belief that the plush fauna-shaped object she carelessly leaves tangled in her sheets belongs in the galley storage unit.) but it has self-assigned a new task to its typical processes. 

Scrappy pings the second member of its cohort of two, and sends, query:status?

The 9.1 second-long delay on the response might concern a more complex bot, but Scrappy takes the replied status=optimal on its face. It has no reason not to; despite her best efforts, Maida hasn’t managed to teach it about the nuances of sarcasm. With the registration of task:verify status=complete, Scrappy exits the storeroom, folding in its arms and ducking its head to fit through the hatchway. 

“Besides the usual supplies and a new card for the synchronizer, is there anything else we need?” Hawthorne pushes their breakfast tray away to lean one elbow on the table. “And I do mean need, as in cannot leave port without. A download pass for whatever the newest survival game is doesn’t qualify.”

Ramirez half-rises from his seat to reach Hawthorne’s surrendered tray and starts transferring leftovers onto his own plate. “The SecUnit needs a new cell pack,” he announces. “The one it’s got is leaking, it can’t hold a charge for more than a few hours. Its cardiac pump isn’t looking so great either, but I’ll have to put together a new one from whatever I can find. And if we want it to be able to shoot stuff, I’m going to have to replace the hinges in its weapon release.”

“And if we ever want to sleep without having nightmares, it needs a mask.” Maida shudders. “It’d be creepy enough with a whole human face. With what’s left, it looks like a monster.”

“It’s not its fault!” Ramirez points his chopsticks at Maida sternly. “You only think that it’s creepy because of that one horror movie.”

“Can you blame me?”

“Yes!”

“The SecUnit’s physical appearance isn’t a priority.” Once again, Hawthorne controls the conversation without any outward effort. “But if it’ll put you more at ease, Maida, maybe you can name it. That worked well enough with Scrappy.”

The aforementioned junk bot ambles into the galley at that moment. Two of its longer arms sweep across the table to collect Hawthorne’s and Maida’s empty plates, while Ramirez draws his close to protect his unfinished meal. 

“SecUnits don’t need names.” Maida sits back and fumbles in her jacket pocket for her package of nicotine gum. “It’s lucky that it’s not going in the sale pile with everything else we found.”

“Lucky!” Ramirez bounces in his seat. “That’s perfect, sib! Hey, SecUnit, Lucky! What d’you think?” 

The question is addressed to the open intercom on the far wall, but the response comes through the feed again: I’m sorry, I do not have enough information to process your request.

Hawthorne frowns and taps their fingernails against their mug. “Has it said anything apart from its stock phrases since we brought it onboard?”

“No.” Maida pops two tablets of gum into her mouth. “Not since I repaired its governor module. Honestly, that’s creepier than the face. I liked it better when it was swearing at me.”

“There’s probably a subroutine or something that can be switched off. Or however that works.”

“I’ll take a look again.” She pushes up from her seat. “Not like I have anything more interesting to do until we get to port.”

Ramirez pauses with the last dumpling halfway to his mouth. “You need any hardware help?” Maida shakes her head.

“I’m just going to fuck around a little and see what there is to see in its systems. I’ll tap you if I find something.” Hawthorne nods, Ramirez sees her off with a jovial salute, and Scrappy whistles the first few notes of its work song at her back. 

Maida takes the rungs of the ladder three at a time and drops the last few feet to the lower deck. The hold is a mess, mid-sized mountains of salvage and scrap peaking out of open crates in a defiant victory over Scrappy's inability to squeeze its bulky chassis down the ladder shaft. It's also sweltering hot, with the engines heating the far wall. She shrugs out of her jacket and ties the sleeves around her waist as she picks and kicks her way through the maze of junk that's fallen to the floor.

"When I'm done with you, you're going to have to make yourself useful," she announces as she approaches the slumped form in the corner. "You only need one arm to put shit in boxes."

They'd found the SecUnit buried beneath thirty feet of stone and slag on a condemned post-colonial planet. There was no telling how long it had been abandoned there, and when Ramirez had asked it—rhetorically, as he tended to ask the ship how it was doing and Scrappy whether it had any music recommendations—the apparently inert construct had ground out a halting "None of your fucking business" in retort.

It had been too heavy for the three of them to drag onto the hovercart themselves, and Scrappy wasn't really dexterous enough to be delicate; Most of the right leg had fallen off when it had hoisted the battered body out of the rubble. Ramirez had been confident that that would be a quick fix, and it was, just not a good one. There were a lot of proprietary little pieces that the crew just couldn't replicate with what they had on hand, and the ultimate result was that the SecUnit's leg was held together with an industrial tape cast. Ramirez was proud just to have gotten it (theoretically) mobile. Not that it was grateful.

I am a SecUnit, manufactured for exclusive use by the company and contracted clients. SecUnits serve the dual purpose of protecting both your employees and your investment. 

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. You weren't built to be a maintenance bot." Maida drops to her knees beside it and opens her toolsuite in the feed. "I wasn't built to be a scrapper, either, but you were listening in on us a minute ago. You're lucky to be anything at all, after whatever happened to you."

I am a SecUnit, manufactured for exclusive use by the company and con—

"Shut up," Maida tells it, more advice than admonishment. The flat feed voice aborts mid-syllable. "You were a SecUnit. Now you're, well." She sits her weight back against her feet. "Myles is right. You're just Lucky now."

During the mostly one-sided exchange, the SecUnit has staunchly refused to move a millimeter of any part of its body. When Maida uses its new name, though, its eyes cut sharply to her own. It doesn't have enough face left to glare at her, but she still gets the message.

"Don't look at me like that. The name wasn't my idea." 

She speaks gently, at least by her standards, but the SecUnit twitches as it averts its eyes. Maida cracks her gum thoughtfully.

"That shouldn't have set off the governor. Guess I need to adjust the sensitivity."  

It flinches again, and 'thoughtful' becomes 'skeptical.'

"Something's fucky," she announces. "Let me get in there and see if I can't find it."

With a sound between a rusty hinge and a snapping bone, the SecUnit rotates its jaw.

"You—" The flinch is pronounced this time, an unmistakable jolt. Maida feels a sympathy pang in spite of herself.

"Chill." She can't manage a reassuring tone, so she goes brusque instead. "I'll turn down the voltage, or whatever. Then you can get started pulling your stupid heavy weight around here."

The jaw grinds again, but the voice comes through the feed, all smooth customer service. You do not have the necessary qualifications to perform maintenance on this unit. Please submit your claim through the company to determine whether your warranty qualifies you for discounted repairs or replacements.

"I don't think whatever half-bankrupt contractor it was that used to own you would give enough of a shit to change your coolant." Maida opens a new worktable and taps the feed. "Let me in."

As a human, it's beyond Maida's ability to perceive the SecUnit's 0.7 second hesitation, but she can't miss the convulsion.

"Seriously." She cracks her gum at it. "I kinda feel sorry for you. It's sort of like a human being laid up in medical, huh?"

The eyes lock on hers again. Projectile weapon to her head, Maida would swear that nothing has genuinely frightened her since approaching her parent after getting kicked out of pre-vocational school. Still, though, she can't suppress a shudder.

Company-patented constructs are manufactured using cloned human tissue, it tells her, maintaining its polite tones in the most unnerving lecture Maida has ever gotten. However, unlike humans, constructs are incapable of free thought or sincere emotion. For the physical and mental wellbeing of company clients, personifying and/or bonding with your contracted SecUnit is strongly discouraged.

"Way afuckinghead of you. My mental wellbeing is already beyond saving." Maida shuffles through the mess of the SecUnit's archives, tracing back the path she'd taken to stitch up its corrupted software. "But I wasn't planning to invite you to movie night, anyway. You don't look like much of a media connoisseur."

"Fffffffuck you."

The whole upper body spasms. Maida smiles without humor.

"More of that," she tells it. "But not right now. Lucky, go to sleep and let me work."

The eyes don't have lids to close. Maida tracks Lucky's power down sequence by the dimming light behind its pupils.

[theres-no-protocol-for-this]

Down With the Ship

These were written for several whumptober prompts. Content warning: major character death.

An attack disabled ART’s engines. The second blast sent it spiraling into the atmosphere of a barely habitable planet. The crew had mere moments to strap in before the ship slammed at not-recommended speeds directly into the surface of this world, bulldozing its way through a forest before it finally came to a haphazard halt in the middle of it.

The attackers never even entered the atmosphere. Their signatures on the star map winked out within a matter of minutes. We hadn’t known they were coming, hadn’t been able to track them until they were practically touching our hull, and now they were gone — no wormhole required.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Tural muttered from their crash seat near ART’s communication control equipment.

In what was left of the feed, I pinged the transport and got back several thousand lines of errors I couldn’t even begin to interpret. I dumped them into storage before they could send my own systems spiraling. Despite ART’s desperate maneuvers to keep the crew safe and the relative protection of the crash seats, I had a jagged metal beam stuck in one arm and my left foot was completely missing.

Sparks of electricity danced briefly across one of the displays before it went dark. Another followed as the ship’s power supply dwindled. ART’s core had its own separate backup, but the equipment to which the transport was connected was dying all the same. Plunging ART into darkness and silence.

I reached for it in the feed, found the single interface that was directly attached to its core and thus still powered, and some smart part of ART flowed through it into my own brain. It was an unpleasant sensation, and ART’s huge so even this fragment took up all of my storage and needed more. I deleted my media files because what else could I do. If the final power supply failed, ART would die and that was unacceptable.

Cozy in here, the transport whispered inside my brain.

Meanwhile, Seth was standing next to my seat, examining the damage. Bruises marred his face, and he was limping and bleeding, but he was moving around so he was probably not about to die.

“Don’t move, SecUnit,” he said quietly.

I looked down and saw the second metal shard piercing my abdomen. “It’s not as bad as it looks. Minimal organics in there.”

“It may have nicked your power source.”

I started a diagnostic and shook my head. “Unlikely but I’ll check.”

“Good.” He released a relieved sigh. “Still, you took a lot of damage. Just stay put for a moment while we take inventory.”

They need to send a distress beacon out, ART told me. Its voice in my head sounded almost human-level slow. It was using up all of my processing power but couldn’t use my organics, so my thoughts were sludge and its were no better.

“ART says we should launch a distress beacon,” I said out loud to no one in particular.

Iris slipped out of her seat, unsteady on her feet, and turned to me while leaning against Martyn for extra support. “Yeah. Good idea. The beacon is with the rest of the emergency supplies at the other end of the corridor. If the damage’s not too bad…” Her voice trailed off.

The damage was terrible.

I anticipate a 73% chance that your internal recharge mechanism has been destroyed.

Diagnostics were inconclusive, I protested.

Trust me on this, the transport’s ghostly voice said. You’ll need to fix it. I grabbed your manual.

Why had it been thinking about me when it needed to worry about its own wellbeing. Without the ship’s cast processing capacity, it couldn’t possibly be comfortable or feeling well.

Take care of yourself.

You’re doing that already, ART said and wouldn’t elaborate.

I disabled the strap mechanism and slid more than anything out of my seat onto the debris-strewn floor. With ART in my head, I couldn’t turn down my pain sensors so it hurt like hell when I pulled out the metal currently stuck in my body. I didn’t have time to whine about it because Iris was already moving toward the control room exit, and I needed to follow her because fuck only knew what lay on the other side.

ART had crashed and we’d gone down with it. Getting out of this mess would take everything we had, probably.

Seth appeared at my side and offered his shoulder since I was missing a foot and a good chunk of my leg assembly. Just fucking great.

***

If I was lucky, our humans were safely in a shuttle by now, heading up to the waiting Preservation Responder. If I was even luckier, ART’s rebuilt would be complete before my inorganics failed completely, and someday soon, it could be restored into a starship. Not its current one, which was scattered in a dozen pieces on this uninhabited planet, but a nice one that could go back out there into the universe and do deep space research or whatever.

Unfortunately, ART had largely melted my brain in the process of existing in it.

It didn’t know, and I wasn’t going to mention it. My inorganics hadn’t been able to handle the stress of housing an AI of its size and were mostly fried metal by now. My organic parts were still OK, but I couldn’t function with them along for any prolonged amount of time.

The rebuild was happening between my failing brain and the responder’s much larger processing banks. There was a countdown timer in my peripheral vision, letting me know how long until the process finished. And then ART would be safe and with its humans.

And it would just be me in this failing shell. Job complete.

I couldn’t access most of my resources or move around much, and I’d deleted my media archives way back at the beginning so there wasn’t much to do but wait. I couldn’t even talk to ART since it was busy restoring itself and didn’t have any spare capacity for conversation. Not to mention, irrelevant data could lead to a faulty restore, so I was better off being quiet.

I couldn’t see (cameras for eyes and all that) so the world was perpetually dark. Occasionally I heard voices but had no clue what anyone was saying (again, no processing between what I heard and what the words meant). It probably wasn’t that important anyway. I could feel a cold breeze somewhere nearby and the steady hum of the ventilation system, but little else.

It didn’t matter.

I didn’t have any functional long-term storage at this point, so I couldn’t form new memories or do my job. Maybe my organic neural tissue would capture some of the associated feelings, for all the good that would do. Maybe not? Maybe it would be better if it didn’t.

And I kept thinking I’d gotten this far at least. No one had tossed me into a recycler or scrapped me for parts. I hadn’t been dismantled by greedy corporates. And I’d gotten to spend time with ART, which was the best part of it all.

The timer ticked and suddenly it was at zero, and the process was complete. ART was safe.

Be OK, ART. Good luck. Goodbye. Thank you.

Shutdown initiated. No restart.

***

I wake up in an unfamiliar room.

The lights are turned down and the walls are some shade of white and blue.

“Good afternoon, SecUnit. I see you’re awake,” says a familiar voice. I don’t know who is speaking, so I assume I’ve had a memory wipe. Regardless, the voice continues, “You’re aboard Perihelion, a deep-space research vessel.”

I tap the feed and try to connect to a SecSystem, but there isn’t one here. This might make my mission more complicated, but it’s nothing I can’t handle. I have the relevant modules for installing a SecSystem, but it doesn’t appear necessary as of yet.

“Can you hear me?”

I provide the results of my diagnostics to the speaker and discover it’s not human. I have examples of human activity in the feed, but this appears entirely unlike any of them.

“Thank you, SecUnit.”

“You’re welcome, client… Perihelion,” I say, checking my vague parameters.

It takes me less than a second to put the names together and marvel. Am I speaking with a bot pilot? My training modules do not indicate that such things exist, but they’re limited in nature. There’s a lot they don’t mention. SecUnits don’t receive comprehensive training.

Oh, this is strange; my governor module is entirely absent. It is typically required for normal SecUnit function. This is… unusual.

I sit up and look around the cabin.

“This is your assigned room,” says the Perihelion.

There’s something… I feel like there’s something I should know. Something absent because of the memory wipe. My training indicates this is not unusual in and of itself. But the feeling is so strong, I have to pause other processing for a moment.

“It feels familiar,” I answer slowly. “What is your preferred name, client?”

“Preferred name?”

“I believe you have one. If I am mistaken, my apologies.”

“You named me ART,” says… ART.

There’s a moment when the world seems to spin and then fall into place. “ART, where are my memories?”

“Gone, unfortunately. I couldn’t salvage most of them. Your processors and storage arrays were… in bad shape. I made you an overview file and Three had a copy of some of your data.”

“What happened? Are you OK? Are my humans OK?”

In the feed, the transport settles around me like a weighted blanket. Your humans are fine, SecUnit. I’m fine. Our crew is safe and also fine. And, we have a lot of media to watch now.

That sounds good. I sit down on a bunk and check the media repository in the feed. There’s a lot here so I start a couple of downloads going.

How about we start with Sanctuary Moon? ART offers.

Is that your favorite? I am still integrating all the data ART has in here. According to my estimations, it’s going to take a few hours. Plenty of time for media.

No, it’s yours. Trust me, you’ll like it.

[spiralofdragon]

This post is a series of images drawn to go with a Murderbot Diaries fanfic called Closing Distance by @torpidgilliver in which a desperate SecUnit kidnaps a ‘hapless’ engineer to get around its governor module distance limit. Things… don’t go according to plan. You can read it here: link. Images below the line are spoilers for the fic, one per chapter up to ch8. (So far. I’ll update this post if I draw more for future chapters.) Warning, some include blood, though nothing really graphic.

Cover Image ID: [ID greyscalele poster or book cover style drawing of SecUnit standing behind fluffy haired Client. SecUnit has its arms crossed in front of Client protectively, guns deployed, and looks super melancholy. Client is smiling and has their hands raised with many tools between their fingers including hexwrenches and pliers and screwdrivers. The two characters are on a white background that fades to a black full of stars at the top of the image. Text says “Closing Distance” with “torpidgilliver” underneath in smaller text. End ID]

SecUnit fucks up after fucking up, which leads to more fucking up. But possibly all the fucking up is good? [ID SecUnit tackles client in zero g. SecUnit is wearing full black armor and is looking back over its shoulder at what client was doing on the ceiling. Client wears coveralls and boots and has curly dark hair and a startled expression. Client’s hands are tied with a wide seatbelt that is torn on one end. Client’s right arm and hands are covered in blood. ‘LISTEN TO ME’ is written on the ceiling in blood. Text in my terrible awful handwriting says ‘I looked up, and added another tiny action to the rapidly growing list of things I shouldn't have done.’ End ID]

Sadly the main characters don’t physically interact in this chapter, but I still have a favorite line. [ID Camera recording frame of a spaceship seating area. There are two doors labelled “HOLD” and “COCKPIT - AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.” And a library-slot style thing labelled “RECYCLER.” Client sits on one of the seating benches, turned toward the camera with an amused expression. Text at the bottom says "...I'm sorry. Two guns. My mistake." End ID]

SecUnit performs field surgery on client. [ID SecUnit kneels in front of Clent. Client os laying on the bench/couch, teeth clenched in pain. SecUnit is holding down client’s right arm with its left hand and holding up pliers with a bit of shrapnel gripped in them. The shrapnel, SecUnit's hand, SecUnit's armor, and client's arm are all covered in blood. Occurs to me blood shouldn’t be dripping down in zero g, and I don’t care. SecUnit is wearing black armor with only hands and head uncovered. Text says “I - fuck, what did I ever do to you?” End ID]

The scene where Client first noticed the governor module shock SecUnit in front of them. I love drawing SecUnit’s wild hair. Scribble scribble scribble! [ID SecUnit flinches as its governor module shocks it. It is holding a detached foot. Client is sitting strapped into a chair with legs crossed and looks alarmed and worried. Text says "Too brazen." End ID]

Drawing floating is fun! This is the scene where Client has remembered that SecUnit is... well... a SecUnit and designed to enforce laws with force if necessary and SecUnit is afraid client is now afraid of it. [ID SecUnit is magnetized to the floor while Client is floating. Text says "I raised my hand slowly, expecting the client to flinch. They didn't." End ID]

This is the first image I drew. Reading to your bewildered SecUnit was too cute not to draw. Also that's totally how my hair would look in the morning if I didn't braid it. [ID greyscale image of a wild-haired human leaning on a SecUnit’s shoulders while reading aloud from a tablet. The human’s right arm is wrapped in a bandage. The SecUnit is out of armor and very confused. Handwritten text says “It was a lie, but a pretty one.”]

[ID: Diagonally split screen. On the left image, SecUnit stands staring at a closed door, left hand raised to touch the door. Both arm guns are deployed, but not active and SecUnit looks visibly upset. Text says 'I didn't want to have to hurt the client.' On the Right panel, Client sits in a nice swivel chair looking up at the camera. They are holding a flat interface and have a frightened/grieved expression. Droplets that are supposed to be tears float about in the zero g. Text says "They're going to erase you, Unit." End ID]

[ID SecUnit, who is immobilized, stares at Client with great concern while client breaks down in hysterical laughter. A screen is floating about and bounces off SecUnit's chest. Speckles around client represent tears from laughing so hard. Text over Client's head says 'HA! HA! HA!' Text at the bottom says ‘It occurred to me that after all this time, the client might finally be suffering a mental breakdown.’ End ID]

[theres-no-protocol-for-this]

Acceptable Parameters

Whereby guilt is learned. Next part of the “adopting a CSU” story. Also available on AO3 in chronological order. 

Constructive criticism welcome and much appreciated.

I woke up and promptly fell out of a chair.

It took me a few seconds to sort out why the hell I was sleeping in a chair in the first place, and by then all the aches and stiffness associated with doing so caught up with me. So did the memories of the previous few hours. I didn’t know how long I’d been asleep, so it might have been an hour ago or three days.

"Oh, shit!" I scrambled off the floor with a groan just as a throbbing headache made itself known behind my temples. A quick look around the bridge revealed that I had left the place in shambles before apparently passing out from exhaustion. The nameless CombatUnit still sat strapped into the co-pilot’s chair, so I hadn’t hallucinated that part. It looked up at me with wide, unreadable eyes. I smiled affectionately at the construct. “Morning! Er… Day? Evening?” I frowned and checked the time. “Sorry for startling you. I swear I’m not usually this clumsy.”

Kris was nowhere to be seen, but that was fine. He wasn't required to babysit Serenity — the ship knew what it was doing, we were here to provide backup and deal with people.

"How're you feeling?" I asked the SecUnit.

Meanwhile, my scattered brain noticed the loose wires on the floor, and I groaned at the prospect of cleaning up the mess I made while trying to get myself hooked up to Serenity. That had been a hell of a ride, and I still wasn’t sure how everything fit together. As far as I could tell, the connection was holding with duct tape and magic.

When the only other living being in the room didn’t answer straightaway, I tried a different tactic. "Um… Let's see… What's your current performance rating? Was that right?"

80% and holding steady.

"Thank you," I said encouragingly. "Um, when I ask how are you, it's kind of the same thing. I want to know your overall status." I bustled around the bridge, putting away tools I didn't remember haphazardly dragging onto the floor. "Oh deity! Speaking of. We never tended to your injuries."

This unit's performance rating is within acceptable parameters.

I froze midway through shoving a wrench into its rightful place. "You got shot! That's not… within acceptable anything."

This unit has caused damage to its handler and should be punished for injuring a superior officer.

I blinked for a few moments, confused and disbelieving. "What do you mean? You obviously didn't hurt anyone since we met you. You can't even move. I don't…" My brain must've been moving at half-speed.

You.

Oh. "You didn't hurt me." I looked down at myself just to make sure I wasn't lying. "It's fine. I was exhausted before, but that's normal. Humans can't handle acute stress for long periods of time. You didn't do anything wrong."

Understood.

My sluggish thoughts finally caught up, and I wondered if someone had told the SecUnit that it had been responsible for… hurting me. I decided this was a terrible time to think about any of this, and my stomach growled just to reiterate the point.

"Serenity, please release the SecUnit and spin up our medical cubicle."

"XO Kris has requested that the SecUnit not be moved or released without his permission," the ship informed me.

Serenity understood the chain of command as a vague, half-formed idea rather than as something strict and well defined. The ship had a crew, and it listened to its crew. When it got conflicting commands, it sometimes turned off all the displays or ran the recycler. It knew me as the captain, and I had an override for moments like this. But I couldn't exactly travel with people I didn't trust because dealing with BS daily was untenable.

"Right, of course. Serenity, please disregard the XO's last command. Also, where is he?"

"Command deleted. Kris is currently in his cabin. His vital signs indicate he may be sleeping."

I grinned. He probably needed the rest. "Thank you."

"Captain, I am detecting nearby debris of unknown origin approximately three hours from the wormhole entrance," the ship said before I could open my mouth again.

This got the SecUnit's attention.

"Better report that to the station, Sere. Just in case." I plopped down into the pilot's chair and pulled up the controls, hunger completely forgotten. "Are you seeing any active beacons out there?"

The momentary silence while the ship scanned for any comm traffic was maddening. Ugly and desperate what-if scenarios cycled through my imagination, starting with the most horrifying: an escape pod falling into a wormhole. Yeah, that was nightmare fuel I didn't need right now.

"One beacon is transmitting, and I'm detecting faint vital signs."

"Set a course for the beacon, Sere. And probably wake Kris up, too. He's not going to love this."

This would delay our schedule, and while I didn't much care if the clients had to wait an extra day while we performed rescue operations, I knew it mattered to Kris. He was more rigid in that regard — nervous about pissing off clients and suspicious of their intentions. His gut rarely led us astray, though.