“She didn’t say ‘goons.’” It was an archaic word. I knew it without having to look it up because the new series of Adventures in the Free Systems, which was made on one of the other worlds in the Preservation Alliance, had dropped locally twenty hours ago and it had used the word “goons.” I was 93 percent certain that was where Mensah’s small human had picked it up, too.

“You know what I mean.” She folded her arms. She had clearly expected to get more information out of me and was disappointed this was apparently not going to happen. “You saved her, right?”

“Yeah. Want to see?”

She lifted her brows, surprised. “Sure.”

I’d already pulled my video of the last part of our run through the TRH embarkation zone, the fight with the SecUnits and the Combat SecUnit, and our escape in the shuttle. I did a rapid edit to cut out some of the bloodier close-ups, and then sent it to her feed.

Her gaze went inward, then a little glassy as she reviewed it. In the tone of a young human who was impressed but trying not to show it, she said, “Wow.”

“Your mother saved me, too. She shot a SecUnit with a sonic mining drill.”

She finished the vid and frowned at me again. “So, you’re a SecUnit.” She made a half-shrug gesture I didn’t understand. “Is that … weird?”

It was a complicated question with a simple answer. “Yes.”

Mensah came out onto the balcony and pointed firmly toward the seating area back inside the office. Small human waved goodbye and went to sit down. Mensah leaned against the railing next to me and said, “I was afraid you’d left.”

She kept her gaze on the plaza, so I could look at the side of her face. “I thought about it.”

She was quiet for twenty seconds, watching the movement in the plaza below. “Have you thought much about what you want to do?”

“Watch media.”

She did the lifted eyebrow look which I had on file as meaning: I know you’re trying to be funny but you’re not funny. It was most often aimed at Ratthi and Gurathin. “I think if that was all you wanted to do, you’d be off somewhere doing it, and you’d never have gone to Milu.”

“I watched a lot of media on the way to Milu.” It wasn’t exactly a counterargument, but I thought it was important data.

“Gurathin showed me the video you shared with him.” She meant the video of the transport with Ayres and the others. “You were helping those people.”

“I couldn’t help them. They had a contract labor agreement.”

I saw from her reaction that she knew exactly what that meant. “It was too late for you to help them, then.” She started to turn toward me, then looked out over the plaza again. “But you wanted to.”