I was a little worried the hair on my head would be noticed. After Milu, I had made it this length so I wouldn’t look like a SecUnit and now I had to look like a SecUnit again. ART, watching me watching myself in a camera while poking at my head, pointed me to the bunkroom’s attached bath where there was a dispenser for things humans needed. One was a lubricant-like substance that when I followed the instructions flattened my hair down so it looked shorter. That looked more SecUnit-like. Since ART had apparently decided to be helpful and stop sulking like a giant angry baby, I said, “Why do you want me to pretend to be an augmented human? This way is easier.”

You don’t like it, ART said.

“That’s my problem.” I didn’t like it. But if you put everything that had happened to me on a scale of awfulness and assigned exact values to each incident (which I had done once, it’s in my archive somewhere) dealing with corporates who exploited failed colonies, and probably went through SecUnits as fast as Amena did fried vegetable crunchy things, was in the lower third of the chart.

Despite what I’d told Amena, the existence of the SecUnits on the explorer worried me. If they had been captured and not destroyed, they were a way for the Targets to get intel about what I was capable of.

When my crew is at risk, it’s my problem, ART said.

I was getting tired of being told what to do. Self-determination was a pain in the ass sometimes but it beat the alternative by a lot.

I made sure my collar was folded down so you could see my data port (though anybody who tried to stick a combat override module in there was going to get a violent surprise) and walked calmly out of the bunkroom into the galley. Amena was sitting on the table, frowning at me. She said, “What are you two fighting about now?”

ART said, I made SecUnit’s uniform too nice.

Amena nodded. “You do look great.”

I’m not even going to dignify that with a reaction.

Arada came back to the galley in her crew uniform, which was a less combat-ready version of mine. It was casual and practical and she looked comfortable and natural in it, which would help. “Are we ready?” she asked. “Let’s go.”

“Surely they won’t suspect anything,” Ratthi was saying to the others at the bulk dock. “Who runs around with a friendly rogue SecUnit? Besides us, I mean.”

12

We used ART’s EVAC suits, which were better than the ones the Preservation survey owned. (They had secondary internal protective suits for planetary exploration, not that we’d need them on the transport.) Though first I ran checks to make sure there was no contamination in their onboard systems. (It was unlikely—the power usage stats said the suits had been inactive throughout ART’s whole memory disruption incident—but I was going to be paranoid until I figured out how ART had been attacked.) (I mean, I’ll be paranoid after that, too, but only about the usual things.)