(If there’d been a SecUnit in the colony, there probably would have been a compelling reason why it had to stay behind on the dying planet.)

(I don’t actually believe that.)

(Sometimes I believe that.)

“Reclaiming the lost colonies is big business now,” Ras said. He finished his water and set the container aside. “The terraforming equipment is usually still in place, as well as habitats and other salvage.”

Amena’s expression was flat and stony. She pretended to need to fiddle with her wound pack, so she didn’t have to look at them. “So did you find a lost colony?”

“We were attacked on the way there,” Eletra said, as Ras was drawing breath to answer.

I found a larger cabin that looked like it had been deliberately trashed. Clothing lay trampled on the floor, some of it in the blue of ART’s crew uniform. Hygiene items had been opened and dumped or smeared around on the small attached restroom. A couple of actual static art pieces and a holographic print of humans playing musical instruments had been thrown on the floor and broken. Someone had tried to break a display surface, but hadn’t managed it, and it floated sideways, still showing a static image of two male humans, not young, maybe Mensah’s age or older, but that was as much as I could guess. (I was no good at judging human ages.)

One had dark skin and no hair on the front half of his head, and the other was lighter, with short white hair. They were both smiling at the camera, with an embossed version of ART’s logo on the wall behind them. I could look them up in my archive of ART’s crew complement, but I didn’t want to.

I felt something build in my chest. I pulled the recording of my conversations with ART, the way it said “my crew.” It was bad enough that ART must be dead, it wasn’t fair that the humans it had loved so much were dead, too.

I wanted to find a bunch more algae-smelling gray snotty assholes and kill the shit out of every single one.

A sudden 5 percent dip in performance reliability made my knees go shaky and I leaned on the cabin hatch. For twelve seconds it seemed like a good idea to slide all the way down to the deck and just stay there.

But I should get back to Amena.

Also, after the Targets had rampaged through here, the deck was pretty disgusting.

In the medical suite, the conversation had moved back to me. (Oh goody.) Eletra was saying, “You really have to be careful. That SecUnit seems to have been altered to make it look less like a bot, but that doesn’t change their programming.”

“Hmm,” Amena said, not looking at her, still picking at the wound pack on her leg.

Ras put in, “I know you think it’s trying to protect you—”

“It’s not trying.” Amena’s tone was clipped. “It’s protecting me.”