I pulled myself up into the cockpit. The canopy moved down and sealed with a whoosh. “It’s all right,” I said to M-Bot. “Rig is good people. He’ll take care of you.”

“I am, of course, simply emulating the way humans play irrational favorites over one another. But could you not go?”

“I’m sorry. I’ve got to go learn to fight the Krell.” I frowned at the tone in the robot’s voice. “What’s wrong? I told you, Rig is a good—”

“I am willing to accept that he is until evidence proves otherwise. This is a problem: I appear to have lost my master.”

“I can be your new master.”

“I cannot change masters without proper authentication codes,” he said. “Which I just realized I do not remember. The problem, however, is larger than this mere fact. I do not remember my mission. I do not know where I came from. I do not know my purpose. If I were human, I would be… scared.”

How did I respond to that? A frightened starship?

“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll give you a new purpose—destroying the Krell. You’re a fighter. M-Bot. I’m sure that name stands for something exciting. Murderbot… mayhembot. Massacrebot. That’s it, I’m sure. You’re a frightening, all-powerful death ship designed to fry the Krell and save humanity.”

“I do not feel very frightening,” he said. “I do not feel like a death ship.”

“We’ll deal with that,” I promised. “Trust me.”

“And can I trust that those words are not… a falsehood? Like the one to tell the engineer’s parents?”

Well. That came back to bite me faster than I’d expected.

“I must ask you,” M-Bot said more softly, “not to tell any others about me. I assumed you’d understood this earlier, when I explained my orders. I am supposed to ‘lie low,’ which is a colloquialism for remaining inconspicuous. You should not have told the engineer.”

“And how would we repair you, otherwise?”

“I do not know. Spensa, I am an artificial intelligence—a computer. I must obey my orders. Please. You can’t turn me over to your DDF. You must not even speak of me to anyone else.”

Well, that was going to present a problem. I wanted to get this thing flying, and once I did, that would mean flying it to help in the fight against the Krell. And if we couldn’t fix it… well, I’d need to turn it over. Regardless of what I thought of Ironsides, I couldn’t just sit on this ship forever. Not if it could mean the difference between the survival and extinction of humanity.

I had opened my mouth to argue with M-Bot further when a set of lights started flashing on the dashboard.

“Multiple atmospheric incursions have been detected by my short-range sensors,” M-Bot said. “Debris has begun falling toward the planet, with forty-three ships following.”

“Forty-three?” I said, glancing at his sensor readout. Short range for him was apparently still pretty long, by our standards. “Wow. You can spot them, even in a debris fall?”