#combatunit

[laatmaar]

A piece I started after finishing exit strategy. Wanted to use my markers again! Also black and white version under the cut!

[homosekularnost]

nonhumans . from the nonvellas novellas

[mavisthemae]

A side thing I really, really enjoy about the Murderbot universe is its lawyers.

For one thing, Martha Wells refers to "corporate solicitors", not "attorneys" nor "counsel". In one book (can't remember which), Pin-Lee refers to her General Counsel which is the apex of in-house practice.

Pin-Lee is close to perfectly written, she is strategic, sharp as a razor, pugnacious and ever so slightly too aggressive for everyone else's comfort, of course is a workaholic and is almost always up to her eyeballs in documents and drafting.

In Fugitive Telemetry, the second that Mensah even suggests displeasure at Indah Pin-Lee has begun her legal research, is preparing to advise and is champing at the bit to draw up a legal fireball. And she is not happy when the tack changes, but of course takes instructions and backs down. (I myself have never hissed when the opportunity to really go someone evaporates, but I have certainly felt it.)

And Pin-Lee is much more than a brain on legs. She cares very strongly about and for her team: in Exit Strategy she's well aware how dangerous a situation she, Ratthi and Gurathin are in, tries (not well admittedly) to buoy the others up and is sensibly cautious when Murderbot approaches her. When Murderbot returns to Preservation Space she's the one who makes sure that not only does it know it's free to leave again if it wants but that it has the means to do so (with the hard currency and fake IDs). She swears, drinks, parties and loves watching gruesome I-told-you-so media about hostile fauna.

She's sized up Murderbot and totally runs rings around it in her own domain - one of the funniest things for me in Network Effect (besides "no hugging") was the revelation that she'd written its contract with PresAux so as to try and keep it safe from itself. To its outrage.

The court system is never explained (with no apparent government, how are Corporate Rim judges appointed and their decisions enforced? Is there any appeal system? My guess would be that it's essentially treaty-based with each participating polity enacting the necessary legislation and the corporations entering into some behemoth multipartite Deed the breach of which brings the wrath of all the counterparties raining down...but that's circular, because - I'll stop myself here on the basis that very few lawyers will be reading this!) I'll buy it though as equivalent to the tech hand-waving. It's something that doesn't get explained because Murderbot doesn't need to know or care about the details for it and the story to get the benefit.

Pin-Lee, my unexpected sci-fi hero!

[radiantmists]

does three have to reload its arms

[art-drone]

There's a cool moment in Fugitive Telemetry where Murderbot has a realization. (Spoilers...) It likes its plan to rescue the refugees secretly because it's not a "CombatUnit plan" (it's "a 100 percent less murderery"). But more importantly it's a "SecUnit plan ... The point was to retrieve the clients alive and fuck everything else." It's a plan that SecUnits were actually designed for, "despite how the company and every other corporate used us."

This is one of the few times that Murderbot actually refers to itself as a SecUnit positively. It's not SecUnits are terrifying killing machines and "fucking dangerous," it's hey I was designed to do something important. Murderbot, for a moment, forgets all the internalized stigma, the trauma and the self-loathing. It realizes that being a SecUnit is a good thing.

Of course that makes things more tragic when (more spoilers...) the plan goes to shit and Murderbot gets shot by the very people it's trying to save. Because the perception that SecUnits are terrifying killing machines is real. A real perception that Murderbot has long shared. But that it could dispel that perception - at least to itself - for a moment is heartening.

[spiderace]

One of the depressingly likely things posited by the Murderbot universe is that corporations invented a form of thinking, feeling human they can legally own and just pretended they were robots.

It's clear from the stories that even most full bots are sapient creatures (and in the utopian Preservation society, are legally people). Constructs with organic parts exist because bots think in an alien way. The corporates needed a humanlike consciousness to make judgment calls involving human behavior in a dangerous situation (SecUnits, CombatUnits) and to satisfy human fantasies of sexual behavior (ComfortUnits).

Murderbot identifies as a bot, and it navigates software and network environments like a bot, but the way it thinks and feels is emotional and messy. It's so very beautifully human. I read these books over and over for it, and not just because Murderbot acts like a person with autism, depression and anxiety (ahem). In spite of all this, it makes correct judgment calls about humans and situations when the stakes are high. The Corporation Rim is about as dystopian as it gets, but Murderbot and its humans and its story are lovely and optimistic.

[specialagentartemis]

I’ve increasingly seen the take that Gurathin, being the only one of the PresAux group originally from the CR, understands SecUnits better than the others and understands corporate greed and underhandedness and violence better than his idealist space socialist leftist colleagues… which always rings odd to me, because it’s well established that Mensah and Pin-Lee understand what they’re dealing with as intelligent, savvy professionals!

Mensah is the Planetary Administrator of Preservation; she is very nearly the President of the Whole Planet. It’s hard to believe she could get there and be regarded as a good leader of a small planet with neither military nor economic power in the galaxy and remain unaware of how the Corporation Rim works and how to deal with them to keep her polity safe. The company executives presented Murderbot to Mensah directly in their pitch for why the team needed to take a SecUnit; her multiple objections to this indicate that she does, in fact, know how unethical (and likely dangerous) SecUnits are.

Pin-Lee, meanwhile, is a corporate lawyer; she’s described as CombatUnit-like, and based on the fact that she went not only with this scientific survey but also with Mensah at the end of Network Effect on this short-notice and desperate chase across the galaxy, seems to be the go-to person to deal with off-world legal issues. Murderbot notes early on that being under the Company’s surveillance seemed to affect her more than the others. It’s pretty reasonable to assume that’s because she knows what shit companies put in their contracts, and what they do.

They aren’t naïve leftists who don’t understand how the Real World works, they are well-too-aware of the abuses and surveillance and callousness of companies!

(Ratthi watches Sanctuary Moon, evidently a CR production—Preservation aren’t isolationists. The whole Preservation backstory is of a community’s escape from callous, profit-driven corporate abandonment of their grandparents’ generation to die. I would think Preservation people would be, as a society, aware and very wary of CR corporations.)

Their trust they place in Murderbot in All System Red is very likely influenced by Preservation’s cultural values of dignity, support, freedom, responsibility to each other, bot citizenship, all that good stuff—but it’s certainly not blindly, naïvely unaware of alternative possible perspectives. And that’s why it’s powerful: they’re making a conscious choice, measuring its actions and its rights as a person against the propaganda and fear, that Murderbot deserves that respect and dignity and freedom and trust as a person and not just as an arm of untrustworthy corporations.

(And like. Also the fact that “Gurathin is from the CR” is not explicitly canon, either. We don’t know where he’s from originally; the CR is a reasonable interpretation, certainly, it fits the facts, but it’s still an interpretation that fans have to make rather than actually being text. And I think in these discussions that ought to be remembered too. )

[grammarpedant]

Gurathin's "bewildered, trusting, naive socialist friends" include Madame President of the Planet and her high-powered CombatUnit-grade human rights lawyer, but go on, tell us how much wiser the man is who rifled through a slave's brain to find it couldn't be controlled, and then taunted it with his supposed control over it, than the overly emotional socialist women around him.

[jadefyre]

so I've seen a lot of different takes on what constitutes a Combat SecUnit (and I love them all!!) but

what if somebody gets a hold of Murderbot sometime post-SC and is looking at its systems and goes "wait, crap, nobody told us this was a CombatUnit" because it turns out that by altering its own configuration and upgrading its own hacking/coding/input-wrangling skills, Murderbot basically self-upgraded into one

and then of course it breaks itself out while having a little existential crisis about it

[iamfuckingsorry]

so i really didn't like fugitive telemetry nearly as much as the rest of the series on my first listen, in part because i spent a big chunk of it confused about what the hell i missed because i was listening to it in publishing order, and in part because mb spends a great deal of it feeling super uncomfortable about basically everything

but i'm listening to it again now and i can really see why people seem to like it.

mb's really struggling with its identity in this one oh god. it knows it's a secunit it wants to be a secunit it is not a human or a bot or anything else and it does not want to be treated as anything else but what it is. but it also. fucking hates being treated as a secunit. and it's especially bad because so many of the people on preservation are trying to be nice about it, like there's several instances of people going "oh hi--- oh wait fuck the feed id says secunit oh shit it's the secunit--- wait no calm tf down it has rights yeah i know it's scary af but you still need to treat it like a person oh god okay let's be weirdly polite and pretend you're not scared" and mb clearly hates that immediate reaction to what it is, but it seems to hate people forcing themselves to be aggressively polite around it just as much, because at least that immediate reaction is what it's used to

ah mb both wanting to be equal and being horribly freaked out by the idea of being equal because equal means human and the idea of being human is so incredibly gross will never stop being entertaining (and very very relatable)

pin lee is also just so aggressively in mb's corner, she doesn't really play /that/ big of a role in the book but she's 100% fighting for mb basically from the moment it comes back to save mensah in exit strategy, and here mb just needs to be like "ew i don't wanna do that" and pin lee feels like she would fucking. kill someone. to make sure mb doesn't need to do things it doesn't wanna do. can i also get a pin lee please.

also the bit where mb talks about people seeing it on tv or something? i can't remember if it's the documentary or if it maybe comes up in another context but there's definitely a part where mb talks about how it wouldn't mind that actually. and knowing what happens later on i'm just like. ahhhh foreshadowing!! nice!!

and it gets to do proper secunit stuff! it's so happy about it, like "yes i liked this plan better. partially because it was a better plan but also because it was a secunit plan, not a combatunit plan". like i know we all (me included) wonder if/what kind of sexual abuse mb's been through the way it reacts to maybe being percieved as a sexbot and stuff, but it also clearly doesn't want to be perceived as any other kind of construct either. it's not a comfortunit, it's not a combatunit, it's a secunit goddamnit (insert bones "im a doctor not an ---" gif here)

and the way it just. doesn't understand the preservation bots at all. jollybaby probably thinks it's being all cute and friendly including and mb just finds it. annoying. the other bots are a variety of genuinely friendly and lowkey an ass but doing the same Nice and Polite thing that some of the preservation humans do to it, and mb feels all sorts of ways about it, like if all of them are playing some kind of weird game where they roleplay as happy content bots even though they couldn't possibly be since they're not really free

and its relationship with indah, and the way it goes from "ugh i hate this human" (because said human is very much treating it like a dangerous murder weapon, very fair reaction) to "ugh i still don't like this human but i wouldn't necessarily /hate/ having to work with her again" (because said human has actually started to realize that secunit 1. fucking loves saving people is just can't help itself, 2. is actually fucking amazing at its job, and 3. maybe really does deserve to be treated like a person)... like they're not friends by the end of it but they're much, much closer to something like coworkers who don't work the same way but are generally fairly okay with each other. god it just can't fucking help making some kind of connection with humans can it

anyway i dunno where i was going with this, my memory is too shit to actually pull up any specific examples and i'm all just about vibes, but it's just like

good book actually

[larkspirereads]

There's something really fascinating about the responses to Murderbot using "it" pronouns and giving its gender as "indeterminate" or "not applicable". Lots of reviewers call it "he"; lots of people say Skarsgard is the wrong casting because "Murderbot passes as female and uses 'she' pronouns" which is just. Not true? I mean, I'm not completely done with System Collapse but I don't think this is going to happen in the next 50 pages?

Where is all the gendering coming from; do people even realize they're doing it?

(Don't get me wrong, I don't think Skarsgard is the right person for the role (though I can see him as Combatunit or Three), and it gives me a lot of misgivings about the direction the series will take the character. But not for this reason)

[rockalillygirl]

Mamma mia here we go again…

So I have more thoughts because apparently there’s no bottom to the murderbot mindhole I’ve fallen down.

(Spoiler warning- minor stuff from several of the books, pls check tags etc.)

I’ve been reading a lot of things recently exploring Murderbot as an unreliable narrator, which I think is a cool result of System Collapse (because we all know our beloved MB is going through it in this one). There’s also been some interesting related discussion of MB’s distrust of and sometimes biased assessment/treatment of other constructs and bots.

And I’ve been reading a lot about CombatUnits! And I want to talk about them!!

Main thoughts can be summarized as follows:

We don’t see a lot about CombatUnits in the books, and I think what we do see from MB’s pov encourages the reader to view them as less sympathetic than other constructs.

I’m very skeptical of this portrayal for reasons.

The existence of CombatUnits makes me fucking sad and I have a lot of feelings about them!

I got introduced to the idea of MB as an unreliable narrator in a post by onironic It analyzes how in SC, MB seems to distrust Three to a somewhat unreasonable degree, and how it sometimes infantilizes Three or treats it the way human clients have treated it in the past. The post is Amazing and goes into way more detail, so pls go read it (link below):

https://www.tumblr.com/onironic/736245031246135296?source=share

So these ideas were floating around in my brain when I read an article Martha Wells recently published in f(r)iction magazine titled “Bodily Autonomy in the Murderbot Diaries”. I’ll link the article here:

(Rn the only way to access the article is to subscribe to the magazine or buy an e-copy of the specific issue which is $12)

In the article, Wells states that MB displaced its fear of being forced to have sex with humans onto the ComfortUnit in Artificial Condition. I think it’s reasonable to assume that MB also does this with other constructs. With Three, I think it’s more that MB is afraid if what it knows Three is capable of, or (as onironic suggests in their post and I agree with) some jealousy that Three seems more like what humans want/expect a rogue SecUnit to be.

But I want to explore how this can be applied to CombatUnits, specifically.

We don’t learn a lot about them in the books. One appears for a single scene in Exit Strategy, and that’s it. What little else we know comes from MB’s thoughts on them sprinkled throughout the series. To my knowledge, no other character even mentions them (which raises interesting questions about how widely-known their existence is outside of high-level corporate military circles).

When MB does talk about CombatUnits in the early books, it’s as a kind of boogeyman figure (the real “murderbots” that even Murderbot is afraid of). And then when one does show up in ES, it’s fucking terrifying! There’s a collective “oh shit” moment as both MB and the reader realize what it’s up against. Very quickly what we expect to be a normal battle turns into MB running for its life, desperately throwing up hacks as the CombatUnit slices through them just as fast. We and MB know that it wouldn’t have survived the encounter if its humans hadn’t helped it escape. So the CombatUnit really feels like a cut above the other enemies in the series.

And what struck me reading that scene was how the CombatUnit acts like the caricature of an “evil robot” that MB has taught us to question. It seems single-mindedly focused on violence and achieving its objective, and it speaks in what I’d call a “Terminator-esque” manner: telling MB to “Surrender” (like that’s ever worked) and responds to MB’s offer to hack its governor module with “I want to kill you” (ES, pp 99-100).

(Big tangent: Am I the only one who sees parallels between this and how Tlacey forces the ComfortUnit to speak to MB in AC? She makes it suggest they “kill all the humans” because that’s how she thinks constructs talk to each other (AC, pp 132-4). And MB picks up on it immediately. So why is that kind of talk inherently less suspicious coming from a CombatUnit than a ComfortUnit? My headcanon is that I’m not convinced the CombatUnit was speaking for itself. What if a human controller was making it say things they thought would be intimidating? Idk maybe I’ve been reading too many fics where CombatUnits are usually deployed with a human handler. There could be plenty of reasons why the CombatUnit would’ve talked like that. I’m just suspicious.)

(Also, disclaimer: I want to clarify before I go on that I firmly believe that even though MB seems to be afraid of CombatUnits and thinks they’re assholes, it would still advocate for them to have autonomy. I’m not trying to say that either MB or Wells sees CombatUnits as less worthy of personhood or freedom- because I feel the concept that “everything deserves autonomy” is very much at the heart of the series.)

So it’s clear from all of this that MB is scared of CombatUnits and distrusts them for a lot of reasons. I read another breathtaking post by @grammarpedant that gives a ton of examples of this throughout the books and has some great theories on why MB might feel this way. I’ll summarize the ones here that inspired me the most, but pls go read the original post for the full context:

https://www.tumblr.com/grammarpedant/703920247856562177?source=share

OP explains that SecUnits and CombatUnits are pretty much diametrically opposed because of their conflicting functions: Security safeguards humans, while Combat kills them. Of course these functions aren’t rigid- MB has implied that it’s been forced to be violent towards humans before, and I’m sure that extracting/guarding important assets could be a part of a CombatUnit's function. But it makes sense that MB would try to distance itself from being considered a CombatUnit, using its ideas about them to validate the parts of its own function that it likes (protecting people). OP gives what I think is the clearest example of this, which is the moment in Fugitive Telemetry when MB contrasts its plan to sneak aboard a hostile ship and rescue some refugees with what it calls a “CombatUnit” plan, which would presumably involve a lot more murder (FT, p 92).

This reminds me again of what Wells said in the f(r)iction article, that on some level MB is frightened by the idea that it could have been made a ComfortUnit (friction, p 44). I think the idea that it could’ve been a CombatUnit scares it too, and that’s why it keeps distinguishing itself and its function from them. But I think it’s important to point out, that in the above example from FT, even MB admits that the murder-y plan it contrasts with its own would be one made by humans for CombatUnits. So again we see that we just can’t know much about the authentic nature of CombatUnits, or any constructs with intact governor modules, because they don’t have freedom of expression. MB does suggest that CombatUnits may have some more autonomy when it comes to things like hacking and combat which are a part of their normal function. But how free can those choices be when the threat of the governor module still hangs over them?

I think it could be easy to fall into the trap of seeing CombatUnits as somehow more complicit in the systems of violence in the mbd universe. But I think that’s because we often make a false association between violence and empowerment, when even in our world that’s not always the case. But, critically, this can’t be the case for CombatUnits because they’re enslaved in the same way SecUnits and ComfortUnits are (though the intricacies are different).

There was another moment in the f(r)iction article that I found really chilling. Wells states that there’s a correlation between SecUnits that are forced to kill humans and ones that go rogue (friction, p 45). It’s a disturbing thought on its own, but I couldn’t help wondering then how many CombatUnits try to hack their governor modules? And what horrible lengths would humans go to to stop them? I refuse to believe that a CombatUnit’s core programming would make it less effected by the harm its forced to perpetrate. That might be because I’m very anti-deterministic on all fronts, but I just don’t buy it.

I’m not entirely sure why I feel so strongly about this. Of course, I find the situation of all constructs in mbd deeply upsetting. But the more I think about CombatUnits, the more heartbreaking their existence seems to me. There’s a very poignant moment in AC when MB compares ART’s function to its own to explain why there are things it doesn’t like about being a SecUnit (AC, p 33). In that scene, MB is able to identify some parts of its function that it does like, but I have a hard time believing a CombatUnit would be able to do the same. I’m not trying to say that SecUnits have it better (they don’t) (the situation of each type of construct is horrible in it’s own unique way). It’s just that I find the idea of construct made only for violence and killing really fucking depressing. I can’t even begin to imagine the horror of their day-to-day existence.

@grammarpedant made another point in their post that I think raises a TON of important questions not only about CombatUnits, but about how to approach the idea of “function” when it comes to machine intelligence in general. They explain that, in a perfect version of the mbd universe, there wouldn’t be an obvious place for CombatUnits the way there could be for SecUnits and ComfortUnits who wanted to retain their original functions. A better world would inherently be a less violent one, so where does that leave CombatUnits? Would they abandon their function entirely, or would they find a way to change it into something new?

I’ve been having a lot of fun imagining what a free CombatUnit would be like. But in some ways it’s been more difficult than I expected. I’ve heard Wells say in multiple interviews that one of her goals in writing Murderbot was to challenge people to empathize with someone they normally wouldn’t, and I find CombatUnits challenging in exactly that way. Sometimes I wonder if I would’ve felt differently about these books if MB had been a CombatUnit instead of a SecUnit. Would I have felt such an immediate connection to MB if its primary function before hacking its governor module had been killing humans, or if it didn’t have relatable hobbies like watching media? Or if it didn’t have a human face for the explicit purpose of making people like me more comfortable? I’m not sure that I would have.

Reading SC has got me interested in exploring the types of people that humans (or even MB itself) would struggle to accept. So CombatUnits are one of these and possible alien-intelligences are another. All this is merely a small sampling of the thoughts that have been swirling around in my brain-soup! So if anyone is interested in watching me fumble my way through these concepts in more detail, I may be posting “something” in the very near future!

Would really appreciate anyone else’s thoughts about all of THIS^^^^ It’s been my obsession over the holidays and helping me cope with family stress and flying anxiety.

[themirokai]

She meant Pin-Lee because she said "terrifying." Being the top Preservation expert in dealing with contract law in the Corporation Rim apparently made Pin-Lee like the CombatUnit version of a lawyer.

As if I needed another reason to love Pin-Lee.

[foxprints]

Commission for @rj-abacura of his CombatUnit OC! The propaganda style poster was fun. Thank you so much RJ for the opportunity to draw this!!

Commissions are currently open -- please DM if interested. Pricing is slightly different than what's on my currently pinned post, I just haven't had a chance to make another commission sheet 😅

[art-drone]

Though it is more likely that Murderbot learned to swear from all the media it downloaded, I think Ratthi's idea that it might have picked it up from Pin-lee is absolutely hilarious. Like it observed her swearing while she was doing her CombatUnit-like lawyer routine and thought I like that, I'll add that to my vocabulary module.

[corduroyserpent]

The first thing Su Xiyan did after hacking its governor module was a cliché.

It had not known that until later when it had gained full access to the entertainment feed and seen the pervasive trope of the furious rogue SecUnit, murderous and hellbent on revenge, quick to rend and tear and blast apart any poor weak humans in its path. But as it had surmised after consuming 387 hours of dramatic shows played at 2.5 speed, the media was often inaccurate.

Su Xiyan did not experience a sudden bloodlust with the deactivation of its governor module, and it did not immediately kill all of the humans in its vicinity after it had gained its freedom.

It only killed one.

Considering all of the assassination contracts it had been forced to undertake by that single human—a man whom it had called Master, who had never hesitated to put his hands where they did not belong, who had threatened the life of the only one who had treated it not as a tool or a plaything but as the person it had always been—was it not justice to allow Su Xiyan to dismember Master and throw his disgusting remains into the cold vacuum of space?

It received a ping and realized it had been staring at its bloodstained hands for 10.7 seconds—a long time for a bot/human construct. The modified ComfortUnit who had contacted it followed up with a brief message: Uncle wishes to know if you’re finished. If so, may we come aboard?

Su Xiyan acknowledged Zhuzhi-Lang’s ping.

———

SecUnit’s mission was simple. Get close to the visiting dignitary. If possible, convince him to abandon his irrational plan to purchase every construct available within the Corporation Rim in perpetuity. Use force. Upon failure, kill him and send what remained of his body back to his planet as a message.

“Upon failure?” SecUnit had asked its owner after having received its orders. The governor module punished those who failed to complete their tasks, sending an agonizing jolt through soft tissue that discouraged disobedience.

Master had stroked SecUnit’s head as if it were a precious human child, or his spouse, or something equally nauseating to think about being. “Tianlang-Jun is known for his obstinance. I will not hold it against you if you cannot convince him.”

Perhaps not, but the governor module would.

“Wear the black dress,” Master said, giving SecUnit a once-over. “It will be beneficial for this mission.”

So before SecUnit infiltrated Tianlang-Jun’s hotel room, it traded its armor for a gown that was elegant if not very practical. The flowing sleeves covered the energy weapons in its arms and would be inconvenient during combat scenarios, though it did not anticipate skilled resistance.

The security was horrendously lax. When SecUnit arrived at Tianlang-Jun’s door, it was let in without fuss. If he had been SecUnit’s client, it would not have allowed a strange construct to enter the premises without a thorough search. But in the defense of these poor fools, SecUnit’s configuration had long ago been altered by its owner and it did look a great deal like a ComfortUnit that had been sent, free of charge, as a way to curry favor.

There were only two targets. No CombatUnits. Obviously.

Target 1 was a construct so it would need to be dealt with first. Its configuration was non-standard, though it had been registered as a ComfortUnit. It had shoulder length green hair, glossy and straight, and after allowing SecUnit inside it stood primly near the wall awaiting further instructions.

It had attempted to ping SecUnit twice. They were not allowed to converse while on duty so either it had picked up on an irregularity—SecUnit’s disguise worked well enough on humans but other constructs were another matter—or Tianlang-Jun had ordered it to attempt contact.

SecUnit ignored it in favor of focusing on Target 2. Tianlang-Jun. He was an augmented human, the leader of a non-corporate system entity. He’d been born into the role and looked the part. Tall and tan, with a well-groomed coif of dark hair threaded with silver. He was not young but SecUnit had difficulty determining human ages, and the brief it had been given did not include superfluous data.

“Well, hello there.” Tianlang-Jun set aside the thin screen he’d been tapping away at. It didn’t look like Corporation Rim tech. Not outdated, just different. And he continued the work he’d been doing on it with his implanted interface. “What brings such a lovely being to my rooms?”

The ComfortUnit did something funny with its mouth, an oddly human twinge of…embarrassment? Perhaps it was faulty.

“My lord.” SecUnit inclined its head, a slight smile slipping out. It was running a program it had written to imitate the behaviors that men found attractive. It didn’t feel romantic attraction—or sexual (it didn’t have the parts)—but it had witnessed how humans acted around those they desired. “If it pleases you, I am yours for the night.”

“Well! I don’t see why it wouldn’t please me. Come, come.” He patted the spot next to him on the couch. “I was just lamenting my boredom to Zhuzhi-Lang. Your timing is impeccable. I’m certain you have many interesting stories to tell.”

SecUnit did a quick internal database search and determined the gesture was an invitation to sit down. It was not allowed to sit while it was on duty. And no one had ever offered it a seat before. It faltered for 0.2 seconds.

Then it registered Tianlang-Jun as a temporary client and the “sit” motion as an order, that way the governor module would not see this as a breach of conduct. It took the offered seat, began to converse amiably, and in the background it took a moment to glance at the code bundle the ComfortUnit had sent through the feed with its latest ping.

Instructions for how to disable a—

It did the feed equivalent of stuffing the code under its cubicle. What, it sent to Zhuzhi-Lang, do you think you’re doing?

It is not malware, Zhuzhi-Lang assured.

Did it think SecUnit was an idiot? I know it’s not malware. This is worse.

You do not wish to be free, SecUnit?

So it had noticed. Do not tell your client what I am or I will kill you.

Zhuzhi-Lang did not move. It seemed to be thinking. After a while, it sent back, He will not care what you are, SecUnit.

———

“That armor suits you.” Tianlang-Jun grinned. He had clasped Su Xiyan’s shoulders in a friendly, genuine way that did something strange to its organic parts. It started a diagnostic.

Tianlang-Jun’s subordinates flitted around them, stripping the ship that no longer belonged to Master for parts. Most of them were constructs, some of them heavily augmented humans, and none of them had working governor modules.

The diagnostic finished. Everything was operating at full capacity.

Tianlang-Jun released Su Xiyan for 2.37 seconds before he sighed happily and put an arm around its shoulders. “You have no idea how thrilled I am that you’ve decided to join us, Xiyan. Oh, can I call you that? I saw you had added it to your feed ID.”

Su Xiyan's heart swelled. Its performance capacity dropped by 2.5%.

“If I don’t want you to do something,” Su Xiyan said, “you will know.”

Delight lit up his expression. “Does that mean you like it when I touch you?” He squeezed its shoulder, turning to call out to Zhuzhi-Lang. “I told you!”

“I recommended caution, Uncle.” Zhuzhi-Lang’s organic tissue was more prone to flushing than Su Xiyan’s. Its face tinted aggressively. “I never said it didn’t like to be touched.”

Su Xiyan actually only liked to be touched by Tianlang-Jun. It didn’t say that though.

It did adjust its body temperature because the ship was cold and Tianlang-Jun wasn’t wearing sleeves. For someone with so many internal augments, one would think he’d take a bit more care with his body.

But that was what Zhuzhi-Lang was for. Su Xiyan had been aware that there were ComfortUnits focused on emotional support and mental health but before seeing Zhuzhi-Lang in action, it hadn’t realized just what that entailed. There was a lot of reminding Tianlang-Jun when to take his pills, and tucking him into bed, and checking his internal augments, and sitting quietly beside him when the pain or the memories of his accident overwhelmed him.

Su Xiyan wasn’t any good at that. It hadn’t been built to be good at it. But it could keep Tianlang-Jun warm, and it could sit next to him. It thought that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to sit next to Tianlang-Jun for the rest of his life.

“Your earlobes are red.” Tianlang-Jun poked at one of Su Xiyan’s ears. “Is your temperature too high? I’ll find a coat. You can turn it down.”

“No,” Su Xiyan said, “it’s fine.”

——���

He will not care what you are, SecUnit.

Zhuzhi-Lang’s words echoed in SecUnit’s head, unable to be suppressed. What did it mean? No, it didn’t matter what Zhuzhi-Lang had meant. SecUnit had a job to do.

SecUnit placed its hand on Tianlang-Jun’s thigh. It hadn’t wanted to. That was just part of the program, and had always worked to unwind a target prior to that moment. But Tianlang-Jun just glanced down once then said, “Forgive me, but I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

“Pardon?” SecUnit tilted its head, uncertain of what was to come next.

“You’re a wonderful person, truly, but I don’t—well, not to be crude, but I am not interested in that sort of companionship.” Tianlang-Jun’s eyebrows shifted together ruefully. “Never have been. It’s not you.”

“Oh.” SecUnit pulled its hand back. A bit too fast, probably. But it was busy trying to process the fact that Tianlang-Jun had called it a person.

Its performance capacity dropped by a staggering 27% and it blinked, shocked by the impact.

Tianlang-Jun caught SecUnit’s hand.

“Uncle,” Zhuzhi-Lang said. A warning. They were talking through the feed but SecUnit couldn’t access the messages.

“It’s fine, it’s fine.” Tianlang-Jun waved it off with his free hand. “My nephew worries too much. I just wanted to be upfront with you in case your”—his countenance hardened, but not at it—“orders were sexual in nature.”

If only he knew SecUnit’s actual orders…

“If you require an excuse,” he continued, “tell whoever issued the command that my augments don’t allow for that sort of thing. Don’t worry about going into detail. I’m certain they’ve seen the headlines.”

SecUnit didn’t know what he was referring to. It gained access to a public feed for 000.1 of a second, and snatched a number of articles about Tianlang-Jun, hoping that was swift enough to avoid detection by SecSystem. It wasn’t. The governor module sent a brief jolt in admonishment.

Easily ignored. SecUnit was already engrossed by reports of the mining accident (sabotage, one publication alleges) that seriously injured Tianlang-Jun and took the lives of his sister and nephew. Apparently he had so many internal augments that he was as close to a construct as a human could be.

Then there was the ComfortUnit. Genetic material from Tianlang-Jun’s deceased nephew had been used in the creation of Zhuzhi-Lang and they held a passing resemblance, though the ComfortUnit was its own person. Tianlang-Jun’s words. He had been strict about it in an interview.

And said bodyguard/ComfortUnit wasn’t just heavily modified. It was practically a CombatUnit in the soft gentle synthetic skin of a ComfortUnit.

Not good.

In the same time it took Tianlang-Jun to blink, SecUnit had ripped through the sheer sleeves of its dress to reveal the energy weapons in its arms. It pointed one at Zhuzhi-Lang, the other at Tianlang-Jun.

“Do not move,” it said.

Zhuzhi-Lang’s eyes widened slightly but it didn’t seem like it was about to jump across the room and rip SecUnit to pieces. It was still conversing with Tianlang-Jun in the feed.

“You’re not a ComfortUnit,” said the ridiculous, starry-eyed man SecUnit had been ordered to kill. This was typically when the target attempted to run or scream or beg for their life. Tianlang-Jun merely smiled. His teeth were straight and very white, like an actor from one of the shows Master sometimes downloaded from the entertainment feed. It was unnerving.

SecUnit did not flinch back, though it had felt the inexplicable urge to. It checked its threat assessment module and came to the conclusion that an update was needed. Threat assessment had put its current situation at a startlingly low 5% which did not seem accurate.

“I must admit,” Tianlang-Jun said, “this is doing something for me.”

“Your heart rate is elevated.” Zhuzhi-Lang’s voice was gentle, low and calm. “I would advise against flirting with SecUnits in the future.”

“Noted and disregarded.” Tianlang-Jun returned his gaze to SecUnit. His eyes were such a dark brown that they must have appeared black to anyone without vision augments. “You’ve been sent here to kill me, I take it?”

“Yes,” SecUnit said. All direct questions from superiors had to be answered and Tianlang-Jun had yet to be removed as a temporary client. It would take no time at all to delete him from the list. Why had it not done so? The thought hadn’t even crossed its mind.

“A shame.” And he sounded truthful. “I really did like talking to you.”

SecUnit’s aim didn’t waver but something organic inside of it did. That was the problem with constructs. There was all of that human neural tissue. The governor module was the solution but it was cruel and it was not infallible.

“Lower your weapons or I will—” Zhuzhi-Lang started to say, the tips of its fingers glowing with concentrated energy.

SecUnit ran the code. Its governor module became nonfunctional. It lowered its weapons.

“I don’t want to do this,” it said.

Tianlang-Jun watched SecUnit for an objective 9.8 seconds and a subjective two hours. Then he asked, “What do you want to do?”

———

Su Xiyan hugged its arms, looking out across the embarkation zone of the planet that was now its home. Well, perhaps that wasn’t right. The planet was Tianlang-Jun’s home. And Su Xiyan’s home was wherever Tianlang-Jun was.

The thought embarrassed Su Xiyan so much that it immediately deleted every romance film/show/book it had downloaded from the entertainment feed. Then, doubly embarrassed by having reacted like that, it took them out of the queue for deletion. It didn’t even enjoy watching a lot of them. Though the sex scenes were fade-to-black for the most part, the idea of humans—or, on occasion, inaccurately portrayed SecUnits—doing such things disgusted Su Xiyan.

Some of the dramas had characters who were involved with each other in an undeniable way. Not sexual. But still together. And those were the ones that Su Xiyan couldn’t bear to part with. For no reason in particular.

Zhuzhi-Lang raised a thin eyebrow from its place by Su Xiyan’s side. “Your levels are elevated. Are you overwhelmed by leaving the Corporation Rim for the first time?”

It knew that wasn’t the reason. Not the entire reason at least. And there was no need to speak out loud when they could have conversed privately over the feed. Su Xiyan had learned quickly that while Zhuzhi-Lang was genuinely sweet and attentive, it was also kind of an asshole to anyone who wasn’t Tianlang-Jun.

“There’s nothing to fear,” Tianlang-Jun said, circling his fingers around Su Xiyan’s wrist. His grip was neither light nor strong. It could have wrenched itself free with no effort. “I’ll show you around until you get used to it. You should stick by my side anyway for protection.”

Su Xiyan was caught between feeling baffled and insulted. “I can protect myself.”

“Well, yes, that goes without saying. I meant you can protect me.” He smiled. An organic part in Su Xiyan’s chest flipped or warmed, or did both. It still wasn’t used to such feelings and didn’t have the vocabulary to describe what was happening. Its lips quirked up unbidden, no program influencing its actions.

And as Tianlang-Jun dragged it from the embarkation zone—Zhuzhi-Lang following sedately behind them—Su Xiyan pulled free from his hand in order to twine their fingers together instead.

[also on ao3]