Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Wha! Wah!"

The panicked sound of Handset losing his balance was the first thing that made sense. I'd registered the movement of our SecUnit before that, but it was so fast and there was no indication (yet) of what it was reacting to. I turned my head toward where he'd been. Not even the SecUnit was visible. There was just dust and the further sound of scree tumbling down the embankment, or maybe both of them sliding down the mountain.

I took a step in that direction before I caught myself. The SecUnit had this. To anyone else who'd had the same first instinct, I called out, "Hold your positions!"

There was a sound of impact, snapping and sharp, reminding me of the absurd otherworldly vegetation down there that had forced us to land on this less stable elevated area. Handset screamed in pain, positively shrieking. I grit my teeth and remembered what a field medic had told me once – if they have enough breath to scream and blabber, then they're okay. I toggled through settings to see his vitals. His suit had been compromised, his heart rate was high – he wasn't dead.

I took another step toward the ridge he'd fallen from. I wanted so badly to see what had happened. A security alert popped into my feed from the SecUnit. It could see me, of course. Its drones were all over the place and the hopper itself was close by. Maybe he hadn't slipped. Maybe the ground had collapsed under him. The SecUnit didn't want me approaching.

Status? I sent to it, since it sounded like Handset was distracted. (He was cursing now. (Cursing the SecUnit, actually, though I couldn't hear him clearly enough to tell what he was upset about.) He was probably fine, just scared.)

Client Handset has suffered a puncture of approximately four centimeters to the lower back, left side and a laceration estimated at one centimeter deep and six centimeters long. His position is stable. He should be extracted immediately. I am unable to assist with extraction at this time. It included MedSystem's assessment but there was too much there for me to absorb quickly.

More immediately, I needed to know, Why can't you help?

This unit has suffered damage from multiple penetration points. It is immobilized at present.

I grimaced and turned to Gafferd. "Get rope, an extraction chair, harness, whatever we've got in the emergency supplies to send down there so we can pull Handset out. He can't climb."

Gafferd nodded and scuttled to the hopper. She was reliable and steady, which was why I'd given the order to her. Bessman started toward me, ignoring that I hadn't rescinded the directive to stay where they were. They asked, "Can the SecUnit-"

"Stay away from the ridge!" I barked at them, then followed up with, "Go help Gafferd." To everyone else, I sent out, "All others, pack it in. We have an injury that needs MedSystem treatment. We're done today."

I could hear the burble of Handset and the SecUnit talking at a normal tone. Again, not well enough to carry. I laboriously toggled around the myriad of stupid settings and menus to find the security channels (this was not intuitive), then access the SecUnit's feed, then flipped through four drone cameras before I could finally see what the hell was going on down there.

Oh.

Yeah. The SecUnit was kind of fucked up. It had landed on the vegetation which consisted mainly of enormous spikes, several of which had their pointy ends buried in it or stuck in its armor. It was hard to tell how damaged it actually was. Did I have access to a more detailed status report? I back-screened to its feed-

And was distracted by weapons fire. I scrambled back to the drone with the good view. The unit was trying to shoot one of the spikes that had it impaled. Handset was nearby, clinging to a woody, coiling stem of the plant, wedged between a couple of the spikes. Underneath them both was more coils of plant, filling the ten meters or so to the ground. There was no evident danger other than impalement or falling (or falling and impalement, which they were already dealing with).

Bessman shouted from the hopper, "What's going on?" The other team members, interrupted in the course of packing up to leave, were similarly spooked.

"It's fine," I told them. "The SecUnit is getting itself free."

"I thought maybe something was attacking them," Bessman said, approaching me with a seat that had been reconfigured from the standard stretcher. Ropes were attached to it. A drone zoomed down to inspect it.

"No, they're fine." I was inspecting it, too, and waved the drone out of my way. It evaded my hand and stayed in the way. I could have actually swatted it but I knew it was trying to assess if this emergency rig was safe just like I was. "Looks good," I told Bessman, who nodded.

"Gafferd's got it hooked up on the other end. I need to tell her how far down they are."

The SecUnit replied in our feeds. Seventy meters of rope are needed. This is within the amount the hopper carries.

Bessman grunted. "It should have waited to be asked."

"Mm," I said noncommittally. It was the obvious next question and one could argue Bessman's statement constituted asking, as far as indirect communication styles went. I wasn't going to waste time arguing about it. Handset was down there bleeding out. Four centimeters stabbed into his back was a lot. Something important might have been punctured. "Go tell Gafferd."

Bessman flinched as there was another energy weapon discharge from below. The SecUnit sent a status update – it was no longer immobilized.

"Go on," I told Bessman. "I've got this." I pointed at my temple to indicate the feed. They nodded and hurried back to the hopper. On the feed, I sent to the SecUnit, Good. How close can I get to toss this down to you? I glanced up at the drone, which had returned to a normal surveillance position above me.

Get a secondary rope. Fasten it to your belt ring. Move to the top of the ridge. Pay out slack and see if the chair will slide down the slope without you needing to go further.

That felt like safety overkill, but I'd already lost a guy down the mountain so I did what it suggested. I turned and yelled, "Bessman! Get me another rope, from hopper to me, and tie it off on your end."

Once I was secured, I moved to the ridge where the land had fallen away and sent the chair downslope without any trouble. Sand and loose stones went with it. I heard Handset yelping, but it was too late to do much about it. I didn't dare stop the chair's progress until it had reached the edge and went over. If it got stuck down there, I'd have to go to it on this shifting, unstable mess and kick it loose (along with a lot more than the pebbles being currently dislodged). Once it was over the edge, though, I stopped it for a moment.

I pulled up that drone angle, which was three screens away for some reason, and looked at what was going on down there. The SecUnit was now on its feet, perched on the vegetation next to Handset and curled over him protectively. I lowered the chair the rest of the way, with the rope's passage disturbing fewer stones than the chair had.

Handset was transferred in and sent up. His environmental suit was reporting ongoing blood loss and what were probably pre-shock symptoms. Whatever he'd been stabbed with had been pulled out, which even I knew was dumb but I hadn't been down there to see what had happened. Given the way the SecUnit had been jammed onto the spikes, I doubted it had anything to do with it. (Though it did seem odd it had been stabbed seven times and him once – I'd skimmed its report.)

We had a rough time getting him over the edge but after that, the winch in the hopper dragged him up the slope easily enough. At the top of the ridge, he got out of the chair despite an alert from the SecUnit not to do that while unsecured and on unstable ground. He was already doing it, though, so I put an arm around him, above the bloody, slashed line where his suit had been cut open. The air around here was no good for him either.

We hustle-limped to the hopper, maneuvering around the various ropes extending out from it. I got him down on the platform Tecky had prepared and helped with getting a new oxygen line to his suit. It was awkward since he was facedown, but we managed.

Tecky tugged the ripped part open, looking around inside with a flashlight. "Is this the only wound?"

"Yeah," Handset said. "I think so. It held me up or something. And then it, it kind of twisted me to the side and that's when I got cut. I guess it was the same thorn. Hurts. And I feel cold and nauseous. I feel like I'm having cramps or something. I don't feel good. There's blood all down my leg, inside the suit."

Tecky said, "Hand me that regenerator. It'll seal this up faster than a bandage. The MedSystem can cut it back open when we get there." I fetched it for him.

Bessman asked fretfully, "Is he going to be all right?"

I left them to it, turning to see that Gafferd and Relde had brought in the chair and were coiling the rope. Lilli was settling into the pilot's chair and I could hear the engines humming up to speed. Relde hit the button to shut the ramp. Everyone's gear was piled up where it should be, a little haphazardly but that was normal with the unexpected nature of our departure.

There was something wrong, though. I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I looked around at the expectant faces of my team, waiting for my signal for us to leave. Everyone was here. Maybe it wasn't a person. "Did we get everything?" People nodded. "All the equip- Wait! The fucking SecUnit!"

Chapter Text

It was the sound I noticed first, the higher pitched shill of stone against stone and the more mid-range grit of enviro suit boot grinding over loose rock. Client Handset was falling or slipping. It was possible he'd catch himself, but I really didn't like that first noise. It indicated a subsurface shift and he was very close to the top of a steep slope, one that ended with a narrow shelf and then a several meter drop into dangerously spiked flora. (I'd told the team lead about the hazard but I hadn't thought he was too close to the edge until now.)

I turned. I braced myself. I checked the drone angles. He was slipping and falling, center of balance beyond recovery now and I had visual on the cascading ripple of displace stone under him. He couldn't recover. I launched myself.

I didn't think I'd be able to recover, either, which was something I considered as I covered the space between where I'd been standing near the hopper to where he'd been taking a reading only a few meters away. Our landing zone had been narrow, given the confines of geography and vegetation. His handheld equipment was clattering down with him.

If he'd been able to slow himself at any point, I could have snagged the stone of that narrow shelf at the end of the slope and stopped us both from falling further. But he couldn't and I didn't. Had the fall been longer, I could have tucked him against myself for his safety. All I had time for was to get a grip on him and get myself lowermost. Then we hit the spikes.

These weren't just thorns. Many of them were the length of my arm, polished and pointed, as big around as I could grip at the base and strong, as flora went. My entire weight, and my client's, came down on them. There was a splintering, crunching noise from under me and a punched out sound from my client. I had a hold of the back of his suit and I'd extended my arm straight up on impact, trying to keep him above the spikes. There was only one that reached that high.

I had a few fractions of a second to see it, project its impact, and realize I couldn't move him out of the way in time. He had a kidney where it was going to hit and a spine next to that. On the other side was intestines. None were good choices but I went for the last. The spike stabbed through his suit and into his body, much deeper than I wanted. (Any depth at all was bad.)

His legs kicked, an involuntary, spasmodic motion. I didn't have time to talk him into cooperative motions (if he'd been another construct, we'd have already worked out how to handle this), so I twisted my body (there was a splintering sound from under my back and pain not worth mentioning) and gave him an abbreviated jerk, mostly a wrist motion for me, to shift his center of balance from where he'd been stabbed and instead up toward chest and shoulders. It lifted him mostly off the spike, which was the best I could do. Using the momentum, I swiveled my wrist and shifted/slung him sideways, a motion that sent him rolling so he wasn't belly-up to the world and instead, faced away from me.

Gravity took care of the rest. As it did, the spike sliced through his back, his clothing, and then snagged a little on the enviro suit before ripping free. Good. I still had hold of him, but my leverage was rapidly becoming absolute shit. The last thing I was able to do was pivot his falling body enough so his legs were rotating downward. Boots clattered over other spikes and his legs hit still others as he came to a rest mostly head-up, feet-down, and if he'd gained any further damage along the way, it was minimal.

He probably didn't think so. He was hyperventilating and flailing. I was barely maintaining my grip. I sent a drone over to see the other side of him, the side where his arms were desperately grabbing at spikes and stems as his feet scrambled for purchase. Hopefully, he'd get a grip before I dropped him due to his motions.

My eyes were looking at my midsection, which was distended with a spike that had penetrated my back much like his, just a lot deeper. It, and another at my upper back, were the load-bearing points I was currently suspended on. The one at my upper back had gone through armor, skin, and some flesh, but been thwarted by the shielding around my chest. Chest and head were the most well-defended parts of a SecUnit. Chest was where our power generation, main pumps, and organic support organs were kept.

Anyway, I wasn't able to help him like this and that was unacceptable. He got a grip and I released him so he could cling more effectively. In the meantime, I checked the status of my other humans. Predictably, the team lead was starting toward the very spot the client had fallen from. I did not need her also slipping, falling, and landing on top of us.

I sent an urgent but politely worded 'Stay the fuck there and don't complicate things' to her. She stopped. She ordered the rest of my clients to hold position. Good. I liked her. So far, she had not fucked with me or prevented me from doing my job, although she had overridden my objection to this landing area. (My obviously justified objection.)

Okay, back to getting me mobile. I had seven spikes in me to different degrees. The one against my upper back had splintered and torn up a lot of skin but was otherwise not being a problem. The one in my abdomen had punched through and broken inside me, as I could feel from the way it was a dull pressure instead of sharp on the inside of my front abdominal sheathing. There were a lot of important things it had damaged on the way through, none of which would cause me to stop functioning in the next few minutes.

It was still bad. The others were varying levels of annoying. I had one at my left ankle and left knee areas, jammed into my armor, and another at my right hip that had penetrated armor and buried itself inside my joint. The last two were in the armor of my upper left shoulder and through the skin of my lower left forearm, just above the gunport. I'd already torn that one free, leaving a laceration not worth thinking about.

I tried to get my left leg free. I didn't have leverage. I'm strong – very strong – but the flora just creaked and moved with me. My right leg was no better, not bending the way it should, a grinding catch in my hip telling me the stupid spike was in there in the way.

The client had by now been able to pull a few breaths and was using them to scream and curse. I checked his status and otherwise ignored him. Certain classes of spontaneous utterances didn't count as orders I had to follow, not that he was yet saying anything articulate enough to be an 'order'.

I could not, however, ignore the team lead. Status? she asked on her priority channel.

I answered, Client Handset has suffered a puncture of approximately four centimeters to the lower back, left side and a laceration estimated at one centimeter deep and six centimeters long. His position is stable. He should be extracted immediately. I am unable to assist with extraction at this time. I included MedSystem's assessment. She didn't read it.

Why can't you help?

This unit has suffered damage from multiple penetration points. It is immobilized at present. I sent my own assessment which she didn't read either. I'm not sure she even noticed it. I moved a drone over to monitor her and prioritized it over Client Handset's ongoing complaints about the height, the danger, the pain, what I was doing, etc. I was talking back to Handset soothingly; my buffer could handle that.

My first priority remained getting myself free. I tried several other ways, feeling additional flesh on my upper back tear and could see the thing in my abdomen shifting. I had a lot of alerts I was ignoring. It has gone without saying that my pain sensors were minimized. Most of my systems were functional, though, which was a good thing. Could have been way worse, is what I'm saying.

I paused to track the team lead accessing my feed and then querying the drones, flipping between them in slow motion. I could have just toggled her straight to the one she probably wanted (it was the one down here watching us; my guess was right) but I didn't. There was something about watching humans be so slow that I'd always found fascinating. They moved ponderously and gracelessly, so often unaware of the obvious consequences of their actions. I derived a certain unscrupulous validation from it.

I don't know. I just loved watching them be so helpless. It was fascinating. It gave me purpose.

Now, back to my current dilemma. I gave up on twisting my arms behind me and trying to break the spikes – again, not enough leverage – and decided to just shoot them.

"Prepare for weapon discharge," I told Client Handset.

"What?"

I classed that as an ignorable spontaneous utterance and fired. He yelped although I was firing under myself with my right arm, the opposite direction of him. He was in no danger. The spike under my right hip shattered. I pulled the tip out of me and was able to get my right leg down, pushing off a stem and allowing me to free of the one in my left shoulder armor. My left leg was still hampered. My abdomen felt very bad. The motion was not good. I hesitated, feeling through my new center of balance and seeing if I could rock back, pivoting on my upper chest now that my left shoulder was free. Yes, that was better.

"What the fuck was that for?" Handset asked, looking back at me in terror.

Up above, rescue supplies were being brought out, much faster than I'd expected. That was nice. I had the drone on team leader examine the chair and sent another inside the hopper to check the other end of the rope. It was unattached at this point, but the human had the winch out and was working on it. As long as team leader didn't immediately send down the chair, that would work.

She tried to bat my drone out of the air but I evaded her. I wouldn't trust her evaluation of safety – that was my job. I entertained some back and forth with her, then told Handset, "I am freeing myself so I can assist in putting you in the rescue chair that will be here shortly."

"Fuck, I'm bleeding. Oh fuck. I think I was- That was. Fuck, was it that one? I think it was that one. How much of that fucker went inside me? Fuck." I wasn't sure he understood me. His breathing was uneven and I was concerned. Helpless humans always got to me.

I bridged up the limited amount I could and shot out the spike jammed into the armor near my left knee. With that out of the way, I could snap the one at my ankle by moving my leg. Then with those limbs free, I curled up and off the one in my gut, putting my hips and folded legs above my head and chest, balanced on the spike under my upper back. It cracked further, but I caught myself with arms to either side. Once the one was out of my gut, I was free.

The chair came down. He went into it. Only one of the straps was configured correctly to hold him. I considered going up with him - the winch was rated to pull our combined weight, I might be able to help navigate the near right-angled-turn at the stone shelf; but at the same time, he wasn't strapped in sufficiently and I would make the operation less stable. Plus, I didn't need to stay in proximity to him. The hopper was only sixty-two meters (straight line) from here, well within my distance limit.

He went up. I examined the cliff. Layers of it were as crumbly as the surface above where he'd slipped to start with. Visually, I couldn't tell which layers were stable and which weren't. I supposed I could climb it. Up above, I could see them packing away the chair, clearly not intending to send it back for me.

Rude.

Kind of normal, though.

I retrieved the handheld reader he'd dropped when he'd fallen, then started climbing in a leisurely fashion, using one hand to hang onto the gear. I watched the humans on the hopper interior cameras as they fussed over Handset's medical care. I had just reached the top when they closed the ramp. It wasn't angled such that they could see me and no one at the pilot's station had the right exterior camera up.

But, like, they knew I was out here, right?

What the fuck, were they going to leave me?

I stood there, staring at the hopper. I didn't feel betrayed. (Okay, maybe I did.) (A little.) Mostly I was just perplexed. It was hilarious in the darkest and most morbid of ways. I know humans are stupid (so stupid). And slow on the uptake (so slow). But the idea that they'd leave me behind and just forget, somehow, about the construct who just saved Handset's life was boggling.

Were they really that dumb? It was endearing. They were so hopeless. How did they manage to get to this point, to even be able to make constructs to protect them? They were so pathetic. They really, really needed me.

Yet I just stood there. The engines were humming up to life. I could see the pilot taking her place. My governor module buzzed a warning to me. I was supposed to protect the equipment, too, and I was equipment. It's not like I couldn't notify them that I was outside the hopper. I could even tell the engines to power down and lower the ramp myself. But I was curious.

I saw team lead doing a quick headcount of her staff. They were all present but she looked uncertain. "Did we get everything?" she asked. The other humans nodded but she looked no less confused. (They were like babies. Adorable, confused babies. I waited, ignoring the tingle of impending governor module rebuke. I wanted to see how this played out.)

She looked over the haphazardly stacked instruments and gear, brow furrowed intently. She was so clearly trying to figure it out. (My drone video was still streaming in her feed, currently showing me standing in front of where the ramp would open. It had been doing that this whole time, but humans can't process multiple inputs. She'd tuned it out at some point. Inwardly, I was rooting for her.) Finally, she said, "All the equip- Wait! The fucking SecUnit!"

I could have grinned. (I might have, under the helmet.) That made me feel good. She got it! Good human.