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Fuck me, it was cold. There was a lazy wind blowing, the kind that doesn't bother going around but cuts straight through you. I was standing perfectly still in my SecUnit standard pose, which just made me feel even colder. At least I had The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon to keep me company.
The bunch of weirdos I was babysitting contracted to guard were all excited about the magnetic anomaly they'd discovered near the pole. I was more interested (but not surprised) that it wasn't in the survey data that the cheapass company had provided. Silently, I begged them to hurry up with whatever they were doing so that we could head back to the habitat and relative warmth.
Of course, they just had to carry out their survey during the coldest part of the year, in the polar region, on a planet that was already pretty chilly. But that's scientists for you. At least they hadn't tried to set me on fire yet. I upped my body temperature by a couple of degrees and gritted my teeth to stop them from chattering.
The leader of the group, Dr. Mensah, seemed nice enough. And she was good at keeping the rest of them in check, so there was that. Even with her supervision, it was like herding small, agile fauna.
"SecUnit! Over here!" shouted another scientist, Dr. Ratthi.
No, SecUnit over here, I thought. I'm here to keep you safe, not to run errands or whatever the fuck it is that you want. But, then again, that shout could be construed as an order and I didn't want to reveal my hacked governor module, as that would land me in an acid bath trouble. So I shuffled across the ice, keeping my faceplate closed. As long as I didn't talk, they wouldn't know I could talk (security briefings don't count) and maybe they'd forget about me and leave me alone.
""Does that look like a body lying under the ice, SecUnit?" Fuck.
"Insufficient data," I let my buffer tell him. Smooth, Murderbot. Nicely dodged. Now I could go back to Sanctuary Moon.
"But if you had to say?" Deities, this guy wasn't going to give up until I – ugh – interacted with him.
"It could be a large fauna," I conceded. "Probably a predator, best to avoid it."
Reader, he did not avoid it.
"Guys! We've found a body lying under the ice!" We? Leave me out of this.
"Cool," said Dr. Arada, positively bubbling with excitement. "Let's liberate it and see what it looks like!"
"It's unlikely to be friendly," I nearly blurted out. Luckily I'd updated my speech module to add a one-second delay, and caught myself in time. Instead I offered, "Risk Assessment suggests a 60 percent chance of contamination if you try to thaw it out."
"Spoilsport," huffed Arada. "Fine, we'll use all the standard protocols to avoid leaving our germs on it." That wasn't what I meant and she knew it. Still, as long as I kept that recording for the company it shouldn't come back on me when her skin became covered in boils or whatever.
Dr. Mensah called Drs. Gurathin and Volescu away from their own investigations to help dig out the frozen fauna. They wanted me to dig too but I really, really didn't want to. I told them I needed to go check the perimeter and went for a walk.
By the time I returned, they had the body encased in a huge ice block strapped onto one of the heavy cargo lifters. Now that it was out in the open, I could see that it was vaguely humanoid in shape. If you ignored the three red eyes and blue worms in place of hair.
"I mean, if it's native to this planet then technically it's a local fauna," argued Dr. Ratthi.
"And if not, then it's definitely alien remnants," countered Dr. Gurathin. "And we should leave it here for a specialist team to deal with." I was beginning to respect Dr. Gurathin despite myself.
They continued to argue until Dr. Mensah stepped in. "We can chip the ice off without actually thawing it, in order to take tissue samples. If they match other fauna from around here, it's local. If not, we can put it back in the ice and report it. Agreed? Good." And that was that.
___
I had to sit in the cargo hold of the large hopper with that thing beside me all the way back to the habitat. I wasn't creeped out at all. Also, I need to stop watching horror themed media.
Back at the habitat, they put their new friend in the level 5 containment module which, to be fair, made my risk assessment drop a few points. Nevertheless, Dr. Ratthi kept chip, chip, chipping away at it every chance he could get. Tricky to do when you're wearing a spacesuit and have to go through decontamination every single time you enter or leave. I wanted to monitor him continuously, but I had to take a recharge cycle. I gave him strict instructions to leave it alone until I was back online. What could possibly go wrong?
Shutdown
Restart.
So now we had two identical Dr. Ratthis. For fuck's sake.