Chapter Text
After SecUnit’s departure, Bharadwaj discovered Sanctuary Moon. At first she’d tried to assist the others. She thought she’d be able to help Pin-Lee with legal research, if only by locating relevant documents. But just keeping track of the terms proved beyond her. Any new knowledge she tried to acquire bounced off her brain like a drop of water skittering around a hot pan until it evaporated. She couldn’t settle.
The others kept gently telling her to rest more and focus on recovery. The thing was, her concentration issues weren’t physical. She did have lingering symptoms. Her chest ached when she breathed too deep, and yet recovery required deep breaths. She needed to keep the healthy lung tissue next to the puncture wounds moving, to keep air flowing in and out and to cough in order to push out anything that pooled up. The tender spots elsewhere weren’t as bad. MedSystem had repaired the holes in her intestine and stomach quite effectively.
But none of that explained the slow, syrup-like quality of her thoughts, or the way that she couldn’t hold on to what she read.
Eventually she quit fighting it. Looking for something to fill the hours and curious about what SecUnit saw in the show, she watched Sanctuary Moon’s first episode.
It was nothing she would have watched for her own sake. But despite the show’s absurdity, there was a certain artfulness to it. Bharadwaj began to admire the playfulness to the costumes, the odd sincerity behind the cheesy plots, and the craftsmanship in the way the show cued viewers with music and lighting. At first she’d found those cues overblown, but soon they began to feel comforting and familiar.
She also tried to find out more about SecUnits. The public archives held almost nothing. The few bits of information that seemed reliable came from very early in their creation, and more recent info was a contradictory mess.
She asked Gurathin about it. “Why is there so little in the feed? They can’t be all that rare if every survey has to take them, and yet all I get are these rumors and legends.” She waved her hands in frustration.
He smiled wryly. “You’re not supposed to know about them. They wouldn’t be as scary if you did. But more than that, no company wants any other company to know what its units are capable of. You realize one of their uses is in inter-company warfare?”
She hadn’t.
“That’s where I saw them in action. A hostile takeover. Such a bloodless name.”
Her throat didn’t want to cooperate. It had gone tight and she struggled to get the words out. “I saw the newsfeeds. About the strike. Not our SecUnit of course, but…”
“Yeah.”
“They don’t have a choice.”
“Yeah. The strikers don’t have much choice either. Choice is something you inherit, purchase, or steal, out here.”
Bharadwaj looked at her hands. “I wanted to learn about it. We see all these stories, you know? Even on Preservation, we're exposed to all these stories about rogue units murdering everyone. We never see their faces. We have this philosophy about how it’s wrong to use constructs this way, but it’s just an idea floating in a vacuum. I want to learn. Even if it never comes back…”
She was fighting back tears.
Gurathin gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “I might be able to find something. I never really looked, before. I guess I bought into the propaganda too.” He let out a huff of air. “How stupid of me not to realize. Everything out here is lies. And behind the lie, there’s always someone who profits.”
“So if people knew…”
“The corporations wouldn’t like it if people knew. Of course that alone wouldn’t weaken their power much. But they wouldn’t like it.”
“Maybe we can tell people about how it saved us.”
“Not without its permission,” Gurathin instantly said.
“You’re right. That’s SecUnit’s story, not ours. But maybe someday it will let us? It deserves credit.”
“It does. And I’ll try to find some sources for you. Reliable ones.”
“Thanks, Gura.”
Gurathin did turn up some intel which he found reliable. His “reliable sources” turned out to be fairly technical in nature, which meant Bharadwaj had whole new fields of study to turn her attention to.
That should have been a good thing and a cure for boredom, but she struggled to concentrate. Still, she chipped away at it little by little.
#
“You should go home,” Gurathin said.
She’d been thinking of it and feeling guilty every time the thought came to mind. Part of her had hoped one of the others would tell her to go. And yet now that it was happening, she had a sinking feeling in her stomach.
“What if I’m needed?”
“We don’t all need to stay. Pin-Lee’s our lawyer, I used to live here, Mensah is the one everyone wants to talk to. You and Arada should go. Ratthi too but I don’t think he will.”
Gura could be so awkward when he was trying to be nice. He kept glancing at her eyes and then immediately glancing away.
“I suppose Ratthi is good moral support.”
Gurathin instantly said, “You’re great moral support. You make everything better.”
“Then why…”
“You have healing to do. Proper healing, at home.”
“Is it so obvious? I thought I was doing okay,” she said ruefully.
“You’re doing fantastic.” He met her gaze, and what had she just thought about Gura being awkward at this? She hadn’t been prepared for how sincere his eyes were.
He said, “It’s never over when you get discharged. I’m amazed at how resilient you are but you should be at home right now. It’s no kind of life, being here with nothing to do except cheer us on. And I’ll worry less if you and Arada leave together. The journey will be so much safer with two.”
“I suppose we have to think of those things, even when it comes to something as simple as getting a transport to Preservation,” she said a little bitterly.
He nodded. “I want to talk to you before you go, about safety and what to watch out for.”
Before, not if, she thought. And yet she knew he was right. She wasn’t useful here.
I’ll do it, she thought. I’ll go home. A heaviness swept over her, which was strange because she also felt as if some enormous weight had been lifted.
Gurathin shuffled closer and awkwardly unfolded his arms and held them slightly apart from his body. Was he suggesting a hug? She held out her own arms and he moved in. He was surprisingly good at it once he committed. She leaned her head on his chest and let out a sigh.
“I don’t want to go,” she said.
“I know.”
“I will though. I’m no good to anyone here.”
“Not true. But life doesn’t stop and besides, the Council will understand better if they talk to someone who was present. There’s things we can’t say in our reports.”
That was true, and cheered her just slightly. “I can tell them about SecUnit,” she said.
She could feel him smile by the way his posture shifted.
“Yeah, tell them. Ugh, you’re going to have to tell them about me too.”
She squeezed him tighter. She was going to have to share all of it. The 57 dead miners, the mutual invasion of each others’ minds. But also the way he’d carried SecUnit’s memories back at risk to his own health, not to mention the way he’d recognized the risk LeeBeeBee posed and kept her locked out of HubSystem. If LeeBeeBee had gotten the alien remnant coordinates she was after, GrayCris would have just moved to wipe them out without warning. She thought back to her lecture about compassion and blushed a bit.
“It’s all the same. The bitter is part of the sweet.”
“Maybe, but I wish life would quit teaching me so many lessons,” he groused.
She laughed and gave him one final squeeze. She was going to miss him.