Martha Wells

She’s a really good commander. I’m going to hack her file and put that in.

I wanted to seal my helmet so badly my organic parts started to sweat, but I replayed the conversation with Mensah and managed not to.

My jaw was so tight it triggered a performance reliability alert in my feed. I said, “You don’t need to look at me. I’m not a sexbot.”

I was also planning to use the time to watch some Sanctuary Moon and recharge my ability to cope with humans at close quarters without losing my mind.

Hard work really did make you improve; who knew?

“My friend is dead!”

Amena was startled. Staring blankly at me, she asked, “What friend? Somebody on the survey?”

I couldn’t stop now. “No, this transport. This bot pilot. It was my friend, and it’s dead. I think it’s dead. I don’t see how it would have let this happen if it wasn’t dead.” Wow, that did not sound rational.

Arada added, “Who are you?”

ART said, You are aboard the Perihelion, registered teaching and research vessel of the Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland. Then it added, I’m not going to hurt your humans, you little idiot.

Arada lifted her brows, startled, and Thiago looked boggled. I said, You’re using the public feed, everyone can hear you.

So are you, ART said. And you’re leaking on my deck.

I said, “The humans think I’m an asshole, wait till they get to know you.”

I thought you weren’t speaking to me.

Ratthi’s expression was doing a neutral yet skeptical thing that was really annoying. He said, “Have you made many friends who are bots?”

I thought about poor dead Miki, who had wanted to be my friend. There was a 93 percent chance Miki had wanted to be everybody’s friend, but Miki had said to me “I have human friends, but I never had a friend like me before.” I said, “No. It’s not like that. Not like it is between humans.”

Ratthi was still skeptical. “Is it? The Transport seems to think differently.”

I said, “The Transport doesn’t know what the hell it’s talking about, plus it lies a lot, and it’s mean.”

“Why do you call it ART?” Amena asked. “It said its name was Perihelion.”

I told her, “It’s an anagram. It stands for Asshole Research Transport.”