#murderbotfic

The next thing it knew, it was jumping forward in a delayed, reflexive attempt to dodge the beam that had already hit it, and found itself suddenly with no ground beneath its feet, and then it was falling, tumbling head over heels, down what seemed like a cliff, unable to get any bearings at all and unable to slow its fall as its mind scrambled to catch up with the suddenly changed situation. There wasn't enough time to try digging its hands into the dirt it was falling past, and none of its frantic, disoriented attempts to slow its fall did anything.

Going from inside a cramped, dark dead ship to falling full speed down a cliff with a nauseatingly bright purple visible every other moment when its head spun to face upward was bewildering, to say the least.

Over the sound of every part of its body slamming repeatedly into dirt and rocks, it could hear the sounds of familiar human voices shouting over eachother in clear alarm, along with dozens of warnings from various sources, but it shut them all out, trying to focus on slowing its uncontrolled fall to no avail.

When it finally slammed to a halt, it fortunately managed to land squarely on its stomach, instead of its head or legs. Its armour supposedly would have stopped bones from being broken, but you never could be too sure it'd actually live up to that promise. Several of the times Murderbot had been dismembered while in the Company's hands had been because its armour wasn't actually up to the standard it claimed it was.

The force with which it had finally slammed to the ground would have been enough to kill an unarmored human instantly, but fortunately, its armour this time seemed up to the test, because it didn't even get the wind knocked out of its lungs like it'd been fearing. That had only happened to it a few times, because its lungs were sturdier than a human's but it was a sickeningly unpleasant experience that it never wanted to experience again if it could help it.

It wanted to sit up, but when it tried, its armour zapped it and then starting pinging it with alarms, warning it that the structural integrity was at risk and it should be placed in a repair cabinet before being trusted to protect the wearer.

It shut off the armour's alarm and sat up stubbornly, trying to figure out what was happening. This was the kind of armour the Company rented, not like anything they had on Preservation, not like anything it'd worn for years.

The first thing it saw when it sat up and got its eyes to focus was the bottom of a crater stretching out before it, with steep, black walls of loose soil rising in the distance, with the purple sky overhead streaming bright with sunlight, with brown and gold planetary rings stretching across the vaulted ceiling of the sky, and...

...wait a minute.

It was only then that Drs. Bharadwaj and Volescu came into view, both of them running full tilt and skidding to a stop in front of Murderbot, assisted by the extremely and unpleasantly familiar, color-coded exploration suits they were wearing.

It was after Murderbot realized that Dr. Bharadwaj wasn't using her cane, and that this type of exploration suit wasn't fit to support an injured leg to, that the improbable, ridiculous, absurd idea of what might be happening started to dawn on it, despite all its logic trying to push the idea away. Time travel wasn't actually real, it was only something that happened in fiction.

It was probably hallucinating. Or dreaming. Because it was definitely Drs. Bharadwaj and Volescu in front of it, rushing forward to –

Oh fuck!

It realized what they were about to do an instant too late to stop them, and then it was too late to pull away as violently as it wanted to without severely injuring them.

Dr. Bharadwaj grabbed one of its arms, and Dr. Volescu grabbed the other, and they attemped to pull it to its feet, and all the while their concerned voices were overlapping along with the conflicting and progressively overwhelming messages and commands it was receiving from its governer module, the med system, and the other humans who were still on the comm.

Fortunately, it was wearing its armour, so they weren't touching it directly, but even so, it could feel the pressure, and it promised worse.

It was bewildered and disoriented, unable to figure out what was going on with all the chaotic inputs it suddenly found it couldn't handle. It found itself pulling away from the humans more roughly than it should have and leaping to its feet and landing several feet away from their reaching hands, snapping, without thinking, too confused and overwhelmed to do anything else at the moment, “My contract forbids you from touching me without my permission!”

It felt its governer module try and fail to fry its brain as Drs. Volescu and Bharadwaj fell backwards to the ground, shock plain on both of their faces through their transparent visors.

And it was only at that exact moment that Murderbot remembered the danger they were all in, remembered why the Dr. Bharadwaj it knew in what was undeniably the future never went anywhere without one of her canes.

The world seemed to move in slow motion as it started running forward to grab its friends to get them out of the crater and out of danger, every sense in its body, both mechanical and organic, suddenly, dreadfully certain that it was too late.

It was too late.

The giant, predatory tunneler exploded up out of the ground below the two humans, teeth whirling, and the comm units were filled with screams.

Murderbot didn't bother reaching for the gun on its back. After that fall down the hill, it was unlikely to be functioning. Instead, it launched itself straight for the animal's mouth, just like the last time Dr. Bharadwaj had been caught, pulled the two unconcious humans out and leapt clear, then opened the gun ports in its arms, and fired as rapidly as it could into the creature's throat on full power, aiming for the teeth, the soft inside of the mouth, and the back of the throat. It knew not to waste its time trying to hit the brain above the mouth, it wouldn't stop it.

But pain was pain, and maybe, if it hurt it badly enough, it wouldn't want to come back for seconds. The animal reared back violently away from the assault, and a few of the bursts hit its underside, cracking and charring the flesh in large circles of black before it plunged backwards back down the tunnel out of reach.

The roar of the hopper was suddenly audible overhead, and Murderbot knew that Dr. Mensah and Ratthi had arrived, flying to the rescue just half a minute too late.

Murderbot dropped down and clamped its hands over the horrible injuries the two scientists had sustained, feeling like it was also going into some sort of shock.

Dr. Volescu's left foot was gone, and so was Dr. Bharadwaj's entire right leg. It wasn't just chunks missing this time, the whole thing was gone.

Murderbot had miraculously managed to get them both out of the animal's mouth without getting debilitatingly injured itself this time, but even so, it knew it wouldn't be able to carry both of them up the steep wall of the crater by itself. All of the medical supplies had been left over in the center of the crater where they'd been standing before Murderbot fell down the hill.

The only thing it could do was crouch over them, its armoured hands covered in their blood, and wait for the hopper to get close enough that they could be pulled inside to safety, desperately hoping that they would survive, not knowing what it would do if they didn't.

Murderbot could feel an involuntary shutdown coming on.