All Systems Red

They land among cliffs in a tropical region of the planet. The humans stay in the hopper while Murderbot scouts the area with its drones. Murderbot thinks about deserting the team since they know it no longer has to obey commands, but it doesn’t want to: “I pictured doing that, pictured Arada or Ratthi trapped by rogue SecUnits, and felt my insides twist” (102). When it returns to the hoppers, Mensah tells Murderbot that it needs to remove its helmet so the team can see its face. In this situation, it is important for the crew to be able to humanize Murderbot.

Inside, they discuss why “EvilSurvey”—their nickname for the hostile survey team—is doing this. They decide that there is something on the planet EvilSurvey wants, and they need to keep the other teams from discovering it. Murderbot asks the team if its administrative entity will miss them if they are murdered like DeltFall. Everyone looks at Murderbot strangely because it does not know who they are. Murderbot gets into an argument with Gurathin, who asks why Murderbot did not read the info packet it was sent about the team. Murderbot says it didn’t care. Gurathin tries to provoke Murderbot into attacking him, but Murderbot does not take the bait. Mensah communicates privately with Murderbot on its feed and tells it that the two of them are the only ones who will be able to remain calm in this situation and that she needs its help. Murderbot jokes that it panics all the time, Mensah just doesn’t see it.

The team worries that EvilSurvey might destroy their samples when it reaches their habitat, but Murderbot tells them their data is not what EvilSurvey wants. That night, Murderbot finds Ratthi on watch and asks him about what happened earlier. Ratthi says that they are from Preservation Alliance, a non-corporate entity, and that Mensah is their elected administrative director: “One of the principles of our home is that our admins must also continue their regular work, whatever it is. Her regular work required this survey, so here she is, and here we are” (111-12). Murderbot is embarrassed that it did not know this about Mensah, but it confirms its assessment of her leadership capabilities. Ratthi tells Murderbot that in Alliance-controlled territory, robots and constructs are considered full citizens. This information does not impress Murderbot because it knows that robots who are “full citizens” still need a human owner, usually an employer, to act as their guardian.

Because Mensah is an important individual, the company cannot be bribed to ignore an attack on her: If PreservationAux launches its beacon, help will arrive. Murderbot is still pessimistic about their chance of survival. The next day, Mensah, Pin-Lee, Ratthi, and Gurathin accompany Murderbot to retrieve the data from the drones at the habitat. On the trip, Gurathin asks Murderbot if the company punished it for the deaths of the mining team. Murderbot says they took it offline, but constructs are too expensive to destroy, so they tried to purge its memory. Gurathin asks if Murderbot hates humans because they made it malfunction, and Murderbot says no: “That’s a human thing to do. Constructs aren’t that stupid” (116). It accepts that not all humans are corrupt even though it prefers the characters in its serials to real humans.

When they arrive at the habitat, the drone footage shows EvilSurvey—which turns out to be GrayCris—arrive with five combat-ready SecUnits and five armed humans. Murderbot recognizes two of the SecUnits as the ones that attacked him at DeltFall’s habitat. On another feed, a human speaks to the drone and tells the group to meet it at a set of coordinates: “This doesn’t have to end in violence. We’re happy to pay you off, or whatever you want” (120). Mensah realizes GrayCris thinks PreservationAux knows what they want and is willing to negotiate. They can search their data of the unmapped regions to find what GrayCris is looking for and leverage it during the meeting.