All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1)

by Martha Wells

I COULD HAVE BECOME a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites. It had been well over 35,000 hours or so since then, with still not much murdering, but probably, I don’t know, a little under 35,000 hours of movies, serials, books, plays, and music consumed. As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure.

They don’t give murderbots decent education modules on anything except murdering, and even those are the cheap versions.

Yes, talk to Murderbot about its feelings. The idea was so painful I dropped to 97 percent efficiency. I’d rather climb back into Hostile One’s mouth.

I thought it was likely that the only supplies we would need for DeltFall was the postmortem kind, but you may have noticed that when I do manage to care, I’m a pessimist.

This is why I didn’t want to come. I’ve got four perfectly good humans here and I didn’t want them to get killed by whatever took out DeltFall. It’s not like I cared about them personally, but it would look bad on my record, and my record was already pretty terrible.

I love you, armor, and I’m never leaving you again.

It didn’t comfort me and I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t comfort the humans to know the stupid company would avenge them if/when they all got murdered.

Guardian was a nicer word than owner.