Exit Strategy (The Murderbot Diaries, #4)

by Martha Wells

If there was anybody waiting for Ship, I couldn’t be aboard when it docked.

I can delete things from my data storage, but not from the organic parts of my head.

Bye, Ship. You were there when it counted.

Twenty-three of them in power suits, all heavily armed, forming up for a boarding operation.

Forty-seven security drones of various sizes and armament

SecUnit. You think this thing is really onboard? Intel says possibly. I— With its controller? No controller, dim-iot, that’s why they call them rogues. Oh yeah. It was about me.

ART had changed my configuration, removing up to a centimeter from my arms and legs so I wouldn’t match a scan for SecUnit standard body shape.

My image search had turned up a name for the security company logo: Palisade.

I needed to get off HaveRatton as soon as possible, and figure out a good way to get my memory clips to Dr. Mensah.

Taking it and the other clips to Mensah in person would be the most secure method, and that’s what I meant to do.

Dr. Mensah had been accused by GrayCris of corporate espionage.

GrayCris had clearly been the aggressor in the violence against the survey teams.

the journalists couldn’t find Mensah.

There had been a news release by GrayCris that Mensah had gone to TranRollinHyfa to answer their litigation,

Mensah hadn’t gone to TranRollinHyfa voluntarily.

At least humans could cut out their ID markers; I had corporate logos etched onto parts of me I couldn’t get rid of.)

GrayCris thought Mensah had sent me to Milu to fuck them over.

I hesitated over my memory clips from Milu, the ones still hidden in my arm and Wilken and Gerth’s clip.

Miki had died for that information, whether it knew it or not.

I stopped at a shipping kiosk and bought a small parcel package.

I addressed it to all of Dr. Mensah’s marital partners on their farm on Preservation.

GrayCris had done all this to acquire strange synthetics, alien remnants. Now that everybody knew that, they couldn’t sell them, or develop them,

There was a company gunship hanging off the station.

I sent the gunship’s bot pilot a ping

That meant that the gunship had been sent to retrieve an endangered client, but the operation had been halted because the retrieval had been blocked,

it was confirmation Mensah was here, or at least that the company’s current intel thought she was here.

GrayCris thought the newsbursts were how Mensah had ordered me to go to Milu, so it stood to reason they would use newsbursts to lure me here.

They had Mensah, so I don’t know why they would want me.

The team from Preservation must be here to negotiate for Mensah’s release,

I needed intel before I could do anything, and they were my only potential source.

they were paying close attention to augmented humans wearing any kind of hood, hat, or scarf, or face-obscuring tattoos, cosmetics, or ornaments. Me, a generic type augmented human person with my hood folded down on my back, didn’t get a second glance.

It opened at the authorization the hotel had attached to my ID marker and at that brilliant moment I discovered there were no interior camera views or audio surveillance. Stupid hotel. I had probably even paid extra for it.

Why have a bed that could easily accommodate four medium to large humans when you only had one hook for towels in the bath facility?

Love.

the hotel was datamining.

I caught an image of Ratthi in a corridor, walking toward a pod junction, timestamp sixteen hours and twenty-seven minutes minus present time. Gotcha.

Real humans don’t act like the ones in the media.

I caught up with Pin-Lee, Ratthi, and Gurathin

I wasn’t sure the Preservation team knew GrayCris was surveilling them,

Were they my sort-of human friends? My clients? My ex-owners, though legally that was only Dr. Mensah.

(Gurathin had never liked me and it was mutual),

I want a lot of things—freedom, unlimited downloads, new episodes of Drama Sun Islands—most of which I wasn’t going to get.

“I came to find our friend,” I said. “Do you want to get in a transit bubble?”

they were mostly used for sightseeing. They also looked convenient for awkward conversations.

“Mensah said I could learn to do anything I wanted. I learned to leave.”

“You could have told her what you wanted. We—she—we were worried, okay.”

I was having an emotion, and I hate that.

“Either I’m Mensah’s property, and I work for her, or I’m a free agent and I work for myself.”

Pin-Lee had always been the tough one, and it took her time to let down her guard.

“So you came to help us. Why should I trust you? You obviously don’t trust us.”

we’re here to negotiate a ransom.”