Exit Strategy (The Murderbot Diaries, #4)

by Martha Wells

WHEN I GOT BACK to HaveRatton Station, a bunch of humans tried to kill me. Considering how much I’d been thinking about killing a bunch of humans, it was only fair.

I should be over this by now.

I needed more info; obviously I’d missed some important developments.

I’m apparently an idiot, but not that big an idiot.)

I said, “We met on Port FreeCommerce.” I couldn’t resist adding, “I was the one in the transport box.”

“Okay, so what did you hire yourself to do?”

You’re on your own. Or you’re on your own with Ratthi and Gurathin, which may be worse.”

Then it got disastrously complicated.

(Yeah, so much for making this a stealth operation.)

I said, “Maybe I wanted the trail to start here.”

“You people are so naive.”

I shut my risk assessment module down.

I said, It’s Murderbot, Dr. Mensah.

If I screwed this up … I couldn’t screw this up.

“I should have had more confidence in you.” “I’m not sure I’d go that far,”

(Yes, I know. I shouldn’t even have thought it.)

The two last things were incompatible. It was time to stop fucking around.

It would have been more funny if I hadn’t been leaking onto the deck.

Fuck this. GrayCris is not going to win.

(“I don’t want to be human.” Dr. Mensah said, “That’s not an attitude a lot of humans are going to understand. We tend to think that because a bot or a construct looks human, its ultimate goal would be to become human.” “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”)

I know Preservation thinks of itself as some kind of human non-corporate paradise, but let’s be real.)