Fugitive Telemetry (The Murderbot Diaries, #6)

by Martha Wells

Humans do the “make it a question so it doesn’t sound so bad” thing and it still sounds bad.

“Yes, I’ve had experience with investigating suspicious fatalities in controlled circumstances.” Indah’s gaze wasn’t exactly skeptical. “What controlled circumstances?” I said, “Isolated work installations.” Her expression turned even more grim. “Corporate slave labor camps.” I said, “Yes, but if we call them that, Marketing and Branding gets angry and we get a power surge through our brains that fries little pieces of our neural tissue.”

Indah’s jaw tightened again (she was going to hurt herself) but she said, “Of course, with a murderer running loose on the station, I am upping every security level, including those around the council and Dr. Mensah. I actually don’t need you to tell me my job.”

Pin-Lee had promised, “Don’t worry, I’ll preserve your right to wander off like an asshole anytime you like.”) (I said, “It takes one to know one.”)

She missed Mensah mouthing the words stop it at me. (I guess the feed isn’t adequate for all forms of communication, particularly those that involve a lot of glaring.)

I know a “fuck off” when I hear one. So I fucked off.

(Yeah, good luck with that. Trying to get humans not to touch dangerous things was a full-time job.)

I pulled it from memory. “They said, ‘We’ll call you if we need you.’” Gurathin said, “I can’t tell if that’s you being passive aggressive or you being willfully obtuse.” I would be more pissed off about him saying that except a) he was right about the passive aggressive thing and b) he was standing where I had told him to stand, blocking the nearest port camera view of what I was doing.

Which is good, because the fewer humans running around with weapons the better. (I say that as a SecUnit who has been shot a lot, often by my own clients, accidentally and on purpose.)