Fugitive Telemetry (The Murderbot Diaries, #6)

by Martha Wells

The full station threat assessment for murder was sitting at a baseline 7 percent. (To make it drop lower than that we’d have to be on an uninhabited planet.) (I’ve never been on a contract on an uninhabited planet because if I was on the planet on a contract then we’d be inhabiting it.)

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

They don’t want me. (Hey, I don’t want me, either, but I’m stuck with me.)

(No, I didn’t kill the dead human. If I had, I wouldn’t dump the body in the station mall, for fuck’s sake.)

(I had an input on my threat assessment module continuously now so I could get real-time updates instead of just checking it periodically, and yes, it was a constant source of irritation because it reacted to everything. No, it was not helping my anxiety. But it was necessary.)

acerbic

“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.”

I had archives of everything that had happened since I hacked my governor module, but I hadn’t had as much relevant experience in that time. But what I did have were thousands of hours of category mystery media, so I had a lot of theoretical knowledge that was possibly anywhere from 60 to 70 percent inaccurate shit.

I didn’t make an expression because I knew Indah would be more annoyed by me not reacting than by me reacting.

Being the top Preservation expert in dealing with contract law in the Corporation Rim apparently made Pin-Lee like the CombatUnit version of a lawyer.

“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.)

“Just because you’re accustomed to using a dangerous weapon doesn’t mean it can’t turn on you. Or harm others.” Okay, wow. But it wasn’t like it hurt my feelings or anything. Not at all. I was used to this. Completely used to it.

“And I want to preserve our working relationship. To do that, we will both be reasonable about this and set our knee-jerk emotional responses aside.”

(which, if there were, I have to point out, we’d know who had killed the dead human—excuse me, the deceased)

(I had promised not to hack Station systems. Nobody had said anything about not setting up my own systems.)

“We need a search for what kind of cleaning tools could remove contact DNA and which ones are available on station. Particularly the ones that are small enough to conceal in a pocket or bag.” It’s too bad we don’t trust the SecUnit who is an expert at running those kinds of searches. Just to be an asshole, I said, “The tool could have been brought in from off-station.” She ignored me.