All Systems Red

Murderbot wakes up and realizes the combat module is gone. Gurathin tells the team that Murderbot has hacked its governor module and doesn’t have to follow its commands, and he thinks Murderbot has played a part in sabotaging their systems. Gurathin reveals Murderbot’s history of accidentally killing its clients, and Murderbot replies that it hacked its governor module so that malfunction wouldn’t happen again. Gurathin further reveals that Murderbot spends most of its time watching Sanctuary Moon and has named itself “Murderbot” (82). Gurathin wants to keep Murderbot immobilized, but the rest of the team does not see Murderbot as a threat. Murderbot proves it is not immobilized by getting up from the table and pinning Gurathin against the wall. Murderbot tells Gurathin that it doesn’t like him, but Murderbot doesn’t hurt him.

Murderbot says the company is not trying to kill the PreservationAux team because it would have poisoned their food supply rather than having SecUnits attack them: in the case of the former method, they risk less legal and financial liability. The team decides that a third survey team bribed the company to keep its presence on the planet a secret, sabotaged HubSystem, and caused DeltFall Group’s deaths.