Fugitive Telemetry
{4.5/5} “It’s usually easy to make friends with low-level bot pilots, but this one had been coded to be adversarial, directed to operated in stealth mode, and was wary of incursion attempts. It tried to alert its onboard SecSystem, but a the old saying (which I just made up) goes, if you can ping the SecUnit, it’s way too late.”
Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells, published in 2021
Preservation Station doesn’t get many murders, so when one happens Dr. Mensah and Murderbot are called to the scene. Murderbot helps the station security people by telling them things about the victim’s clothing. Next, since the victim was most likely a temporary resident, it goes to the transient housing block and gets some assistance from a free bot named Tellus. Tellus informs Murderbot that it has the authority to go into unoccupied rooms for a maintenance inspection — they do this, and find the victim’s room.
This is the 6th Murderbot story, following Network Effect. Like most of them, it’s a novella.
It’s about helping people who don’t want your help. It’s about a search for refugees who are probably dead or in danger of being killed by people from where they came from.
I’ve read 6 books by Wells.