Exit Strategy

An injured Murderbot escapes with the Preservation team in their shuttle. As a Palisade ship gives chase, Murderbot contacts its former bond company’s gunship for assistance. This is risky—there is a chance that the company will want to reclaim and then destroy Murderbot. The gunship retrieves the shuttle, but the company demands an expensive new bond payment to transport Murderbot, classifying it as a weapon. Mensah stops Murderbot from taking the ship by force while Pin-Lee negotiates the payment.

Meanwhile, the pursuing Palisade ship launches a sophisticated code-based attack, using stolen company codes to bypass the gunship’s defenses. To save everyone, Murderbot merges its consciousness with the gunship’s bot pilot to fight the attacker, a sentient code construct that is dismantling the ship’s systems. They devise a trap, luring the code into the empty escape shuttle by using mundane recordings from Milu as bait, knowing the data’s parameters would resemble what the attacker was searching for. Once the attacker is in the shuttle, Murderbot and the bot pilot jettison the shuttle, and the gunship captain orders it destroyed. The processing strain of this operation causes Murderbot to suffer a catastrophic system failure and collapse. Murderbot’s consciousness fragments.