Taking place just after Exit Strategy, we meet Murderbot trying to live within the bounds of the Preservation space station security where it is making it's home currently. Preservation is a place where any murder is odd, so when one comes up Murderbot is reluctantly accepted as a consultant to help out station security.

Muderbot takes the direct route as usual, though it has to be a bit more careful because of the promises it made to station security about not hacking their systems. Still, Murderbot doesn't waffle around, it just goes out and collects information to solve the murder, and find humans being smuggled away from slavery before they die.

What continues to fascinate me about these quick stories is the humanity seen in all of the bots we meet. From the "dumbest" haulers, to the most sophisticated bots like Murderbot, there is a real personality behind the bot that humans never get to see.