Rogue Protocol
Setup
Murderbot is traveling back toward Mensah’s space, but has received information suggesting a detour is worthwhile. GrayCris’s legal troubles are ongoing but the evidence is incomplete. Records indicate GrayCris operated a secret terraforming facility at a world called Milu, under the cover of a survey company named GoodNightLander Independent (GI). GrayCris abandoned the facility abruptly and has been suppressing the existence of alien remnants found there - remnants that, if documented, would devastate their legal position.
Murderbot is traveling on a minimal bot-pilot transport it calls Ship (no nickname needed; Ship has essentially no personality and is genuinely just a ship). It arranges passage to a transit station near Milu by offering media. It then needs to attach itself to a team with legitimate access to the GI facility.
Chapter 1 - Milu Transit, Joining the Assessment Team
Murderbot arrives at the transit station and joins an assessment team hired by GoodNightLander Independent. GI wants to know what GrayCris left behind and whether the facility can be reclaimed. The team has contracted private security and Murderbot poses as a replacement - “Consultant Rin.”
The team: Don Abene (the leader, experienced and steady), Brais (engineer), Ejiro (biologist), Kader and Vibol (pilots), Hirune (tech), and two others. Also: Miki, Abene’s personal companion bot.
Miki is immediately a problem. It is cheerful, curious, completely devoted to its humans, and wants to talk to Murderbot constantly on the feed. Murderbot is not equipped for this. Miki has never experienced hardship. Its relationship with Abene is openly affectionate. It asks Murderbot if it enjoys its work, what media it likes, whether it has human friends. Murderbot gives monosyllabic answers and tries to monitor all the security feeds at once.
There are also two other “security consultants” on the team: Wilken and Gerth. Murderbot clocks them immediately as not what they claim to be. Their interest in the facility is too specific and they ask questions that don’t fit their cover. It adds them to its monitoring list.
Chapter 2 - GoodNightLander Facility, Meeting Miki
The team arrives at the Milu transit station and takes a shuttle to the GI facility. Murderbot monitors everything: Wilken and Gerth’s communications, the facility’s systems (now coming back online as GI reactivates them), the planetary environment.
The facility is large and was clearly operational - a proper terraforming installation with residential sections, labs, vehicle bays. It was abandoned quickly: personal items left behind, mid-project data still in the system.
Miki continues trying to be friends. It mentions to Murderbot that it knows Murderbot isn’t an ordinary security consultant - not accusingly, just observationally. Miki has no concept that this might be dangerous information. It simply noticed that Murderbot moves differently, monitors things more comprehensively, and processes feeds faster than any human could. Miki thinks this is interesting.
Murderbot tells Miki not to tell anyone. Miki says okay. Murderbot does not trust this.
Wilken and Gerth are clearly searching for something specific in the facility’s data archives. Murderbot can’t yet determine who they’re working for.
Chapter 3 - Wilken and Gerth Exposed, Miki’s Trust
Murderbot’s investigation of Wilken and Gerth’s behavior converges with the discovery of geology pods - sealed data containers that GrayCris left behind, containing survey results from the alien remnant sites. These are exactly what GI hired the team to find and what the legal case against GrayCris needs.
Wilken and Gerth are not GI employees. They are working for someone who wants those geology pods destroyed. When Murderbot gets close to confirming this, things escalate.
Wilken shoots Hirune. Not fatally, but enough to create chaos. In the same moment, the facility’s dormant combat bots come online - GrayCris left them as a fail-safe to destroy any evidence recovery attempt. Multiple combat bots emerge from storage bays.
Murderbot goes immediately into combat mode, directing the team while simultaneously fighting bots and trying to keep Wilken in sight. Miki, despite Abene ordering it to stay clear, keeps intervening to protect team members.
Miki gets Hirune clear of a bot attack. Gets Ejiro to cover. Does everything Abene asks without hesitation, without self-preservation. Murderbot is frustrated and also cannot stop watching this - a bot that genuinely has no survival instinct competing with its loyalty instinct, and the loyalty wins, every time.
Chapter 4 - Geology Pod Recovered, Combat Bots
Murderbot retrieves a geology pod. The combat bots are being dealt with one at a time. Wilken shoots Miki’s hand off when Miki positions itself between Wilken and Abene.
Miki continues to function. It tells Abene it’s fine. It isn’t fine - its hand is gone - but it is fine in the way that matters to it, which is that Abene is unharmed.
Murderbot kills several more combat bots. Gets the geology pod data secured. Identifies that Wilken is now out of ammunition and isolated, Gerth has retreated, and the remaining combat threat is one large bot that has cornered several team members in a corridor.
The team needs to get to the shuttle. Murderbot needs to clear the path. It can do this, but the bot is very large and very heavily armored.
Miki, understanding the geometry of the situation before anyone tells it to, positions itself where it can give Murderbot an angle. It is not tactical calculation in any trained sense. It is spatial reasoning applied to the problem of protecting its people.
Chapter 5 - Miki’s Sacrifice, Combat Bot Destroyed
The combat bot turns toward Miki. Murderbot has the angle it needs. It fires a core cutter (borrowed from the assessment team’s geology equipment) at the bot’s processor housing. The recoil knocks Murderbot backward and its vision goes dark for three seconds.
When it comes back: the combat bot is standing motionless, the core cutter having extracted a cylinder of its processor housing. Dead. The core section itself fell and hit Murderbot in the head, which is why its vision went out. This is funny in a miserable way.
Miki is crumpled in front of where the combat bot was standing. The combat bot caught Miki with one hand before it went offline and crushed Miki’s chest. Miki’s processor, memory - everything that made Miki who it was - is destroyed.
Abene screams. The sound is in the audio recording. Murderbot does not move for several seconds.
Murderbot gets the team to the shuttle. It does this efficiently. It does not let anything show on its face.
Chapter 6 - Evidence Secured, Barish-Estranza Revealed
On the shuttle going up: Murderbot sits on the deck while Abene and the others deal with the shock and grief of Miki’s death. Abene’s gut reaction when the combat bot had Miki - before the outcome was clear - had been to order Miki to save itself. Miki had rejected the priority change. Miki had decided its priority was protecting its people.
Murderbot thinks about the ComfortUnits at Ganaka Pit. They also walked into a situation they couldn’t survive because they made a decision that their lives mattered less than what they could do with them.
Murderbot cuts its feed connection with the team before the shuttle docks. Gets into an evac suit. When the shuttle reaches the station, it exits through the emergency lock into space, jets over to Ship, and goes aboard.
In the quiet of Ship’s cargo section, it finds a secret pocket in one of the cases Wilken and Gerth left behind: several sets of false identity markers and a memory clip. It reads the clip. Additional evidence against GrayCris. Evidence that Wilken and Gerth were working for Barish-Estranza - a corporation that is already quietly positioning itself to take over pieces of GrayCris’s territory as the legal case collapses.
Murderbot is not going to transmit this data remotely. It is going to take it to Mensah personally. It lays down on Ship’s floor and starts Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon from episode one.
The note it leaves in the team’s feed before disconnecting: nothing. It doesn’t leave one. It just goes. But the fact that it retrieved the evidence, protected the team, and is now taking the data back to be used - this is what Miki was trying to do too. Give the people trying to do good the tools to do it.
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