Artificial Condition

Murderbot has walked away from the company that owned it, but not from the one memory it cannot reach: the incident at the RaviHyral mining facility that left fifty-seven people dead and gave the rogue SecUnit its name. Wanting to know whether it was really responsible, it works its way back toward the moon where it happened — and is adopted, more or less against its will, by ART, a vast research transport with a formidable intellect, an appetite for Murderbot's serials, and no patience for evasion.

Getting down to RaviHyral means passing as something it is not, so Murderbot takes a job as a security consultant to three young researchers — Tapan, Rami and Maro — trying to recover data taken from them by a local operator named Tlacey. The contract is meant to be nothing but a pretext. It turns into the reason a construct that is nobody's property has to work out what it actually owes the humans standing next to it.

The second of Martha Wells's Murderbot Diaries, Artificial Condition is a short, fast, first-person novella about surveillance, corporate ownership and the awkward business of being liked.