Iris leads a research crew aboard the transport Perihelion into a station in the middle of a hostile corporate takeover. Security teams are evicting residents sphere by sphere. The crew's goal is a Pre-Corporation Rim structure a handful of scientists are trying to survey before the new owners seal it for good.
Perihelion, the ship's AI the crew calls Peri, runs tactical support from orbit. It holds a plan together as the mission slides sideways. The story shows what Peri took away from Artificial Condition. Its brief, wary contact with a rogue SecUnit has left it readier to trust its own crew and worry over them.
This is a novelette rather than a full book: short chapters, one dangerous day, told from the crew's side instead of the SecUnit's usual first-person voice. Readers see Peri the way its own people do. It is exacting, protective, and capable of something closer to friendship than it would admit.
The story sits at book 2.5 in The Murderbot Diaries, between Artificial Condition and Rogue Protocol, and rewards readers who have already met Peri there. It was a finalist for the 2026 Hugo Award for Best Novelette.
